About Topplers

Part1. FROM A BAND TO A LABEL
Topplers were a post-punk band from the West of Scotland from around 1980 to 1983. Although they never released any records, tracks by the band appeared on two cassette compilations in the UK and they shared a cassette release with two other bands in Belgium! Their name was allegedly a tribute to the FALL but their sound was characterised by imaginative trebly guitars over sinuous basslines with distictive vocals, all pinned down by the rock-solid beat of Ian Murray on drums! (he later went on to play with pompous celtic AOR band Capercaille!!!!)

artwork for topplers illustrated lyrics 1982
After they drifted apart in 1983 most of the band members stayed away from the music scene (apart from occaisional home recordings) until, in 1990, Allan the bass player joined Nyah Fearties.
The Fearties had a worldwide reputation as an uncompromising duo who produced more noise from amped up acoustic instuments and junk percussion than most did with a full band! By 1990 they had produced two albums and two singles and were taking a well earned rest.
Davy Feartie was looking for a new direction and, along with Allan from the Topplers, started using drum machines and cut-up samples to fill out the sound on some spaghetti western styled instrumentals they recorded. It wasn’t long before Stephen Feartie joined in with his banjo and a whole new electric/acoustic sound developed. Although all three were writing lyrics for the new tunes, Lewis Mitchell, the Topplers singer, chipped in with his words to some songs which were taken up by the Fearties.
Allan stayed with the Fearties for the next 5 years but after Lewis drank the entire Fearties rider at a gig in Queen Margaret’s University, his collaboration with the band was abruptly stopped!
In 1999, although old enough to know better, Allan started playing again with a couple of younger musicians, Brian and Zeke, under the name of the Joy Boys! A recording was made of five tracks but no-one bothered to write any lyrics or was prepared to sing! Lewis heard the tracks and immediately sprang into action. He had years worth of lyrics waiting to be used and within days had transformed the recordings into proper songs!
By this time everybody had CD writers and colour printers and a profesional looking sleeve and label was made up for this collection of songs. The band luckily changed their name to The Reverborators on Lewis’ suggestion, but what would they call the imaginary label it was to be released on? Well, two of them had been members of the Topplers so why not call it Topplers Records?

the fist CD on the original topplers label 1999

… to be continued!

Part 2 - THE EARLY YEARS

TOP01-Reverborator

TOP02 - The Decider

TOP03 - Jimmy Wolfe EP

The Reverborators had split up by the time the CD was finished but Allan & Brian continued experimenting with home recordings and Allan eventually invested in an iMac and got himself a free copy of Pro Tools.
Lewis was still getting copies of the recordings and writing his own lyrics which, over a period of two years or so, became the two Decider CDs.
Brians brother Michael joined in on some of the recordings and his band ‘Jimmy Wolfe’, who were looking for a CD to sell at their gigs, became the next act to have their music released on Topplers.

TOP04 - The Decider!

TOP05 - Jimmy Wolfe EP

Top06 - The NoMen

By 2002 Topplers had their own website and had released five CDR albums. Brian was playing in a band called the YesMen with his neighbour George who used to pop round and borrow Swell Maps and TVP records.
Allan had always loved the Swell Maps but his favourite records were released by artists who used the Swell Maps as their backing band; The Cult Figures had a wonderful pop-punk single called Zip Nolan which had one of the best 7″ covers ever and Steve Treatment had a fantastic 5 track single which mixed Marc Bolan’s lyricism with Swell Maps’ shambolic punk. He’d bought the Steve Treatment single in 1978 and had never heard anything else by him, but in 2002 he went to a record fair with Brian and saw another Steve Treatment single in a home made sleeve which, even though it cost a fiver, he bought. It was another classic! It had lost some of the frenzy of the Swell Maps backing but the songs were brilliant… a thought crossed his mind… “Were there any other Steve Treatment records out there?”
Using the Topplers website he put up a Steve Treatment page with all the info from the two singles he had and asking if anyone knew of any others. There were numerous replies pointing out that we had the first and third singles and that there was another one out there, but then we got a message from Steve’s sister and another from Christine Isherwood (who sang backing vocals on the records) saying that Steve was alive and well and they would get him to contact us…
Just before New Year of 2003 Allan got a call from Steven John Finney, otherwise known as Steve Treatment! It was a long conversation… He talked about his old records and his band in the nineties called The Ticket Inspectors. He played the single we hadn’t heard down the phone, it sounded great, and promised to send copies of his recordings up to us! A few days later a package arrived stuffed with singles, cassettes, press clippings and photos. The records were great but of more interest was the cassettes full of unreleased recordings and demos of recently written songs!
By this time Allan had also joined ‘The Yes Men’ with Brian and George and together they went through the tapes with the idea of rerecording them with Steve singing and releasing them on Topplers. It seemed like a good idea, but by the time they started recording, they were having so much fun they decided to do them without Steve and release them under the name of “The NoMen”. To beef out the sound our friend Billy was brought in on percussion. He played with his own elecro-pop band The Electroluvs and had also remixed and rerecorded a Decider single on his own X-Static label.
Steve heard the NoMen recordings and was amazed - “They sound more like me than I do!” It was time to get Steve involved…

TOP07 - Steve Treatment

TOP08 - Steve Treatment

TOP09 - Steve Treatment

Part3. GETTING SERIOUS…