For a while back at the turn of the Millennium, it looked as though Aberystwyth's Murry The Hump might just become a little bit huge. They put out a slew of singles on various indie labels between 1999 and 2001 and with each release the acclaim grew and grew. Their debut single The Green Green Grass Of Home was not a cover of the Tom Jones classic, but rather a song about marijuana. It was Single Of The Week in NME. The follow-up Thrown Like A Stone was voted #1 in John Peel's Festive 50 in 1999.
The famous fans followed: Steve Lamacq, Alex James of Blur, Joe Strummer... JOE STRUMMER! They played gigs with everyone from the Stereophonics to Bonnie Tyler; the Levellers to Deacon Blue; Shed Seven to Björn Again. BJÖRN AGAIN!! Signing for Too Pure, should have provided Murry The Hump with the platform for megastardom. Indeed, their debut album 'Songs Of Ignorance' received countless plaudits, including review in the Times, the Independent and the Guardian. THE GUARDIAN!!! The world was their oyster.
So what went wrong? Well, quite simply, it became a job. "It stopped being fun and we found we had to promote things and that's when things started getting quite tense," according to singer Matthew Evans. So they split. Within a couple of years, three of the band reformed as The Keys, who are not only still going, but also had their very own Welsh Wednesday feature back here.
Vodka & Wine featured on that much acclaimed, and really rather good, debut album. You surely cannot resist any song with an opening line this good..
Maybe the daft name put folk off?
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing them quoted at length in a 'bands to watch' piece but laughing at their name and almost immediately forgetting all about them.....
Can see why folk liked them on the basis of this song but not personally convinced.