Forgotten Band Planet

Belltower Logo

Belltower Line Up:
Jody Porter - Vocals/Guitar
Britta Phillips - Vocals/Guitar
Nino Dmytryszyn - Drums
Mark Browning - Bass/Vocals

Belltower - Group Shot

The Belltower, who recorded mostly for Ultimate Records, produced some tremendous stuff, which was aligned closely by the music press of the time (the early 90's) with the 'Shoegazing' movement, or 'Scene That Celebrates Itself'.
The vocal harmonies were ace, the arrangements superb and they wrote some great pop songs....members of the band would later go on to be in Fountains Of Wayne, Ivy and Astrojet....

WHAT THE PRESS SAID:

About In Hollow: Melody Maker:
"... not bad. I think that used to be an insult."

About Popdropper, (MM August 1992):
"The Belltower are a great band. If you can´t afford to buy Popdropper now, find a friend who can and tape theirs. Five years, ten years hence, when times are better, it´ll still be in the racks. You can search it out then. Yes, it´s true, I´m a fan, and with good reason."

About Popdropper,(Select October 1992):
"It´s a measure of American taste that a band so damn fine, so emotionally charged and so American as the Belltower have to come to the UK in search of recognition"
4 out of 5

WHAT THEY SAID THEMSELVES:

Jody, October 1991, MM: "As long as it´s demented, as long as it´s saying something, it´s cool to flirt with pop music."

Edmund's notes: Not a bad little summary, there are other decent bands at the angelfire site too....

Recieved this information from an unknown contributor (December 2004):

"Danny lived in England with Jody etc in the around 1998-1990 or so and played bass with Belltower.
I think there was one tape I recall seeing with all their pics on it tho that may have been a promo item, the cover was in black and white.
They worked together later on Fountains of Wayne I think it was... I would have to do some fact checking on what projects and when.
Danny came back to the states when things were stagnating across the pond and has had wonderful success in the years since both personally and professionally.

He has been with They Might Be Giants for over 10 years and has had his hands in so many projects with everyone from Lincoln to David Mead to The Davenports as well work on commercials. You can search his name on google but the Belltower connection is little known online as he did before the internet was the pool of info it has now become.

Was also sent information that:

From Britta:
"Here are URLs to our current websites (music/video):

 www.deanandbritta.com
www.myspace.com/deanandbritta (Defunct)

I don't have any live footage of us when we were living in the UK. 
I have some after we moved back stateside, but not sure if any of it is watch-able ; )

I'll be in touch!

- Britta"

"Jody and Danny also worked with David Mead on
Mine and Your's... a really wonderful cd if you come
across it"

Thanks to dlny911

(Edmund) This is from http://www.angelfire.com/md/shoegazing/belltower.html:

"Shoegazing from the US???

Yes, it´s possible, and the Belltower were the best example that Americans could do it just as good as the English.
Their album "Popdropper" is actually one of the best Shoegazing albums.
This is mainly down to the fact of the gorgeous voice of lead singer Britta. She had one of the best voices for this kind of music.
As I´ve only found out recently, Britta seems to be celebrity in her own right, she´s even got an internet fanclub (The Britta Phillips Online Fanclub), and appeared in a movie in 1988 and did the vocals for a cartoon character! Amazing....

Anyway, back to the Belltower and Popdropper: Best tracks are definitely the singles "Outshine the Sun", "Lost in hollow" and "Flight". Another really good song is "One-Dimensional".
I don´t think they released much more after that album, but two of them are now in Fountains of Wayne...erm..... "

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