Entertainment For Lively Minds
Ah yes, I was turned onto Napalm Death by H from Steps...
Listening to the always good, usually excellent, Sound Opinions podcast, which was 'dissecting' Rust Never Sleeps, it was mentioned that it was influenced by Devo (which I think is quite well known).
He found out about Devo because Toni Basil had a tape that she gave to her boyfriend of the time, who happened to be Dean Stockwell. Dean Stockwell then gave it to Neil Young.
I know Toni Basil had a more varied career than the massive hit Mickey may suggest, but I think the Toni Basil-Dean Stockwell-Neil Young chain may be my favourite fact of the year.
Are there any other examples of unlikely third party recommendations? Did Max Bygravers buy up all of Zappa's catalogue after hearing about them from Des O'Conner's first wife, Princess Margaret? Did Ben Affleck read One Day after Matt Damon saw Uri Geller read it on a plane?
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Not really third party recomendations
But a couple of unlikey pairings.
1) In 1963 perma-tanned and oft-maligned TV host Bob Monkhouse recorded and paid for some early demos by folk blues legend Davy Graham.
2) Skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan spotted the 17 year-old Justin Hayward's potential and signed him to a 10 year publishing deal in 1964.
This meant that all the Moody Blues' songs Hayward wrote before 1974, including Nights In White Satin would be owned by Donegan's company, in perpetuity.
In a similar vein,
Here's a strange pairing:
David Nixon (the comedian) and the Mellotron.
Watch and wonder:
Great link
but wasn't David Nixon better known as a magician than a comedian?
Yes, he was. What was I typing?
Grrr.
Yes, he was. What was I typing?
Grrr.
One I like
Sorry, not really a recommendation. More a satisfying link. It always upset me a bit that Woody Allen, via Shelley Duvall's character in Annie Hall, was so derisive about Bob Dylan. 20ish years ago, when such things mattered to me, I always thought that two of my favourite artists ought to be connected in some way. After all, I thought: Husbands and Wives isn't unlike Blood On The Tracks!
Ok, so here goes...Marshall Brickman, who co-wrote Manhattan (and Manhattan Murder Mystery, as it happens) went to university with Eric Weissberg, and played in a band with him (I believe he may even have played with Woody Allen too). They both feature on the soundtrack of Deliverance, which features the big hit that should be called 'Duelling Banjo and Guitar' but isn't. And then, one day, I stumbled across the name of the band that Bob Dylan recruited for Blood On The Tracks (using them for little more than 'Meet Me In The Morning'): Eric Weissberg and Deliverance. Featuring, presumably, one Marshall Brickman.
When Worlds Collide: More unlikely pairings
Huey Lewis played harp on Live and Dangerous, and I've read that he shared a flat with Phil Lynott for some time.
While it doesn't seem as amazing now, in the 80s when I first got into Eno's Another Green World I just couldn't believe it was Phil Collins on percussion.
Phil Collins gets a bit of an unfair press, IMHO.
He's an excellent drummer (at least, he was) and an excellent percussionist. He did a lot of excellent work with Eno, and Brand X wasn't half bad either.
Given he's now retired, let's remember him this way. And not because of the awful bollocks he guffed out on his own volition.
Couldn't agree more.
He wrote some cracking songs too.
Don't forget Phil Collins the actor
Here he is on Miami Vice doing his best Michael Palin impersonation with Emo Philips at the beginning of the clip.
He is also an accomplished Elvis Presley impersonator
Never!
Phil Collins is way beyond redemption round our way. I can't think of a single note he has ever played on that I would want to own.
None but the most stony-hearted
could ever dislike this:
John Martyn & Phil Collins - Sweet Little Mystery
It's better than most
of his output but I'm afraid I don't get John Martin either. One of the few people I've walked out on.
Heresy
Burn the unbeliever..............
Sorry,
what's the connection here? Mr Collins on drums?
Burning
is the connection.
Note to self......too subtle.
Yes, Phil Collins the actor
In this, Calamity the Cow. A Children's Film Foundation production I think
http://youtu.be/TxIW-RZddCg
it won't let me embed the video I'm afraid
Huey Lewis
also played harmonica on the George Hatcher Band's Talkin' Turkey album, under the name Huey Harp.
Huey Lewis'
early band Clover backed Elvis Costello on his debut LP My Aim Is True.
