“It’s just a funny world, That hides me out of sight…”

…It certainly is, and it did.  Start talking about Cardiacs – their music, their influence, their history, any of it – and it very quickly gets complicated and the words run out or go down rabbit holes.  It’s all extra-ordinary, all the way down.
For instance, the way their work is spreading across the globe, now that it’s unimpeded by the gatekeepers of British pre-millennial popular music that kept them under a bushel when they were in their prime.   The way it’s happening isn’t so much the obvious ‘ah we have the internet now’ – that’s the same for every band that should have been better known – as an indicator of the power and depth and uniqueness of Cardiacs’ body of work. Get a taste for Cardiacs and you want to make everyone you know listen too.
Should it have surprised us, when an American publisher of shiny, beautiful books about The Residents and Butthole Surfers and Ministry appeared to be ready to give Cardiacs the same treatment?  After all, Cardiacs never played in the US, and despite four decades of albums and gigs in the UK, rarely in Europe.  A ‘coffee table book’ … about Cardiacs?

Melodic Virtue make spectacular art books about cult bands, and Cardiacs are the ultimate cult band.  The creative force behind Cardiacs, Tim Smith, took the idea of a ‘pop band’ and dialled up everything about that idea to absurd, marvellous levels, and began doing so from the very start.  By the 90s they were described as ‘the finest live band to walk the face of the planet’ (Terry Bickers, Levitation) and rightly so – sheer entertainment coupled with music that could go from mind-blanking headbanging joy to cathartic heartbreak in one song.  They built up their own following through sheer hard work and cottage industry self-management, eventually able to fill three thousand-plus capacity venues without help from a sometimes shockingly vindictive mainstream music press and business.

Just before Tim Smith fell ill in mid 2008, there was a hint that some kind of tide was about to turn for Cardiacs, with approaching new singles and an album, but the severity of his condition – near paralysis, unable to speak, requiring round the clock care – meant that the album remained unfinished and a silence descended.  But his magnificent body of work was out there, the albums, the videos, the stills from those gigs, haunting reminders spreading through file sharing and social media, losing none of their power as time went on.  After some years out of sight, Tim began to be seen at the Alphabet Business Concern Conventions, gigs held in Salisbury close to his care home every couple of years, events where Cardiacs-related bands would play for him.  Amongst one of the bands who played for Tim was the hugely respected and influential American songwriter Rob Crow – it was he who bent the ear of Aaron Tanner, the main man at Melodic Virtue, about this extraordinary English band hardly anyone had heard of.  Aaron listened, Cardiacs gained yet another convert.

In the summer of 2020, Tim suddenly, peacefully, passed away. He left us following a period of time where, with the help of his network of carers, family and friends, he was able to supervise the remastering of re releases, there was hope of him overseeing the finalising the unfinished album. After the initial shock and grief of Tim’s passing, there was a palpable need to keep his work going – indeed it seems to have had its own slow-growing momentum, Cardiacs, without anyone pushing too much, have been growing and growing, culminating in this year’s moving and rather cathartic Sing To Tim memorial concerts.  That rather organic word of mouth momentum is perhaps why the sudden appearance of Melodic Virtue asking fans for help with memories of Cardiacs for this book felt right, it felt like the time…

Where to start? I did have a line of lyrics here but Marina has already done that up there and today we have a book to tell you about. Compiled and designed by Aaron Tanner, Cardiacs: A Big Book and a Band and Whole World Window spans the group’s formative years as Cardiac Arrest to their last single, Ditzy Scene (2007). “This new release features rare and unseen photos, artwork, and other ephemera that will”, so the publicity says, “captivate long-time fans and newcomers alike”. With an introduction by Shane Embury of Napalm Death, “this book is both a tribute and a comprehensive chronicle of the band’s artistry as a whole, providing a wealth of behind-the-scenes looks from the perspectives of band members past and present, alongside fans and contemporaries such as: Mike Patton (Mr. Bungle, Faith No More), Billy Gould (Faith No More), Todd Sucherman (Styx), Boff Whalley and Dunstan Bruce (Chumbawamba), Mike Keneally (The Zappa Band), Joanna Wang, Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd), Rob Crow (Pinback), Amon Tobin, Matthew Wright, Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti), Charlie Harper (U.K. Subs), Ego Plum, Pitchshifter, Dan Mongrain (Voivod), Paul Masvidal (Cynic), J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) and many more”. 

