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| Tim,sporting that ultimate punk rock fuck you prop...a beard! |
The music is sort of like Section 25 as recorded by Martin Hannett with none of his legendary equipment, except a cassette deck with inbuilt condenser mike, and a reverb unit made from a damp cardboard box. Not unlike a live Joy Division bootleg, except with even less people in the audience.( yes, everyone's seen Joy Division haven't they? ....I once made the mistake of turning down Joy Division, supporting the Buzzcocks, to go and see The Slits, and the Subway Sect, on at a rival venue. By the reports I received of the gig, everyone was in the bar when J D were on,and came out when the Buzzcocks played! Oh, the choices of entertainment you had in 1979!).
I'll let Tim, previously referred to as 'The John Boy Walton of Punk' in these unhallowed cyber-pages, fill you in on the Beating Hearts story(Active: late-1981 to late 1982):
"After Controls (Mk 2) called it a day in
early-81, Tim Naylor and Kerry Kirk formed a short-lived outfit called
Heartbeats with a girl guitarist (Tina) that rehearsed a few times but never
played live. Tim then joined a
Farnborough-based four piece band called Spod (also the name of the girl
vocalist) as bassist, but left after six weeks as he wanted to put his own
outfit together.
Through contacts at Kingfisher Music in
Fleet (“The West End Store in the Sticks” according to the Pearl & Dean
style ad that used to run at the local cinema), a series of revolving door
auditions started in late 81 for a band Tim provisionally christened Beating
Hearts and a number of jams around a song (Listen to the Heartbeat) gradually
whittled the wheat away from the chaff.
One promising line-up featured Jim Rump on
vocals and Kerry from Controls with a former mod guitarist Steve Gerry, but
that failed to take off. Gerry
recommended Simon Baggelley as a guitarist and Tim invited former Control
guitarist Jon Monks to come and try out on keyboards (Jon’s preferred weapon of
choice). He also auditioned a young drummer Richard Jennings who had been
playing in an anarcho-punk inspired outfit with Sean Burt who later vocalised
with Black Easter. This line-up
crystallised into Beating Hearts, with Tim on lead vocals and bass.
Tim brought a clutch of songs to the first
two ‘official’ rehearsals and in a brave move these were recorded live to
cassette with barely any time for the band to learn them, which Jon then took
away and edited into a demo called ‘First Three Hours’. This comprised two post-punk pop songs ‘Being
There’ and ‘Forget about Debbie’ (the latter appeared twice on the demo for
some reason), the Joy Division-ey ‘New Pride’, another lengthy version of
Listen to the Heartbeat (which was actually two parts rather inelegantly edited
together), a song dating from Controls
Mk 2 called ‘You tore my heart out’, and an extended ten minute instrumental
jam based around an echoed bass and synth line which Tim improvised some lyrics
over called ‘Beauty Fades’.
This live demo was packaged up by Tim and
despatched to a few indie labels including the X-Cassettes supremo Chris Green
who was in the throes of establishing a vinyl label (called at that stage Open
Eye Records, but eventually changed to Open Door Records). Green was exceptionally enthusiastic and
offered the band a place on the ‘Beyond the River’ vinyl compilation.
Meanwhile, Beating Hearts made their live
debut with a Saturday night gig at the Function Suite at Farnborough Recreation
Centre, playing to a small crowd of Controls fans. One new track ‘Wrap me Up’ stood out as the
obvious candidate for Beating Hearts to record, and the band went into a local
four track studio and produced a breakneck rough and ready version which was
duly dispatched to Reading and Open Eye Records. This was rejected as being in the wrong
format for mastering, so the band booked into Matinee Music, Reading in April
82 with Chris Broderick at the helm. A
more sedate version of the track was re-recorded and eventually appeared as
track 4 on Beyond the River (Open Door Records OD001)."
You can sample the Beating Hearts contribution to Beyond The River, "Wrap Me Up" (mp3)HERE!
Track Listing:
1. Being There
2 Forget about Debbie take 1
3 New Pride
4 Listen to the Heartbeat
5 Beauty Fade (edit)
6 You Tore my Heart Out
7 Forget about Debbie take 2
8 Listen to the Heartbeat take 2
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