And Clover were the support band
on the Lizzy tour when Live & Dangerous was recorded.
And there was me thinking I was the only person that had ever heard of the George Hatcher Band. Somewhere I've still got a 10 inch white vinyl Live EP of theirs.
Sorry JoLean, we seem to be messing with you're thread
but here's an idle speculation I can't resist.
Tom Waits and Bette Midler used to be an item.Fact.
In her early career Bette Midler's pianist was Barry Manilow.Fact.
Could it possibly be that Tom and Barry knew each other? Possibly even hung out together?
(warm glow)
Mile Davis...
Miles davis was responsible for getting The Byrds signed to Columbia records, on the recommendation of his daughter.
Oh these are ace...
...I only really made one of my once-every-two-years opening threads because I loved the link between them, so loving these unlikely connections. Bob Monkhouse & Davy Graham will take some beating.
I did...
...the notes on the eventual CD release. As it happened, I'd interviewed Bob by email on the subject of Davy shortly before he (Bob) died. I'll post some of the interview here later - Bob was very helpful and enthusiastic, even 40+ years on.
Six Degrees of Monkhouse
The copper who found Bob Monkhouse's missing jokebook went on to be a writer, and contributed two episodes to the Radio 4 series "Baldi" - which was created by Horslips bassist Barry Devlin.
And in the same vein...
...Barry devlin directed several videos for U2... who wrote a hit single called 'Beautiful Day'... which was the name of song Quintessence's Phil 'Shiva' Jones wrote when he was signed to the Goodies record label Bradley's (after being fired from Quintessence), who were hoping he'd write a hit single...
You see: eventually it all comes back to Quintessence... :-D
As promised...
...an extract from the notes to the posthumous Davy Graham CD featuring the Monkhouse demos. And a clip of the great man playing blues in Nick's Diner (one of his regular gigs) in 1963 film 'The Servant':
In spite of an instrumental approach and repertoire so original that it was both unique and bizarre in the monochrome world of pre-Beatles Britain, Davy Graham had first come to the notice of the nation’s youth through the mainstream medium of BBC television in 1959. In an edition of the Monitor series called Hound Dogs And Bach Addicts: The Guitar Craze - directed, as if its very title wasn’t a giveaway - by the maverick Ken Russell. Davy, sitting atop a pile of rubble on a bomb site somewhere in London, played a fingerstyle arrangement of Julie London’s ‘Cry Me A River’, with Celtic Afro and upturned collar. According to Martin Carthy - whose memory is extraordinary and usually accurate - he also played ’an outrageous contrapuntal blues’, although in the version of the film which survives, only the former is extant.
In November 1963 - having made several further, lower-key television appearances playing folk, blues and cabaret material either solo or backing vocalists like Long John Baldry and Shirley Abicair - Davy made another notable appearance on screen, being his bohemian cool to a mainstream medium, this time playing ‘Rock Me Baby’ in a Soho coffee bar cameo in the multiple award-winning Joseph Losey film The Servant.
Quite possibly that appearance had come about through Davy’s brief involvement with entertainer Bob Monkhouse and his business associate Henry Mitchell. What is certain is that this liaison resulted, via a hitherto lost audition acetate funded by the pair, in the contract with Pye’s Golden Guinea imprint for his first album, also released in 1963, The Guitar Player. Davy, in latterday interviews, occasionally offered vague memories of this association: ‘They had an agency just behind the Hilton,’ he told one interviewer in the ‘90s, ‘and Henry said, “I’ll get you an interview with Bob Monkhouse”. Well, everybody had heard of Bob Monkhouse - I was jumping up and down! So I did an interview with Bob Monkhouse (for Radio Luxembourg I think) and then Henry Mitchell got me the contract with Pye Records…’
In fact, the true series of events is even more remarkable. Rather than Mitchell, the driving force behind Davy’s Pye contract was indeed Monkhouse. After watching Bob’s This Is Your Life appearance in spring 2003, in which the man was repeatedly acclaimed as a generous supporter of new talent from the ‘50s to the present, I decided to nail the matter once and for all. Emailing a query through his agent, Bob - true to his good-guy reputation and clearly a closet guitar buff - got back to me personally the very next day.
