Alisha's Attic

This year is 20 years since Alisha's Attic was introduced to the world. Those who have read earlier posts will know I was once a big fan.

At the time they released their debut hit, "I am I Feel", I wouldn't listen to anything that wasn't rave so I wasn't a fan from day one. I did secretly like it at the time though. I recall one morning when waking up to my radio alarm clock it came on and I waited till the song finished before getting up. I thought it sounded quite similar to "Head Over Feet" by Alanis Morrissette which I also secretly liked.

Then their follow up, "Alisha Rules the World" came out and I quite liked that one too. It was a few months until their third single, "Indestructible", which I heard on the O-Zone and then "Air we Breathe" came out in the summer of 1997 which I saw them perform on the Pebble Mill lunchtime show, but neither single really had much impact on me at the time, I just tend to have a good memory of where I was when I first heard many songs. So I pretty much forgot about them for a while.

In September 1998 they came back with the single "The Incidentals". By this time I was more open to non rave music and liked this song. I remembered thinking their older stuff being quite good too and maybe this should be a band I start listening to. I said that about several other bands too though so didn't straight away. Then in April 1999 I was in MVC in Derby and they played "Barbarella" more than once and also had it on a listening post and I considered buying it, but didn't. I discovered the following week it only reached number 34 in the charts which I was quite surprised by.

Finally in June 1999 I was on a day trip in Lincoln and decided to buy an Alisha'a Attic album. I had two choices, either the first album "Alisha Rules the World" or the current album, "Illumina". Wanting to live for now and not what used to be, I went for "Illumina".

Admittedly though, on the whole I was quite disappointed with the album. It started with "The Incidentals" which was definitely the best track on the album. The second track "Going Down" was listed as one of their singles on the sticker on the cover but was never released, but I didn't think much to it. It never really picked up again until "Wish I Were You", the second single from the album, although there was a track in between called "Resistor" which would later grow on me. After an interlude called "Me and the Dolphins" came "Barbarella" and then the rest of the album was instantly forgettable.

Shortly afterwards someone told me their sister owned "Alisha Rules the World" and gave me a copy of it. This was much more like it and actually got better towards the end of the album. Also, the track "Air We Breathe" which never had much impact on me as a single would become one of my favourites on the album. I would often listen to the album and loved it so much that I declared Alisha's Attic to be my favourite band on a cold night in late 1999 whilst listening to them on my Walkman.

By this point though, they had pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth. I wanted to own the CD of "Alisha Rules the World" but this was a time when CDs were around £15, an amount I was reluctant to spend on something I already owned. Then a friend of mine managed to get one on the cheap at a car boot sale and let me have it for free.

By the summer of 2000, I had done a bit of internet research and found out they were planning a comeback in September of that year. Then one day I was browsing second hand CDs at Cash Convertors and found a couple of singles for 50p each so bought them. One of them was "The Incidentals" which had a B side called "Not my Muse" and the other "Alisha Rules the World" which had a B side called "God Lives There". Both were very good tunes and not doing things by halves I decided to buy all their singles. This wasn't that simple as they had all been deleted so could not order from HMV etc so went shopping for music on the internet for the first time and ended up buying them all, money no object. I also went on to discover other rarities such as a mini album called "Japanese Dream" which had been released in Japan only, all of which I paid a fair amount of money for. I also became a member of the fan club and towards the end of the year started building a website about them which is now defunct.

Meanwhile, the plans for a new single/album had been delayed until 2001. Their new single was "Push it all Aside" which whilst not as good as the older songs, it was still quite good. Around the same time I managed to buy a promo CD for their third album, "The House we Built" which had 6 of the 12 tracks on it. Sadly though, "Push it all Aside" was the only one I thought was any good but I still had faith as their was another 6 tracks to come.

In April 2001 they played a free acoustic gig at the Kashmir Club in London, a small basement venue which was run by the former singer of the Cutting Crew. That night I got to meet Alisha's Attic themselves. It's often said that you shouldn't meet your heroes and its true. Don't get me wrong, they were nice enough people but they were just normal people, not the super humans I imagined them to me. On the other hand maybe it was a good thing to give me a reality check! That said though, it was an enjoyable night and I got to meet several other fans many of whom had their own websites and I'd spoken to via e-mail beforehand. One of them got the same train home as me and had the full 12 track promo CD which I listened to on the train. Sadly, the other 6 tracks weren't really up to much either.

A couple of weeks later, they played another gig at the same venue and I went again. This definitely lived up to the fact its never as good the second time, but the gig itself was probably to the same standard.

The second single from the album, "Pretender Got My Heart" was released in July 2001 and failed to reach the top 40 and then the album itself was released the following week reaching number 55 before dropping out the charts the following week. Then a couple of weeks later they inevitably got dropped by their record label, something I found out via a fan club letter.

Like I said though, I didn't think much to "The House we Built". In the interviews they were doing, they were talking about going to various places to find inspiration and how they went for an organic sound by recording it all in one take. My theory though is that they knew they were getting dropped after the album so took advantage of the opportunity to travel courtesy of the label and then record the album with minimal effort. I may be wrong, but the quality of the album would certainly suggest that.

I remember calculating I had spent around £350 on Alisha's Attics music, something I felt a bit foolish about. I asked a friend if he thought I should hold onto it in case its worth plenty in years to come. He said it wont, people will just forget about them. I tried selling some of it and managed to get £50 for a couple of CDs, something I almost certainly wouldn't get nowadays.

After they were dropped, they released a CD called "The Vaults" through the fan club which was several tracks which never made the albums. However by this point I wasn't all that fussed and at £15 I didn't bother, it just seemed like a final pay check to me.

These day's I still listen to the "Alisha Rules the World" album but the rest of my collection is at my parents house somewhere gathering dust.

But what happened to Alisha's Attic?

Well Shelly became a solo artist and later formed a band called Red Sky July with her husband, Ally Mcerlaine, the guitarist from Texas.

Karen is now a songwriter for several pop artists, some of which you can find on her Wikipedia page. One song on there she didn't write though is "Oh No" by the So Solid Crew, this was a song Alisha's Attic sued the So Solid Crew for because of its resemblance to "The Incidentals".

The song I've posted is called "Adore U" which is my favourite Alisha's Attic song and is the last track on "Alisha Rules the World. Enjoy.