One name that cropped up on the recent Forgotten and Not So Forgotten Singles threads was Kid Creole and the Coconuts. (aka August Darnell)
Back in the 1980s I was an enormous fan and actually got to see their magnificent live show once at the Lyceum Ballroom. And then gradually I lost touch with the Kid. The last time I saw his name on a poster he was to my astonishment doing panto in Manchester!
@Alias and I got into an interesting chat about how August Darnell had early on in his career had a Number One in the USA with Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band with a record that didn’t chart in the UK. But then, reinventing himself as Kid Creole and the Coconuts, he had in the early 1980s three Top Ten hits in the UK. These went largely unnoticed in the US. Why did the Coconuts not appeal to the US audience and vice versa.
Anyway, this morning I was fascinated to discover this Quietus interview from 2011. From his childhood in the Bronx to late in life settling in Malmö: it’s a remarkable read. (see comments)
“The first Savannah Band record was pure magic. The reason: we were twenty-something-years old when we made it, 1976, and we had stored up ten-years of writing – we started young. You had a lot of songs so you picked the best. Ten years of frustration built up and it’s like BOOM! I think it’s only nine tracks. That album opened doors for us for the rest of our lives. It was new. It was innovative thanks to my brother, who said: ‘I’m gonna take from the past – because I love Duke Ellington and the Dorsey brothers, Tommy and Jimmy, and I love Frank Sinatra’s crooning and Ella Fitzgerald. I’m a take all that shit that I love and take it to a new market, a dance market ‘cos disco was god then.”
Talk about braggadocio! In 2011 he was still larger than life!
Is there anyone else here who is a fan of Kid Creole, Dr Buzzard, Ze Records, Nuyorican Soul, NY Salsa etc?
Here’s the interview. Enjoy!
https://thequietus.com/interviews/kid-creole-was-my-utopia-an-interview-with-august-darnell/
They certainly knew how to put on a great live show.
Such a weird man. One of the best bands I saw. I just watched that video of Stool Pigeon, fantastic! The horn arrangement is top notch; and in fact it occurs to me now: basically they are very like Steely Dan, even down to the sort of subject matter they picked, but with that faux tropical thing going on. Pick pretty much any Steely Dan hit and imagine Kid Creole doing it…
No, no, no! It’s the antithesis to Steely Dan – I HATE Steely Dan with a passion, and Kid Creole and the Coconuts gives me more joy than almost any other music on earth!
The emotional content is indeed completely different. But the music seems related to me, but hey, I’ve been wrong before. I’d sooner watch this lot for sure.
Gosh @Locust! You are a real fan. And quite right too!
I’m very chuffed that so many fans have come out of the woodwork on this thread.
Off pists now for an interesting titbit.
“As most South Africans know, a coconut describes someone who is black on the outside but follows the norms and tendencies of a white person. ”
https://grocotts.ru.ac.za/2022/06/29/confessions-of-a-part-time-coconut/
I loved Ze Records, “A Christmas Record” (origin of The Waitresses’ “Christmas Rapping”) always gets brought out each December chez Mickey, and Cristina’s fantastic “Is That All There Is?” also came up in the Forgotten Singles thread (Cristina was married to label head Michael Zilkha, hence her early signing!)
Ze’s Davitt Sigerson later became one of the most powerful men in the music industry, but he was also behind my favourite forgotten single, Daisy Chain’s “No Time To Stop Believing In Love” on Ze, a hit precisely nowhere, though got a bit of radio play in Ireland… is it actually possible for a song to be *too* catchy?
Great comment @metal-mickey. That Ze Xmas album has be one of the best festive albums ever.
Davitt also contributed this wonderful song.
August mentions Cristina in the interview.
“You produced Cristina’s version of Leiber & Stoller’s ‘Is That All There Is,’ right?
AD: [big smile]Yes I did! [laughter] I was too embarrassed to tell him. We had asked his permission when we did that, because we fucked those lyrics up bad. Me and Michael [Zilkha] wrote to them saying we love your version, here’s ours. And they said ‘under no circumstances are you to release this’ but Michael released it anyway and it became a’ underground thing.”
It’s a long way from Peggy Lee!
Here it is with some great photos of New York.
I had to find out more about Cristina!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_(singer)
“she was too weird for the pop world and too pop for the weird world.”
From the Ze Xmas album.