‘During a visit to a jazz club in Soho,’ he explained, ‘I heard the wonderful music of Davy Graham, quite unlike any technique I’d ever encountered, so spontaneous and free while never losing purpose and direction. We talked over a couple of drinks and shared our enthusiasms. We both worshipped Django Reinhardt, of course, but I recall Davy’s reservations about Les Paul whom he considered a technical maestro but too structured. Davy was a little downhearted as he’d been passed over for two or three recording sessions by Spike Hughes, then a leading voice in the London jazz world.
‘At the time I was a young and rising personality, and older people in show business thought I might know what I was talking about. They were wrong, of course, but my opinions were taken quite seriously. I sought advice from an old RAF chum, jazz pianist Stan Tracey, and the radio producer Pat Nixon, whose knowledge of the contemporary music scene was considerable. They suggested that Davy make some demo recordings at the private Bond Street studios of an outfit called Guy De Beere. Davy lacked funds and I was doing okay so I financed the recording session.
‘The discs were wax-coated aluminium, 75rpm [discs could be cut at various non-standard speeds at that time], and had to be played with a thorn needle. I then sent copies to all the most influential A&R men, bandleaders and principle employers at the major labels, including Norrie Paramour, Phil Green, Tony Osborne, Sid Phillips, Joe Daniels, Ken Carpenter, Syd Dean, Joe Loss, George Martin, Ronnie Scott, John Dankworth, Ted Heath, Geraldo and Harry Parry, together with a note detailing Davy’s career thus far and enclosing a pretty ropey photo.
‘To our amazement Davy was called to several immediate auditions, two or three radio bookings (one for Spike Hughes!) and offered a recording contract with a minor label, which was later taken up by one of the bigger distributors. Show business being what it is, Davy’s path and mine divided and, apart from rare occasions, we seldom met again. But whenever I heard him play, I confess to a surge of pride: I heard him first!’
Nice work Colin
I pulled the CD out this morning after reading this.
Amazing...
...thanks, Colin, that's great. Despite being quite knowledgeable about London in that era, I had no idea. Now I read it, I have a vague memory of Stan Tracey/Bob Monkhouse friendship, which I'd forgotten about.
Really excellent: and another tick on the 'Bob Monkhouse: What A Good Guy' box.
Like Aragorn, you must be older than you 'seem' Jo...
...have you any 60s London anecdotes? Did you, for example, ever see Davy Graham in his heyday? Or attend any Quintessence concerts in notting Hill Gate?
Ah!
No, I wasn't alive at the time, but my Dad was an avowed jazzer and proto-mod, who frequented those clubs and I'm a big fan of cinema and documentaries of the time. When I say "quite knowledgable", I mean it on my terms, rather than yours, I suspect!
No, no, no...
...I wasn't around then either! I could, in theory, have attended the legendary Quintessence St Pancras Town Hall (below) or caught Davy Graham's last stand at Les Cousins - but I'd have been 2, and perhaps not best equipped to appreciate the quality of the sounds...
Thank you very much JoLean/Colin H!
You've got me worried about senility again.
I've stated in a previous thread my regret at not keeping a list of all the gigs I attended in my youth.
After watching the Live at St.Pancras clip the youtube menu popped up with Quintesscence Live in Hyde Park 1969.Now between late 68-71 I was pretty sure I went to all the free concerts in Hyde Park (I hasten to add I was still at school when I started).So I went to www.ukrockfestivals.com (great site for nostalgia buffs) and looked it up.
There it was - just after the infamous Stones gig (they were rubbish but the event was great) and before Pink Floyd unleashing Atom Heart Mother the following year.
I must have been there - mustn't I?
What about the line-up?
Soft Machine (definitely seen them),The Deviants (pretty sure I have),
Al Stewart (hmm), Edgar Broughton Band (God yes! They were everywhere.Thanks to them I got to a live recording session at Abbey Road - but that's another story) and finally Quintesscence (I was definitely aware of their music and there are several small bells ringing in my head telling me yes I did see them).
I'm sorry their music didn't blow my mind.
There was a lot of stuff around at that time that did.
Which is probably why I can't remember!
"several small bells ringing in my head"
...that'd be the memory of Quin's many and various onstage percussion devices, generally rattled and tinkled by flutemeister Raja Ram (there's a classic bit of Ram's outstanding 'little-bell work' in the Quintessence Glastonbury 1971 footage: rarely have wrist-bells been rung so earnestly on a festival stage).
Anyway, glad to have helped reignite your grey cells, hipster. If you find you CAN remember any 60s anecdotes, I'm sure we'd all love to hear them!
