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Bands you’ve never got around to checking out…

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Some bands have stuck in my mind but I’ve never got around to checking them out, and now they have drifted into possibly well deserved obscurity. One is 70s festival stalwarts Stray…never heard them, and their name is ungoogleable if I ever got around to looking for them (which I won’t). But I wonder…were they any good? Another one is Glencoe – I vaguely remember the adverts – 4 hairy rockers glaring out from the NME….any good? I have the faint feeling some of them went on to the Blockheads. Any Glencoe fans out there?

So who are the ones you always wondered what they are like? We are here to help.

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  1. As a young teen I’d often buy imported Hair Metal magazines from the US, such as Hit Parader, because they’d frequently have members of Guns ‘n’ Roses or Poison (the shame!) on the front cover. There were lots of PVC-clad, fully made-up young men populating the rest of the pages, and I could only imagine what they actually sounded like, although I can probably hazard a guess.

    So, who can fill me in on Nelson, Twisted Sister, Enuff Z’Nuff, Cinderella and the like? Youtube clips may be required I suppose, but don’t go mad.

  3. I’ve recently had a belated obsession with hip hop, so I’m now loving albums from a whole host of artists I’d never got round to checking out before now. I’d never even heard of Nas, Gang Starr, Pete Rock, MF DOOM and many more, all of whom I am now a firm fan. There are plenty of others who I had heard of, but never knowingly heard any of their music, including Jay-Z, 2Pac and Wu Tang Clan. In fact, there are some that I didn’t even realise were hip hop bands, like Cypress Hill, who I had always thought were a metal band.

    We’ve recently had a couple of hip hop threads that have brought the likes of Justin Warfield to my attention (thanks for whoever it was for that one!), so I have pretty much exhausted my trawl through US hip hop. I’m still not terribly familiar with UK hip hop though. I have to say that much of what I have heard I don’t like, but I do like Skepta and Roots Manuva.

    So on the hip hop front, it’s not so much a specific band, but rather the whole genre in the UK. Which UK hip hop acts should I be exploring? Is Dizzee Rascal as good as they say?

    I’m now expanding to trip hop, electronic, ambient, dubstep, that kind of thing, which I know is quite a broad spectrum, but basically I think I’ve totally gone off what you would call songs! I’m already familiar with the more well known bands such as Massive Attack, Chemical Brothers, Air (who I adore), Hot Chip, Sigur Ros, etc, and I do have a smattering of albums from Across genres and have probably heard most of the more celebrated albums. I have also rather belatedly been introduced to Mogwai, Burial, Morcheeba and Orbitol, all of whom are fab.

    But what else should I be listening to? Are Groove Armada any good? What about Bjork? Or Nightmares in Wax? Or the Thievery Corporation? There must be loads that I’ve missed out on whilst I was busy listening to stuff I now find quite boring.

    I’m having a musical mid-life crisis!!

    • This is the best post I’ve read on here in ages – you should be live blogging this odyssey you’re on!

      First Roots Manuva album is one of the best hip hop records you’ll ever hear. For Dizzee Rascal I’d also go to the debut, and particularly “I Luv U”, which is fantastic – was listening to it only the other day.

      In terms of trip hop, virtually anything 90s from Mo Wax or Ninja Tune, and obviously Endtroducing. In fact, maybe go for even earlier DJ Shadow and try “In/flux”, which was my own intro.

      Grime – the magnificent “5 Years of Hyperdub” compilation is a great starter.

      If you like Mogwai (my favourite band) then I’d suggest trying Slint, Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. “Lift Yr Skinny Fists…” is the place to go for the latter.

      • Sorry, just to note that the 5 years of Hyperdub album is Dubstep, rather than Grime. I’d also recommend Skream (eponymous album) and Joker in that genre. And maybe early Slugabed if you want to hear it all get a bit freaky.

        On which note, here’s a tune I always reach for in summer time and which may work for you – Peacemaker

      • Just going to list some more stuff here, top of head; Rustie (try: “Attak”), Disclosure (first album), Jon Hopkins (“Immunity”), Deafheaven (“New Bermuda”), Jamie xx, Dam Mantle, Fuck Buttons (but only “Tarot Sport”), Mono, Major Lazer, the Fabric: live compilations (great place to find new music), Wiley (particularly the hilarious early “Eskimo” stuff), Krept and Konan….

        Presume you’ve already done the first Portishead and Tricky albums, but if not – run don’t walk.

