Emma Sharpe

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NME photoshoot: photograph by Gered Mankovitz.

The Story of Emma Sharpe, Alan Hall and the Features

Emma Sharpe's theatrical streak emerged early in her life when she would direct, produce, sing and 'star' in back garden movies as a child. Alan Hall, a gifted guitar player and songwriter, had first performed in youth club bands but this was interrupted by adventures on the high seas...

Emma met Alan when she was working as a waitress in a hotel - 'he pulled up outside in an electric car,' she recalls. It was the late seventies. The lovers spent much of their time in in a cold squat in Lewes (Sussex, in the UK) songwriting, creating crude demos on rudimentary gear and planning world domination.

One of these songs, the frankly awesome Motorway, was recorded in a kitchen in Kemptown, Brighton (having moved from Lewes) using a cheap Woolworths electric guitar (with top E string missing!) via a MXR distortion pedal played through Alan's PYE home hi fi stereo amp and speakers, immortalised on a Philips battery cassette recorder. Emma's eerie, magnificent vocal came to us through an old Grundig microphone.

Attrix Records, the dead cool local independent label in Brighton, were at this time (Autumn 1980) looking for material for inclusion on their third and final compilation LP. The first two, Vaultage 78 and Vaultage 79, had been immensely popular and John Peel had played all the Attrix catalogue on his fabulous evening radio shows.

It was now the winter of 1980 and there seemed to be a shortage of good recorded stuff in Brighton, but when local radio presenters Stuart Jones and Vince Geddes requested demo tapes for a new series of nightly broadcasts from BBC Radio Brighton, they were inundated with cassettes from budding punk acts. They particularly liked Motorway - a screeching, lonely guitar accompanies Emma's remarkable vocal, a siren wail of unnerving beauty describing a bleak, J.G. Ballard-type of future.

It was as a result of these radio shows that Attrix finally decided that yes, there would be a new Vaultage album: there were so many great songs from those demo tapes, it would have been criminal for them to remain unreleased. John Peel loved Motorway and played it on his legendary programmes.

Fired up by all this encouragement Alan and Emma hastily formed a group, the Features, with Dave Edge on drums, Bruce Maine on bass and Andy Miller helping out Alan on guitar duties.There was a lot of local interest to see them perform live and at first their repertoire of only seven or eight fast and furious two-or-three minute songs meant that the live set was short and sweet and audiences didn't quite know what hit them: the band left the stage in under 30 minutes.

Motorway was enthusiastically selected for inclusion on Vaultage 80 and interest started coming from further afield. John Peel phoned Alan to discuss a BBC session at the famous Maida Vale studios (previous visitors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Beatles etc). In the end they did tape a session there but not for a further two years - February 1982, for the David 'Kid' Jensen show. That session was produced by Dale Griffin, former drummer for Mott the Hoople, who kindly played the session to some major labels for the band.

As 1981 got underway, pressing financial concerns meant there couldn't possibly be a fourth Vaultage album. There was a glaring gap in the Attrix discography: nothing had been issued with the catalogue number RB02 - these nerdy, archiving details are important to earnest young men of 21!

It was decided to kill two birds with one stone: release a cassette instead (hugely cheaper) and showcase, on one side, some ancient (but until then unissued) material and on the reverse a contemporary selection. These (then) new groups had their own showcase: the Red Squares, Nouveau-A-Go-Go (very Bill Nelson), Three D and Emma Sharpe and the Features with their cute, compact and cool pop gem, TV.

That year Attrix Records were concentrating on releases by the Chefs and Birds with Ears and due to budget restrictions couldn't sign any other acts. Happily for Emma and the group, Tim Curran, a music journalist on the Evening Argus (local Brighton newspaper) was a big fan and gave them favourable press. More importantly, he alerted another independent label, Mean Records (of London) who snapped them up and put them in the studios.

