The Lives of the Saint Etienne

To build their Facebook timeline into a full-on history, Saint Etienne are inviting fans to email them with photos, memorabilia, memories, cuttings and stuff like that:

Would you like to contribute your memories of seeing, listening or reading about the group to the Timeline, and share your experiences with other fans? These could be photos of Saint Etienne shows, ticket stubs, early vinyl, magazine cuttings, or memorabilia - absolutely anything to do with the group. The more unique, the more other fans will appreciate it.

We'll pick our favourites and put them into the Timeline, giving you full accreditation and telling the story on your behalf. If you submit something that really makes us smile, there are a few prizes that Sarah, Pete and Bob have been keeping in their lock-up.

Please email all content (photos, clippings, videos, stories) you'd like submitted to the timeline to saint.etienne@umusic.com

If the prizes are really good, you could then submit those again to the timeline, and might win more prizes, in an ever-growing circle until you get to keep Bob Stanley in your spare bedroom. [NB: This might not form part of the actual terms and conditions.]

Demand answers from Bob Stanley

Q Magazine is apparently still going, and asking for readers' questions for Saint Etienne.

Downloadable: The Drums

You've got to love anyone who says that the only music they listen to is The Field Mice. And The Drums being remixed by Saint Etienne, the only band to have had a hit with a Field Mice song - well, that's a loop being closed, right? There's a download waiting for you at RCRDLBL.

Downloadable: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

What do you get if you take The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's Higher Than The Stars, and have it all messed about with by Saint Etienne verus Lord Spank?

This free download is what.

Downladable: Air France v Saint Etienne

I dare say you'll already know this, but The Line Of Best Fit is currently uploading for the downloadings an Air France reworking of Saint Etienne's Spring.

Oh... it's only going to be there for 48 hours. Quick!

Downloadable: Saint Etienne

The lovely people at Saint Etienne have pulled together a three-track live ep, Trumpton Comes Alive, which you can download and play on your computer or portable electronic devices. It's very good.

Saint Etienne: Return to Foxbase

Some sublime news from the Saint Etienne camp:

Rumours have been flying left right and centre, but we can finally confirm that disco dynamo Richard X has taken Foxbase Alpha and re-arranged it into a brand new beast called FOXBASE BETA. Using the original masters, adding cellos, electrix, choirs, and the spirit of Brian Cant he has created something really special - spruced-up yet reverential, it is essentially a 2009 up-date of Foxbase Alpha, given a shot of vodka and a loving caress. We're chuffed. It feels unnervingly like jumping into a Tardis.

FOXBASE BETA will be issued, via the fan club, as a limited, numbered 2CD set of 3,000 copies, which will also include FOXBASE EXTRA, three unreleased recordings from the original album sessions: a just discovered coda to Girl VII (we'd forgotten it existed), a summery instrumental called Richard III, and the first, very different, take of Kiss And Make Up, which was the very first Saint Etienne recording. We cut it one afternoon in January 1990, and then Only Love Can Break Your Heart in the evening! It was all so simple then. These tracks won't be available anywhere else.

There's also to be limited 12", gig-only versions and all manner of highly collectable whatnot. Let's just not think about how young we all were when the original came out. Let's not think about that. Don't THINK ABOUT IT.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Saint Etienne/The Field Mice

I Taught Myself How To Grow Old explores the genius of Kiss And Make Up - including talking to the man who wrote the song, Bob from the Field Mice, on his relationship with the Saint's version:

BW: I haven't heard it in a very long time and although it's always a compliment when someone covers one of your songs my heart does sink a little every time it's reissued because the publishing has never been straight forward for Kiss and Make Up.

Saint Etienne have all the accessories required for that Big Match atmosphere

Set your alarm clocks and other devices to remind you at 3pm on Monday when the hugely limited edition Subbuteo edition of Fox Base Alpha. There's only a thousand, so get in early, or you'll have to wait until you can buy it on eBay to put in a drawer alongside your 1981-82 Subbuteo catalogue.

[While you're waiting: Saint Etienne videos]

Downloadable: Saint Etienne

In order to promote the latest in the long line of Saint Etienne best-ofs, they're swapping a free download of Teenage Winter for email addresses.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Bob Stanley

Pitchfork spend some quality time with Bob Stanley:

Pitchfork: You have a new compilation, London Conversations. You've released quite a few comps-- Too Young to Die, Smash the System, Travel Edition, plus rarities and fan-club releases: Why another one and why now?

