Biography
Yeah Yeah Noh was formed by Derek Hammond (vocals, guitar) and John Grayland (guitar); Adrian Crossan (bass) joined them for the first single along with Graham Summers (drums). Sue Dorey (drums, vocals) was then recruited to complete the line up, debuting on the second single. Two of the band members, John Grayland and Sue Dorey (along with Damian S), published Printhead, a free magazine focusing on independent music in Leicester and its environs. The magazine released Let's Cut a Rug, a compilation LP of songs from local independent bands.
Signing to In-Tape records, the band debuted in June 1984 with the Cottage Industry EP, featuring humorous and satirical lyrics and post-punk/jangle-pop music. After a further two ep's, the releases so far were collected on the album When I Am A Big Girl.
After adding Tom Slater on guitar, the band moved towards a more psychedelic sound and introduced more serious songwriting for first album proper, Cutting The Heavenly Lawn Of Greatness...Last Rites For The God Of Love in 1985. The band released a further single but split up in 1986. Hammond announced that he was forming two new groups, The New New Seekers and The Time Beings, but neither materialized, and he continued to work as a music journalist under the pseudonym D.J. Fontana.
The band's Peel sessions were collected on the Fun On The Lawn Lawn Lawn album in 1986, and a retrospective Leicester Square was issued by Cherry Red Records in 2006, including several tracks recorded after the band had supposedly split.
Hammond later wrote the mythological travelogue London, England (Mainstream Publishing 1998) and Got Not Got: The A-Z of Lost Football Culture, Treasures & Pleasures (Pitch Publishing 2011), also compiling the BBC Radio 1 John Peel Show retrospective Perfect Unpop: Peel Show Hits and Long-Lost Lo-Fi Favourites (Vol. 1, 1976–80) (Cherry Red Records 2008).
The group reformed in the 21st century including John, Derek and Tom from the 1980s line-up, Dermot O'Sullivan (bass) who played guitar on various later 1980s sessions, Antony Cook (drums) and Eva Landsberg (keyboards).
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