Ready, Steady, Friday!

A woman of many tee shirts

For this week's Be-Bop Friday I'm delighted to hand over the reins to a new Twitter friend of mine, Carolyn Perry. Carolyn only came to my notice fairly recently; I knew she was a huge punk fan, but it was the tee shirt she was sporting in her profile picture that gave the game away - wearing an iconic '45' shirt can only mean one thing - another Generation X disciple!

Thank you for taking the time, Carolyn. 

"I didn’t get to see Generation X until 1993 when they played a reunion gig at the Astoria as part of a Billy Idol concert. I grew up in Stourbridge and it wasn’t until I started going out with a punk in late ‘77 that I occasionally managed to get into Brum for gigs, though it often involved sneaking out of the house and getting changed at mates’ houses. The lyrics to Kiss Me Deadly really bring back that time for me, just substitute the number 30 bus for the 130 to Birmingham.

‘Seven o'clock they stand in rank

For the thirty bus uptown

And later in a downstairs room

She pulls her lover down

In ecstasy but they can't make a sound

Case her mother might come down’

By the time I left home and moved to London in September '79 Generation X were all but done, and then Billy Idol moved to the US and went solo. It was an exciting time for music with the launch of MTV and Billy’s songs were perfect for new media of music video. Accused of being ‘too pretty for punk’, Billy really suited this format and is a charismatic performer (also I am a sucker for blond spikey hair, which the aforementioned boyfriend also had). I particularly like Billy’s early solo stuff – White Wedding is a phenomenal song and Rebel Yell is my favourite of his albums. I even joined the Billy Idol fan club at one point and have still got the T-shirt!

Idol with guitarist Steve Stevens (Carolyn's pic)

Idol and James wrote some great songs together, and I know I’m in the minority but I think Generation X/Gen X were underrated. I’m hoping that there might be another reunion at some point, but until then I’m glad that Billy is still rocking. I saw him on his 2014 and 2018 tours and he didn’t disappoint. He’s responsible for a lot of timeless tunes and let’s face it, 2020 has been the year for Dancing With Myself*. P.S. This video of still sends shivers down my spine."

Generation X - Kiss Me Deadly (1978)

* Funnily enough, Carolyn, I was only saying the same thing myself.  

Baby Baby Baby! (It's a Beano Friday)

Welcome to another Be-Bop Friday - slightly rebadged today in honour of one of my best friends. That's Mark (Beano to his buddies) pictured above - the photograph will make perfect sense, I'm sure, by the time you've read his love letter to a band that still make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, some four decades after he first discovered them.

***

"Do you remember your first kiss? Of course you do! Mine was from a girl called Sarah Blackburn, she lived on our street and I would have been maybe 10, fancied her like mad for ages. Likewise, I bet you remember the first band you discovered. I do too, and their music still gives me goosebumps to this day. At one time they were the biggest band around. They reached the dizzy heights of Number 1 no less than six times in the 70s - and remember you needed to sell a million copies in those days to reach the top spot. Three Number One 1 albums followed; one of which is considered up there with the very best live albums ever (I’ve just voted for it in Classic Rock’s best live album poll). 

They made a film too, a proper one, which you went to the flicks to see. It was way ahead of its time and showed the dark side of the music business. Years after its release it would be described by BBC film critic, Mark Kermode as 'the Citizen Kane of rock musicals.' The movie subsequently went on to achieve critical acclaim.

Know who it is yet? Well, Q magazine once described  them as ‘the missing link between Oasis and the Beatles’ - Oasis would go on to record a splendid cover version of one of their hitz and then play it in front of an adoring 60,000 fans at Maine Road, Manchester. But let me guess, you still don't know who it is. (I think we do, Mark! John).

