Jonny Cola & The A-Grades
27March2010 SECM17 on RADIO TAKAOKA JAPAN
Jonny Cola & The A-Grades are a London foursome determined to make a drama out of a crisis. They intend to do this by means of starry-eyed, quiet/loud, happy/sad, metropolitan/suburban, shabby/glam pop music. They have a self-belief that at times verges on the frightening.
Singer Jonny Cola (not the name on his birth certificate) met guitarist Mauro Venegas, bass player Aurora Sommer and drummer Nicholas Bukowski in a dense and frustrated crowd at London Victoria Station, metaphorically speaking. Rather than queue up for a ticket from the sole working machine on the vague assumption that a train might actually be departing anytime soon, they saw their chance and hot-footed it crosstown to craft songs to live, love and die to. One day, they aim to return and commandeer the tannoy system.
We’re sorry to announce that this metaphor has now been cancelled.
Since they first took to the stage together in summer 2008, The A-Grades have played regularly around London, from circuit standards to SE5 dives and high-profile club nights. Last November saw attention-grabbing double A-side single "We're All Going To Die / Heroics" released on download and a limited run of 99 CDs through the invented-for-the-purpose BBA Highland label. The single delighted, baffled and enraged in equal measure, with Planet Sound declaring it “ruddy tremendous”, The Organ admitting that they were simply confused, and indie zine Bearded proclaiming it a contender for the worst single of all time, which the band took as a sizeable compliment.
The new year saw the band playing live radio sessions for Resonance FM and south-east London institution Earwax Radio and cracking on with recording their debut short album, The Yellow Mini, with producer Brian O'Shaughnessy, best known for working with indie icons such as Denim and doing all the hard graft on Primal Scream’s Screamadelica while Andrew Weatherall sat around getting stoned.
Now all but sold out, this enticing seven-song set packed the group’s influences and vibrant eclecticism into an all too brief 23 minutes, veering frantically between the enigmatic “One Day All Of This Will Be Yours” and Motown histrionics of “Shooting Up” via the shameless glammery of “Heroics” before skidding to a halt with the fragile, uncomfortable title track. Planet Sound gushed over its “ambitious vocals” and “headrush rock & roll glamour”, Whisperin’ & Hollerin’ were charmed
by its “positively endearing devil-may-care approach”, while the legendary Jean Encoule, writing for the Mudkiss webzine, was taken with its “overwhelming sense of purpose”.
To promote the album, the band plucked a digital single from it – “Disappearing Act”, a tasty three-and-a-half-minute slice of dirty disco pop, complete with killer chorus, key change and calypso middle eight. Alongside scattered airplay in the USA, Germany and deepest East London, the single received plays on BBC 6Music from Gary Crowley and Tom Robinson and also made Jonny Cola & The A-Grades Steve Lamacq’s Unsigned Band of the Week – a feature promoted with a live radio interview, in which Lamacq praised the song as “a great pop single”.
In August, the band released Another Summer Burning, a four-song free download EP warmly received by a growing fanbase. A tender piano version of Sabrina’s 1988 classic “Boys (Summertime Love)” was seen by many as a highlight, as was the mini-epic “Budget Flight To Faro”. The latter track is now to be released in physical form as the B-side to the band’s new single, “Out Of Focus”.
With awareness spreading of the band’s exciting live shows and growing arsenal of killer tunes, a full-length album in production and a TV appearance on More4 News, of all things, this might just be the right moment for Jonny Cola & The A-Grades. Watch this space. Intently.