        Hope that all helps.

        • Thanks, that’s plenty to be getting on with. I was going to say I already have RM’s first album, as I thought that was Run Come Save Me, but it appears I was wrong! And funnily enough, I downloaded some new DJ Shadow stuff (I bought Endtroducing a few weeks ago) the day before yesterday, including in/flux. I’ve been trawling through blogs looking for pointers and that came up a few times.

          I also downloaded Tarot Sport a couple of days ago, although I already had a copy of Slow Focus, which I like. I have an Explosions in the Sky album too, which was recommended to me a while back. I’ve had the Portishead albums for a while and, funnily enough, was listening to Blowback this afternoon whilst sorting the kitchen out!

          The rest are all new to me though, so I’ll enjoy catching up with them.

          The reason for my odyssey (great term and I shall be using it!) is twofold. Firstly, I have finally given in to the problems I have had since having a tumour removed from the middle of my spinal cord in my neck 13 years ago and have stopped working. I have a lot of neuro problems due to the surgeon having to cut into my spinal cord (limited feeling below neck, loss of balance, fatigue, tinnitus) and have been in constant pain since 2002. I had carried on working, making modifications until I ultimately worked from home, but I’ve gone downhill over the past 18 months, so have had to stop working. Hence I have a lot of time on my hands.

          The other reason is a bit dafter. I had to buy a new small shelving unit, because my dvd collection had spilled over, and it stopped us having our Christmas tree in the usual place. We therefore moved the sofa around and it has opened up a big space in front of my stereo and two big CD shelving units, which had previously been difficult to get to.

          For the past 10 years I have only really listened to music via my ipod or PC. I used to listen via itunes on my PC all day whilst working and actually had a crackpot idea a few years ago to listen to my entire itunes library from A to Z*, because there was much of it I never really listened to. I had around 55,000 tracks on it at the time and it took me a long time. I can’t actually remember whether it was 2 years or 3, but I think it was the latter. And I listened to everything bar the kids’ bedtime stories. I have well over a thousand tracks on there by each of the Beatles, the Stones and Dylan, so they took some perseverance, especially 30-40 discs of Let It Be outtakes and a 20-30 Stones concerts, particularly hearing “and now Keef’s gonna sing one” each time. I also have pretty much every version of every song by Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, the KLF and Frankie GTH, so sitting through a couple of dozen versions of Two Tribes all at once isn’t the pleasure it sounds! Anyway, I did it, including both sides of Metal Machine Music, which wasn’t the worst album on there (that honour was taken by my wife’s awful Scouting For Girls album). Actually. It’s also possibly not even Lou Reed’s worst album!

          But exposing my stereo was a joy, because I cannot remember the last time I received a new CD and rushed to put it on, like I did in the time before ipods. Instead I would download it and listen through my speakers attached to the computer. I do have a nice docking system in the kitchen, but the music sounds so much better via an actual CD player, funnily enough! Sadly, the first album that got this honour was the new David Bowie one. I proceeded to bang on to my wife (I’m afraid the umpteen tablets I take every day make me go on a bit, as my long winded blog entries confirm!) about how great it was that Bowie was still stretching boundaries and remained just as important these days, etc, so she was very nervous about waking me up with the sad news a couple of days later.

          The first thing I did though, once I could really see my CD shelves again, was notice where the gaps were in my collection. Not as easy to spot this from an itunes account. I have my shelves arranged in sort of genres, with a few bands having entire shelves. What really stood out was my meagre hip hop section. Mainly Beastie Boys and Eminem, with a few of the major works by NWA, Run DMC & Public Enemy. Basically, exactly what you’d expect a white middle aged English bloke with a shallow knowledge of hip hop to own.

          So, I started looking at websites and lists of greatest albums and took it from there. Surprisingly, there is a real lack of decent websites covering the first 20 odd years of rap music. I found enough to get me through though, and a few blogs were also helpful, as were a few books that we spoke of on the hip hop thread.

          I’ve now got to the point where I have pretty much all the albums that would appear in all-time top 50 lists and have explored all the artists you’d expect to pop up on such lists, as well as more obscure artists. I must admit that my tastes** are more for stuff from 1979 to the early 2000s, as the stuff from the past 10 years or so leave me pretty cold, although I am firmly on the Kendrick Lamar bandwagon.