The result was the insanely catchy single, I'm A Millionaire, which received national airplay and good reviews in the music press. Wesley Magoogan, from Hazel O'Conner's band (famous for his haunting sax on 'Will You') played a lyricon on the A-side and sax on the B side, Wonderland. The single was recorded on the Rolling Stones Mobile (the Stones used it for recording in the late seventies in the South of France but Emma and the boys had to rough it on a cold night in Harlesden).

The group were working hard - a punishing schedule that would have defeated lesser beings. There were gigs up and down England's south coast supporting the likes of John Cooper Clarke, Mari Wilson and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

However, despite positive reactions from the media, the single sadly failed to set the charts alight and the band were again looking for a record deal.

'Kid' Jensen, remembering them from the session on his radio show, invited them to appear on TV South's 'DJ' programme and they were filmed perfoming the coldly atmospheric the City at TV Centre, Southampton on the 19th of January 1983. A video of this television appearance was sent to EMI Records who were duly impressed and signed them soon afterwards (their A&R man was ex-bass player Dave Ambrose, from the Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger Trinity ('This Wheel's On Fire').

A demo of a new song, Remember My Jealousy, had been recorded at Hillside Studios in Brixton the previous year. EMI insisted on remixing Jealousy at the Town House studios in London using 'a big-name producer'. As Emma and the boys arrived,some members of Queen were leaving ; Brian May got chatting to Emma, perhaps enchanted by her jaw-dropping beauty. But when work got underway, EMI ruined Jealousy by shoving in synthesizer and gormless drum parts, mixing out the guitars and putting the vocals through the mincer, spoiling everything. When the single was released (1983) the band appeared on local radio to launch it: to their utter surprise (and delight) the original demo had somehow got pressed in error. EMI should have let it stand but instead pressed up the Town House version. They then had to quickly press, distribute and plug this version. Chaos ensued - even having Simon Cowell as the EMI radio plugger didn’t improve things: two weeks later the promotional team were concentrating on the next Cliff Richard release.

So a small quantity of that original demo are still floating around out there for sale, a wrong pressing and a rare and perhaps collectable bit of vinyl. The town house version has 'town house' scratched on the centre of the vinyl, the demo version has 'JONZ' scratched there.

Again, despite good airplay and reviews nothing was happening financially or otherwise and Emma Sharpe and the Features were dropped by EMI.

Some years later, when the appetite returned, Alan and Emma started writing again, mostly just using acoustic guitar and recording with a Teac four track machine. In the late nineties the duo gigged all over the south coast as Just Fontaine. From this, websites were launched and the band now have a world wide fan base. The group's name had to be shortened as other acts disputed ownership, and they are now known as Fontain.

It's a familiar story - early independent label success, widespread media interest, major label involvement and then, nothing.But the short-lived career of Emma and Alan's project, littered as it is with fascinating details, anecdotes and near-misses, resulted in a variety of genuinely remarkable tracks...postpunk treasure of the highest calibre.

- mr. obscure, January 2011(from information supplied by Alan Hall)

Alan and Emma

Alan Hall, shaking things up

The first recorded appearance of THAT voice and THAT guitar: the Brighton compilation LP 'Vaultage 80'

Emma Sharpe and the Features

Inside the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.

Alan Hall, during a video shoot

the City

Emma Sharpe and the Features | Myspace Music Videos

Emma Sharpe and the Features

EMI publicity photo, by Alan Ballard

Photos taken whilst being filmed for television, 1983:

Songwriters, performers, creators

Relevant locations to visit. . .

Emma's page on Punk Brighton
MySpace page for Fontaine
Some of Emma's tracks at Last FM
Emma and Alan's MySpace page

She could - should? - have been a star

In Kensington Gardens, Brighton.

mr. obscure - The famous flagship page. 50 new tracks every month. free mp3s.
The Fiction Factory - Spoken word stuff, radio plays, stories etc. free mp3s.
The Super Seventies - Tons of groovy 70's tracks, replaced every two months. free mp3s.
The Audio Emporium - jaw-dropping soundscapes, thrilling and relaxing too. free mp3s.

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