This is of course something rather close to our hearts here at Organ, our association with Cardiacs goes way way way back, way back beyond the first very handmade edition of Organ back in 1986. Cardiacs have always been a big part of the reason for us doing a lot of what we do and so far what we’ve seen on this this book is delighting us. 

The book – love the front cover imagery by the way, love the design, the backgrounds, the art of it all – the book comes with a black vinyl 7″ record housed inside the cover, a recording of the previously unreleased track, Aukamakic/Dead Mouse, actually a partly previously unreleased thing from their 1979 debut, Cardiac Arrest E.P recording sessions, as well as another track itself previously unreleased on vinyl, Faster Than Snakes with a Ball and a Chain. A song that was originally intended for their 1999 full-length, Guns and did eventually appear on the Greatest Hits album. 

There’s a whole bag of stories about Greatest Hits and how it came to be around the time of Affectionate Friends and all on the back of the success of the Sea Nymphs EP. The lead track from said Sea Nymphs EP being a rather welcome daytime BBC Radio One single of the week as well a release that had John Peel waking up to it all (Peel’s interest was mostly as result of his love of a band called Cay at the time, as well as Cuban Boys (we had just released the debut Cay single and Mr Peel, for a time was giving most things on ORG his time which is why we wanted to release what were by then relatively old Sea Nymphs recordings, we knew it was the right time, we knew people who normally wouldn’t pay attention would for once listen).  Sea Nymphs were a lot lot more that just an offshoot band or a Cardiacs side-project, Sea Nymphs were a very very important part of Cardiacs and if there is one major flaw in this book then it is the lack of Sea Nymphs. Indeed there could be an argument that puts Sea Nymphs up even higher than Cardiacs, that the magic that the core of Tim, Bill and Sarah made together was the highest peak of them all. You do sometimes wonder where is all might have gone if later circumstances had been different? So anyway, the idea of the Greatest Hits album was cooked up as a way to follow all the Sea Nymphs EP interest when there wasn’t really anything new to follow up that interest with. Cardiacs had no money to do it all themselves, we agreed to do it with them with the pay off being the Affectionate Friends album that would hopefully sell well enough to cover some of the costs of all the posting out copies of Greatest Hits to press and radio people around the globe. I really hadn’t intended to start telling a story now, this is supposed to be a book review! Anyway, we cooked up Greatest Hits and Affectionate Friends was the payment which in turn kind of explains the bit on the inside front cover of the Affectionate Friends album, actually Tim wanted the inside cover to be the actual front cover, we Organs being paranoid (as well as being zealots) though the joke would be lost and that it would just be taken the wrong way by too many people.  So Greatest Hits was cooked up in the pub with Tim alongside Affectionate Friends (as well as a tribute album that Tim though no one would ever want to be involved in that was actually coming together rather nicely until it all got lost in admin along with a whole host of other things that might have enabled Cardiacs to do a lot more earlier in this century than they actually eventually did). So we pulled together the idea of a Greatest Hits album although Tim refused to put the actual Greatest Hits on it, “we don’t want all that old shit” which made things a little difficult, we begged him for something that would add interest, he insisted he had nothing and then on the day, when we were in the studio putting it all together he pulled Faster Than Snakes out a carrier bag he had been clutching (for 28 days), he said it didn’t feel right on Guns and that’s (our part of) the story of that piece of music that you now find on the seven inch piece of vinyl that comes with this book. I must admit it isn’t my favourite piece of Cardiacs music, if it is the first thing you ever hear of the band then maybe head over to Bandcamp and have a listen to the rest of Greatest Hits…

Back to the book, what would Tim have made of the book? What would he have made of it after his refusal to put any of hat “old shit” on Greatest Hits? 