          What has been good is that my lack of knowledge has enabled me to approach it all with an open mind. I don’t know who are supposed to be the best and who are laughed at (apart from Vanilla Ice of course), who are cool and who are not, etc. I was slightly prejudiced against Kanye West, because of all that reality shite, but was suprised to find that his first few albums are actually quite good.

          What has been enjoyable though, is that pretty much all of the albums that appear on top 100 lists are great. You could never say that about top 100s in rock or indie or those all time top 100 albums that Uncut keep rolling out. For every Revolver there’ll be some overpraised rubbish like The Libertines (absolutely THE nearest music has come to the Emperor’s New Clothes that lot) or something that is just not to my taste, like Led Zeppelin or Bob Marley. Instead, with hip hop it really is easier to say what I don’t like than it is to say what I do like.

          Apart from the bland stuff of the past ten years or so, what I don’t like is:

          – skits. Of the thousands I have come across I could probably count the ones I have enjoyed on the fingers of one finger.
          – the awful excessive braggadocio on more recent albums. Modern rap artists are rivalled only by boxers (especially Tony Bellew) and contestants from The Apprentice in the high opinion of themselves!
          – repetitive foul language (although this is only really a problem when the wife or kids are in the house)
          – and the worst is the fascination some rappers have with having the sound of themselves having sex in the middle of their records. I mean, WTF? Can you imagine if halfway through Pet Sounds Brian Wilson decided to stick in a couple of minutes of himself getting a blow job? God knows why anybody thinks that’s what we want to listen to. Call me an old fuddy duddy…

          Jeysus, I’ve just scrolled up and realised how long I’ve been banging on for, but I do like to go on when I’m passionate about something and I know absolutely no-one who is interested in hip hop music apart from on here! But in summary, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed music this much since I was 10 or 11 years old and decided that I enjoyed the Beatles’ red album so much that I might explore what else they had recorded.

          *I reluctantly admit that I may have a form of OCD, as I’ve been an obsessive collector all my life (I reckon I can confidently say that I have the largest Batman comic collection, James Bond trading card collection and Barnsley FC programme collection in the whole of my village!) and if I decide to do something I don’t do it by half. Other recent projects include watching every Hammer Horror film I could get my hands on (around 70), every Elvis film and every Carry On film in chronological order. All three shared similar trajectories. I’m currently listing everything I have in all my collections for insurance purposes, as it became evident we were woefully underinsured. Most would find this a chore, but thanks to the aforementioned OCD I am actually really enjoying the task!

          ** my favourite artists thus far are Beastie Boys (always liked them though), Gang Starr/Guru, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, MF DOOM, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest and Biggie Smalls. My favorite style is the laid back, smooth, jazz influenced style, hence the choice of some of the above. My favourite albums so far are spread about much more though, but I’ve gone on so long that even Bingo has probably given up reading (and so long that my hands have gone completely numb and my neck and shoulders are hurting quite considerably), so I’ll list them another time!

          • Ruddy heck, rabbited on for over an hour and forgot another major dislike, which puts me off a lot of modern hip hop. Autotune! That robotic type of vocal is fine on occasion, e.g. when Kraftwerk use it or the use of the vocoder on Air’s Moon Safari, but when it’s purely used to hide the lack of ability of the performer it wears a bit thin.

            To put my delayed hip hop fixation into context, I should really have said what I was listening to during the time between 1985 and 2002, when most of the best hip hop was made. I was 16 in 1985, so still exploring 50s and 60s music, after spending the previous 3 years pretty much solely listening to stuff like Dylan and especially The Beatles. I spent the 80s and early 90s listening to things like Pet Shop Boys, Frankie GTH, New Order, The Cure, The KLF, The Dream Academy, Stephen Duffy, Frazier Chorus, Danny Wilson and Prefab Sprout, the last 5 being as far removed from hip hop as you can get. The early 90s was more American stuff like REM and Neil Young, as well as indie stuff like The Charlatans and Suede. Having moved to Brighton and London in the mid-90s I enjoyed the Britpop thing and I ended the 90s caught up with Americana, with Joe Pernice, Whiskeytown and The Jayhawks being my favourite.

            All this whilst my (now) favourite artists were releasing groundbreaking albums, doing gigs I’d never attend and, er, many of them falling victim to America’s fixation with firearms.

