The Real Tuesday Weld is a British band formed in 2001 by lead singer and producer Stephen Coates, who studied at the Royal College of Art.[1] They have released several albums, singles and EPs, and many tracks on compilations. Their combination of big-bandjazz era sounds with electronica and vintage-style animations has been influential on the current range of electro swing artists and DJs.[2] Their live shows are usually accompanied by visuals in the form of bespoke films and animations.
The band is named after American film actress Tuesday Weld. Coates once had a dream involving Weld and 1930s vocalist Al Bowlly and cites it as inspiration for the band's particular style.[3] (A German alternative/indie rock band by the name of Tuesday Weld, that released two albums and four singles in the 1990s, is not related.)[4]
Coates lives in Clerkenwell, London.[5] "The Clerkenwell Kid", often cited or credited as the band's producer/re-mixer, is an alter ego for Coates himself.[5] Their 2009 album The Clerkenwell Kid: Live at the End of the World is an imaginary live recording of a concert on the "eve of the apocalypse".[6] The Clerkenwell Kid is also the main character in a London-based mythology that Coates has developed around his love of the city's history and stories.
In early 2021 Coates announced on the band's website that the Real Tuesday Weld would be winding up "in the next year or so" after the release of three final albums – Blood (released in May 2021), Dreams (released in September 2022) and Bone.[7]
The band's album The Last Werewolf is a soundtrack to the novel of the same name (2012) by childhood friend Glen Duncan,[10] reprising their joint work on Duncan's novel I, Lucifer (2004). BBC Music reviewer Lisa Haines described the I, Lucifer soundtrack as "[a] remarkably wonderful album...a melancholic collection of sardonic whispers, melodious instrumentals and woozy, underhand beats".[11]Uncut said it was "[m]eticulously arranged, touching, intimate, and with mesmerising melodies".[12] In 2010–11, Coates also co-wrote and produced an album Horseplay as "Lazarus and the Plane Crash", a collaboration with Joe Coles of UK cult garage rockers The Guillotines that was released on Antique Beat in 2012.[13] Every year since 2003, the band have released a Christmas EP of songs and spoken word elements.
The band have worked with many animators and filmmakers, particularly the Russian animator Alex Budovsky and the American animator George Fort on several international award-winning films. Their "Bathtime in Clerkenwell" cut (from the I, Lucifer album) appears as the soundtrack for Budovsky's innovative multi-award-winning short film of the same title.[14][15]
The band have had many existing tracks used in films, television shows and commercials. Their song "I Love the Rain" was used in a commercial for Chevy in 2011. The 2013 Apple iPad commercial featured the piano instrumental "The Lupine Waltz" from The Last Werewolf album. The song "Last Words" (from the album The London Book of the Dead) is cut throughout and plays over the final scenes of Sony Pictures' 2008 film Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by indie cult director Peter Sollett (who is known for his feature film Raising Victor Vargas).
In 2007, Coates was commissioned to write music for the Rothko room at the Tate Modern, London and the band re-scored the surrealist cult film Dreams That Money Can Buy for the British Film Institute.[3] Other commissioned arts projects include "Propaganda from the State of Love" at London's Victoria and Albert Museum for the 2008 Cold War Modern exhibition.[25]
In 2014, Coates launched The X-Ray Audio Project, an initiative to provide a resource of information about "Roentgenizdat"Sovietbootleg recordings of forbidden music made on used X-rays in the 1940s and 1950s.[28] The project archives visual images, information, audio recordings and interviews made during travels in Russia with photographer Paul Heartfield as the basis for a book X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone published in November 2015 by Strange Attractor Press.[29]
The pair have made a short documentary film X-Ray Audio – The Documentary with UK organisation The Vinyl Factory[30] and the longer form Roentgenizdat[31] which was awarded the best documentary prize at the London Russian Film Festival in 2017.
They hold multimedia events where Coates tells the story of the Soviet bootleggers and they cut new X-ray records from live performances as a demonstration of the process involved in the UK,[32] US and Europe, working with various musicians including Thurston Moore, Marc Almond and Barry Adamson. Coates delivered a talk on the project at TEDx in Kraków in June 2015.[33]
In March 2019, as The Bureau of Lost Culture, Coates and Heartfield cut audio by Massive Attack, Jonsi, Noam Chomsky amongst others onto X-ray for "The Library of Dangerous Thoughts" project by the University of the Underground.[38]
Broadcasting and other work
Outside music, Coates has written for various publications and radio and worked with various arts organisations. His label Antique Beat presents the monthly "Salon for the City" in Westminster and curates various arts events including "32 Londoners" and "London Month of the Dead"[39] based around the city's history and mythology.
In 2008, he wrote and presented a series of eight radio programmes: US and THEM: Sounds of Propaganda and the Cold War on London arts radio station Resonance FM. In 2012 he appeared at the Fiona Shaw-directed arts project Peace Camp, part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, providing a vocal take on Nick Cave's lyrics to the song "Into My Arms" with A. L. Kennedy.[44]
In February 2015, he wrote and narrated an essay for the BBC Radio 3 series Just Juvenilia,[45] telling the story of his visit to the underground river Fleet in London, the time he lived in a Buddhist monastery and the circumstances surrounding the forming of The Real Tuesday Weld in the late 1990s.
In November 2015, his publishing company Antique Beat and Earth Recordings released Film Music, a three-album set of music by the Russian film composer Mikael Tariverdiev, a project Coates had been working on since he first heard the composer's music in Moscow in 2011.[46] In November 2017 a follow-up release was made of the complete soundtrack to the Soviet classic comedy of errorsThe Irony of Fate, the score from the TV series Olga Sergeevna was released in October 2017 and the original sound track for the 1970s Soviet blockbuster series Seventeen Moments of Spring was released in November 2018.
In 2018, he wrote and presented a series of five radio programmes on London arts radio station Soho Radio on various subjects related to bootleg music and vinyl culture.
In 2019, he wrote and presented Bone Music, a documentary based around interviews carried out in Russia for an edition of BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears series. The programme told the story of an underground culture of forbidden music in the Cold War-era Soviet Union and featured the Russian band Mumiy Troll.[47]
He currently presents The Bureau of Lost Culture, a bi-monthly show about counter-cultural themes.[48]
Discography
Most of the band's albums have had multiple versions released in different territories. They have also issued several private releases including an "Audio Christmas card" with exclusive tracks each year since 2000.[49] This discography is not complete, though it does cover the major releases.
Albums
At The House of the Clerkenwell Kid (2001, Bambini)
The Clerkenwell Kid: Live at the End of the World (2008, Six Degrees Records / Antique Beat). Limited live recording made by The Clerkenwell Kid "on the eve of the apocalypse"
The Last Werewolf (2011, Six Degrees Records / Crammed Discs). Soundtrack/companion to the novel The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Horseplay as "Lazarus and the Plane Crash" with Joe Coles (2013, Antique Beat)
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Tuesday Weld is a former American actress. She began acting as a child and progressed to mature roles in the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960. Over the following decade, she established a career playing dramatic roles in films.
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