Mexican R'n'B

Much like Liverpool contemporaries The La’s and Shack, The Stairs’ frontman Edgar Jones spent much of the eighties smoking industrial quantities of dope and immersing himself in the music of ‘60s greats Arthur Lee, Syd Barrett, Captain Beefheart and the raucous garage rock of the Nuggets and Pebbles compilations. Even those groups, however, might have baulked at Jones’ insistence that the songs on The Stairs’ debut album would only be influenced by music made in the year 1966. Far from being a conservative period pastiche, however, Mexican R&B’s frenzied gumbo of freakbeat, R&B and garage rock exploded with its own gonzoid, spliff-addled eccentricity and would become a key text for next generation ‘cosmic scousers’ The Coral.