Like a few on this site I was in a band at school. We played covers of course, all the usual ones. Smoke on the Water, My Wonan from Tokyo, Paranoid, Keep yourself Alive. None more cliched but great fun. We were heavy metal right, heavy bloody metal.
And yet…for a two week period in 1982 we went Jazz Funk. For the life of me I don’t know why ( I hated Shakatak of course) I suspect our keyboard player (and original singer) was behind it. He was the musical “genius” behind us, in the early days of the band working out my bass lines and the guitarist’s parts. His fault then .So for a fortnight I was trying to come up with funky trebly bass lines to our original compositions and hating it….I just wanted to rock!
Thankfully the white sock XR3 phase didn’t last long….we didn’t play our new oeuvre live and we went back to what we did best….though secretly I wish tapes of those songs did exist!
Any other bands with startling or short lived about turns?
I immediately think of the Quo with their psychedelic beginnings and swift change to denim clad boogie, though you could add the Fabs who started as leather clad rock n rollers before cleaning up and turning out chart topping ditties about lurve in matching suits.
Gillan go disco.
Not sure why I remember this – think I saw them twice at Sheffield Poly in the space of a year or two – first time playing twiddly jazz fusion – the second back to Smoke on the Water and high-pitched squealing.
Do recall they went down slightly better the second time around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz8cAmG97ds
Manfred Mann in their Chapter Three incarnation. They did a couple of albums (plus a never released third) before transforming into the Earth Band. Chapter Three, for me, was the best thing they ever did. Real Vertigo heaviosity with added jazz.
Here’s ‘Konekuf’ (reverse the word for the intended effect):
The Bee Gees
Beatle-esque pop with psychedelic overtones (sort of). A bit folk-y and ballad-y.
Come the mid 70s, they discovered a drum loop and invented (no, popularised?) Disco.
By the mid-80s they were changing again with a sort of country-ish inspired pop
(initerstingly still using the same drum loop a lot of the time)
Fleetwood Mac
Exhibit A: Albatross, The Green Manalishi, Man Of The World and Need Your Love So Bad
Exhibit B: Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way, Diane and Big Love
OK, there are effectively different bands (only the name is the same) but it’s the same drummer and bass player
It’s the same drummer and bass player. So it counts in my book.
My first thought was Little Feat and of course it was the keyboard player that took them in that direction – Bill Payne.
I could only think of ‘Drum n’ Bowie’ to be honest with you. Short lived, around the late nineties. Unlikely to be missed.
A very early band I was in played Santana and variations on Blues In A. However the drummer was more ambitious and suggested we learn Return To Forever’s “Theme To The Mothership”. Unfortunately none of us could work out how it went, even me, one of those pesky keyboard players who was supposed to know everything.
We then decided we’d get some gigs and make some money. We advertised (ie put a notice in the music shop) for a singer, and Andy turned up, whose tastes ran more to Tom Waits, Tim Buckley and Randy Newman. So of course he and I went off on our own, and actually did a few gigs until the guitarist left to pursue his university studies. The replacement guitarist then did one rehearsal before inviting me out to his house to play me some of his songs, which I was amazed by. I still am, we continue to be the best of friends, and have played and written stuff together for 40 years.
Rather off-topic but I’m reminded of the time when a friend’s brother bullied me into trying out for his funk band (think Meters) on keyboards, despite me protesting that I wasn’t really that familiar with the music. It’s all one chord, you’ll be fine was his line. But then he was the singer.
So in this dank rehearsal studio in the Holloway Road I was presented with this enormous Korg which I had no idea how to use and which didn’t really work properly anyway, it turned out. I vamped away frantically, trying to look as though I knew what I was doing, while the rest of the band ignored me completely. The guitarist (who was excellent) was particularly scornful. That was the end of my career as a funkmeister.
Was that 313 Mike?
Indeed yes, sticky carpets and all. I hope it’s still there – should be preserved for the nation.