I have the Ze Christmas Album onwhite vinyl … very fitting
Just. Played Stool Pigeon on my radio show. I remember seeing them around the time of Tropical Gangsters at the Hammersmith Odeon, I think, 1983.
Probably their peak. Coati Mundi, all those sets. Twas a good show.
I was there too.
My girlfriend at the time decided she wanted to become a Coconut.
For me, Kid Creole joined the dots between the music in this fantastic documentary, and more. He opened my ears to so many different musical genres.
That was a great interview, and probably one of the first interviews with him that I’ve ever read – I can’t remember him getting mentioned much in the music press even at the height of the band’s success, for some reason.
I was – and still am – a huge fan of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, have all of the albums and still play them when I get the chance. My biggest regret in life (well, my music life at least) is that I didn’t manage to insist that I’d get to see them play Gröna Lund in 1983 – I had been dumped at my sister’s place for the weekend and she didn’t want to pay for the entrance fee to the park/gig (40 SEK per person!) and I didn’t want to insist because she was very poor at the time… But I never got another chance to see them, unfortunately.
Of course (as I’ve mentioned before) August Darnell mentions Gröna Lund in this song from one of the later albums (second verse):
In my opinion people are wrong when they claim that their later albums were bad, they were always great but people’s taste changed (mine didn’t).
Very glad to hear you are also a big fan @Locust. Gosh I really feel your pain about missing that gig at Gröna Lund. It would have been great fun. Back in the day when 40 spänn was worth something! 40 SEK scarcely buys a carton of milk in 2025.
Look what I just stumbled across! A 90 minute TV special by Granada TV in Manchester from 1984.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7661768/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_5_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_there%27s%2520something%2520wrong%2520in%2520paradise
Here’s a comment from IMDB:
“I ran across this just recently as I’ve been listening to a lot of Kid Creole and the Coconuts music this past month — what a treat! It’s a movie version of the concept of their 3 albums from the early 80’s (Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places, Wise Guy/Tropical Gangsters, and Doppelganger) and it’s a delightful trip.
August Darnell is actually a fairly fine actor considering his lack of professional training – but then again, he acts this role of Kid Creole to perfection on stage so there was really no stretch for him to carry it into a cinematic role.
If you are a fan of the early 80’s and especially if you are a Karen Black fan – you will enjoy this film as much as I did.”
Interesting, I’ll give that a go later!
But of course, as we now know from his interview: he did have professional training… 🙂
@kaisfatdad big fan of the works of August Darnell in his many guises alongside his Coconuts and Sugar Coated Andy Hernandez aka Coati Mundi. in fact that era of Mutant Disco that Ze records ushered in is well worth an investigation and now Ze are issuing books, read their compendium of articles by Glenn O’Brien last year, a really good selection of pieces about the New York of that time
Thanks for the tip @exilepj. I shall dig deeper!
A great single by The Coconuts, written and produced by August Darnell.
Love ’em. I was probably the only hippie at their Hammersmith concert in September 1983. Me and a bunch of clubby, soulboy sorts. I was more a focus of attention than the big Broadway musical type stage show. The Coconuts provided what walter Becker described as “the correct visual accent” for the band. I’ll say. COR!
Your comment led me to this rather amusing review of a 1982 show in Glasgow.
https://therockandrollknife.blogspot.com/2012/05/kid-creole-coconuts.html
That’s lovely. And true. This is one of my favourite albums from that time.
Excellent stuff @Vincent. Coati’s contribution to Kid Creole’s success should not be underestimated. He served a very important role in the stage show as Kid’s sidekick.
Not least in this hilarious song
I love the way the Kid sends himself up! And how everyone else in the band is laughing at him.
FWIW – the review was for a show in Edinburgh.
However, I saw them at the Glasgow Apollo!
Edit to add: I thought it was the same tour (1982) – but I’ve just dug out my ticket and it appears that I saw them the following year, 1983…
I suspect they were working hard at that time with all those hits in the charts. And they were based in the UK i suppose.
I’ve just noticed the price,@fitterstoke.
A mere five quid to see one of the best bands on the planet!
Things costing £5 in 1983 would cost £16.68 now on average, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator.
Bargain.
Kind of the going rate I paid 6 quid to see Springsteen in 81 and 8.50 to see The Stones the following year. Your average gigs were around 3.50
Goes to show that inflation on gig tickets has been about 4 times inflation generally.
