The New Cue #449: Roy, God Colony, The Limiñanas, Coldpanda, Cameron Winter, Tamino, Saint Etienne

"I thought they could be pretty big."

Hello,

Welcome to your weekly Recommender edition, with another round of new music picks from Ted and Niall and a cracking Story Behind The Song from Fierce Panda’s Simon Williams, who tells us all about releasing Coldplay’s debut single in 1999. It’s for paying subscribers only – it costs £5 a month to become a fully-fledged TNC ledge and it helps to ensure Ted and Niall don’t have to exist on air and banter. Man cannot exist only on air and banter. You know this, come on.

You might also be aware that soon there is a thing called “Christmas” and perhaps you would be interested in gifting a subscription to someone, probably the best present you could get. The New Cue is not just for Christmas you know, we do this shit all year round. Think about it, and whilst you’re thinking about it, just do it and then it’s done. Did you realise you were such a terrible procrastinator? Get all your friends and loved ones and maybe your enemies - maybe they hate really great music Substack publications? - a subscription by clicking here:

Here’s this week’s playlists:

And here for the Apple Music crew.

Enjoy the edition, see you on Monday

Ted and Niall

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The Story Behind The Single: Brothers & Sisters by Coldplay

Have you ever worked hard for a dream and at the very last minute, just when it’s coming true, watch it float away somewhere new? Let Simon Williams of Fierce Panda Records tell you the story of discovering Coldplay and releasing their debut single exactly twenty-five years ago…

1/ Simon, please take us back twenty-five years to 1999. What was going on for you and Fierce Panda in 1999 BC (Before Coldplay)?
Life was quite interesting in ‘99. We were going full time with the label after five years cross-hobbying with writing for the NME and releasing a boatload of neo-legendary one-off singles.

We had signed a swanky new label deal with Korda Marshall at Mushroom / Infectious. All we needed to do now was repay his faith and sign the greatest new thing in the world.

2/ How did you come across Coldplay? What were they like when you did?
I first saw them at the Camden Falcon in October ‘98. It was a bit of a weird one because they’d already played the industry fest In The City in Manchester, but it seemed like only Debs Wild and Caroline Elleray in the A&R fraternity had been convinced of their worth by this point. So at the Falcon they played to a load of their mates from UCL and they played very well, with nods to Radiohead and Jeff Buckley and lots of melodic flashes and musical flourishes which weren’t quite in the right places, like they were still trying to find what they were looking for. They looked like scruffy students because, well, they were scruffy students, but they had at least five great songs, none of which were ‘Yellow’ by this point, so that was a pretty good start.

3/ How did the suggestion of Fierce Panda releasing Coldplay’s debut single come about?
In the traditional haphazard A&R manner - saw the singer at the Falcon bar straight after the show, barged into their conversation and mumbled/screamed “Would you like to do a single on Fierce Panda?”

4/ What did you think of Brothers & Sisters?

It was another weird one because traditionally we’d gone for releasing the bands’ very best songs on the basis that a) they could get run down by a bus a week later, or b) more likely, they would re-record the track on a bigger label in six months time - see ‘Bruise Pristine’ by Placebo, ‘This Is My Hollywood’ by 3 Colours Red or ‘All You Good Good People’ by Embrace. In this instance we really wanted ‘Shiver’ or ‘Bigger Stronger’, but we got what we were given from the Station Studio sessions in downtown Southgate. As it transpired, it was a genius move - piano versions of ‘Brothers & Sisters’ on early Parlophone b-sides aside, we have a bona fide Coldplay release rarity on our paws.

5/ How close did you come to signing Coldplay permanently?
This is yet another weird one - after a couple of terrifically seminal Bull & Gate shows in January and April ‘99 it seemed like the A&R battle came down to us and Parlophone. Not an entirely unfair fight considering Mushroom/Infectious was home to Muse, Ash and Garbage, and I really felt as though we gave it our best indie shot, taking the band down the pub by Backstreet Rehearsal Studios on Holloway Road, telling them we’d grow together, take over the world side-by-side and such mad like. I thought they could be pretty big.