            And in the absence of a blog, because I wouldn’t know where to start (although I probably went on for long enough above to fill a blog), the latest artists I am starting to check out (not necessarily hip hop) are Prhyme, Little Brother, Run The Jewels, Jazz Liberatorz, Black Moon, Blu & Exile, Cool Calm Pete, Dead Prez, Deltron 3030, Digable Planets, Dr Octagon, Emancipator, Nujabes, Little People, O.C., Organised Konfusion, Thievery Corporation, Nightmares on Wax and Brother Ali.

            Little Brother, Little People and Brother Ali sound the most interesting out of this bunch on first listen, although I can foretell some confusion between the three of those names when my tablets kick in! Really not sure what I make of Emancipator, Nujabes, Nightmares on Wax and Thievery Corporation so far though. I flit between thinking they sound ace and thinking they sound like elevator music, but what I have been searching for for years is another band who sound like Air, and Air have trodden a fine line between sounding great and elevator music on many occasions! The nearest I have found to them so far is Zero 7, because I don’t really get the comparisons with Daft Punk, apart from them all being French.

    • Paul, I’m reading your post and I’m thinking UNKLE. Maybe not the studio albums so much but James Lavelle’s DJ mixes: try ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Beats’, his mixes on Global Underground or the movie-centric ‘Edit Music For A Film’. The whole UNKLE ethos represents a kind of collision of hip hop, trip hop, electronica, breaks and stoner rock. Based on what you’ve said above, I really think you’d dig it.

      In the meantime I’ll eat my children if you don’t groove to this….

      • Your children are safe!

        I actually bought Psyence Fiction a few weeks ago and have downloaded Never Never Land, although not had a chance to listen to that yet. They are a band I will explore further then.

        I didn’t know the link with DJ Shadow until my brother-in-law mentioned it at the weekend.

        • Yep, @paul-wad those studio albums are great, but don’t forget it’s the DJ mixes I’m recommending. Here’s one to start you off. It’s a truncated version of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Beats, it’s absolutely ace and yours for just 60p. Check the tracklisting. It’s right up your street!

                    • Ah, you’re wrong on two counts. Firstly, my copy arrived today and, secondly, it isn’t the best ÂŁ1-odd I have spent recently (Marks and Spencer’s Cherry Madeira cake wins that award), although it comes pretty close. I’ve never listened to a DJ mix like this before (I don’t think), so wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I gave it a spin this afternoon and really enjoyed it. I picked it up for pennies, so the box was a bit battered, but the disc itself was in a nice tin, so that was fine.

                      Getting hold of Do Androids… is a bit trickier though. I managed to download one of the three discs off YouTube, but I haven’t had the chance to listen to it yet. I also noticed some other mixes he has, although apart from Barcelona I can’t remember where the other ones were from. Are these familiar to you and worth getting?

                      I listened to most of the stuff recommended to me above by yourself and others. It wasn’t all to my taste (I found Deafheaven somewhat crazy, for example, and jumped out my chair at least twice whilst listening to it – maybe I had my hearing aid turned up too high?), but most of it was really good. I received my copy of Roots Manuva’s first album and have just listened to it and it’s fab. All this makes me a little annoyed that I wasn’t turned on to this stuff when it came out, as I have missed out on all the gigs and the anticipation and excitement you get whilst waiting for the next new release.

                      I bought Dizzee Rascal’s first album (that’s the upside of being so late to the party – Amazon Marketplace are practically giving CDs away), which is great, but I am finding that you have to dig deep to find decent British stuff. I bought an album called Bring It Back To Basics by Verb-T & Harry Love, which is absolutely brill, but I am having to send it back because it jumps. The perils of buying from Music Magpie on Amazon Marketplace!

                      I’ve downloaded some stuff from Jehst, Skinnyman and Lowkey that sounded quite good too, but I haven’t had a proper listen to them yet. One of the problems I have is that once my tablets kick in I find most stuff to be great, but in the cold light of day they sound a bit different than I remembered from the night before. I’ve therefore stopped buying anything late at night and leave them in my basket to check out again the next morning. I’ve lost count of the amount of records I’ve taken out of my basket! That’s what new bands should do at gigs. Give all the punters a mixture of tramadol, pregablin, baclofen and amitriptyline on the way in and they’ll flog loads of CDs on the way out.

                      I spent the evening digging deeper into Snoop Dogg’s catalogue the other night. There’s some fab stuff on his albums, but also some rubbish. I don’t think he’s done a truly great album, and I am including Doggystyle in this, but he certainly has one in him.