(And of course through the wonders of CD you can now devote serious effort and attention to Quintessence's mind-blowing potential if you so wish...)
Davy Graham
I've got a couple of Davy Graham anecdotes, including one from Les Cousins circa 1967...
Yes please! The floor is yours, Moje...
...and here's the closest thing there is to Davy G film in that era: a clip from an obscure documentary, though the music playing is, I believe, Shawn Phillips (glimpsed briefly before Davy appears) - who was also the chap, incidentally, behind the awesome 'World In Action' theme. Which earned him about 60p. It was the 60s. No one who deserved to made any money, did they?
Cheers Colin
Les Cousins, Greek Street, Soho circa 1967/68. Davy Graham was booked to headline one of Cousins' infamous weekend all-nighters, but the allotted start time of 10pm came and went with no sign of him.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours there was a commotion at the rear of the club and the most extraordinary sight greeted the assembled folkies. Suddenly Davy appeared amongst us and very slowly began to pick his way through the crowd. At Cousins, the performers had to weave their way through the audience (seated cross-legged on the floor, for the most part) to reach the tiny stage. He was carrying a guitar case and surprisingly, his trademark crew-cut was covered by a brightly coloured bandanna. That wasn't the main reason for his slow progress however. As he came closer it became apparent that he was, in fact, leading a small dog - a Jack Russell terrier as it turned out.
Once safely on the stage, he tied the dog's leash to a stool and sat down. Ominously, the guitar case remained firmly shut at this point and would remain so for quite a while. Davy then begin to address the audience and there followed almost an hour of the most interminable stream-of-consciousness druggy bollocks imaginable, none of it accompanied by a single note of music. You know the sort of thing "why is because", "we are all part of a giant vibe" etc. After 30 minutes or so of this blissed-out dissertation, even the dog had nodded off.
The audience, being respectful folkies, were far too polite to give Davy the slow-hand clap, or walk out on him. There may have been a smattering of embarrassed throat-clearing or nervous tittering at some of the more incomprehensible passages, but we remained seated and reasonably attentive to the bitter end.
Mercifully, he eventually took out his guitar and began to play some absolutely incandescent jazz/blues/folk guitar. It was simply amazing stuff and worth every second of the endless stoned rap preamble.
Finally, Davy put away his guitar, untied the Jack Russell and together they slowly wound their way through the crowd, up the narrow staircase and out into the grey Soho dawn.
Fantastic, Moje...
...and having watched a couple of episodes of Frasier earlier tonight, I can just imagine that Jack Russell. If you really wanted - seriously - I could probably firm up that date for you. I have every MM advertised DG appearance in the 60s noted in a file, not handy just now but findable. (Ditto Sandy Denny and several others. Y'never know, might be useful to someone sometime.) Davy was absent from London/UK for long stretches in the 60s. Chances are he only played Cousins three or four times in 67/68...
Thanks Colin
that would be great. The dates are a little hazy at this distance. I wasn't in London for most of '68, so it was either the latter half of '67, or very early 1968. Or, come to think of it, it may have even been 1969 ;-)
I was a regular at Cousins between 1967-69 and as well as Davy Graham, also saw the following perform there:
Roy Harper
Bert Jansch
John Renbourn
Stefan Grossman
Ralph McTell
John Martyn
Wizz Jones
Martin Carthy
plus many others.
Yet some of the strongest memories are of the floor singers who played between the main acts. Anyone could get up and perform seemingly without notice at Cousins and some of them were unbelievably awful, to the point of sheer genius.
One night a strikingly beautiful, statuesque women in tight leather trousers, high heels and waist length hair in the Françoise Hardy style got up to sing. She produced what looked like a £10 orange box beginner's guitar out of a home-made cloth cover and instead of a guitar strap she had a length of satin twine, of the kind used to tie back curtains. As she began to strum this sorry instrument it soon became clear that it was woefully out of tune. She then stopped playing and imparted cheerfully, "Oh, I can't understand it. It was in tune when I left home!"
At this point some kind soul from the tiny crowd got up and tuned her guitar as best he could and she ploughed on regardless, announcing that she'd like to treat us to an Elvis Presley song. Almost unbelievably Ms Hardy began to perform Hard Headed Woman from the 1958 Elvis movie King Creole, complete with violent hip swinging. It was awful of course and wretchedly out of tune. The folkie audience watched through their fingers as things went from bad to worse. I can't recall how it ended, or what other songs she sang, but I've never managed to purge the sheer bizarre incongruity of the event from my mind.