We should of course one day write our own book and of course if we did then none of this stuff we’re telling you here would be in it. We’d never tell you that Tim actually loved the idea of a tribute album, he would have hated me to tell anyone but we did occasionally sit in the pub discussing who might do it whilst exchanging various rumours about who might be a fan or who at least might have said something nice about the band. Did U2 really have Cardiacs tracks playing before they went stage on that American tour they were doing at the time (they did, one of their sound engineers was a fan, who knows if it registered with the band themselves, we’re told it did but who knows). So we’d sit and talk and was it true that Elvis Costello has said something good? And “I know I shouldn’t care about all this and it isn’t what its about but I love all that shit and don’t ever tell anyone I said that”. Some of the very best times with Tim Smith were the times just me and him were off mastering records for ORG releases and afterwards just the two of us would spend the whole evening in a pub talking about all kinds of things like his love of Jethro Tull records or why he really wanted to understand football just to join in in the pub but never could understand it or what so and so might have thought about Cardiacs, or what John Peel had said about Sea Nymphs or about some band he had seen a few nights before in Camden. There was a period when Tim loved going out to gigs mostly by himself, we only ever heard him say one bad thing about one band who he didn’t particularly like (and no I’m not going to name them), he was always sending messages saying things like “go see this band they were great last night, you should release them rather than messing about with us”. Hang on, isn’t this supposed to be a book review? Damn I miss those quiet times with Tim and him insisting we go listen to Queen again or how good Boys Wonder were because they reminded him of The Who – he loved The Who. 

Shut up and review the damn book you say…

Of course it isn’t a damn book, it’s a beautiful book, I need to go sit down properly with it, digest it, hold it – holding these things in our hands – right now we’re only looking at pages on line, work in progress, the pages finished and ready for the printers, really need to sit down with the finished thing, the tactile thing, feel the weight, hold the actual thing, feel the paper, turn the pages and get lost in it. Not sure what Tim would have made of it all? He’d have loved it and hated it all at the same time, but then we never did succeed in getting the actual greatest hits on the Greatest Hits album because “no one wants to know about all that old shit!”  Tim was never one for looking back (but then what about the Garage concerts I hear you cry – there you go, who knows?), I think he’d be embarrassed and he’d certainly have hated not being in control of the art of it all but then secretly he would have loved it, only he wouldn’t admit it to anyone until he’d had a couple of pints on a quiet Thursday after mastering a record. Bloody hell he was a pain in arse when it came to mastering records! That’ll do Tim, you can’t get it sounding any better than that and we are actually paying for the studio by the hour here! Did we really have to spend so long getting that little bit that he deliberately put in just for dogs and than none of us humans could actually hear and then spend bloody ages getting it just so so right?! That really did happen and yes off course we did have to get it so so right!

There was one time when we spend all day mastering a track, got it as perfect as he could – I say we, I was just sitting there, “don’t ask me what I think Tim!” – Tim and the studio engineer, all bloody day, we finally get it right, go off to the pub then head home and then sometime after midnight the phone would ring – “I don’t like what we did, can we do it again!” We never made a penny out of ORG records but we do have some great tales to tell one day (and the one CD of Bellyeye that’s about a minute longer than the final release). All those things that went on that no one really knows about, like the time spent in offices arguing with Blur’s label people about how cool it would be for all parties concerned if Cardiacs were to be on that bill at Mile End. That was when we were trying to publicise Bellyeye of course, it was always a battle behind the scenes on behalf of Cardiacs back there before the internet kicked in properly and all those damn gatekeepers could finally be bypassed. Gawd, I wonder what Tim and the band would be doing now with all this growing admiration and the resources and the doors that the overdue respect is now starting to opening just a little too late. if only this had all happened a little earlier back there, as much as he and they left us with a wonderful legacy sometimes I think Tim hardly got started in terms of the music he might make.   

Get back to the book review! 

