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Borrowing a line from Courtney Love - when it was possible to understand what Courtney Love was saying in order to be able to borrow her lines - Sleeper do Alice In Vain backstage at Glastonbury 1995:
And that, you'll be delighted to hear, concludes the Smart week(end), as there's no sign of either Twisted or Pyrotechnician on the tubes.
No Lady Love Your Countryside video, so we skip a track on Sleeper's debut to Vegas. A few years post-Sleeper, and Louise Wener would return, via novel form, to the idea of Vegas as a life-changing place.
[Part of the Smart week]
There's no Hunch or Amuse floating about online, but there is a decent chunk of Bedhead tucked into this interview with Louise:
[Part of the Smart Weekend]
Delicious. That was about sex, too.
This is the song from Glastonbury 1995, complete with a bonus Little Annie:
[Part of the Smart weekend]
Maybe it was all the sex talk. Indie kids in the 90s had all sorts of problems when confronted with sex.
Swallow. That was about sex:
[Part of the Smart weekend]
In the long history of bemusingly reviled bands, Sleeper were probably one of the most unfairly attacked. The main charge against the group seemed to be that Louise Wener was pretty (although so was Brett Anderson) and said interesting things in interviews (although, again, so did Brett Anderson).
The band's debut album Sleeper in fifteen years old next March - if it was a child, it wouldn't be talking to you now, except for the odd grunt over breakfast and to roll its eyes when you try to do the drugs talk. And what better time that five months before this birthday to revisit the record in video form?
Track one was Inbetweener, the official video for which is on YouTube - complete with Dale Winton - but is unembeddable at the insistence of Sony Records.
This, though, is the track being done at one of those odd Top of The Pop live gigs:
and there's also a version from The Word, again unembeddable.
Buy
Smart: Mp3 download version
Smart: CD version
As many of the tracks available to follow...
Swallow
Delicious
Bedhead
Vegas
Alice In Vain
Back to Glastonbury 1995, then, for two more acoustic tracks - Delicious and Little Annie:
[Part of Sleeper weekend]
A quick scrabble round some desleeperbloked Louise Wener stuff.
First, here's Lou playing Poker with the bloke out the Barclaycard Advert and the bloke out the Pimms advert. Presumably she must have creamed them, which would explain why they did the adverts. If you don't want us to spoil the result, don't worry, it's got something to do with cards: Not embeddable, unfortunately
Next, a brief snatch of Louise pre-guest seating on Shooting Stars, Vic and Bob's welcome-wearing-out gameshow:
Finally, her doing what she does every bit as well as playing snap for money and standing on a revolving disc - singing, inevitably, on TFI, doing Life's A Gas:
[Part of Sleeper weekend]
The number of times Sleeper appeared on TFI Friday, you might almost suspect that Chris Evans had a small part of his heart that would, forever, be at Lou Wener's beck and call. This is from Christmas 1996 - we're guessing, based on Evans' gear, although it could also be from the period when he started to believe he was Lord Of Entertainment.
[Part of Sleeper Weekend]
One of Sleeper's earliest songs - it was on their debut EP - from an early appearance at Glastonbury in 20051995. This is Alice In Vain:
[Part of Sleeper weekend]
Continuing our mini-festival of Sleeperdom, here's a double bill from the Top Of The Pops weekend. Louise - still dreaming of finding a shirt long enough to tuck into her jeans - leads her colleagues through Inbetweener and What Do I Do Now?
[Part of Sleeper weekend]
Taken from ITV's ill-fated attempt to revive Channel 4's brave-but-foolish attempt to create a British equivalent to Saturday Night Live, Sleeper do Nice Guy Eddie on Saturday Live:
[Part of the Sleeper weekend]
We did do a YouTube selection for Louise Wener ages ago, but that turns out to have been one link, to a video which has since been removed. And, since we fought passionately on the side of Sleeper in the 'it's not proper guitar music if you quite fancy the person singing' wars, it seems only right we should give the band a proper celebration.
There was always a slight disdain for the band; Louise was too opinionated; too pretty; the band were too poppy. All the things that, say, Suede were praised were seen as weak points for them. There was a nasty sense that indie kids didn't mind girls in bands, but not ones who actually wore skirts. It probably didn't help that the rest of the group weren't entirely memorable - hence Sleeperblokes - but how many members of Mega City Four could an average punter have supplied if required?
And were they really that dull? Jon Stewart wound up doing session work for KD Lang, which is a handy item to fling on your CD.
Louise has gone on to write books. Pretty good books. But it's music's loss.
Anyway, this is just too good to resist: Statuesque on the Tony Parsons fronted Big Mouth from the 30th April 1996:
Buy
Sleeper best-of although with only twothree proper albums, there isn't much to argue against buying those:
Smart
The It Girl
Pleased To Meet You - the existence of which I had totally forgotten about
Worldwide Adventures In Love - Wener's latest novel, published last month
More videos across the weekend
Nice Guy Eddie on Saturday Live
Inbetweener and What Do I Do Now live at the Top Of The Pops Weekend
Alice In Vain live, Glastonbury 1995
Click... Off... Gone live, TFI Friday, 1996
Louise Wener on TFI, Celebrity Poker & Shooting Stars
Delicious and Little Annie live, Glastonbury 1995
