Something that’s long gone: how the internet rediscovered Iris
Signed to French label Alienor in the ’90s Derby-based indie band Iris had long since found themselves consigned to distant memory and obscurity. That was until earlier this year when a specialist ‘lost song’ website and a Reddit community tracked them down from nothing more than an unattributed one minute clip recorded from French radio in 1993. Suddenly Iris found a new chapter as a band had unexpectedly began.
The search had been going on for a decade, and involved more than 10,000 people from the LostWave community online. The one minute clip of an unknown indie band had been uploaded to WatZatSong.com and the hunt was on to find who had made the music.
Proving one of the most elusive searches, with nothing more than the radio clip to go on, it was in the end a chance haul of second hand vinyl by a community member which solved the mystery. The band were Iris and the song Wit and Wendy from their 1993 EP Appendix, released only on vinyl through French label Alienor.
Long since consigned to the annals of obscure jangle-pop from the pre-internet era the community wanted more on the band and track which had held their fascination for 10 years. The search turned to the final pieces of the puzzle: tracking down the band’s members.
Something that’s long gone
The story starts more than 30 years ago in Derby, England when school friends Phil Wagg and Simon Jones did what many school friends do and formed a band. Picking up cheap second hand guitar and drums respectively as the nineties rolled in they learnt to play (Wagg picking up tips from his brother-in-law Ray Buckley of The Newcranes), and with newly recruited other members started gigging in their hometown.
Settling into a 3 piece with Wayne Walker (bass) and the band played, wrote and demo’d as much as they could in their early years. It was an unexpected phone call from a formative French label called Alienor which began their journey in earnest.
Alienor had heard the band’s track Float, after they were included in a compilation by Greek fanzine The World of Suzie Wong and the label wanted to release more from them. This they did with a 1000 run of vinyl for the band’s Appendix EP then followed with an inclusion on a compilation of 4 Derby bands titled From The Derwent to the Garonne (that compilation also featured White Town, who went on to seal an enduring cult status and some mainstream success with the 1997 track Your Woman, as well as The Almanacs and Antiseptic Beauty).
For Iris the releases kick started an adventure many bands can only dream of (these days especially, but still true back then). While they remained relatively unknown on their home shores the mid-nineties saw them touring their delicate jangle-pop around Europe for 20 weeks of each year from 1994 until 1997. They put in the miles and hours playing gigs at venues and record shops as well as promoting via any radio station willing to give them a spin.
For a group of young men then in their 20s, they describe it as ‘the time of their lives’. Gigging across the continent, some prominent radio play and the support of an independent label. This helped the releases keep coming – a mini album Ups & Downs in 1994, their debut full length album Madaga in 1995, and a final album Bad Hair Day in 1997.
Coming just ahead of the internet becoming a mainstay of music these releases were on analogue formats and in limited numbers. When the band split amicably in 2000 their digital footprint was almost non-existent. Knowledge of them quietly faded in memory and gathered dust in individual record collections. The members accepted their slip toward obscurity, thinking little of their legacy over the years which followed.
WatZatSong
Fast forward 14 years since the band split (and 21 from their first vinyl release) and, unknown to Iris, something began online.
It was January 2014 when a French user of website WatZatSong.com uploaded a one minute clip they had recorded from the radio in 1993. It didn’t contain the band’s name or the song title so they labelled it ‘something that’s long gone’ from a line in the lyrics.
And so began one of the biggest searches users of that website and members of Reddit community LostWave had undertaken.
Over the 10 years that followed it became one of the most sought after songs with members desperately trying to attribute it despite having so little to go on. In the end the discovery was almost accidental.
An ardent community member had purchased a box of miscellaneous and obscure nineties vinyl and found a match for ‘something that’s long gone’ in Wit and Wendy, where it appeared on the Appendix EP from Iris. Thrilled with solving such a long-standing mystery the member uploaded the full track to YouTube, using an image of the front and back cover artwork of the record to form the visual for the track.
Wit and Wendy (a pun on wet and windy) is a slightly echoing recording of a breathy, somewhat sparse jangling pop number. It features a catchy ‘ba ba ba’ refrain over mellow melodies and hissing percussion but as you might expect it’s a pretty little song very much in the style of indie pop at the time.
Coming from early in the band’s career, while it may be scrappy, it is also scene-setting for their potential. And it is certainly intriguing enough to spend time checking out the rest of the release it came from.
