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Ghost Canyon

Title - Get F**ked By Fabulous
Artist - Fabulous

For those of you not in the know, few bands’ reputations precede them as much as 1990s British band FABULOUS. Much like the Sex Pistols a dozen years before them, Fabulous’ media headlines back then often included the words “Vandals,” “Banned,” and “Riots.”

Banned by nearly every venue of their debut UK tour, they featured heavily in NME, i-D, The Face, The Wire, Select, and Melody Maker even though they only officially released a mere handful of singles, one of which, “Destined To Be Free” garnered NME’s prestigious “Single of the Week.”

But before they could release their debut album, the band imploded … and their history became UK legend. On June 24th, 2022 however, Boston-based Supermegabot Records is unearthing their 15-track never-before-released album GET F***ED BY FABULOUS to deliver what exactly has been missing in the rock world for the last three decades.

Including the original seven single A and B-sides, coupled with loads of unreleased instant-classic anthems by a wildly-overlooked band from an unsung era of rock history, Get F***ed… carries all the unbridled swagger and unchecked danger that was absent from the post-shoegazer/ecstasy-laced rave trash that dominated the music scene of that time.

With all the attitude and unrestrained infamy of punk bands before them, Fabulous bearhugged Kylie Minogue, Keanu Reeves, Radiohead and Beastie Boys among many others in their den of iniquity and shook up the sleepy music world.

1. Personality Recession
2. Pour Petrol In Her Face
3. Contribution
4. The Faces
5. There’s A Riot Going On
6. Lady Day
7. Dead Friends
8. Destined To Be Free
9. Capital Gold
10. Get Off My Cloud
11. Bus Stop
12. Everything’s Fine
13. The Great British Showbiz Show
14. Right Out Of Here
15. Manic Street Preachers

This exhilarating, raw and yet musically amped for the soul album opens in the vibrantly excessive Personality Recession and the joyfully brash Pour Petrol In Her Face and then launches us into the anthemic Contribution, the rhythmic rock of The Faces, the power chord progressions within There’s A Riot Going On, and then comes both the energy of Lady Day and the catchy rocker Dead Friends.

Up next is the punk ‘n’ roll of Destined To Be Free and the sturdy Capital Gold which are in turn backed supremely by a massively audacious, but fully formed cover of the Stones’ Get Off My Cloud, the melodiousness within Bus Stop, the languished rocker Everything’s Fine, the knee-jerk punk rock nod within The Great British Showbiz Show, the collection rounding out on the burning Right Out Of Here, coming to a close on the aptly-named Manic Street Preachers.

The band’s first lineup featured NME journalist Simon Spence Dudfield (singer) and NME photographers Martyn Goodacre (guitar) and Russell Underwood (guitar), rounded out by Kieron Ronnie Fabulous Flynn (bass) and Robert Hodge Hodges (drums). Equally key was the presence of manager Brown who was also NME editor (and future founder of Loaded Magazine) in the role of not exactly a manager, more a sixth member / agent provocateur.

Produced by Jon Langford (Mekons), their first single on the iconic Heavenly Records “Destined To Be Free” b/w “There’s A Riot Going On,” was released in November 1991 and it burned up the charts. They were consumed with NME Single of the Week, television, tours (opening for the Beastie Boys, having a fledgling Radiohead open for them, riots, chaos, and loads of coverage.

A seemingly endless party had begun. For the next year, Fabulous went full-on, keeping the rumor mill churning, which in turn drove everyone in the business to chase the band. The following May, KROQ in Los Angeles played the B-side “There’s A Riot Going On” as LA burned after the Rodney King verdict.

“We had loads of narcotics, a pad in Soho and masses of arrogance,” recalls Fabulous manager James Brown. “It ended at the Mondrian Hotel in Hollywood, after a disastrous dinner with Seymour Stein (a.k.a. The Man Who Signed Madonna) and Mo Ostin (a.k.a. Chairman of Warner/Reprise). It is fair to say that they were responsible for 50% of the hits in America and had been for 20 years: they were two of the five most influential people in the music world, and we turned up late for the meeting, minus demo tape, with nothing but dirty clothes and indifference to the godfathers of the American music industry. We ordered 10 bottles of wine and the bill came to £4,000.” Needless to say, a signing offer didn’t materialize.

And in due fashion, the stranger-than-fiction stories continued. Pete Waterman (of the massive pop hitmaking production team Stock Aitken Waterman) signed the band to his PWL label and promised to release their supposed debut album Produced By Kylie (of Minogue fame, of course). Simon claimed to Pete that it would be “a cross between the Sex Pistols and Kylie Minogue. He respected that and wanted to work with us.” The signing fizzled soon after and that record never came out.

Enter Keanu Reeves. Running into the actor while he was in London filming a movie, he got mixed up with the band in a bar and ended up stuffed into the trunk of their car. “It must have been a half-hour drive. You could hear him giggling in the back every now and then,” laughs Martyn. “He looked a bit disheveled but got out like nothing had happened and said something like Awesome!

A year and a half after the release of “Destined To Be Free,” they finally get around to releasing new music. Produced by Miles Hunt (The Wonderstuff), “Personality Recession” had early on been singled out as perhaps their best song and created a nice boost for the band but did little to return them to their rightful spot at the top of the charts.

Their following single “Dead Friends” fizzled too. But it wasn’t because the songs sucked… their mates Manic Street Preachers released their debut Generation Terrorists and sucked the air out of their room… and in the States, Nirvana and grunge killed the scene (of which they were part), leaving no room left for Fabulous to reclaim their stake.

“We had a lot of attention early on, but deservedly so, because we were probably the most exciting band in the country,” says Simon. “We were the only band saying anything, the only band that had any intelligence, and we just put people’s backs up. Someone said Fabulous were like the KLF with guitars, and we’ve always just wanted to be terrorists; to stick it up the establishment, to stick it up the music industry.”

As an epitaph, Fabulous had broken up with little fanfare merely a year later in 1993. What remained of UK rock was mushed together under the far more mannered Britpop genre.

What had Fabulous been about? Were they a brilliant band, a revolt against tedium, an attempt to get rich off media manipulation, the luckiest or unluckiest bastards on the planet?

Listen to this exhilarating collection of music on this brand new CD and you decide for yourselves!

Fabulous - Get off My Cloud [Official Music Video]

www.FuckedByFabulous.com

www.SuperMegabot.com





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