"If I've learned one thing from 27 years in the music business it's that you can't just go around biting people on the leg" - the words of Plinth Drummer Nobby Cobworth, shortly before his death from Psoriasis last year. It would be easy to dismiss such characteristic outbursts as mere attention-seeking, but if anything Plinth were a band that should've sought more attention, and such much-sought-after attention would've been richly deserved. Cobworth first met guitarist Ron Broth and bass player Andy Whelks in the mid-1990s when the duo were working in the Dragon, Wagon and Flagon pub in Droylsden, and performing as Chocolate Sikh every other Friday with singer Hattie Latimer. He convinced them that success was imminent, so long as they changed their name and let him join the band. And had a flexible definition of the word 'imminent'. Also, Hattie wouldn't be allowed to sing, but had to provide sexual services. A demanding set of request...

  It's a little-known fact that the very first album released this millennium was Precum's Throwing Circles, the follow-up to their little-known better-known debut 'Flangetastic'.  The decision to release the record at one second past midnight on January 1, 2000 in Tonga could've been a great publicity stunt, were it not for the fact that their label, Shithouse Records failed to actually release it anywhere else in the world for a further 15 months due to 'suboptimal planning' by the label's management team.  Throwing Circles finally got a world-wide release the following year and 'Suboptimal planning' was chosen as the title for their third and final album before multi-instrumentalist Tristan Greft quit the band, effectively sealing their demise.  Precum were, perhaps ironically, late arrivals at the Britpop party, and their Art Rock sensibilities are arguably not sensible enough, with tracks such as 'If you really don't want to go to...

  The follow-up to their 1990 debut 'Colossus' and released a full 27 months before they found fame aboard the Britpop bandwagon with 'Trilobite', these eight tracks showcase the Halifax fourpiece at their most credible and least talented. If you don't own this album, you're a complete fucking idiot. If you do own it, you're an even bigger complete fucking idiot. But if you don't own it, you're a complete fucking idiot. Discographicalz Colossus (1990) Playing Shit (Live, Bootleg, 1991) Calamine 71 (1992) Trilobite (1995) Bring the Canard (1997) What we did was what we done (Compilation, 1998) Trilobite 2000.3b (2003) The Flaccid Harmonicans fuck off (Compilation/live/rarities, 2004)          

Of all the bands to ride the Britpop wave of the mid-1990s, few are regarded more uniquely than Mexborough janglers Cashpoint , represented here by their 1996 offering, the enigmatic 'Pigs of Idiom'. Eager to avoid the problematic 'second album syndrome', Cashpoint very wisely skipped straight to their third, and in the process created an uneven masterpiece that raised more questions than it answered: Why are we here? Why do we ask why we are here? And how many trombones is it possible for one man to play concurrently? While Jimminy Plint's guitar work is less consistent than on their debut and drummer Ron Kegg's barbituate habit is very evident on tracks like 'Limeater' and the closing 'Murdered like the dead', this is nonetheless a record that both captured the mood of the era and questioned the fact that it did.   The band continued to tour into the mid-2000s, but bassist Mike 'The Bike' Pichaels was the only survivor from the original...