Let's Twist again, like we did twenty years ago, Kirkcaldy's Pop Sensation, the Twist!
The Twist had a more contemporary sound than bands like the Gimix and The Ghost Train.
(The Twist at Negociants, Edinburgh, Autumn 1990)
The Twist were a year or so younger than us and I think there influences were a lot more modern. Bands like the Cure and the Smiths seem to have influenced them, whilst the older bands seemed much more influenced by stuff from 1977 and before.
The band were also active a bit later than the other bands featured on this website. A factor of being in a local band is you have to balance the rest of your life with being in a band, so the scene seemed to change radically every year or so - a lot of the bands active in 1985, were history by 1988, which is when I can first remember coming across The Twist.
The Twist were a huge band in the late '80's and early '90's in Kirkcaldy, I was always amazed that they didn't get any sort of recording contract - they seemed to have everything going for them - they could play well, write good original material and all the girls seemed to be interested in them (I never understood that bit!).
They had a few records out ( a copy of the cover of one of them is above) I think they may have been privately financed.
(The Twist at Negociants, Edinburgh, Autumn 1990)
The following tracks are from the Twist's "Strangefruit" tape, which (I think) may have been their original demo tape.
10 Talk to the Animals (Expensive Mix)
Download the whole Strangefruit tape as one ZIP file (55mb)
Thanks, as ever, to Kirkcaldy Band's resident audio genius (Ian Cargill) for the digital restoration of the original audio tape and also thanks to Fergus Henderson for lending us the tape.
This I think was their second demo, the Pooka tape:
02 Here Is Where I'll Always Be
Download whole Pooka tape (12Mb)
Thanks to Iain Cummings from the band for sending the MP3's over.
(The Twist at Dysart Miners' Welfare, November 1989)
The set below was recorded in mono on my old Marantz machine, that has featured heavily on this website on other pages. This is from a gig at the Abbotshall Hotel on March 3rd 1988, I'm pretty sure The Twist were the headliners that night, Who Cares? were the support act (if you can really be a support act if your singer and bass player can be in the support band too?).
(Colin Livingston, The Clubhouse Summer 1989)
I think by this time, I had got less "professional" with these recordings and I hadn't fixed the record level before the band began - so sorry for the abrupt changes to volume at the beginning. Hopefully, we can unearth some better live tapes of the band. I'm also hoping someone can help me find titles to some of the tracks I can't identify. Talk to the Animals, this is one of my favorite Twist songs - it showcases quite nicely what was great about them - it has a good lyric (it actually seems to be about something, which not many of the songs played by the local bands were!), and it is well played.
01 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Talk to the animals
02 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Faith
03 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Jennifer's Room
04 The Twist March 3 1988 - Ask a Rhetorical Question
05 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Track 5
06 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Track 6
07 The Twist Abbotshall March 3 1988 - Our lips are sealed
The remaining MP3's are from a CD called "We Had Cakes - Sessions 88-92". One of the guys who was in the Twist, Ian Cummings, sent me this a number of years ago, but when this website was up last, I didn't have the webspace to upload all these files. I listened to them again last night and the songs are pretty good. The Twist had a load of strong material that is not on this CD - hopefully I can get hold of some of these. These MP3's are pretty much CD quality - the only MP3's on this site that came straight off a CD!
04 Here is where I'll always be
(The Twist at Dysart Miners' Welfare, November 1989)
(Colin Livingston, The Clubhouse Summer 1989)
Big thanks to Michael Laing for the photos from Dysart Miner's Welfare, Negotiants and the Clubhouse.