Big fan of Kid Creole too. Here’s their Granada TV show from 1982, which I remember seeing when it was broadcast.
I was staying in the Marriott hotel in Liverpool 15 or so years ago. When I went in to check in there was a guy who looked just like August Darnell smoking outside. Turned out there was an 80s package tour in town and everybody seemed to be staying in the hotel. The hotel bar late that night was full of celebrities.
I remember the NME always going on about Kid Creole and the Coconuts. I liked a couple of singles, but never really got into them.
One my absolute favourite bands who appeared on several Ze Records Mutant Disco compilations were Was (Not Was).
Out come the freaks
Tell me that I’m dreaming
And here’s a rather decent medley.
RIP Sweet Pea Atkinson!
OK then, If you insist! One more gem from this wonderful combo!
Today Don Was is head of Blue Note records.
I didn’t know that, @Alias.
The right man for the job!
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/20/blue-note-boss-don-was-interview-future-jazz
A couple of years ago I got this sudden recollection of a song with the lyrics “Me no Popeye, you no Olive Oyl” and a google search turned up the wonderful Que Pasa Coati Mundi video with a tune that I must have absorbed by osmosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO06a2KNBOs
That video is such a wonderful snapshot of New York in the 1980s @mutikonka.
A timeless classic!
My one and only trip to NYC was in 1987 hosted by a Puerto Rican New Yorker Bernie Delgado who I met while InterRailing in Europe. This was the New York he showed me.
I enjoyed the part in the interview where Kid C talked about growing up in the multi-cultural Bronx. @mutikonka
Que Pasa/Me No Pop I is a great forgotten single that sustained me during a miserable elective in Edinburgh. Along with the great forgotten album, Fresh Fruit In Foreign Places, it wasn’t available on CD for many years. Even now, it’s only a truncated version available on streaming or CD. It’s baffling why its full glory remains buried.
They are responsible for one of the best gigs I’ve ever witnessed. Utterly brilliant.
That Coati Mundi clip is amazing. What a performer!
Now I think it’s only fitting to play a banger of a Kid Creole b-side, from the Stool Pigeon single.
Double On Back.
Keep those Creole bangers coming. Mike!
I just stumbled across another excellent interview, also from 2011.
https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/8677-kid-creole/
He’s a great story teller and that really comes across in his lyrics.
“Gina, Gina,
He’s just a ski instructor
What do you do when all the snow starts to melt?
There’s been no action here since William Tell”
Cole Porter would have been proud of that line.
Looking through by albums yesterday I was reminded of one name rarely gets mentioned, but his studio acted as a busy crossroads for the disco, Nu Yorican and No Wave scenes, maverick produced Bob Blank. He produced Off The Coast Of Me amongst many other interesting records. Check him out, you will have more of his records than you realised!
This is an example of a salsa/ disco crossover, Charanga 76 covering Music Trance.
You asked for examples of NY Salsa. One of the very best bands, who rarely appear on compilations, possibly due to their scary management, were Manny Oquendo & Libre. You won’t go wrong with any of their albums.
Elena Elena
Thanks @Alias. I’d never heard of Bob Blank despite the Kid Creole connection.
There’s a compilation album of his work on Spotify: The Blank Generation.
https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/album/the-blank-generation-blank-tapes-nyc1975-1985
As you say, he’s an important figure in the rise of Kid Creole. And, would you believe it? He’s a gifted ballroom dancer!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Blank
This is priceless:
“His former wife is Lola who had performed with James Brown.[8][9] According to an article in the Schenectady Gazette, they originally met in 1979 while posing for a Kid Creole & the Coconuts album. Blank was dressed in safari attire with a pith helmet and having a fierce expression on his face. Lola was wearing a tiny leopard print dress, looking like Jane of the Tarzan films.”
Jumping forward to 1997, here is a wonderful track from the band Nuyorican Soul.
Back to Bob Blank, @Alias. I just stumbled across this long, extremely detailed interview with him. It’s well worth reading the whole thing.. It captures the atmosphere of the time very well.
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/12/bob-blank-interview
Here’s what he said about Kid Creole.
