Hippy Posed Engrosement \/ Hooked On A Trend \/ Negative Nights<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/i192.photobucket.com\/albums\/z149\/pengy1966\/pengy1966%20stuff\/scan026.jpg\")
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Obscure second release on Rather Records, Swell Map\u2019s record label from out of the west midlands. A fair few of the Swell Maps appear on this 7\u2033 single, and you can hear the influence throughout most of the tracks, as well as a heavy dose of Bolan in the vocal stylings.<\/p>\n
There is a great site, TOPPLERS.NET which gives a complete(ish) history of this artist so I am pasting it up here:<\/p>\n
Steve Treatment, or Steven John Finney as his parents know him, was born in Derby but the Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll dream led him to London in 1975. Always a fan of Marc Bolan and T Rex, he spotted a girl wearing a T Rex t-shirt and struck up a conversation. She said she got the shirt from Marc\u2019s office at 69 New Bond Street so he popped round and was amazed at how easy it was to approach the Metal Guru!
\nNikki Sudden, of Swell Maps, also hung about Marc\u2019s office and the pair of them were invited to a T Rex gig at Great Yarmouth where they became friends and declared that they to would one day be as big stars as Marc Bolan! <\/font><\/p>\nSteve & Nikki begin busking around London and going to the early Punk gigs. Steve had a job in the HMV shop and used to wear a plastic padlock and chain he nicked from a Uriah Heep display in the window. Captain Sensible had inherited Sid Vicious\u2019 famous padlock and wanted to swap it for Steve\u2019s!!! Marc Bolan wanted to know about punk rock and asked Steve & Nikki their advice \u2013 he ended up getting the Damned to support him on his final tour and a few good punk bands got their TV debut on the \u2018Marc\u2019 television show..<\/font><\/p>\nSteve was spotted by arty film maker Derek Jarman who was starting on his \u201cpunk\u201d film \u2018Jubilee!\u2019 Steve had the job of taking Polaroid photos of punks at a Ramones gig to appear as extras in the film. Derek thought his age and posh accent would scare the punks away. At this time Steve had long curly hair which he planned to cut off but Derek made him wait so he could film it. This scene appears in Jubilee and was also used in Derek\u2019s anthology film \u201cGlitterbug\u201d. Steve also appears in the book burning scene at the end of Jubilee and received a fiver for his acting skills. Steve Strange was also a Jubilee extra and he and Midge Ure were looking for someone to front their notorious \u2018Moors Murderers\u2019 band. Steve was asked but he quite rightly thought the idea was tacky as fuck!<\/font><\/p>\nBy early \u201977 Steve had written most of the tracks for his first record and others including his theme song \u201cyou\u2019re gonna receive treatment\u2019 from where his nickname came! Nikki\u2019s band the Swell Maps had now made their first single, the classic \u2018Read about Seymour\u2019 on their own Rather Records which was later taken up by Rough Trade records and was a big favourite of John Peel! Nikki thought it would be a good idea to use Rather records to put out singles by other bands and, after hearing tapes that Steve had made on his friend Gary Hill\u2019s Revox tape machine, offered Steve the chance. On June 1st 1978 The Swell Maps and Steve went into Spaceward Studios and recorded the Five \u2018A\u2019 Sided Single.<\/font><\/p>\nThis was one of the best singles of 1978 and although it had all the ingredients of Punk rock, it transcended the three chord thrash associated with punk (it\u2019s best song has only one chord!!!) and has a timeless quality. The Bolan influence is obvious especially on the classic Negative Nights with Christine Isherwood\u2019s beautifull second vocal! There is also a psychedelic and rockabilly influence, with the backwards guitars and double tracked vocals. The whole five tracks sound like a band having fun!<\/font><\/p>\nAs well as providing musical backing Swell Maps helped design the cover and each single had a personalised inner sleeve handwritten by either Steve or the Maps or their pals. There was an anagram on the back sleeve \u2013 Vet Me Tea Set Rut \u2013 which turned out not to be a true anagram of Steve Treatment because they got the \u201cu\u201d upside down! Annette, Nikki\u2019s girlfriend at the time, recalls having to type out hundreds of slips of paper to go into the sleeves and make it a competition to \u201cspot the deliferate mistale\u201d<\/font><\/p>\nThe record sold well and was played in full by John Peel over a number of nights. Steve claimed it outsold the Swell Maps, which is unlikely, and Nikki reckoned that Steve absconded with all the copies for himself! Steve and Nikki did one more recording together but the Maps were now recording their first album and follow up singles so the two drifted apart.<\/font><\/p>\nSteve now found himself with a single high in the Independant Charts but without a band and the means to do any gigs (in fact he never did a single live gig untill he formed the Ticket Inspectors in the late eighties.) An old friend Nick Welsh took it upon himself to get Steve a band and by the end of \u201978 Steve returned to the recording studio for the second single \u2018Step inside a worn out shoe\u201d and \u2018Heaven Knows\u2019<\/font><\/p>\nThe second single was released on Steve\u2019s own record label, Backbone, and is another classic! The T Rex influence is right upfront on \u2018Juvenile Wrecks\u2019 with its rolling piano and Bolan-esque lyrics. The other side (only two songs on this one to get more volume!!!) was \u2018Step inside a worn out shoe\u2019, a quirky rocker with trademark double tracked vocals (arguing with each other at the end!!!). Steve was never one to rehearse or re-take tracks prefering to show the song to the band and dive in head first with the recording, so this session also produced \u2018Change of Plan\u2019 and \u2018Head of a Raven\u2019 for his next single which also came out on Backbone in \u201979. It contains another three tracks of boppin\u2019 good tunes but sadly was his last release for 24 years!!!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taste Your Own Medicine \/ Danger Zone Hippy Posed Engrosement \/ Hooked On A Trend \/ Negative Nights Obscure second release on Rather Records, Swell Map\u2019s record label from out of the west midlands. A fair few of the Swell Maps appear on this 7\u2033 single, and you can hear the influence throughout most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-downloads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/killyourpetpuppy.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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