Jelly Roll Gum Drop…

Occasional Albums Thing 071 - Flesh For Lulu “Blue Sisters Swing”

The first thing to clear up here is this…is “Blue Sisters Swing” a 12” EP or a Mini Album ? It plays at 33 1/3 RPM and it has 5 tracks. I’m almost certain (although we all know how unreliable my memory can be) that on its release in 1985 it was advertised as a Mini Album but both Discogs and 45Worlds (the two main online record collecting databases) list it as a 12” single/EP. For the purposes of this Blog I shall stick with my (admittedly useless) memory and treat it as a Mini Album.

Flesh For Lulu formed in 1982 and after a well received John Peel session they signed with Polydor Records. Their 1984 debut album (great as I think it was, and we all know what happens to bands that I think will be huge) pretty much failed to sell and Polydor dropped the band which is how, here in 1985, we find them on the independent Hybrid Records. 

“Blue Sisters Swing” begins with one of the bands very best, to my ears one of the alternative 80’s very best, “Seven Hail Mary’s”. A single snare beat introduces the band as they all pile in on Nick Marsh’s opening lines “Seven Hail Marys watching over you, Seven Hail Marys everything you do”. The song itself appears to be about loss but it’s minimal lyrics don’t really spell too much out 

Someone will talk of a great loss
Someone will speak of a strange loss, 
Seven Hail Marys they’re watching over you 

The song is really all about the juggernaut the band are laying down and it’s intensity, they absoloutely tear into it, Nick’s vocal getting more and more frantic as the song progresses. From the very first time I heard it I’ve bloody loved it and still play it regularly 40 years later…and 40 years later I discovered that singer Nick Marsh lifted the vocal melody from a Frank Zappa song off the album “Cruising With Ruben & The Jets”.

“Death Shall Come” returns them to the Goth ’n’ Roll arena they stalked so well. “I Know I Said You’re Beautiful But You Know I’m Just A Liar” deserves some sort of award for that title alone. “Who's In Danger?” is sung by Rocco and…well…yeah OK…and we finish up on “Black Tattoo” which feels a little like John Mellencamp’s big hit “R.O.C.K. In The USA” but played by a band out of their gourds on dirty street grade amphetamines.

“Blue Sisters Swing” was re-issued on CD tacked onto the end of a CD release of their 2nd album proper, “Big Fun City”, and with a couple of bonus tracks, “Anti-Social” and a frantic live blast through The Stooges “1970 (Feel Alright)” which makes The Damned’s attempt at it on their debut album (re-titled “I Feel Alright”) sound positively tame !

Flesh For Lulu went on to respectable success in America off the back of a couple of singles that hit on college radio and a song in a movie. The two albums from that period (“Long Live The New Flesh” and “Plastic Fantastic”) are very different to the opening 3 records and to my mind nowhere near as good. Still, they should have found more success than they did at home. Every now and again I come across someone who loved ‘em as much as I do and the conversation always goes something like “I thought I was the only one that even knew them!”. There’s a very long but well worth reading article about them here ...they culda been contenders.

Seven Hail Mary’s - https://youtu.be/t6B0pMXfLuM?si=7erfa3PcEOi3TfHd