There’s hardly a day that goes by when one of us doesn’t say something like “Tim would have loved that”, he and they really did touch people with his and their music, with his personality that was all over the music. He wasn’t perfect of course, he could be as much of a bastard as the rest of us can be at times, must say he never was a bastard with us, although we did end up on the wrong end of his mischievous sense of humour at times, he was a convincing git, he could sell you kinds of stupid ideas 

Back to the book… 

I love books like this, I love old gig flyers and posters, they tell far more than just words can, they trigger so many things, old festival flyers, that time at Fetcham Riverside, Stonehenge. Of course there’s things we would have put in, that whole Reading Festival full bill poster and that triumphant day for a start, that Robert Calvert gig at the Clarendon, that was an important one, that fuelled a lot of word of mouth, the Marillion tour, The Tube! Those times with Here And Now (Here and Now were very important), those Marquee box adverts from the back pages of Sounds, those Camden Palace flyers, important gigs that were vital cog wheels in the word of mouth machine that maybe Aeron, from his American point of view wouldn’t quite have any real chance of grasping – but then I really really like that this is from his American point of view, I like the way he’s come at it. Yes, there’s maybe things we would have maybe left out but then we might be too close to things, maybe Aeron is the prefect person for this mammoth task, a fresh take on it all? I like this book, It looks and feels right, it feels like he’s done a rather fine job. This is about the art of Cardiacs rather than the a forensic history, it is all from a slightly North American point of view and I love that fact. This is Aeron Tanner’s own artistic vision, his books really are about his take on things and that has to be seen as a positive. I love that Cardiacs word of mouth has spread like it had and that now we have new eyes on it all, new eyes from over there picking out the things to treasure from a slightly different angle. For many years it felt like only Southern England really knew about Cardiacs, gigs in the Midlands and up North were far more infrequent than they should have been.            

And yes it is a little (positively) strange to see it all from slightly American points of view, all that colour that’s missing a “u” and all all those American musicians when Cardiacs never once were able to take their beauty to those shores (or indeed to step too many times on mainland European soil), it is amazing to see how the word of mouth really has reached around the globe in recent years and yes spelling flavor the American way feels so right for this American publication, love the lack of a “u”. 

Can’t resist inserting a tiny bit more here about the time we were doing a Faith No More interview around the back of the Town and Club (or the Forum as it is now), this was way back in the Chuck days, one of the band said during the mid-afternoon interview, something along the lines of if we go to the record shop now, what English things should we go buy that will amaze us, we want something that we’ve never heard before, this was way before the days of the internet obviously, before the days of instantly listening to something on your phone, “Cardiacs!” we both yelled in unison. A couple of hours later the band go past heading back into the venue while we’re outside flogging copies of Organ, one of them, it might have been Billy Gould, can’t really remember now (and of course we never ever took photos of anything, these days he’d have been photographed and on Instagram holding the record in seconds), anyway Billy goes past waving a freshly bought Cardiacs piece of vinyl at us, argghh, sorry, I’m telling tales again, but this is how it worked, one person at a time, the slow drip of word of mouth, the slow process of getting past the gatekeepers, one person at a time. That process has accelerated a hundredfold now that the world wide web (or the whole world window, see, he invented that as well) has meant we can all share the songs and news and the footage in a social media fuelled instant, it was hard work connecting people back there, these days hardly a week goes by without hearing from someone new who’s just discovered Cardiacs desperately wanting a copy of Ditzy Scene (sorry people we shock hands on a limited edition of just 1000, we sold them all for two quid each, I hear one was sold for a three figure sum recently, sorry!)

And so Aeron Tanner, having been pulled in to this world of Cardiacs himself in more recent years, has been learning about all this, discovering the magic of it all. In the last few months it might be fair to say it has become an obsession for him, he’s really been putting the hard miles and the even harder work in, he’s grilled us for stories like that Faith No More one up there, he’s been seriously researching, he’s been over here in the UK doing it properly, he’s thrown everything into it. We’ve had several sessions in pubs telling tales, he’s been here digging through our archives, he’s been insisting I dig under piles of paintings to see if there are any old gig posters or copies of Organ he could scan, he really has done some serious leg work, this is the seriously real deal and not some fly-by-night music journalist churning out another book for a quick pay check). Aeron has been in Jim Smith’s loft, he’s told of tales of being up to his knees in Tim’s old archives, of things they’d all forgotten that he’s dug up, he’s chased up fans who might have treasure, he’s worked seriously hard on this and he has really really researched it. This is a book genuinely from the heart, Aeron might be a relative newbie, another one of us who someone gave a tape or a link or something to that pulled us in, rest assured he is a real fan, he is one of us, he is a Pondie, he is another obsessive (you need to be an obsessive to make a book like this). And yes the book is expensive and yes, some of us won’t be able to afford it (like we couldn’t afford the recent rather plush looking Cardiacs reissues) and yes that is a big big shame, but I know he’s not making vast fortunes here! Far from it, none of us ever do with things like this, that’s not why any of us do it.