BS: Um, yeah, it's slightly embarrassing. For some reason we didn't think anybody would notice there's been about four before [laughs]. We've only done one officially before, which was Too Young to Die. There's been various in between because we've changed labels so many times. The reason we're doing it now is because we wanted to redo the whole catalog with a bonus disc for each album. And this is just a taster for that, I suppose. It makes sense to do one ahead of all the individual albums coming out. It just seems like a suitable time.

Get set for Saint Etienne

Good news from Saint Etienne's MySpace:

new single is Method Of Modern Love, expertly sculpted by Richard X, and it's out on February 9th. It'll be super-limited, and the initial copies will be signed. By us. Or maybe by Mal Evans.

What's more, there's a Cola Boy remix. Honestly.

Then on Feb 16th, not before time, London Conversations will finally be on sale.

Bloody hell... a Cola Boy remix after all this time? Whoever would have thought?

(Although given that Cola Boy stuff was thought to cheesy to be a proper St Et release, wouldn't that create some sort of conundrum that threatens the space-time whatnot if a Saint Etienne release featured them?)

Saint Etienne weekend: Nothing Can Stop Us Now

A mere slice of the mighty Nothing Can Stop Us Now from Bestival 2006:



[Part of the Saint Etienne weekend]

Saint Etienne weekend: The Journey Continues

Mark Brown teaming up with Sarah Cracknell, ripping Eliza's Aria off the Lloyds TSB scary-ass train ads (why aren't they riding a black horse? Leo McKern will be turning in his grave) to nearly make the top ten earlier this year:



Or, if you'd prefer just the divine Ms C, here's the same song sans Mark Brown:



[Part of the Saint Etienne weekend]

Saint Etienne weekend: Seven Ways To Love

This, Cola Boy, was a Saint Etienne side project which released songs Stanley and Wiggs judged to be "too cheesy" to put out under their usual name.

They might just have been right:



[Part of Saint Etienne weekend]

Saint Etienne weekend: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

A dollop of Neil Young coverage now. Apparently, this reached number one in the American Hot Dance Chart back in 1991:



[Part of Saint Etienne weekend]

Saint Etienne weekend: Jungle Pulse

I've long held a suspicion that the decision to work with Etienna Daho was taken with the hope that at some point Daho might undertake a miracle, bringing recognition from the Catholic church and allowing the songs to be rebilled as By The Two Saint Etiennes.

While the world is still waiting for him to resurrect some dead nuns or something, let's watch the one Saint Etienne and the one non-saint Etienne working together:



[Part of Saint Etienne Weekend]

Saint Etienne weekend: Pale Movie

Although by rights Saint Etienne's natural home should have been Top of the Pops, they didn't turn up there anything like often enough. Here's one of their visits, though, with Pale Movie. Yes, the big number 28 smash from February 2004:



[Part of Saint Etienne weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: Saint Etienne

One 't', two 'n's.

Really, if you were looking for an example of British Pop to label Britpop, you'd be better off slapping the label on Saint Etienne than Oasis, wouldn't you?

To celebrate the new single, Burnt Out Car, which is one of those 'new tracks' that get flung onto compilations; and next month's compilation, London Conversations, which features the track Burnt Out Car, we're going to spend a weekend rustling about in the Saint Etienne video box.

And how better to start videos, than with Action?



More
Official site - tube-themed thrills
Wikipedia - Saint edit'em
MySpace
Last FM
Airport - [note to self: check this is actually run by the band]

Buy
London Conversations - out October 13th
Tales From Turnpike House - London-centric concept album
Finisterre - it is the end of the world

More videos across the weekend
Pale Movie - Top of The Pops performance
Jungle Pulse with Etienne Daho
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Cola Boy: Seven Ways To Love
Sarah Cracknell featuring (and not featuring) Mark Brown - The Journey Continues
Nothing Can Stop Us Now - live at Bestival

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Bob Stanley tells The Times about the time Saint Etienne tried to nab the gig theming the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies:

Along with our arranger Gerard Johnson we booked a day in a London studio and worked out a demo called Tomorrow Never Dies. Clearly, this entailed us avoiding most of our favourite lyrical subjects (cars with the top down, escaping the city, listening to the radio, sitting in the pub) and contemplating some less familiar to our world of pop – cars with ejector seats, escaping from megalomaniac baddies, having sex with eight women in 96 minutes.