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Artist
The Wheelies
12+ albums
cozy home recordsdaydream generationfolk-popdiySlight
about
The Wheelies are a lo-fi folk-pop band who formed in the summer of 1993 in Fife, Scotland. The original line-up consisted of four friends from high school - Smally (vox/songs), Slight (lead guitar), Ali (bass/the occasional lines from the occasional songs), and Moppy (guitar/whistling/bongos/black bullets). Influenced by bands like The Beatles, The Stone Roses, The Velvet Underground, Ride, and Bob Dylan, they attempted to write psychedelic pop songs, recording several lo-fi cassettes on borrowed 4-tracks or portable cassette recorders between 1993 and 1996. Collections included 'The Wheelies Forever' (1994), 'Groovin On Up In The Sun' (1995), 'Freewheelin' (1995), 'The Grassmarket Recordings' (1996), and 'Rubba Kola' (1996). Most of these tapes have since been lost, but a selection of the tracks were compiled for CD in 2004 and released as 'The Shite Album' for free download in 2009 through Cozy Home Records. Tracks from this time were often improvised and experimental with snippets of dialogue, laughter and mistakes. It is widely agreed that the 'songs' from this period were some of the most mediocre ever written and recorded in the history of song-writing. In the summer of 1997 Smally wrote and recorded the first official Wheelies record 'Simple Songs For Complicated People', locked in a bedroom for 20 days with an acoustic guitar and a keyboard. He was helped on several tracks by Ali and 'fifth Wheelie' Martin Jose Franco Gillandrez (guitar/vox) and the finished tape was