To be fair, when they signed to Parlophone I couldn’t really complain as even I would have signed to them back then - they were unstoppable. To be even fairer, they came up to The Village in Walthamstow to buy us beers while they told us they were signing to someone else, so at least they softened the salty tears. Nowadays I tend to find out bands have left us when I see their new release on another label on Spotify.

What is curious is that their dearly departed live agent Steve Strange was always absolutely insistent that for Coldplay choosing between the two labels was an excruciating process. “Simon,” he would frequently bellow, “you have no idea how close Coldplay were to signing to Fierce Panda!” Sometimes I would try not to look TOO sad.

6/ When did you accept this sliding door moment?
Mmmmm...it probably took just the 22 years to come vaguely near to accepting it. When ‘Yellow’ first blew into the charts I was so shellshocked I avoided all radio and television for weeks so I couldn’t hear it. And I didn’t go see them play again for years - even when I did it was at the Emirates, and my excuses were that Ash were supporting and that label manager Philip was a massive Arsenal fan, so it would be a nice day out for him. (Above and beyond for a Sours fan, to be honest).

So it was literally only a couple of years ago that I started coming to terms with our history together - helped, it has to be said, in no small part by Coldplay coming to terms with their own mad story, as well as their empathetic reaction and support for my perilous words in the ‘Pandamonium! How Not To Run A Record Label’ book. Like other key movers and shakers in their timeline I’ve recently had the VIP (Very Important Panda) treatment at Wembley Stadium and Hampden Park, and quite nice it was too. Even the ‘Yellow’ song sounded pretty good.

7/ What’s new with you and Fierce Panda, generally?
Continuing the happy theme, we launched the 25th anniversary reissue of the ‘Brothers & Sisters’ release by Coldplay on November 29th. When even hardened pressing plant veterans in Eastern Europe are wiping away the tears as they describe a record as “the most beautiful product” they have ever held in their giant manufacturing paws you know you’ve made something super special.

‘Brothers & Sisters’ is on dynamically cool double pink and blue 7” biovinyl, so it’s as good for the planet as it is for your gramophone player. Not only that, but the records come in hot foil embossed inner sleeves, themselves wrapped up in silver laminate gatefold artwork. And not only that, but the release features the three original super rare songs on the 1999 release - ‘Brothers & Sisters’, ‘Easy To Please’ and ‘Only Superstition’ - plus a spoken word extract from the ‘Pandamonium! How Not To Run A Record Label’ audiobook, in which I patiently explain how I dismally failed to sign the biggest band in the world.

Other than that, 2025 promises / threatens new fierce panda releases by Ash, Rialto, Consumables, China Bears, Desperate Journalist, Albert Gold, Bag of Cans, Solar Eyes, Wynona Bleach and The Manatees. Same old same old, only a tiny bit shinier.

• The 25th anniversary reissue of Coldplay’s ‘Brothers & Sisters’ is out now on fierce panda records:

• The ‘Pandamonium! How Not To Run A Record Label’ book is out now on Nine Eight Books: https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/simon-williams/pandamonium-how-not-to-run-a-record-label

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Recommender Pt. 1

Ted Kessler

One of my favourite British reporters is the artist known as ROY. Truth be told, he’s not a reporter and he’s not even called Roy: he’s PJ Smith, the 40-something spoken word merchant who delivers beautifully original and well observed tales about the characters who inhabit the nooks and crannies of his native Liverpool: it’s the interior (and exterior) monologues of petty criminals, heavy drinking escapologists, office droogs, nanas on the bus, cabbies on the late shift and, in his forthcoming collection, ghosts on the blag. The tales are comic, tragic, cosmic, desperate. As I accidentally soft-launched the news on Steve Lamacq’s 6 Music show this week, I can say for now The New Cue will be publishing his masterpiece second collection of stories in the spring…but more of that in the new year.