While the point of this story is hardly to review the music it is worth mentioning how the band’s sound really starts to take flight in EP companion tracks Spiel, and Best, Dylan, Newton, Rasputin‘. This is where tempo and force increase to make these fine examples of early nineties provincial indie rock and spark further curiosity to how the band developed over the course of their career.
“Were you the singer in Iris in the 1990s?”
While the original search was completed a new one began. After so many community members had searched for so long they needed to know more about Iris. The online detectives took to the search once more, this time to find where the members of the band were now.
It was the use of the EP artwork which helped with this. A community member in Peru noticed the names of the band members were listed on the back cover and set off to track them down. Could the Phil Wagg listed as guitar and vocals for Iris be the same one now listed as playing in Electric Pets? The community member took the chance and reached out on Facebook: “were you the singer in Iris in the 1990s?’
Taken by surprise Phil confirmed he was one and the same but needed to know how someone in Peru had heard of a band which had existed and split up before digital releases were a thing, and certainly before any promotion of the band had happened online.
“‘Dude, you’re one of the biggest music mysteries ever. We’ve been looking for you for 10 years.”
The whole story was shared, Phil was invited to join a Discord server dedicated to Iris, and there found the response to him and the songs of his distant past somewhat overwhelming but very welcoming. The joy in finding Iris had translated to community members loving the track they had and wanting more.
Rewarding the search
This interest made for an emotional time for Iris. Suddenly they are reliving memories, and found themselves so in demand with the Discord community formed around them. They’ve done interviews (with members of the community such as Max, and with friends who’d been part of the scene back in the nineties such as Johnny Vincent), and spoken online with people who had invested so much for so long in trying to find them – neither the lost band or the successful seekers can really believe the search is over and the track is finally attributed.
The right way to reward these efforts seemed to be to bring Iris into the now with the digital release of all their music. Over the course of the last few months their music has become available online, they’ve released a limited edition lathe cut vinyl, played Wit and Wendy together for the first time in nearly 30 years, and created some videos for their old singles.
In doing this they’ve found new fans and reached bigger audiences than they did when they were in their original heyday. And perhaps been given a chance so few have to revisit the creative output of their youth, and revise their own attitude toward it by seeing it afresh through other’s eyes.
Reflecting on what their rediscovery meant to him Phil Wagg said: “I realised that when Iris stopped in 2000 I just subconsciously decided that what we had done for more than 10 years was rubbish, it wasn’t not good enough. I wrote it off.
“We didn’t split up acrimoniously, it just fizzled out and we went our separate ways. I think as a coping mechanism for the end of 11 years of hard work, with a lot of dreams and aspirations, I just believed Iris hadn’t deserved success. So, I moved on and started something completely different – Hudson Super Six and more recently Electric Pets.
“But all of this interest and excitement from people around the world has made me realise that there was some good stuff in there. Iris did have worth, and it wasn’t a waste of time and that has been a wonderful feeling I cannot lie.”
There are still many more songs looking to be attributed – including the cult The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet which kicked off the phenomena of hunting lost songs – and members will move on hoping to unlock the secrets from other scrappy tracks from the past.
For Iris they are riding the wave of their unexpected resurgence, and the move from ‘something that’s long gone’ to newly connecting with fans discovering their back catalogue for the first time.
~
Iris’ back catalogue has been released digitally for the first time via Reckless Yes imprint Surface Noise, and can be found on Spotify and Bandcamp. A limited edition lathe cut 7″ featuring a remastered version of Eric, and a live version of Wit and Wendy recorded in 2024, is also available via Bandcamp.
Original label Alienor is now part of Les Disques Alienor.
You can join the search for other mystery tracks on WatZatSong.com or through the LostWave community on Reddit.
Phil Wagg of Iris now plays in Electric Pets alongside Pete Darrington – see our coverage of his recent on-stage interview with John Robb here.
Sarah Lay
A long-standing music journalist she's also co-founder of independent record label Reckless Yes, an author of novels, and when not messing around with words and music, a digital strategist.
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2 Replies to “Something that’s long gone: how the internet rediscovered Iris”
Wonderful piece. Thank you Sarah.
Pleasure was all mine. What a fantastical turn of events and just such a joyful story. The new lathe cut makes a lovely companion to my copy of the original Appendix 7″ and so great that all the releases are now out digital too!