STEVE TREATMENT - 5A-Sided 45 (1978) + Heaven Knows (Juvenile Wrecks) 7" (1979) + Change of Plan 7" (1979)

  
Not long after moving to the city in the 1975, Steve Treatment fell in with the glam kids who haunted Marc Bolan's central London office, most of whom would people London's punk scene in the years to come. Steve became fast friends with Nikki Sudden, who had already started Swell Maps with his brother, Epic Soundtracks. Steve and Nikki became kind of Bolan's main youngblood associates. It was by their heed that T. Rex brought The Damned on the Dandy in the Underworld tour in 1977. As an interesting aside, Steve Treatment also caught the eye of director Derek Jarman at this time. He helped Jarman cast Jubilee by serving as liason with London's punk kids and can himself be seen in Jubilee's bonfire scene.

With the success of Swell Maps' first single in 1977—released on their own Rather Records—they started to put out music from other bands. Rather's second release was Steve Treatment's debut EP, 5A-Sided 45. Swell Maps served as Treatment's backing band on this record, but you'd hardly be able to tell. Stripped to their essential core, some of these songs have just one or two chords and were recorded in as many takes. The slipshod approach imbues the record with that infectious joy of creating. Everything's drowned in reverb and rendered weird by Treatment's double-tracked vocals, and yet his Bolan kick remains front and center. In fact, an engraving on the run-out groove says "BOLAN WAS STOLEN." Steve Treatment never once played out for these records, despite finding some success on the independent charts. He self-released two more 45s on his own Backbone Records, delving even further into rock'n'roll hysteria. His double vocals can even be heard arguing with each other at the end of "Step Into a Worn Out Shoe!" Treatment would go on to play with Ticket Inspectors in the late 80s and early 90s but didn't release music under his own name again for 25 years. He has become quite active in the past ten years, releasing new music on Messthetics and, in 2006, a CDR compilation of his early recordings.


I don't understand why you bit the head off a raven