It was one of the better rehearsal spaces, but I’m talking mid 80s when it first opened. One of the owners was Michael Sellers, son of Peter. It’s no longer there. The arches are all closed off now and there’s a big residential block gone up next to the railway.
That’s a shame. I suppose one day there won’t be any railway arches left. Where will rehearsal studios (and dodgy mechanics) go then?
oh, don’t remind me. I once bought a motor from a guy I vaguely knew who ran a garage under the arches at King’s Cross. Actually it wasn’t so bad. The gearbox only went once on that one. I had a Morris Marina, now that was a serious piece of shit
And that was when it left the factory 😉
They really were the pits, though – I’m sure I lost a pair of boots to the carpets in those ghastly arches. Bloody horrible place where I endured weeks of rehearsals until the band later realised we could ‘rehearse’ in paid for pub gigs up and down the Holloway Road. Yeah!
But, the cameraderie between rehearsal rooms was great.
I remember hearing Missing by Everything But The Girl on the radio and assuming some opportunistic turntablist had slid a beat under some TT vocal after digging her voice on Protection. The Walking Wounded LP confirmed that the EAEOH themselves had gone swimming in the beats. And, as much as I loved the “Eden” version of the band I rather liked the new sound too…
There’s the trick though. Anything with Tracy Thorn singing on it will sound good IMHO.
That was the thing with EBTG. Each album had a different sound.
After Eden, for Love Not Money they had absorbed The Smiths, then they went orchestral…
Two Eighties bands spring to mind. Japan went from glam rock wannabes to a more thoughtful art rock direction which David Sylvian has continued to pursue. And Talk Talk, perhaps an even more startling change of direction to a slowed down, semi ambient turn of phrase which had their record company spitting chips.
@steerpike Good to see you back old boy!
Thanks old bean
The OP reminds me of when The Cult met Rick Rubin, abandoned goth and the swirly-sounding effects pedals of “She Sells Sanctuary” , and took up the unashamed, hard rock sound sound for ‘Love Removal Machine” and ‘Electric’. Some of their fans were distressed, as I recall.
At the time I thought Electric was a silly album. I still do, but I also think it’s very good. It’s a Rick Rubin album really. It’s easily the best AC/DC album since Back in Black.
Strangely, given my Heavy Metal past I was one of those who thought Electric was silly. Didn’t like it then and still don’t. My tastes were mutating and much preferred the gothic tinged Love …still gets a run out at Freddy Towers.
A lot of bands in the late 70s released one or two disco-tinged records, then went back to their old ways.
The Village People embraced the New Romantic movement with awkward results (visually, anyway)
Scene: Queen band meeting, late 1981.
Freddie: “Look darlings, we’ve just had our biggest ever hit in the US with a disco song. Imagine how successful we’d be if we made an entire album like that! What could possibly go wrong?”
Scene: Kiss band meeting, 1981.
Gene Simons: “Look, our last couple of albums haven’t done so well. They’re saying that we’re finished! There’s only one way to get back on track.”
Paul Stanley: “How?”
Gene Simmons:”We’re going to make a concept album about a mysterious elder people. And we’ll make it the soundtrack to a film that we haven’t raised any funding for yet. What could possibly go wrong?”
ABC had a couple of tries at different images but the music still retained the trademark sound. This was what Martin Fry called the ” Bleep and Booster” look. IIRC Bleep and Booster appeared in Blue Peter Annuals. Anyway, skip to about 40 seconds and you will see the full horror of the new band.
King Crimson Barbershop? I like it. Catchy.
Gun became G.U.N. for an album – the one using their fan club phone number (0141 632 6326) as its title. I’d liked their earlier stuff but the new direction didn’t go down too well and they split soon after.
Plinkety-plonk soothing ambient advert soundtracker Moby went a bit funny in 1996 and recorded a hardcore punk album.
I saw him when he was touring this. It was terrific fun.
