The maisonettes
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The Maisonettes were an English pop band with mod / beat influences from Birmingham . It was founded in 1982 by singer Laurence “Lol” Mason and guitarist Mark Tibenham. Mason was previously a member of City Boy , which had multiple hits in the late 1970s but split in 1981. Tibenham had been in several less successful bands. There was also drummer Nick Parry.
Band history
The band recorded Heartache Avenue in 1982 along with studio singers . Mason and Tibenham wrote the song themselves and it was a mixture of 60s beat and 80s synth pop. The song reached the top 10 in Great Britain and also became a radio hit in Germany.
To complete the band, Denise Ward and Elaine Williams had been hired as background singers, but it was discovered that they did not fit the band vocally during performances, and so they were replaced shortly afterwards by Carla Mendonca and Lisa Richards, who then became an integral part of the quintet maisonettes. By the way, the band name was a play on words with the last name of the singer Lol Mason and an allusion to several bands from the 1960s that ended in "-ettes".
The newly formed maisonettes next took on the double single This Affair / Say It Again , with which they could not build on their first success. It missed the charts in most countries. The following album Maisonettes For Sale also flopped and so the band remained a one-hit wonder.
Neither a remix of Heartache Avenue in 1992 nor a best-of album in 2004 could later rekindle interest in the band. But in 2005 the London band Roll Deep benefited from the hit Heartache Avenue : They sampled the song and had a top 20 hit in Great Britain with The Avenue .
Members
- Lol Mason (Laurence Edward Mason), singer
- Mark Tibenham, guitarist
- Nick Parry, drummer
- Carla Mendonca, singer
- Elisa Richards, singer
briefly too
- Denise Ward, singer
- Elaine Williams, singer
Discography
Albums
- Maisonettes For Sale (1983)
Singles
- Heartache Avenue (1982)
- Say It Again / This Affair (1983)
swell
Web links
- Entry at allmusic (English)