Quirk Out
Quirk Out is the debut mini album by Anglo-Irish experimental rock band Stump. After building up a following with their unique sound and live performances, Stump recorded Quirk Out as their second release with producer Hugh Jones at Rockfield Studios in July 1986, following the release of the Mud on a Colon EP earlier in the year. The band's aim for Quirk Out was to capture the band's energy as a live band on studio recordings. The record blends genres such as avant-garde, funk rock with indie rock sensibilities. The best known song from the album, "Buffalo", had already been released on the NME compilation C86, an influential cassette compilation containing newly recorded music from different bands of the British independent music scene.
Quirk Out
26 October 1986
July 1986
19:24
Stuff Records
The band released Quirk Out on their own label Stuff Records in September 1986. It was an unprecedented success for an indie album, reaching number 2 on the UK Independent Albums Chart and spending 26 weeks on the chart. In its 20th week it became the longest-charting album in the history of the chart. It sold approximately 50,000 copies. The album was also a great critical success. Melody Maker named it "one of the pleasures of 1986," whilst Sounds and the NME both included the album in their lists of the 50 greatest albums of the year. Record Collector said the album remains "Stump's most satisfying listen." The band toured the album in 1987 and made several memorable appearances on Channel 4 music show The Tube in promotion. "Buffalo" was belatedly released as a single in 1988. Although Quirk Out has not been re-released, all its songs has been remastered and reissued, most recently on the compilation Does the Fish Have Chips?: Early and Late Works 1986–1989 (2015).
Release and success[edit]
The album was released as an LP in the UK by the band's own record label Stuff Records on 26 October 1986,[3] although some sources mistake the album's release date as 1987. The album was also released in Australia and France as an LP by Chrysalis Records in 1986.[18] A promotional media "DJ copy" was also distributed in Australia.[19] In spring 1987, Stuff Records re-released the album as a cassette in the UK with the band's earlier EP Mud as a Colon as bonus tracks on the second side.[20] When asked by an unnamed music journalist why the band re-released the album on cassette, Hopper said "a lot of people wanted a cassette because they don't have record players."[21] The band were not fans of the production of Mud as a Colon, but by including it on the second side of the cassette release, it allowed the band to recut that EP as it was highly distorted when first released.[21] The artwork of Quirk Out, designed by Phili Josephs with a backdrop designed by Linda Scott, features a buffalo head designed by Salmon himself.[22]
Due to the band's touring, C86 appearance and positive pieces about them in the British music press, the album turned out to be an unprecedented commercial success for such an independent and uncommercial album.[1] On 26 November, the album entered the UK Independent Albums Chart, where it eventually peaked at number 2,[18] kept off the top spot by The Dead Kennedys' Bedtime for Democracy.[23] It stayed on the chart for an impressive run of 26 weeks, including two whole months in the top five.[18] By April 1987, Quirk Out had completed its 20th consecutive week in the chart, an achievement only matched at the time by The Smiths’ The Queen is Dead.[23] McKahey recalled that "Quirk Out was in the Indie Charts for six months in the Top 10. We got ripped to high heaven like, I know it sold 36,000 in the UK and we never saw literally a penny from that, but we’re in good company."[3] The number of copies sold of Quirk Out is uncertain; although McKahey stated that it sold 36,000 copies, Lynch said it sold 50,000 copies.[3] The Independent, however, stated Quirk Out sold over 50,000 copies.[24]
When Quirk Out was released, the band were all getting paid £100 a week.[3] Hopper recalled that "I remember my rent in London at that time was £16 a week so I felt like a king. I felt like a professional musician, although you couldn’t afford a car or something you could just about ask for a loan for an instrument and gear and then you’d have enough for basic living on top of that."[3] Liam McKahey recalled that "live they were something else because Mick was so animated and you’ve never seen anybody like him. He was like a cartoon really. The combination of the three musicians, I don’t think could have sounded any other way, they were all quite mad. It came very naturally to them to be honest. The fact that they had any success at all commercially still baffles me. Quirk Out wasn’t very normal was it? It was just a fabulous thing to see. I think it was really well deserved because I don’t think there was a live band as good at the time to be honest: Mick’s stage presence; and the musicianship and also Mick’s lyrics."[3]
Promotion[edit]
Quirk Out tour[edit]