Tori Amos started out as “leather clad dominatrix” in Y Kant Tori Read , subsequently disowned.
Judas Priest also I think disowned their fizzy pop debut?
Jane from legendary children’s entertainers the Singing Kettle left to form some sort of psychopunktechnohorror combo. Quite a change of direction.
Leather clad dominatrix? Yes please! I have a vinly copy of the album and it’s bigly rare. So sad!
I remember the first time I heard Song 2 and had to check that the radio person really had said it was Blur. It seems obvious now but at the time (a year after The Great Escape) the thought of everyone’s favourite cockernee Hirsty knees-up merchants recording a dirty great gonzo grunge explosion was seriously surprising.
I think I was more astonished at Blur’s earlier change in style when they went mod/cockney for For Tomorrow. Seemed a huge departure at the time for the There’s No Other Way hit makers.
In retrospect, their career development looks very natural, and their eclecticism part of their appeal.
Elton John dabbled with disco in 1979:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9lFzPoR9lc
My favourite style change is Age of Chance. During the years 1985 to 1989 they were wearing cycling clothes and sounding like a politically charged, much less-fun version of Pop Will Eat Itself. Interesting for a while, but wearing over the length of an album.
By 1989, however, in what was no doubt an Ecstasy-inspired change of direction, they ditched the cycling shorts and shouty polemic, hired a decent lead singer and moved into epic, progressive house, including what many consider to be the first-ever Trance record, ‘Time’s Up (Timeless Mix). Their 12-minute ‘Playing With Fire (Firestarter Mix) has the kind of woozy, MDMA-drenched, vibe that Groove Armada later plumbed for At The River. It’s wonderful, well worth seeking out.
When Andrew Harrison reviewed the Age Of Chance reissues for Word Magazine, he relegated this later, more fascinating phase of their career to a sentence or so, doing that criticky thing of dismissing as rubbish something he evidently knew nothing about. Sigh. I loved the mag, but they didn’t always walk the walk.
Wow! I never knew that about Age Of Chance.
On the subject of PWEI, I often imagine chinstroking cineastes around the globe having their curiosity piqued by the discovery that composer of sophisticated film soundtracks Clint Mansell used to be in a band, only to be perplexed by the sound of Beaver Patrol coming through their floorstanding walnut 5.1s…
Actually, PWEI themselves had a late career change of direction, morphing from dayglo, pop-culture obsessed grebo ragamuffins to a very serious, political alt-rock proposition.
One of the first CDs I ever bought with my own money was their seminal (heh) “Dos Dedos, Mi Amigos”*, which opened with the scalding social commentary of “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”.
It’s a long way from “Beaver Patrol” to lines like “when they come to ethnically cleanse me/will you speak out/will you defend me/or laugh through a glass eye as they rape our lives/trampled underfoot by the right on the rise”.
*I also subsequently bought the album of remixes by acts such as Renegade Soundwave, Transglobal Underground and Loop Guru.
They deffo belong this thread.
I loved the first Age of Chance. It doesn’t make much sense to think of the Mecca AOC as the same band… even though they only changed the singer. They didn’t really get a fair crack of the whip, though Higher and Higher did well enough to earn the eternal glory of being on a Now! album.
The Steven Elvidge AOC were very much of their time and totally marmite even then, but I agree about the humourlessness – which was odd considering how drily funny they could be in interviews. Perhaps in 1986-7 there were too many jokers about (cf. the other bands on C86).
I may take their sheet-noisetastic version of Disco Inferno to my Desert Island.
PS) I’ve just clocked that the departed Steven E gets a writing credit on Time’s Up! Well I never.
The Shamen, 1986:
The Shamen, 1992:
The Beastie Boys’ From ropey old punk band…
to leering fratboys…
To hip-hop wizardry.
You missed out the funkateering on Check Your Head and Root Down. After the rigmarole of clearing samples on Paul’s Boutique they basically went, “F888 this, we’ll make our own breaks!”