This is wonderful stuff!
....any more recollections, Moje? it seems to me you very probably saw Duffy Power in a floor spot during that period (solo gtr/voc, hellhound on his trail, etc), and probably enough Al Stewart to last a lifetime!
Are you sure it would have been Les Cousins where you saw Martin Carthy? He was (perhaps surprisingly) a rare booking there - from memory, I think I only came across an MM advert for a Carthy show there once during the late 60s. And he WOULD have been an advert-warranting guest.
Jimi Hendrix performed there one night in 1966 - as a floor spot (on electric guitar, in a venue with one wall socket). Can you imagine...!
And Eric Clapton sat in with Alexis Korner and Duffy Power one night, also on electric. Duffy recalls someone asking Eric to turn his amp down. 'I can't' he explained, 'it's the way it has to be played'. Duffy also recalled someone asking if they'd play 'Moon River'. 'No,' said Eric. 'we don't do that sort of thing - do we Duffy?' To which Duff, a man of more catholic taste, was thinking 'Welllll.......'
Les Cousins closed in 1970 or '71, by which stage the fame of the place as a launch pad to greater things had ensured they had run out of audience: EVERYONE left was a floor singer.
I'll dig out those Davy dates later tonight Moje, and we'll do some sleuthing!
Looking forward to those dates Colin
I do have a few more stories, but I'll need time to write them properly.
One thing I do recall about Bert's regular appearances at Cousins is that he was always hours late. I believe they invariably had to send someone to drag him out of a nearby pub and get him fit to appear onstage while the floor singers frantically filled in.
You may be right about Carthy. I saw him so many times in the late 60s, I may be thinking of another folk club in the provinces.
Perhaps...
...you should open a 60s gig reminiscence thread?
Like all great 'scenes' there's very little recorded documentation of Les Cousins, so far as I'm aware - especially given that it spanned 6 years, 7 nights a week. A few sketches of performers by one of Bert's flatmates in 1965, brief clips of Al Stewart and Jackson Frank performing there in a 1965 BBC doc on social worker/folk scenester Judith Pieppe and clips of John Renbourn and (the otherwise completely unremembered) Marc Sullivan in a Danish doc of swinging London 1967 - plus the '48 Greek Street' various-artists live LP of 1969/70 - featuring very few people of note. But a friend recently turned up a (low quality) recording of John Martyn made there and a couple of photos of him performing there, so maybe there's a few more goodies out there waiting to surface...
Drat...
...sorry for the delay in getting back to you about those Davy Graham 'Les Cousins' dates, Moje. After a trawl of various files in my loft I found the DG chronology I'd made and - annoyingly - it's only forensically detailed up to the end of 1966.
I can recall now that the reason for this is that I went through MM's in the early '90s in Edinburgh's National Library of Scotland for the period 1967-73, looking for info on specific people, and then continued the research in 1998/99 at the British Library for the period 1960-66, taking detailed notes on several more people (including Davy G).
So while my memory of things is that DG was infrequent in his appearances at Les Cousins, I can only give the dates he DID play there up to the end of '66.
Drat...
No matter Colin
thanks for trying.
Another Davy Graham memory. Around 1974-76 I knew some people who lived in a Latimer Road squat just off Ladbroke Grove and Davy would often show up at the house next door (which was also a squat) for reasons unknown (but easily guessable).
I'd spotted him visiting the house and in an effort to explain who he was to the uninitiated, somehow condensed his entire illustrious career down to just one easily digestible fact, viz: Jimmy Page had appropriated Davy's DADGAD guitar arrangement of She Moved Through The Fair and had been performing it live with Led Zeppelin as White Summer for years (as he had with The Yardbirds before that, of course).
Now, that was virtually the only thing my squatter mates knew about Davy so when, sometime later, he was spotted swinging on a makeshift communal water pipe the squatters had rigged up in the back garden, he was addressed in the following manner. Up flew a window in the adjoining house and out jutted a head, the face contorted with rage "Oi, you, Led Zeppelin! Get down off that bleedin' pipe and f**k off out of it!"
Davy looked confused, but complied with the request.
Fantastic stuff, Mojo!