                      I have recently had to list some stuff for insurance purposes, one of which was my CDs. Out of curiosity, I went through and made a separate list of all the hip hop albums I have acquired this year (although I already had a dozen or so), including CDs, mixtapes and downloads (either purchases or, ahem, not purchases) and it came to 386. As I have another dozen or so on the way to me and another dozen or so on my wants list (kicking myself for not buying Viktor Vaughan (MF DOOM’s) Venomous Villain when offered it for ÂŁ12 this afternoon) I have decided it’s time to take stock and stop searching for anything new for a while. I certainly have plenty to get to know better. Because I have listened to so much rap music by so many different rappers in such a short space of time there are only a few voices that I can instantly pick out at present, whereas I could pick out a guest David Gilmour guitar solo instantly, for example. I am getting good at picking the acts out from the songs on Apple Music’s Classic Hip Hop ‘radio’ channel though.

                      So now it’s time to sit back (the new exercise regime handed down by my physio will require much sitting down afterwards!), listen to the music I’ve gathered and start trying to get through the several hundred (and I am being quite conservative with that estimate) books I have piled up over the past few years. I used to read loads, travelling to and from work and what not, since I started working from home I barely read anything other than what I read on the iPad. The Readly app provides me with umpteen magazines per month to get through for starters. But, being as I am, it hasn’t stopped me from buying books at the same rate that I used to. Course, the first things I am going to read are all the hip hop books I have bought, so I am probably going to be checking out loads more artists I’ve never heard of, leading to the inevitable. I have left a bit of space on my new hip hop shelves after rearranging my CDs for the 100th time, just in case…

    • Another record you may really like is the ‘Clear’ album by Bomb The Bass. It kicks off with the near legendary Bug Powder Dust (with your man Justin Warfield providing the rap), which is the greatest play loud before going out on a Saturday night track ever, and then jumps around from electro to trip hop to reggae to Will Self talking about injecting chalk dust. It’s a brilliant record.

      • Nice one, will check them out. Although I don’t spend many Saturday nights out these days! In fact, as Barnsley’s level of opponents is going to be a few notches higher up this season in the Championship I’ll probably need more ‘cheer me up’ music than ‘going out’ music for my Saturday evening entertainment!

  4. For me it has to be the Grateful Dead. Where do you start? I think they may be for me but I don’t know if I can be bothered. If I’m listening to them and their vast catalogue what I’m I missing from someone else?

    • I was about to post the same! Everything I knew about them suggested I wouldn’t like them. Then I watched the Bob Weir documentary on Netflix and… they were okay. Not really my thing, but nowhere near as bad as I’d imagined.

      • A mate and I were discussing this and saying we had imagined, from the descriptions, that the Dead were kind of like an American version of Hawkwind…imagine our surprise when we heard them!

      • No, you are not missing something. You want psychedelia and hippie weirdness, Hawkwind and Gong are the way to go. The Dead should have been called the Dull. I’ve tried to like the Dead but they always sound like a noodling country rock/ bar band group to me.

        • The Grateful Dead for me too. I’m not exactly into tattoo art and as pretty much every album has tattoo art on the cover…..er, triffic…..but pretty soon I’m off to my dealer where I’ll finally get ‘Workingman’s Dead’ and ‘American Beauty.’

          I had a problem with Zappa until last summer (1980s…..say no more…..’re-mastering’), but now I listen to the guy all the time.

      • For the Grateful Dead, I think the secret to getting to like them is sunshine. To me, out of all the fantastic warm sounding Californian music that has been made, they are the quintessential sunshine-with-a-big-fat-capital-SUN band. Wait for a good warm, sun sunn sunny summery blue skies good times laid back day and just bung on a live album – pretty much any of the commonly avilable ones will do to give you the general idea. This isn’t a headphone gig, so just get on with stuff, and just let them … permeate…
        Conversely, I find that I can only listen to most prog, but particularly Jethro Tull, in the more autumnal, wintery, solsticial (?) parts of the year (March the Mad Scientist notwithstanding).
        However, I have never been to California. For all I know, they like nothing better over there than blasting out “Dark Ages” as the drought begins to bite.

        Also, Thievery Corporation? – Saudade would be my pick. It’s the one where they finally perfected the warm but chilled evening vibe.

        • the key to getting them is sunshine acid

          There are a few phases- country blues largely acoustic workingman american beauty then more a conventional band with similar leanings live ,wake in the flood, blues for allah etc then their extended noodlings.