The band continued to regularly perform around the UK, and in promotion of Quirk Out, underwent a promotional national tour. When the album was released on cassette, the band played seventeen gigs in April and May 1987.[37] Roy Weard became the band's tour manager for this era, with Weard later reflecting: "I knew Rich Bishop, who was managing the band at the time and he suggested me for the first big Stump tour. It was immediately after Quirk Out came out. I went along to the studio to watch them rehearse, I thought, can these guys play, this doesn’t make any sense. I went home and listened to the album and I went back the following day and listened to them again and I went, oh, I see it makes a lot of sense. It took a day to get my head around the music. The more I heard it, the more sense it made. The immediate impression was, what’s going on? The time signatures and the way it was all put together, the way that the bass led most of it, and Chris filled in on guitar round the edges, and then there was this floating melody line over the top that Mick always used to do."[38] McKahey said "we were headlining the Town & Country, Kentish Town which was big, the Astoria, big headline shows. We always did very well in Holland and Belgium, we did well in Germany, we always did well in cities like Manchester, Glasgow, Nottingham, Newcastle, and we did well in London."[3]
In June 1987, Stump notably played on the NME stage at Glastonbury Festival. Lynch recalled "it had been pissing down and drizzling all day. I had gone down there three days beforehand so I was well in the mood, well into the atmosphere of the place. I came on stage in shorts, mankey dirty, still half-tripping from the night before. Half Man Half Biscuit were on after us and Pop Will Eat Itself were on ahead of us so that was quite a collection. As soon as we came out on stage, the clouds opened and the sun shone down on us. Van Morrison had just gone on the Pyramid stage so suddenly there was about 9,000 people watching us whereas normally there might have been 3,000 or 4,000. The place was jointed; it was one of those gigs that went so easily. The crowd was fucking loving it; we finished and got an encore. As soon as we went off stage, the clouds closed up again and it started raining."[3]
Aftermath[edit]
The combination of Quirk Out, the band's relentless touring and their appearances on The Tube, especially "Buffalo"−The Quietus rhapsodising "Lynch bellowing and blaring 'How much is the fish?' into an indie catchphrase still remembered some thirty years on"−prompted interest in the band from major labels interesting in signing them.[1] Ensign Records, an offshoot of the Chrysalis Records, took interest, which in the words of Hopper was "no doubt spurred on by the popularity of the Tube video, the Peel sessions and the live shows. "[6] McKahey said that "Ensign thought [Stump] were fantastic" and that 4AD Records and Mute Records also "sniffed around."[3] Lynch recalled that "obviously [Ensign] thought there was going to be money in it when they saw Quirk Out go to number two in the Indie Charts. It was only The Dead Kennedys kept us off the top. The fact that John Peel liked us helped and that the reviews were good. They followed their nose that way. Ensign were into Irish bands anyway, that was their angle, they liked the music."[3]
The band did eventually sign to Ensign Records, where they released their critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful sole full-length album A Fierce Pancake, released in March 1988.[1] The edition of the album released in the United States including "Buffalo" from Quirk Out as a bonus track, as the song was deemed their most popular but was unavailable in the United States.> After the album and its singles were unsuccessful, Ensign Records chose to release "Buffalo" as a single in the UK, some two years after its first release, to revive the band's flagging fortunes, but "this only served to damage inter-band relations even further."[1] Hopper recalled "Ensign were desperate when they re-released 'Buffalo'. They were quite old fashioned when they thought a 'hit' would sustain the band. It was a two year old song, it didn't feel good for morale to do that. And that last performance was pretty awful, four very impatient people on stage bickering and playing everything really fast. It wasn't good. There was some relief when we broke up, I just wonder if we'd had a long break at that time whether we would have come back and resumed? The problem was both Mick and Rob had had enough of London."[1] Although the single was the only, belated single released from Quirk Out, it was also the band's final release during their lifetime and they split-up shortly afterwards.[6]
Quirk Out has not been re-released on compact disc or any format since 1987, the album having been out of print since the late 1980s. However, Sanctuary Records released The Complete Anthology 3-CD set, also known as A Fierce Pancake & Before: The Complete Anthology, in March 2008, containing remastered versions of all the band's material, including Quirk Out.[39] However, that compilation itself is out of print today.[39] Nonetheless, in 2015, Cherry Red Records released Does the Fish Have Chips?: Early and Late Works 1986–1989, a single CD compilation featuring remastered editions of all the band's originally released material except A Fierce Pancake. This is the most recent release of the six songs from Quirk Out.[40]