Greg Vandike

One of my few ‘hipster cred’ indul­gences is cour­tesy of last.fm, when you find that your very own screen name is listed as one of the ‘top listen­ers’. And I’m not talk­ing some main­stream band, I’m talk­ing about some­thing or someone like Greg Vandike, who is all but forgot­ten by almost everyone.

See! Here I am!

Greg Vandike only released a few singles, and none of them went anywhere (the only one that even kind of went some­where was “Clone” from 1979, and all it seems to do is appear on equally obscure compil­a­tions of new wave music.) However, they rank in my own assess­ment as some of the finest undis­covered pop gems — Mr. Vandike simply must have not been well connec­ted, because I think they beat the pants off of the comtem­por­ary efforts of a shrill, angry Gary Numan. The lyrics are quite invent­ive and at times extremely endear­ing, espe­cially in his song “Marie Celeste”. The lyrics are a series of meta­phors related to boats and the sea in general, as it relates to a rela­tion­ship with a girl. It feels like an inspired mix of John Foxx and Squeeze. When the “water water every­where” stanza of “Marie Celeste” kicks in, the song reaches a level of great­ness that makes you wonder why this wasn’t a hit.

• click to play: Greg Vandike — Marie Celeste

Or why anything else he released wasn’t a hit. After a few more singles (some of which I own, some of which I am still trying to find), his success in releas­ing music commer­cially ceased. Little else is known about him other than that he’s from Plymouth in Devon and is related to a musical family which included his mother June Marlow, who sang the jingle for a “Fry’s Turkish Delight” advert.

He died unex­pec­tedly in March 2007, too, just a few months before I had discovered his music. His Myspace profile remains stuck in time and a reminder of how the inter­net, and recor­ded media in general, leaves behind a fairly haunt­ing reminder of past exist­ence. I am not much of a believer in heaven or hell, but I wonder if Greg would have thought in a million years that people from across the world would still be enjoy­ing what he made even after his death, singles seem­ingly left to rot in obscurity?

Obscurity, thank­fully, does not mean total obli­vion. He will be remembered, even if by a few.