Yes it might have been good if Radiohead or Blur had responded and contributed, it wasn’t for the want of trying, mind you, for what it might be worth, I think Blur are full of it in terms of the things they say most of the time these days and from what I can see the musicians who have actually contributed here really do care, they’ve gone out of their way to say something for the book, people we really respect like Weasel Walter from The Flying Luttenbachers, really are fans, they really are in awe like the rest of us – for the record, Radiohead were really up for the tribute album back there at the start of the century, they really were fans back in the day, I guess, through no fault of their own, they’re just too busy with demands from all over the place these days. And yes we might have liked to have seen that Doctorate, Dr. Timothy Charles Smith was made a doctor of music by the highly respected Royal Conservatoire of Scotland just before we lost him, I know the book is focused on the period up and including that final Ditzy Scene single in 2007 but I’d maybe have had some some visual documentation of that Honorary Doctorate Degree that seemed like a very fitting thing to happen while Tim was still with us just to end the book. But then we’d be here all day asking where’s this bit and that bit, there was and is so much and Aeron really has done a fine fine job, truth is there’s probably enough for three or four books like this, the Yous letters for a start (actually I think Aaron has plans for those, he spent an ages tracking down a full set) and Tim’s Cartoons or the puppet show (hang on the cartoons, and the Yours letters come with the deluxe edition of the book, the Yous Letters were the highly entertaining newsletters that would be sent out in the post back in the 80s and did they go on into the 90s?), things that might have been a little more interesting than another band photo (as interesting as all those band photos are) and the living room stage set and that wallpaper from the 80s, oh the wallpaper! Needed more of the wallpaper in there, and the shop and Ordinary Shop Girl Fran and oh how there’s probably enough for five volumes! But Yes, this feels good, it feels right, I like this book, I like what Aeron has done, it is a work of art, it is from his point of view, it is his art or his interpretation of Cardiacs art, I like the little touches, his playing with imagery, it is a good one, it is a good book, it is a very very fine book, it stands alone as a thing of its own, this not a slavish biography of Cardiacs, more a painter painting a portrait his way, this is a beautiful book, a success, thank you Mr Tanner, thanks for doing it properly, these things matter. (sw)    

Cardiacs: A Big Book and a Band and the Whole World Window details, including the order details can be found on the Melodic Virtue website. Orders are being taken now, it is a limited edition, the book will ship in early January 2025.  

Order

LIMITED-RUN OF 1500
9″ x 9″ casebound, 292 pages
Published: January 3, 2025
Catalogue Number: MVP008
ISBN: 979-8-9911862-0-9

More on melodic Virtue – ORGAN THING: Today’s thing is a book, Butthole Surfers: What Does Regret Mean? As much a piece of art as a book, Melodic Virtue books are pieces of art…

Further Cardiacs coverage on these pages

Footnote

Don’t just be taking our many words about Cardiacs though, we’ve been banging on and on for dozens and dozens of years now, Here’s Jon Mueller’s take on things, this kind of thing seems to be happening all the time these days, here’s a piece he wrote from January of this year – Now is the Time for Cardiacs, Jon Mueller on his unexpected discovery of the late UK band.

(and Jon’s words made us go find out who he is – word of mouth and curiosity, that’s how you find the best things). Go check out what Jon does – ORGAN ALBUMS: Three more; Jon Mueller, We Are Winter’s Blue And Radiant Children, Møster!

And here’s some Cardiacs tunes….