There were so many good bands in Liverpool that didn’t become famous. And the Mel-o-Tones were one of them.
They were a great live band, and I think you can tell from the article how much I liked them. I enjoyed reading it again, and I hope you enjoy it too.
The band later turned into Walking Seeds (aka Walkingseeds), going in a more psychedelic direction. Both bands had records on Liverpool’s Probe Plus label.
Loony Tones
Melody Maker, June 29, 1985
The MEL-O-TONES are a Liverpool band that aren't from Liverpool. Nevertheless, expect great things from them, says Penny Kiley. Photographs by Gary Lornie
DO you still want pop music to provide answers? The Mel-o-Tones have some, or so says their first vinyl. "I know," declares a song called "Burton Buzz", "what's behind the green door." These are people who know what the important issues are.
The same song continues: "There's something going on and it sounds like this." That could be the cue for a growl, a laugh (manic, naturally), a scream, or even something a little more articulate like "baba oom mow mow" perhaps. Frank Martin, the Mel-o-Tones singer, says his favourite songs are the kind that don't have "lyrics". Maybe it's because he's the one that has to write theirs. The reason he has to write them, his Melotonic colleagues explain, is "because he doesn't play an instrument". (If Frank played an instrument it would surely become damaged beyond repair, as Frank, on stage, often seems in danger of being himself.) One of Frank's favourite songs is "Surfin' Bird".
These guys cannot be serious. Actually, they are. "Serious play," says Frank. The Mel-o-Tones make the kind of music that makes you want to jump for joy even if it means jumping under several pairs of Doc Martins on your way to the stage that they're inhabiting (Frank, only just); the kind of music that makes you laugh without actually telling jokes. It's noise with a comic strip mentality, that sees and seizes music sideways and serves it up in bizarre segments. Could this be art? It sure as hell sounds like rock 'n' roll to me. It's excitement as physically as it is mentally.
The Mel-o-Tones, in their own words, "surfaced one night" at the end of '84 and sent a sluggish Liverpool into something approaching shock. "We were just a contrast to what was happening," they say modestly.
In fact, the immediate response at the time was summed up in the feeling "they don't sound like they come from Liverpool". An easy answer to that one. "You could set a compass by us," explains guitarist Martin Dempsey. "The group's four people from east, west, north, and south. Frank's from London, Bob (Parker — bass) is from the west coast, Barrow in Furness, Jon (Neesam — drums) is from the east coast, Middlesbrough, and I'm from Lancashire."
Martin, in fact, is the nearest thing to a native, having been in the city for a decade and playing with with such seminal combos as Yachts, Pink Military, and It's Immaterial. It was Martin who took the group that was already evolving from a garage band with a copy of "Nuggets" and the enthusiasm he'd been looking for, and fashioned it into something approaching uniqueness.
The first EP, put out with deserving speed on Probe Plus, showed the versatility of a group whose energy level had already bagged them as something with "-billy" on the end — a mistaken assumption to anyone who'll listen. The six tracks on the EP, from "Bomb Sutra" to "I Walked With A Bugs Bunny Bendy Toy" are an exhilarating promise of delights to come, and as different from each other as King Kurt or the Cramps to Captain Beefheart (and there are fans of both in their audiences). The future promises even more choice.
"We might even have gaps in our music," warns Martin. "A lot of our songs are like frenzied messes, which we like, but I like dub as well. I want to do something deep, something silly, something surfy, something poppy, just get loads of different points of view on vinyl, but still retain the feeling of what the band's about.
"There's something that runs through all our music, a cutting edge — any music that hasn't got that doesn't interest me."
Too much music, they agree is, in Frank's words, "sanitised sound".
"People don't enjoy noise any more," he bemoans.
Things the Mel-o-Tones enjoy are "hardness . . . crunchy guitars . . . pictures".
When the Mel-o-Tones made their first record they were "just throwing a lot of ideas and feelings in and whizzing them around". When I meet the Mel-o-Tones they throw a few more ideas around, or at least Frank and Martin, as the two spokesmen, do. Do the absent two feel the same? "They're as confused as we are."
Feelings: "The people I admire," says Martin, "are people that have been out on a limb and done interesting things within the basic rock 'n' roll format — Beefheart, Hendrix, Bo Diddley . . ."
"We've got to be inventive," determines Frank. "There's still so much that can be done within the rock'n'roll framework — it can be stretched a lot further.
"People are frightened of things that aren't done in the proper way. We use the guitar as a sound machine, not as a virtuoso instrument. I experiment with making different sounds with my mouth."
Ideas, for the future: "Storytelling — more drama — more screaming — playful experimenting — fun."
A bit of history . . .
The name: "We struggled with a lot of names, and 'tone' was a constant. There was a doowop band . . . Howling Wolf's publishing . . . Loony Tunes in Merrie Melodies, Bugs Bunny cartoons . . . and we discovered a few weeks ago that there's some actual nodes inside your ears and when noises get too loud or abrasive they cut off and they're actually called the melotones which is f***in' wonderful!"
The meeting: "We met," explains Martin, "through art and music — but that's part and parcel of the same thing anyway." Time for another art school band? "That," he says sternly, "is a dodgy subject. Every band in the world has got somebody who went to art school. Except the ones like Ultravox.
"The sort of art I like anyway," he goes on, "is performance, entertainment, art that's energetic, has some life in it, something that's a part of real life. If you can see a band enjoying itself and doing something interesting and creative then that's the sort of art an audience can appreciate.
"Being aware of things," he says "means we're less likely to be contrived."
Contrived they certainly are not - see them on stage and something unthought takes over, something profound and exciting. (Who would think Frank was such a nice, quiet-spoken boy?) Martin has a more mundane explanation: "The thing is you can think and theorise and rationalise but when it comes to it — we're not very good! I'm not a musician — I'm a music fan. I can't play guitar to save my life — but I can feel things."
The Mel-o-Tones don't waste their visual energies on themselves (a can of hairspray doesn't make an artist) but those talents are there. They make comics as well as music, paint posters, plan light shows, dream of films, and make videos that will never get shown.
"We made this home video," recalls Martin. "We were all running up and down this scaffolding with these masks that Frank made. They were really good but . . ."
"My landlord thought they were rubbish and threw them out," laments Frank. "That's what happens to a lot of my productions." So this is what they mean by the trash aesthetic?
Actually, they do know what that means. "Seeing what is good in what other people think is rubbish," defines Frank. "A lot of things other people disregard I enjoy, from nasty noises to tatty old magazines and old Warner Bros cartoons.”
"Invention and imagination and anarchy," surmises Frank, "can be found anywhere."
I think I've found them in the Mel-o-Tones.
Watch the Mel-o-Tones
Live at Planet X. Enjoy.