The band is SLADE, and they get little recognition for their considerable input to this great nation’s music scene other than for a certain festive hit. Not that is until you venture into my world: bitten by the bug in the early 80s via one of those compilation albums SLADE Smashes, I couldn’t believe what I was listening too. It was awesome, with that voice hitting you between the eyes like a sledgehammer. The Black Country Boyz even returned to the charts for me, reinvented with Noddy as the Rock 'n' Roll Preacher. Every locker in my school had the words ‘BEANO – SLADE’ plastered all over them: Beano being my nickname (still is, 40 years later) and SLADE being my band. 

Their second coming lasted till the mid 80’s when they were cast aside chart wise, but I still got my fix by going to Slade related TV shows & and conventions - attended by the Magic 500, a bunch of like minded super fans whose sole purpose was to turn it up to 11 and 'Stamp your feet and clap your hands.' These events have created some amazing friendships which go far wider than just the love of music, and nobody can take that away; no matter what the non-disciples may think.

And the love affair continues to this day, with walls full of memorabilia and guess what? My band returning to the album charts (in the Top 10, again) with a look back at past glories in the shape of Cum On Feel The Hitz. Time for this SLADE super fan to feel normal again, well at least for a little while!

So, don’t forget your first love, and, remember, SLADE are for life, not just for Christmas!"

A huge thank you to Mark for this. As you can see, Beano is now the proud owner of Jim Lea's confetti jacket - the one he wore on the front cover of their 1972 album, Slayed? Though I'm told it's a little on the snug side.

C-Bop Friday

I can't tell you how pleased I am to announce that today's guest on Be-Bop Friday (my irregular featurette written by people I like about their favourite artist) is C - head honcho at Sun Dried Sparrows. C's musings have been a regular fixture on my sidebar for as long as I can remember. Reading her blog is an antidote to all the ills currently befalling civilisation. Thank you for taking the time, C. And I look forward to a time when we can hold our Bloggers' Summit (in real life and without masks!) Let's all meet up in the year 2021, to paraphrase that well known polymath from Sheffield.   

***

"It’s a dreary, damp Saturday afternoon as I write, the kind of Saturday afternoon that anyone who grew up in Britain knows well.  The kind that taps into our memories and effortlessly transports us to the most unremarkable yet evocative days of our youth. Afternoons when we dragged ourselves into town, sheltered from the rain in the jeans shops, fluffed up our hair in the reflection of the Freeman, Hardy & Willis window before diving into the record shop, eager to exchange the pound notes we’d been saving up for the most exciting thing in the world: a piece of 12" vinyl. The Clash, their first album, or Pink Flag by Wire, perhaps – in my case, anyway; whatever it was we favoured at the time.

But our love for those bands might be fleeting. It’s hard to have a favourite which lasts a lifetime; so much changes, both us and them.  So instead my focus turns to a band who somehow encapsulate that very idea – the way we change as we wend our way through life, the influences, the everyday.  The unremarkable yet evocative. Saint Etienne are the band I choose to hear on dreary, damp Saturday afternoons. But they are equally well received against the backdrop of Summer skies, crisp Autumnal Sundays, or street-lit city nights. I think a lot has to do with the fact that Bob, Sarah and Pete are my contemporaries - we share an English '70s past and thus also our middle-aged reflections.  I wrote once before about how, lyrically, they soothe my unease at getting older by reminding me that, actually, it’s alright to be where we are now in our lives because of all the great markers along the way which made us who we are. So, that all seems a bit deep and philosophical, but somehow Saint Etienne convey it with natural ease and no pretension.

It would be hard to pick just one song, there are so many to choose from, but with lyrics which perfectly describe the youthful joys of buying our first records, 'Over the Border' from the album 'Words and Music', seems the most appropriate right now." 

Saint Etienne - Over the Border (2012)

Another Be-Bop Friday

Back in May of this year I was singing the praises of ex-Christians and It's Immaterial songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Henry Priestman, whilst at the same time - probably a tad unfairly - bestowing upon him the accolade of Unsung Hero. As you can see, Henry embraced the term (at least I think he did) and after writing about him again here (and bracketing him with Harry Nilsson no less) I approached him about doing something on my blog. The warm email exchanges that followed were, at every turn, reminiscent - I think anyway, and I'm sure Henry would agree - of two old boys who'd known each other all their lives; though we've never met - maybe that will change as soon as this bloody pandemic buggers off. I hope so.

