Nightingales
Luckily this is not the case with the Nightingales, the “proper” band Lloyd and drummer Paul Apperley formed after the Prefects split. Punk hard-liners pledge allegiance to the Prefects because of their borderline chops and party-line barking but, as heard in the Peel sessions, issued in 1987, the Prefects were not a horsepower band and didn’t need to stay stoopid. The Nightingales simply improved on the Prefects’ merits: Lloyd himself, self-proclaimed “proud plebe,” singer, and writer; and a shambling band sound that could appeal to fans of both the football anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and Captain Beefheart’s “Zig Zag Wanderer.”
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But the Nightingales moped for no one, not even for themselves. Though he almost played in a band with future Joy Division front man Ian Curtis, Lloyd was never a candidate for the depressive canon. Well, there you go–the ever-popular English melancholy might have pulled the kids. But the Nightingales’ self-contained jubilation didn’t support first person agita or a plan for a brave new world. It was a different sound track for a different sitcom, where spanner wielders and girls in bedsits speechify, without rancor, about what goes on, just like the la la la kids. And if the Nightingales were not the kind of bubblegum Kurt would have championed back into print ten years ago, that doesn’t mean they weren’t catchy–good luck trying to get “Paraffin Brain” or “Crafty Fag” out of your head.
