Double LP
Featuring all Fire Engines’ Codex Communications/Pop: Aural recorded output. Plus the two 1981 John Peel BBC Sessions, the latter featuring tracks unavailable elsewhere. The CD adds essential live recordings including Fire Engines’ debut live performance at Leith Community Centre, the band’s memorable appearance at 1980’s ‘Why Does The Pope Not Come To Glasgow?’ Edinburgh Fringe and one of the band’s legendary 30-minute sets at Edinburgh Valentino’s captured during the summer of 1981.
Fire Engines’ life as a band might have been over before it had barely begun, but the punk sired Edinburgh band’s short life blazed with incident and colour. ‘Boredom or Fire Engines – You Can’t Have Both’ went the legend. The small and imperfectly formed back catalogue they left in their wake sounded like they had crawled out of a cellar and come blinking into the inner-city light in a parallel universe somewhere between Leith Walk and CBGB’s. Boredom wasn’t an option.
Edinburgh’s incestuous inter-band family tree also included crossovers with The Flowers and Boots for Dancing, both of whom released singles on Bob Last and Hilary Morrison’s Pop: Aural label. Following the release of their debut single – ‘Get Up and Use Me’ / ‘Everything’s Roses’ – on the Codex Communications imprint – Fire Engines too found a home with Last and Morrison’s post Fast Product label.
Now remastered from Bob Last’s original master tapes together with two accompanying John Peel Sessions, Chrome Dawns is the definite Fire Engines artefact including the 7” inch – ‘Candyskin’ / ‘Meat Whiplash’ – now regarded as a classic; the mini album – Lubricate Your Living Room – as a wilfully perverse objet d’art; and the 12” – ‘Big Gold Dream’ – best remembered by some for its sleeve. Despite such limited output, Fire Engines had a rich history the brevity of their lifespan doesn’t do justice.
