15 Big Ones

Description

With 15 Big Ones we are celebrating 40 years of BMX Bandits. It is a greatest hits of a sort but with a twist. The collection features their most successful single releases over the years but also tracks that should have been singles but weren't. I Wanna Fall In Love, And It's You and Love Me Til My Heart Stops are among their most beloved tracks but were somehow missed when it came to choosing the singles from albums. I Wanna Fall in Love could have been their best chance at a proper hit but the label just couldn't hear that in it. So in a way the collection is partly about presenting what should have and could have been. "I started BMX Bandits in 1985 with my friend Sean Dickson (A.K.A. Hifi Sean). The group I had before, The Pretty Flowers, had suddenly wilted and died when Frances McKee, who had been my main inspiration for starting the group, announced she was starting a new group with her new boyfriend Eugene Kelly. That group became The Vaselines. I had some song ideas left over but it felt like no one to do them with. Sean had recently started The Soup Dragons and they were already getting a lot more positive interest than any of the music projects any of us had had up to that point and my other main musical friend Norman Blake had decided to take a break from bands and all that nonsense for a little while. Sean surprised me by saying he would be up for helping me with a new band project and that day we decided on the name BMX Bandits, it made us laugh a lot and we liked that it seemed anti-cool. An added bonus for me was when Brian Wilson started The Beach Boys surfing was the big youth trend but their leader didn't surf. The big youth trend when we started was BMX bikes but I couldn't cycle. 40 years on BMX Bandits have remained musical outsiders. We never had the hits that Alan McGee predicted for us but as outsiders we've been able to grow as a musical entity doing things our own way and not trying to fit in with whatever else is going on. Almost everything wonderful that has happened in my adult life has come out of me being in BMX Bandits, including my children and key relationships. BMX Bandits is who I am." Duglas T Stewart, August 2026.

Description

With 15 Big Ones we are celebrating 40 years of BMX Bandits. It is a greatest hits of a sort but with a twist. The collection features their most successful single releases over the years but also tracks that should have been singles but weren't. I Wanna Fall In Love, And It's You and Love Me Til My Heart Stops are among their most beloved tracks but were somehow missed when it came to choosing the singles from albums. I Wanna Fall in Love could have been their best chance at a proper hit but the label just couldn't hear that in it. So in a way the collection is partly about presenting what should have and could have been. "I started BMX Bandits in 1985 with my friend Sean Dickson (A.K.A. Hifi Sean). The group I had before, The Pretty Flowers, had suddenly wilted and died when Frances McKee, who had been my main inspiration for starting the group, announced she was starting a new group with her new boyfriend Eugene Kelly. That group became The Vaselines. I had some song ideas left over but it felt like no one to do them with. Sean had recently started The Soup Dragons and they were already getting a lot more positive interest than any of the music projects any of us had had up to that point and my other main musical friend Norman Blake had decided to take a break from bands and all that nonsense for a little while. Sean surprised me by saying he would be up for helping me with a new band project and that day we decided on the name BMX Bandits, it made us laugh a lot and we liked that it seemed anti-cool. An added bonus for me was when Brian Wilson started The Beach Boys surfing was the big youth trend but their leader didn't surf. The big youth trend when we started was BMX bikes but I couldn't cycle. 40 years on BMX Bandits have remained musical outsiders. We never had the hits that Alan McGee predicted for us but as outsiders we've been able to grow as a musical entity doing things our own way and not trying to fit in with whatever else is going on. Almost everything wonderful that has happened in my adult life has come out of me being in BMX Bandits, including my children and key relationships. BMX Bandits is who I am." Duglas T Stewart, August 2026.