So I asked Henry to tell his musical story up to the point where he met the Christian brothers. I've always thought that the best tales always happen before the main story.

"I was brought up on a 60s diet of Beatles/Kinks/Tamla/Stones etc, then moving on to psychedelia, then 'underground' or 'progressive' (as it was called in those days) in tandem with Bowie and Roxy. My abiding passion as a teenager was just music music music, and all I ever wanted to do in my life was play in a band. I attended Hull Art College in 1974 for a one year Foundation Course, having failed miserably in my 'A' levels(except Art), and, of course, bands form at Art Colleges (well, they did back then), so it was the obvious path for me.

Towards the end of my time at Hull I formed a band featuring John 'Brad' Bradbury on drums (who later popped up in the Specials), and future Yachts guitarist Martin Watson on guitar (with whom I would end up going to Liverpool Art College after the summer). We rehearsed for weeks and played the end of summer term party, supporting a chap from the main college called Eric Goulden (aka Alan Addis), whose band went under the marvellous moniker Addis and the Fliptops (featuring the Binettes). Two years later (Wreckless) Eric and I would both be signed to Stiff records.

Liverpool was actually my second choice for the three year Diploma Course; I applied to Leeds Art College, but failed the interview. Interestingly enough, if I had got into Leeds, I’d have been on the same Fine Art Course (and same year) as Marc Almond & Dave Ball of Soft Cell. It could’ve been all so different! So Martin and I both headed to Liverpool with ideas of forming a band. What sort of band we weren’t sure, and had no thoughts of actually writing our own material. We were lucky, punk came in (meaning you only had to be vaguely proficient on your instrument...ideal for me!): songs became shorter, less than three minutes, but full of 'honesty and energy' (as my later song 'Did I Fight in the Punk Wars for This?' stated). We formed the typical Art College band, somebody suggested we write our own songs and two years later fortune smiled upon us as we (now called Yachts) released our first single 'Suffice to Say'. With Yachts we had a good run for our money: a couple of albums (even scraping into the Billboard charts), toured the States twice, toured Europe supporting the Who...but all bands reach their sell-by date at some point - even if they don’t split up.

It was whilst in Yachts that I formed a hobby band with Yachts’ original singer John Campbell called It’s Immaterial - we’d find obscure songs by American garage/punk/psych bands (like the ones that would appear on Lenny Kaye’s wonderful Nuggets compilation, but even more obscure...so people might think we’d written them!), and just play for fun round Liverpool. I was away in the States touring with Yachts, and when I returned John and Jarvis from Itsy had come up with this idea for a song 'A Gigantic Raft in the Philippines'. Suddenly my hobby band was doing more interesting stuff than my main band, so I made the decision to leave Yachts and do It’s Immaterial full time. The only thing was that I was no longer a writer in the band (I’d been the main writer in Yachts), which started off fine; it was nice not to be having to come up with an album’s worth of tunes every year, and I became the sort of Brian Jones of the band - instrument-wise I’m jack-of-all-trade (master of absolutely NONE), playing a bit of keys/guitar/clarinet/sax/marimba/cello etc etc. This was fun for a while, but I was starting to come up with ideas for songs, and realising I probably wouldn’t get them away with Itsy, I stashed them, and began thinking about whom I could get to sing them. It’s Immaterial were working on a song (that became a single) called 'Ed’s Funky Diner', and we’d heard of this a cappella band of brothers who would be ideal for singing on the chorus of this new song. I was working at that time as an engineer in a demo studio that belonged to Itsy’s manager Pete Fulwell, and the brothers Christian were booked in to add their vocals to the track. I was the only member of Itsy at this session, and when the session ended, I plucked up courage to ask “would you like to hear some of my songs?” Two of them had a game of tennis booked, and didn’t really appear interested, but the three brothers Garry, Russell & Roger  all stayed to hear my demos and we began working together on songs that would end up on the Christians' eponymous triple platinum debut album. You could say that was a fortuitous meeting, and I’m glad I asked them to listen to my songs!"

