In December,
producer Pat Collier began work on mixing a live
album at London's Greenhouse Studios. A number
of dates had been recorded during the 1994 UK
tour including Leeds Town & Country Club and
Leicester Granby Halls. As the group had
always been noted for their live performances,
it seemed logical to bring their album releases
to an end with a definitive compilation of live
recordings. Sadly, although a double album
was produced of their Granby Halls performance,
the group were not happy at the timing of the
release and the album has never surfaced
although some tracks would eventually appear on
a 2007 live compilation album released by the
BBC.
To compensate
for the non-appearance of a live album, a
bootleg CD recording of the Phoenix gig was
released in February 1995 which featured the
Radio 1FM broadcast except for the final track,
'Good Night Though'. Around the same time,
Polydor reissued 'The Eight Legged Groove
Machine', 'Hup' and 'Never Loved Elvis' on their
mid-price range.
For a brief while,
it began to look as if the split had been over-emphasised
when
Malc, Martin
and Paul were seen meeting up on a number of
occasions. However, it would transpire a
couple of months later that these meetings were
due to a new musical project the three of them
were working on alongside former Eat frontman
Ange Dolittle in the name of WeKnowWhereYouLive.
No sooner had this news emerged than details of
Miles' new band Vent also came out.
In the sudden
spate of interviews and articles, Malc became
the first to talk openly about the split. "We
lost the plot," he said. "No-one seemed to pull
in the same direction at the same time. It
mutated over the last English tour. We had a
meeting after that and said it's not worth it.
It was a brave thing for us to do because we
could've gone on. But I think we all knew it
wasn't happening. I still see Miles though from
time to time." He went on to add, "The
Wonder Stuff has all gone now. It's been a year
since the last tour and nine months since
Phoenix. We can't live on what we've done
previously, we're doing stuff now which is
different and fucking great."
In July, one
year and a day since they split up, BBC Records
released a CD-only live recording of The
Stuffies' Manchester G-Mex gig from 1991 - a
strange choice of release as the concert is
already available on the 'Inertia' bootleg. The
release included sleeve notes written by Miles
and had a slightly different track listing with
the addition of a couple of tracks. The
sound quality was also greatly improved.
LIVE IN MANCHESTER
With
all members currently taking first
steps with new projects including
the spunky WeKnowWhereYouLive, The
Wonder Stuff are now just a salty
memory but in November 1991 they
were alive and very much kicking,
and more than capable of energising
the vast echoey tramshed of the
Manchester G-Mex Centre.
In it's own way, this is just as
appropriate a summary as the recent
greatest hits package since a
muscular competence and Miles Hunt's
abrasive chumminess were always part
of the group's uncompromising charm.
'Sleep Alone', 'Size Of A Cow',
'Golden Green', 'Dizzy', 'Welcome To
The Cheap Seats' and the rest are
delivered with typical verve and
aplomb.
This is stadium rock with a
comfortingly homely edge, which is
perhaps why they never mounted a
serious challenge to U2. But it's no
less enjoyable for that. ****
Stuart Maconie, Q Magazine |
An interview
appeared in the New Musical Express in October,
around the time of Vent's first live UK
performances, in which Miles spoke about the
break-up of The Wonder Stuff. "I used to go on
stage thinking, what's the fucking point? You've
got the records, you know what they sound like
so why do you want to hear them again?' But
that's just me being cynical about being in a
band. There are some people who, if you tell
them they are going on stage and grossing
£60,000, then there are some people who will do
that. Myself, I've never had any respect for
money. The Wonder Stuff ended up with five
people on the payroll that weren't in the band.
We had three fucking managers and we ran a
studio. On the last tour we had 25 crew and you
wake up in Glasgow with a stinking fucking 'flu
and 25 people are wanting to work and they can't
because you've got 'flu. I don't want that
pressure, I just ended up thinking in commercial
and competitive terms."
A little over a
year after the mid-price release of the group's
first three studio albums, Polydor reissued the
'Construction For The Modern Idiot' album on CD
as part of their mid-price range. Unlike the
previous reissues which had been identical to
their original release, the record company
repackaged the album in its original 'palm
trees' sleeve design. This caused considerable
confusion for collectors of the group's releases
as copies of the original withdrawn album were
highly sought after but the reissue gave no way
of proving whether a copy of the album was now
an original or not. However, by the Summer
of the same year Polydor had deleted all of the
group's releases from their catalogue except for
'If The Beatles Had Read Hunter' - which they
reissued on their mid-price range - and the
'Greatest Hits - Finally Live' video.
Between 1997 and 1999 The Wonder Stuff, as a
musical project, ceased to exist. The surviving
group members were off doing their own things,
their contractual obligations to Polydor were
completed and, aside from the occasional
inclusion of a Stuffies track on a compilation
album, there were no more releases. Then,
at the end of December, I caught up with Miles
Hunt for an interview on the TWSonline website
(the forerunner to Room 512). During the
interview he
revealed that
he had been talking with Martin Gilks, Malc
Treece and Martin Bell for a number of months
about whether or not to reform the group. The
group had been given some very serious offers to
work together again and it was only after very
serious consideration between all of them that
they agreed to leave the past behind them and
continue working on their current projects.