Oliver: Small Factory - Suggestions (8 December 1991)

In the first proper post that I made on this blog, I said that the only physical mixtapes I made up from the Peel show were the 4 that I put together from a number of shows I listened to over the period May-December 2002.  I told you then what the first selection was, but the second was a track called Bonk! Ding! by lo-fi noise rockers, Gerty Farish.  It was taken from a 1997 album called Bulks Up released by Load Records out of Providence, Rhode Island.  And it's exactly that kind of tenuous connection that leads to this particular selection.

Small Factory were a three piece band, also from Providence, Rhode Island and Suggestions was their debut 7" release on Collision Time, a label which only released this and a tune called Smart Ernest by Frank Allison and the Odd Sox.  The sound of both Small Factory and Frank Allison was a long way off from the kind of compressed lo-fi stuff that Load Records put out.

While superficially optimistic, Small Factory offer an undertow of disappointment in life.  It's prevalent in titles to songs of theirs like Junky on a Good Day, Pretending It's Sunny and their first album's title, I Do Not Love You.  Even Suggestions, despite it's good intentions about having more fun in one's life, espouses that escape and new surroundings are an essential before life and its routines has you in the ground.  Given the growing musical trends of the time, one might almost call it folk-grunge.

Video courtesy of Let's Play a Record