          The allure is the beautiful sweetness of the sound of jerry garcia’s guitar.

  6. Shanana were a sort of cool Showaddywaddy. In truth all you need is the video clip from Woodstock as it defines their sound with the added joy of the visual. I bought a dble best of in about 1973 and, do you know, best track? At the Hop live at Woodstock.
    Fanny were the american Girlschool but with the misfortune of taking it o so seriously. All screech and bad skin.
    Maggie Bell a scottish Janis. Fabulous singer and still hitting the boards.
    HH&F, as said, the joy of early Albert Lee, along with Chas or Dave on piano. A bit worthy. I always preferred the Keef Hartley Band for that bluesy/country/rassy vibe.
    Replacements a bit like a very drunk REM playing Creedence songs too fast.
    I should add that most of my “knowledge” comes from following up similar distantly remembered names and following links on long taken down mp3 musicblog sites

  7. The Dead would be one of my picks too. As would a thousand others. Pixies? Pere Ubu? Television? I’ve never knowingly heard a note.

    One of my favourite ways to waste a few hours is to look up 70’s gigs I was at and see if I remember the support band. I was in a band myself, so we ALWAYS watched the support (solidarity, and all that.) I have come across a few gems.
    Hackensack supported Chapman Whitney Streetwalkers. They had a singer who, if he’d ever had a fitness trainer, looked like he’d eaten him.
    Silverhead, a terrible vehicle for Michael Des Barres. Plodding, derivative, shite.
    Mealticket were a British Americana band years before the word had been invented, with a Play School presenter (American) on keyboards and songwriting (I loved them.)
    However, there are a few that have left absolutely no mark on me. It appears that I saw Glencoe at least three times. I have no memory of them. Clancy anyone? Unicorn? Capability Brown?

      • Glencoe indeed had the great Norman Watt-Roy and Jon Turnbull, both later Blockheads. Ahead even of Glencoe, the UKs hardest working, hardest sweating bassist was in a little remebered band called the Greatest Show on earth, with his brother Garth. Their sole album is an interesting listen, if you can find it. It is probably now only able to be sourced via obscure eel market websites.
        (Ooops: wiki tells me 2 records)
        Clancy I recall vaguely, but don’t remember. Capability Brown seemed to have a huge presence in the inkies, albeit all courtesy full page adverts, suggesting there was more hope than fulfillment.

        • I’ve got Clancy’s “Seriously Speaking” LP. It’s . . . . ok. The sort of stuff you’d expect to see on OGWT when you came in from the pub.

          They were formed by Ernie Graham (who’d played in Eire Apparant and Help Yourself) and Colin Bass. Gaspar Lawal was on percussion.

          Colin Bass was in Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera – I remember they had a track (Flames) on the first Rock Machine sampler. He went on to have a very interesting life in music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Bass

          Here they are

          • BOTH!? They made three studio albums. The third always gets forgotten, but it’s terrific, in a modest, low-key way. Also one of the best-recorded albums ever, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you.

            • It was possibly with yourself HPS, that I discussed the merits of the third Television album (imaginatively titled Television) a couple of years ago.
              It is an overlooked album that deserved (and still deserves) greater exposure.

              here’s Call Mr Lee

              • That is good. Never knew of its existence. Tom Verlaine rarely singled out as a guitar player but evidence enough of his idiosyncratic genius in that clip.

                Never heard a thing beyond Marquee Moon. Saw them Live Hammersmith – 1978? With The Only Ones. Dropped acid. First time. Last time. Copped off with an art student from St Martins. Didn’t get home that night. Said I stayed at Tobe’s. Mum knew I was lying. Great gig. Great night.

    • Jings, I remember Mealticket, the name, sadly not the music, other than, being country-rock I surely must have found them worth raving about. I can sort of imagine them, but the picture I get is Juice on the Loose, who I also only think I can remember because Ron Kavana was a member, who later found a small window of folk pages fame with Alias Ron Kavana.
      Moon were perennials for a while, with Noel McKanna on vocals. Saw them supporting Mike Heron’s Reputation in Swindon. (So there!!)
      The band I always ended up seeing were G.T. Moore and the Reggae Guitars. They did an excellent version of that Diana Ross song, you know, “Little Girl, please don’t wait for me, wait patiently for love, one day it will surely come”, that one.
      And the Ravin’ Maniacs of course.

