The Soup Dragons

[tense music] Is that the Imagine Dragons?

[dramatic music] No, it's the Soup Dragons.

Oh.

For a point, Love Kills was the title of a 1984 solo single by which member of Queen?

Yeah, yeah.

My advice when you come out of those exams, and this is just me when I was at uni, there's a great song by the Soup Dragons called I'm Free.

Okay.

And back in those days, I had a 1976 Kombi full of my windsurfing gear.

Or even the Rolling Stones did music like this.

I was thinking the Soup Dragons could cover this.

You know, it's got that kind of like 90s kind of shitty dance band, rock band could do this and just

make it.

We talked about.

Yeah.

That's why I was thinking of the song being a hit and thinking it like it could be done by the soup dragons.

If they just did a lame version of it.

And I suppose it was because London Calling had such a diversity of musical styles on it that it kind of satiated all my, uh, wants and needs at the time.

But I did fortunately broaden out, uh, musically, and there was many bands, you know, like the Jesus and Mary Chain, uh, the Soup Dragons, um, uh, Red Lorry Yellow Lor-

Oh, yes.

Red Lorry [chuckles] Yellow Lorry, uh, the Nikons.

And I have people like Bad to the Bone, George Thorogood, which is more of a mainstream song.

Then some 90s bands like the Soup Dragons with I'm Free.

I have some instrumental tunes on there, like Lagrange by ZZ Top.

I think some instrumental tunes that are fun and funky is cool to have at a tailgate also, as well as stuff with vocals.

yeah um did you move to london like most bands we've spoken to we basically that they they moved to london to make it was it the same for

well i mean london was only like 40 minutes on the train anyway from where we grew up in sort of winnish wokingham which is just on the on the line from reading to waterloo so that's where we went to all our gigs you know we would go up to the town country club and and uh And we used to go to this place called the Clubfoot, which was in Hammersmith, which had a lot of bands like, you know, the Sharp Assistants and Early Soup Dragons and Primal Scream, a lot of the sort of creation, early creation bands and Scottish bands were playing there.

and um so like the mary chain at hammersmith palais when they came out with i think that was had sonic youth supporting them um wow that would have been 85 or something and um and you know like uh the Bunnymen and the Smiths at the Kilburn National and that sort of stuff.

So, you know, Reading was a pretty cultural hole, really.

one step gone For the purest I ever paid she

Another band that have reformed, the Soup Dragons with Electric Blues.

Initially active from 1985 to 1995, they reformed in 2023.

Electric Blues was a non-album track released as the follow-up to the re-release of Mother Universe and it failed to charts with fans voting with their wallets that they didn't like the direction that the band were going in.

Before the Soup Dragons were Midway Still with I Won't Try.

Up next we have the television personalities with Strangely Beautiful.

Fronted by Dan Treacy, they were active from 1977 to 1998 before reforming in 2004.

And those guys, they weren't quite Britpop.

They kind of were, 'cause you had Soup Dragons-

Sweet, sweet divine thing

... and all those great, uh, The Farm, and I mean, Groovy Train's a great song.

For me, I had a very interesting moment with the Big Life situation.

I'd started out in 86 and then I found the Soup Dragons, which was the first act that we sort of got involved in.

Great band.

We did... okay with them initially we got we did a deal with uh muff winwood and he sort of funded us putting out music through rough trade which was uh which was fun and we got into the top 75 and it was all going well jazz was in the meantime jazz was paying me like a very small wage to keep me going a little bit i was also booking the bands at the clarendon which i think i earned 50 pound a week for which is and in those days was okay And eventually the money that Jazz had from Wham that he was putting into the company ran out.