Super Sonics is Martin Green's 29th compilation CD, the first of which, The Sound Gallery was released in 1995 when his seminal club, Smashing, was at its height. With his DJ partner, Michael Murphy, the music policy at the club was a breath of fresh air and resolutely anti-'policy'.

As well as spearheading a renewed interest in musical soundtracks (as per The Sound Gallery compilation), the sheer joy of their mash-up of Bowie, Hi-NRG, punk, TV themes, techno, glam and new wave was a response to what bored them about the club scene at the time, which was all about house music and no surprises.

Between then and now, there have been compilations exploring obscure exotica, jazz and lounge music, but now Green, who is still an in-demand DJ, curator and writer, returns to his 90s roots to present a tribute to the decade that made him.

Green is a rigorous connoisseur of the junkshop bargain bin. Most of the bands featured on Super Sonics were destined to be relegated here (the CD single was very 90s), but by dusting them off and presenting the scene as he saw it; rather than as history has framed it, the forty tracks reveal a much more experimental, anarchic pattern of events, as opposed to the 'cool Britannia', lads-with-guitars way the decade is packaged now for consumption.

I'm honoured to say that my band, Posh (with James Dearlove and Richard Evans), feature on the CD, along with bands that we loved, toured with and even some we hadn't heard of until now. I was at the opening night of Smashing (and the closing… and many, many more) and I never went to a club like it. So it's always a pleasure to talk to Martin, but to natter about this very sweet time especially so.....

Pippa: Martin, you're on a bit of a mission with this compilation, aren't you?

Martin Green: I am. Basically history gets re-written and the mavericks get forgotten. People like ourselves who had a certain amount of success, but not corporate success…you just kind of get written out. And actually, what we were all involved in was really influential. So the 90s has been re-written as this very lad-y, guitar-y, house-y kind of decade. History remembers bands like Cast and Oasis, and with clubs it’s all Cream, Pacha, Gatecracher, it’s all very very straight and corporate. So I wanted to put something together that reflected what we were all about in the 90s, much more art school, much queerer and female-led.

Your club night Smashing was truly mixed, wasn’t it?

Yeah, what we were doing was very anti the whole house music scene, which was exciting when it started in the mid-80s, but by the early 90s it was boring. We were into mixing things up and playing a bit of punk with a bit of electro, or a bit of Burt Bacharach…because there was very little contemporary music that we really liked. But then from what we were doing, lots of the indie bands that were hanging around started to come to the club, then they started having success; bands like Suede, Denim, Blur, Pulp and Elastica. Then they started bringing their records down and we started playing their music. Then lots of other bands were forming, like yourselves, so it was a really inspirational time. There were loads of gig venues everywhere and lots of clubs put on bands and it was kind of a reaction against four on the floor dance music, manufactured dance music and also America. It was an anti-grunge thing…about dressing up and looking glam. It was all quite anarchic as well.

Smashing was run by you, host Matthew Glamorre, Adrian Webb on the door and your co-DJ Michael Murphy. The dance floor was FABULOUS! One moment you'd be serving your best Fosse to the Sweet Charity soundtrack, the next track would be The Fall, or Elaine Paige! I don't think I ever went to another club where I laughed so much!!! Or played musical bumps...clubs aren't generally about humour!

All the clubs had got so humourless. I remember when we were young and first going to clubs like Taboo, it was really fun. The first time I went to Taboo, Into the Groove had just come out and Jeffrey Hinton played it FIVE TIMES! Kept taking it off, putting it on again (laughing). I remember going to a club in Nottingham….

Which club?

I think it was called L’Amour…

I went there! They only played Hi-NRG!

Exactly! All queens with great big shoulder pads and big hair. I was with Michael Murphy and our friend Andy who was working behind the bar and we laughed and laughed….they played the Hi-NRG versions of Evergreen and stuff and it was just hilarious, we had such a good time. The house thing made everything really serious. We wanted to bring the unpredictability back into clubs. Before, you never knew what you were going to hear or who was going to be there, you had an idea, but every night out was an adventure. We wanted to bring that back really. Everyone came together and then it exploded and became really popular.

You wouldn’t get that mix anywhere else in London at the time: teens in vintage sportswear dancing with Pete Burns, disco dollies dancing with beatniks - so eclectic!