“August is a genius. He wrote some of the greatest music of the century, starting with “Cherchez la Femme.” When I met him he had just lost the Grammy to The Brothers Johnson for Best New Artist in 1976. He came in all dressed in the zoot suit and everything. It turned out that he lived in a pied-à-terre. He finally had gotten his dream, and he was living on Central Park South in a room about 12 by 14 with just a bathroom. He was clawing his way through everything. It was scary to think that somebody who was as talented as him, who could do such a great album as the first Savannah Band album, couldn’t get a break or couldn’t get arrested.”
This book about the history of the NY music scene sounds like an interesting read.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-must-be-the-place-jesse-rifkin?variant=40913091821602
“A fascinating history that examines how real estate, gentrification, community and the highs and lows of New York City itself shaped the city’s music scenes from folk to house music.
Take a walk through almost any neighborhood in Manhattan and you’ll likely pass some of the most significant clubs in American music history. But you won’t know it—almost all of these venues have been demolished or repurposed, leaving no record of what they were, how they shaped music scenes or their impact on the neighborhoods around them.”
And from the Ze Records site, a description of the Aural Exciters album which was Bob Blank’s after hours project.
https://www.zerecords.com/2010/album_about_id_52.html
“Aural Exciters was Bob’s afterhours party record. After the sessions finished Bob used to ask all theses brillant artists to do something on his own project Aural Exciters. August Darnel and Andy « Coati Mundi » Hernandez from Kid Creole & the Coconuts wrote almost all the songs, helped with Ron Rogers & Adriana Kaegi from the Coconuts.The best studio musicians were the house band with most of the Kid Creole band member including guest Gychy Dan & Ron Rogers. James Chance plaid sax, Pat Place & Adele Bertei from the Contortions some guitars and Keyboards, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Christine Wilshire & Taana Gardner some vocals, eveybody contributed this crazy fun project. What a Band ! And it realy sounds like an avant garde Latin flavored P-Funk party. The album begame over the years a cult Mutant Disco album played all over the world.
August Darnell even used Aural Exciters for experimantation on various material to be founded on futur Kid Creole’s albums. Songs like : « Mr. Softee », « Gina,Gina », « Maladie d’Amour », were first recorded by Aural Exciters. August also wrote the avant garde «Emile (Night Rate)», which was downbeat dub disco ten years before Massive Attack. Not to mention the evident wink to Amyl nitrate wellknown by poppers’s fans. Cults Classic Dancefloor : Emile (night rate).”
This also sounds worth a listen,
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11418-going-places-the-august-darnell-years-1976-1983/
“Like the Seminole, Navajo, Kickapoo/ Like those Indians, I’m an Indian too.” These are words you will find rolling around your mind, for reasons all out of sorts, after listening to the maniacally infectious disco of August Darnell. (Prepare, too, to take stock of the Chippewa, Iroquois, Omaha, and Sioux, lest other tribes go underrepresented.) The couplet comes from “I’m an Indian Too” by one of many acts commanded by Darnell during an era when disco knew no bounds. It certainly didn’t on any of the tracks compiled on Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1976-1983, a collection of stuttering, stately, and studiously weird disco songs that have to be heard to be believed. Darnell was involved in Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band before branching out as a writer/producer for other acts (many on the fabled crypto-disco label Ze Records) and then for his own group Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Common to them all are theatrical airs, irrepressible grooves, and fateful moments, however subtle or pronounced, that give rise to reactions classifiable only as WTF?!?!”
August had his finger in many pies!
From the musical “Annie Get Your Gun” (and controversial even back then…do they still sing this in modern productions? I somehow doubt it…)
I’d never heard that version (or heard of “Don Armando’s 2nd Ave Rhumba Band”) before.
You definitely need the Mutant Disco album!
The 6-track original compilation album “Mutant Disco – A Subtle Discolation Of The Norm” (vinyl album or chrome cassette) features Kid Creole’s “Maladie D’Amour” leading off on side two. Two expanded CD volumes were released about 20 years later using the same title. You’ll find them on streaming services nowadays but on neither is that version of Maladie D’Amour included.
This album , Off the coast of me, has two versions. And several other extras.
Off the coast of me was August’s first album as Kid Creole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off_the_Coast_of_Me
Fascinating to see the band play the title track. They were on their yay to find their visual identity.
Another vintage clip, this time from 1990.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXUaP3BuCtA
And now from Montreux in 1991. The Coconuts are now brunettes and far more energetic than in 1980.
Even as a school kid reading the music press I was aware that New York was a hugely important place for music. August Darnell epitomises the reason why.