  8. About a week ago I realised Tom Petty And His Heartbreakers had slipped through the net somehow, so I set to and made his music the theme of one of my Gramophone Club meetings here, where I introduce the natives (clustered around my feet) to the Joys Of Western Music. It was with some anticipation that I cued up the first long player, but before the stylus was half way across the disc I found my attention had wandered. So too had my audience.

    A note to those who find The Dead intriguing, but don’t know where to start: you may have the impression they’re “country rock” or “psychedelic”, but fans of either won’t find much to satisfy them. They’re perhaps the oddest band ever to make the big time. Any category you try to file them under will find them wanting in some way. As rockers they’re strangely thin-sounding and riffless. As country, jazz, psych, whatever … they’re probably not going to cut it for you. But I’d recommend starting with the studio albums – in spite of being dismissed by scowling Deadheads (the cruellest of all fanbases) they’re fine pieces of work, and benefit from being concise. From The Mars Hotel would be one point of entry; some lovely songs, some shambling rock n’ roll – if you don’t find something to like here, you can back slowly away …

  9. Cheap Trick.

    Never knowingly heard any of their records, but this I do know:

    Two geeks and two pretty boys is how they presented themselves.

    Guitarist Rick Nielsen has a fine collection of rare and unusual vintage instruments.

    They backed Lennon on the original version of Double Fantasy (which I have heard). Yoko nixed the tapes and the album was re-recorded with a more AOR friendly sound.

    That’s it.

  12. I wonder if there is a song called Stray, by Suicide, as well?
    Suicide? Famous 2 piece, saxophone and 2 string bass. Anyone got anything from their catalogue. Tosh if I recall an OGWT slot correctly.

    • Suicide= Saxophone & 2-string bass? I’ve never heard that version, Retro.
      Alan Vega – vocals, Martin Rev – synth, drum machine. Dark minimalist stoner electro-psych is as good a description as any you’ll get from me.

      (Frankie Teardrop)

      Perhaps you’d confused them with Back Door, who were a sax/bass/drums trio. If you can imagine Jazz/Prog with no keyboards or guitar and lead bass, you might be getting there.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EL_AiCDXP0
      (Human Bed)

      • Back Door were a great group – it’s worth looking out for Colin Hodgkinson’s bass playing on their YouTube clips. He later joined Whitesnake (!) and I saw him a few years ago in Chris Rea’s Hofner Bluenotes.

        On Back Door’s second LP the producer Felix Pappalardi added a little bit of electric piano but by their third album they were joined throughout by Dave MacRae on keyboards and Bernie Holland adds guitar to a couple of songs.

        Here’s another fine and much missed sax / 2 string bass / drums combo:

        • I remember having a Suicide track on a magazine compliation cassette. Thin synth theme throughout simple hypnotic beat and really quite good.

          Alan Vega is a pretty interesting fellow.

            • I suspect it was Morphine I meant, having looked at these clips. Still didn’t like it. Suicide I have heard, on a compilation that did make the i-pod, and, yes, the sound is indeed tinny synth and bronxy vocals, not unpleasant, not outstanding. And I learn that their light flushed out yesterday, 2 years short of Bill Wymans forthcoming age.
              Back Door supported ELP at Earls Court in about 1972ish, not going down well with the spotty schoolboys that I was one of. Have recently re-investigated and that Colin Hodgkinson (another Colin H!) is rather handy.

    • Oddly enough I had the same thought last week and checked them out on Spotty. Talky liked it – jangly tuneful harmony drenched pop. You can immediately see why indy band love them. They nicked the formula in its entirety.

    • I avoided Big Star for a while as two of my favourite bands (the Replacements* and Teenage Fanclub) namechecked them all the time and I didn’t want to be let down. When I did hear them by chance, it was love at first listen. It’s that wonderful Rubber Soul compressed guitar sound mixed with southern soul. I will never tire of their first two albums.

      * By the way Rigid – Please to Meet Me is the Replacements album to start with. It’s got Alex Chilton AND the peerless Skyway.

  14. I have no idea what The Cure, Sisters of Mercy or The Fall are like. I think I know what Echo and the Bunnymen and Prefab Sprout are like and I don’t like them, but in truth I really have no idea.

  15. I’m currently ‘checking out’ Thin Lizzy’s second album from…..’oxygen, nurse’…..1972. 10/3/1972!
    I’ve had the 1971 debut, and the E.P., for some time now and, so, as it was ÂŁ2 in the Oxy…..

    Why do I like this, and yet run a mile from a Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple record?

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