Also, you have to remember it happened pre the members bar scene as well. Well, you had the Groucho, which was bit naff. But the members clubs didn’t exist at that time. So when Prince turned up at Smashing, his driver said he wanted a VIP area for him, we said no, he’ll have to join in with everyone else! He didn’t like that and went off in his limo….but it was all about coming together wherever you were from. We all wanted to be in the same space, listening to those records.

This album isn’t really the sound of Smashing though, is it?

No, it’s more like my take on that period of the 90s. It’s a mix of jerky guitar-pop, female-led bands, electronic stuff and experimental things. Quite a lot of the bands did play at Smashing. I just wanted to re-tell the story and dig out - which I’ve always done - those obscurities that people have forgotten about. B-sides, album tracks and bands who only brought a couple of singles out. Because people get lost, and fall through the cracks, and it all just becomes very mainstream.

It was maybe more of a chaotic time, some of the bands like Sexton Ming and Steady, were more avant-garde, others more anthemic like London Girls by Stephen Duffy....

Everyone had a passion, and had their own sort of vision, and no-one was really thinking, “oh, I want to have mega-success” - even the bands that did go on to have mega-success. I mean, lots of those bands split up once they got successful!

It was such a ‘scene’ and there were LOADS of live venues up and down the country, we played gigs with quite a few on the album….we went on tour with David Devant and His Spirit Wife actually...so much fun and laughter!

They were still from that tradition of bands coming from art school. Blur and Pulp both came from art school and they were the main protagonists. There’s such a history from the Beatles to the Kinks to Bowie, art school was an avenue to pop, where now people go through stage school, so it’s a different journey. I think it was the last period where you could still live in London quite cheaply, there were still squats around and I think there was still a sense of possibility. Also, what we were doing was all in the West End! So, when we were doing the conga it was up and down Regent Street!

I know! I almost can’t believe that happened! Every week!!

So brilliant - in all these clubs that had been in mothballs since the 60s! Appletree Yard, The Gaslight…you’d just knock on the door and say, “Can we do a night? You take the bar and we’ll take the door…” and that was it, they’d just say “OK!” So there was no expenditure, so you could be risky. The first night of Smashing [at Maximus, Leicester Square] was basically us-lot dancing about, around thirty of us, to our favourite records! In a club that holds eight hundred people!

I was there that night! You'd have to show a spread-sheet now before anyone would let you do that!

I approached a venue in the West End about doing a night with Lenny Beige and Mike Flowers, a Tuesday night, a one off and they said, “Yes, it’s available, we’d love you to do it, £5,000 up front..” We were like, £5,000????!!! - for a Tuesday night!!!!???

The CD single was such a thing then, wasn’t it?! I used to get sent a lot and that’s how I knew about the Gretchen Hoffner single, My Judy Garland Life which I was so pleased to see on the compilation.

There was that kind of queer-core scene running parallel, I really wanted to represent that. Also, to represent the UK Riot Grrrl movement with Huggy Bear..

I LOVE Her Jazz!

It all mixed in and was coming from the same point of rebellion.

And the performance art element of the scene, too. The scene was quite small; one of our drummers, Pablo, used to do percussion for Pulp but also used to perform with Earl Brutus, as a kind of agitator, standing at the front of the stage staring people down in the audience, suit jacket and no top, with the sleeves rolled up, kind of trying to start a fight….

Well, the first night we did at Eve’s club on Regents Street, we were really trying to impress the owners (who weren’t very happy with us anyway, because we got a big feature in Time Out and they didn’t like it because they wanted a feature) – then Earl Brutus came on stage and set all the fire alarms off with all the smoke on stage, and the fire brigade came in and walked across the light-up dance floor - there were firemen literally wandering about! Everyone just kind of carried on, and they didn’t kick us out!!

What a great story! And what a wonderful compilation!

The album’s a tribute really… there were a lot of really good, really diverse people about and I wanted to show that. It was a great time because, coming towards the end of the twentieth century, everyone was picking out things that they liked and putting them together in interesting ways. That was the thrust of what we and a lot of the bands were doing, kind of looking to the past to come up with something new for the future.

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Pre-order the compilation on Cherry Red Records here

Smashing Time…

Super Sonics is Martin Green's 29th compilation CD, the first of which, The Sound Gallery was released in 1995 when his seminal club, Smashing, was at its height. With his DJ partner, Michael Murphy, the music policy at the club was a breath of fresh air and resolutely anti-'policy'.