...Martin Carthy recalled to me once that his first wife was walking down a road in London in 1968 and Davy Graham suddenly appeared and embraced her saying 'At last - someone I know!' He had, it seems, just come off heroin and, as Martin put it, apparently hadn't recognised anyone for 4 years.
Thanks Collin
I'm reminded of a similar story told, I think, by Danny Thompson (or possibly Alexis Korner) about meeting Davy in a Soho street back in 1963/64. "I've decided to become a junkie" Davy confided matter-of-factly. It seems he figured it was de rigueur for all good musicians to take that route.
Actually, I may even have read that in one of your pieces, come to think of it...
Either way...
...it was a decision and it was his. Insane.
Long before Toni Basil did "Mickey"...
...she played one of the women who hitches a ride with Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces (and was at the table when he did his famous "I want you to hold the chicken" routine). She was also one of the dancers and choreographers on the T.A.M.I. Show so she was hip and happening long before Neil Young.
Yes...
...I was aware of Toni Basil's choreography work (extensive doesn't do it justice) and did allude to it, it was more the link between her & Dean Stockwell & Neil Young & Devo I enjoyed.
She was also in Easy Rider
as one of the hookers our heroes trip out with in the churchyard at
Mardi Gras. I think the other one was Karen Black who had a major role in Five Easy Pieces.
She also
is responsible for the videos for "Once In A Lifetime" and "Crosseyed And Painless" by Talking Heads.
This could be an urban myth...
... but I recently read that Marc Bolan played guitar on Nutbush City Limits by Ike and Tina Turner.
However I read it online. Is there any truth to this?
What is true though, is that Michael Caine compiled a CD of chill out music in 2007 called Cained. It is a personal selection of chill out classics. Roger Moore's dubstep compilation, sadly, hasn't came to pass yet...
http://www.play.com/Music/CD/4-/3423227/Cained/Product.html
And lest we forget, Mick Hucknall was the money behind the Blood and Fire label, which repackaged all those dub reggae classics...
I'd direct you to a
I'd direct you to a recent-ish Word podcast where Danny Baker addresses the Bolan myth and puts the case for him playing on (if I remember correctly) the following single as opposed to Nutbush.
Speaking of Michael Caine...
...his manager in the early '70s also ended up as the personal manager of Phil' Shiva' Jones of Quintessence. Phil has now no recollection of how this happened. He did, though, find himself (slightly embarrassed to be) appearing in a walk-on hippy role in one of Michael's spy films, and recalls being driven in said manager's Rolls past a swanky hotel in London and noticing on the steps of one that Sammy Davis Jnr was waving at him. Phil's convinced Sammy thought he was one of the Beatles.
Anyway, given this tenuous connection and Michael current fame as a chill-out dance man let's have Quintessence's 'Dance For The One', from last year's Glastonbury...
Yes, I know, I need little excuse...
Jim And William Reid
Do backing vocals on "Drama" by Erasure. They were in the same studio complex. Listen, you can hear the accents on the cries of "guilty!".
The girl
talking on "Poison Arrow" by ABC, the subject of the song according to Martin Fry, is also the girl talking and shouting "Hey!" on "Close To The Edit" by Art Of Noise and subsequently "Firestarter" by Prodigy.
"Close To The Edit" itself (if not the enire Art Of Noise) began life as a means to utilise unused drum tracks of Alain White from Trevor Horn produced sessions.
Bobo and the Coconuts
Always made me giggle like a schoolgirl that Kid Creole's Coconuts performed the backing vocal lines on much of U2's War.
Looking back easy to see why - same label, same studio.
Another couple
Jon Lord had John Mortimer as a neighbour, became pally with him, and wrote some music for him:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/7519094/To-Notic...
(I also thought the ex-Deep Purple man wrote the music for Mr Mortimer's daughter's wedding, but can't find that mentioned).
John Cooper Clarke once shared a house with both John Cale and Nico - memorably described in the recent "Chain Reaction" interview with Peter Hook: "She was a bundle of laughs ... but then, I'm easily amused".
PS And didn't Bob Holness play sax on Baker Street? (runs for cover)
Just remembered...
Robert Plant is Joan Bakewell's neighbour!
Bert Jansch used to live...
...a few doors down from Jilly Cooper. And Bernard Butler lives round the corner from Duffy Power...
I seem to recall reading somewhere that Jimmy Page's neighbour has a problem with his Leylandii. Obviously his neighbour's not The Hedge from U2.