***

And so to the second part of me quizzing Henry. Could he, I asked him, tell me in 200 words who his favourite band/artist is? Of course he could!

"I go through phases, last month it might’ve been Roy Harper, the month before that Belle & Sebastian; it changes, but currently, having just finished Johnny Rogan’s Ray Davies biography, I’m into all things Kinks - which is sort of where I came in. My friend and neighbour, John Lewis, his dad ran the Hedon Bakery, and John had all the latest singles, so it was a case of free cakes & Vimto, and afternoons listening to his amazing record collection -  Beatles, Byrds, Pretty Things, Stones and THE KINKS. Mum liked the Beatles (she’d bought me 'From Me To You' for my 7th birthday) tolerated The Stones, but couldn’t STAND The Kinks, which of course made me like them even more! And then I found out that me and Ray share the same birthday! So, having saved up my meagre pocket money, my next step was to buy my first album (with my own money). The Marble Arch label came to the rescue: for twelve & six you could buy 'Well Respected Kinks', it had all the classic early singles on, and the B sides were fabulous too. I was hooked. I’m currently trying to buy up all the Kinks LPs I sold in my ill-advised LP cull of 2010. They’re not cheap; lend us £50, would you, John?"

Henry Priestman at home, August 2020 (photo courtesy of Mrs. Priestman - a.k.a .'Her Ladyship')

A huge thank you to Henry who as well as being a perpetually busy man - writing and recording - was also in the middle of selling his house when writing this for me.

Be-Bop Friday

David - he's colour blind

My friend David - he of the salmon pink shirt which he swears blind is orange - recently wrote 100 words for me on the first single he bought with his own money.
At our most recent compact and bijou Vinyl Session (the one before lockdown), being a huge fan of Be Bop Deluxe, he played Futurama - their second album from 1975. Last Friday night when we discussed rebooting the sessions again, I asked David to tell me in 200 words why Be Bop Deluxe are his favourite band of all time.
And no, he didn't use the dreaded phrase Wakefield's finest; however, I did have to edit out at least five uses of the word genius; well, maybe two. Only kidding, David! But your shirt is still salmon pink.


"The reason I have always been enamoured by Be-Bop Deluxe, throughout my 40-odd years of being relatively sentient and capable of critique, is that they encapsulate perfectly all the things I love most about the rest of my favourite music. They are, for me, the absolute yard-stick of genius*.
Their prolific run of albums (five released between 1974 & 1978) is an absolute tour-de-force of song-writing, production, musicianship and downright inspired artistry.
Fronted by the sprite-like impresario Bill Nelson, the band were somehow able to contain his phenomenal guitar-playing, cool stage-presence, magical lyricism and innovative production techniques to come up with a sound that was as complex, unique, and relentless as it was loud.
Be-Bop Deluxe were simply the epitome of the heart-thudding excitement that good music induces; always so deliciously upbeat and able to use their breath-taking creativity to transport the listener to other worlds and sensitivities; like watching a movie. And the way their multi-layered productions included brass bands, guitars, synthesisers, horns and, of course, Bill Nelson’s virtuoso axe wielding, means there is always something new to discover. Even now.
Be-Bop Deluxe really did show how awe-inspiring, uplifting, artistic and, yes, clever putting together sounds and talent to make music can be."

* I kept one in!

Be-Bop Deluxe - Maid in Heaven (1975)

Are you able to write 200 words on your favourite band or artist? If so, you could be next up in the feature I'm already calling Be Bop Friday.  Please do get in touch.