Keeping Some Dark Secrets

We’ve acquired more information about those early Johnny Foreigner recordings we posted about here last week, straight from singer/guitarist Alexei Berrow and drummer Junior Laidley. The two emailed in details about founding bandmate Dan and the collection Weleftyousleepingandgonenow, which is not imaginary as we had speculated. In fact, Weleftyousleepingandgonenow contained 14 tracks and was released in a hyper-limited edition of 40 handmade copies sleeved in pictures of buildings from Johnny Foreigner’s beloved hometown Birmingham, England folded together to form some sort of house. The collection was self-recorded and the songs have since been lost to the band due to hardware failures of one sort or another. All of which means that if you own one of these 40 physical copies of Weleftyousleepingandgonenow, we know a guy in Boston who really wants to talk to you.

But anyway, back to Dan, whose last name we could not determine, but who is described by the Johnny Foreigner chaps as “ridiculously talented.” Since leaving Johnny Foreigner — to which he contributed keyboards, samples and guitar work — Dan has been playing in the London-based bands Gentle Friendly andButtonhead. If the name Gentle Friendly sounds familiar to you, it’s because the Casio-and-samples-and-loops wielding duo — which also includes a chap named David — had a couple songs featured on the vowel-hating RCRDLBL music site last year. Gentle Friendly plan a full-length release this spring, and previously issued the EP Night Tape in November and a cassette titled Esses Together/Blast Debris (Debris From Blasts Had 1968 – 2008), which certainly sounds like an early Pavement title, doesn’t it? The band has a handful of live appearances forthcoming with acts including Ponytail and Spectrum that you can review at its MySpace dojohere. Buttonhead is more guitar-based and structured, but equally eccentric; we’ll try to devote some time to the quintet in the near future. Johnny Foreigner — the current model, featuring Kelly Southern on bass — for its part released the single “Lea Room” b/w “DJs Get Doubts” earlier this week in the UK on Best Before Records. We’re working on an interview with the band, in which we hope to delve further into its plans to begin working on a new record in March.

Gentle Friendly — “Five Girl Night” — Night Tape EP
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[buy Gentle Friendly recordings from the band here]

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Filed under: Johnny Foreigner by Jay