Lazy Sunday Afternoon...
by the Small Faces chronicles the true incident of when Steve Marriott was asked to leave his flat by his landlord when his noisy partying made his neighbours complain, one of whom was Cilla Black
David Niven was an early "admirer" of
Can before they came to the attention of "You're The Lady" hitmakers Obi & Esther Ofarim.
That's enough incongruity to keep me going for a year.
Cinderella Rockefella
was the title of the Esther & Abi Ofarim hit ;-)
Great Minds! I was going with the same thing.
Niven was present at Damo Suzuki's first performance with CAN in Munich (1970?)
Liz Kershaw, Bruno Brookes, Sam Fox & Frank Bruno
Released a version of Come Outside. It's wonderfully dreadful. I was trying to find a clip of the version of Teenage Kicks performed by Dawn Chorus & The Blue Tits with Liz as Dawn Chorus and Carol Vorderman as a Blue Tit. That rarity has yet to hit YouTube but sits snugly in my record collection.
Ha!
Just seeing the title of that post, before I read the contents or saw the link, I knew that it was from you, Beany!
Ha to you too!
Liz Kershaw described my record collection as eclectic on her 6 Music show. I looked it up in the dictionary and it means "beautifully crap". In the days before my Massive CDs I used to produce Beanytapes. When introduced to Billy Bragg on an 80's tour he confessed the cassettes kept him sane on tour.
Special singer
This may not be news to others but was to me, heard Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers being interviewed about 'The Specials' on 6 Music yesterday and learned that Chrissy Hynde contributed backing vocals, although I have already forgotten to which song. It's me age you know.
A Message To You, Rudy
It's amazing what you remember, eh ?
Some years ago...
...when I was involved in helping 60s Brit blues legend Duffy Power towards a comeback album I had an idea of covering a George Harrison track. I then thought, 'why not ask George to play on it - he can only say no...' I may have got as far as approaching his 'guy' at EMI, can't recall. Anyway... I mentioned this idea to a friend who then said, 'well, you might as well ask - individually - Ringo and Paul - they have a bit of history with Duffy, they might feel inclined...' The idea never came to anything but we did amuse ourselves for some time with an elaborate in joke, imagining an album eventually appearing credited to 'DUFFY POWER [in huge letters] featuring The Beatles [in tiny print]'.
Of course, even IF the three fabs had all agreed to play on something for old times sake, one could never in a million years have put that credit on the record. But it was a fun bit of imaginary absurdism.
Thing is, though, the guy who recorded the 'Sour Milk Sea' LP in 1970 (Jackie Lomax) pretty much managed that, didn't he? And PJ Proby's 'Three Week Hero' LP of 1969 might as well have been credited to PJ Proby featuring Led Zeppelin...
Chas and Dave
were the sessioneers on Labi Siffre's I Got The' that provided the main sample behind Eminem's 'My Name Is'.
That would explain...
...the legendary Eminem outtake
'My Name Is (RabbitRabbitRabbitRabbitGertcharabbitRabbitRabbitGotMyBeerInTheSideboardHereRabbitRabbitRabbitRabbit)'
Nothing to contribute...
...but can I just say that this is my favourite blog title so far.
Anyway, here's some of the Death on TFI Friday:
Mr Evans has been an arse in the past, no doubt - but who takes risks like this on telly any more?
"... if we've got time"
Excellent!
We all know this, right?
'Just Pretend', arguably Elvis Presley's greatest 1970s song, was written by the father of Observer columnist Kathryn Flett.
Who also wrote...
...'Flett It Be', 'Flett The Heataches Begin', 'Fletts Have A Party' and 'Flett The Good Times Roll.'
the rather germanic
Looking 5000 Volts singer currently rocking TOTP with "Dr Kiss Kiss" was the same woman whose right nipple was mistaken for a light switch by Basil Fawlty.
However, the actual vocalist
on the song was Tina Charles, who lived in the next road to us in Hainault.
I got myself
on that there wireless when I contacted Radcliffe and Maconie's Chain which went from Teenage Kicks:
by The Undertones whose lead singer is Feargal Sharkey who had a hit with A Good Heart written by Maria McKee who is the half sister of Bryan MacLean who was in Love. Then I got them to play Alone Again Or.
P.S. MacLeans solo album Ifyoubelievein is superb.