I do like the sound of that book. I’d like to have a look at it before buying as its not cheap.
Another book about the NY music scene with it’s title also taken from a Talking Heads song is Will Hermes Love goes to Buildings On Fire, which I highly recommend.
The guy who wrote that book, @Alias, is music journalist and tour guide, Jesse Rifkin, who does guided tours of New York visiting places associated with the musical history of the city.
https://walkonthewildsidenyc.com/about
He does a free Substack newsletter which might be worth nvestigating.
Here’s his Insta account
https://www.instagram.com/walkonthewildsidenyc/?hl=en
I listened to this podcast discussing the book:
If I go to New York again. I would love to go on his Birth Of Punk and Post Punk, Disco & Hip Hop Downtown tours.
An integral part of the Kid Creole stage show was the interaction with his sidekick, Andy Hernandez aka Coati Mundi. He left the band at the end of the 80s. What happened to him?
Wiki provided some useful information.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati_Mundi_(musician)
But then I stumbled across this excellent interview from 2009.
https://andybetablog.blogspot.com/2009/12/coati-mundi-interview_28.html?m=1
“Kid Creole & the Coconuts never having US success:
We never felt that successful. If you can’t make it in your hometown…we would go on tour: France and Japan and play in front of thousands and thousands of people and then come back to my little apartment in Spanish Harlem and it was like a dream. You’d come back and there’s nothing. What is so difficult about it that we can’t get over in the US. We had a good product and we were entertaining. The music wasn’t ‘pop’ Top 40, but it wasn’t that inaccessible. We weren’t from Mars! It was tough and it was tiring. Eventually it got to me after ten years. It was too much.
Did you and August part amicably?
Not at the beginning. No we didn’t. We’re okay now. When you’re younger, you’re more energetic on not liking somebody. The spiritual part of life doesn’t kick in that soon. We’re cool now, but not back then. That’s the way it happens.”
Andy relocated to LA and became an actor in Miami Vice!
“My first professional thing was Miami Vice, an episode with Bruce Willis. I played a part of a gun-running mob and Bruce Willis was my boss. It was a lot of fun. I had a great time. I wound up doing a few episodes as different characters. They always called me “The Ghost” because they would kill me off and bring me back as another character. That’s how I got into it. I came out to LA because I had family out here and NYC was getting expensive to live in. It was colder. I just got to change it up. I go to NYC cuz it’s still my town.”
The same journalist did an interview with Kid Creole back in 2011
https://andybetablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/kid-creole-interview.html?m=1
“Speaking of Andy, did you ever hear Coati Mundi’s album?
I listened to it in the car and it was spectacular. Andy came a long way and I love him and his humor. He was the zaniest character I know. I miss having a comic foil onstage. Sometimes the shows get too serious. I’m singing “Mister Softee” and the audience is taking it seriously?! He was like a Marx Brother.
You have a song on the new album that unpacks what happened with the Savannah Band.
Tommy Mottola said to me: “Savannah Band had the potential to be one of the largest bands in America back in the 70s.” It was like Rome, we fell from within. The Savannah Band self-imploded. Our sibling rivalry destroyed it. My brother and I couldn’t take it to the next level. We were huge and had a hit record, wrote well together, and we had a great songstress, a chanteuse Cory Day. We had everything going for us. We destroyed ourselves. I wrote “Stony and Corey” as tribute to my brother and the songbird, they were the two most influential people in my life in terms of being a music personality.”
Here are the dynamic duo back in their glory days.
I sent the interview at the beginning of this thread to my salsa pal in London who introduced me to Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah
This is how he replied:
2But the first Dr. Buzzard album is in a different league from anything by Kid Creole – as Darnell himself admits in the interview. Its melding of ’40s big band swing with soul, disco and Caribbean rhythms was completely brilliant – and every track on the album is a gem! Even the cover artwork is great. I would put the album in my Top Ten without a doubt- it’s that good!”
High praise indeed! I must give it another listen
He goes on…
“It seems to me that, although Darnell merely wrote the lyrics to the Buzzard songs, it was he who subsequently reaped the benefits of the Buzzard experience, in terms of mixing genres and of image. His brother never really received the recognition he deserved. I always assumed that Darnell took a great deal of inspiration for his Kid Creole image from the Forties bandleader Cab Calloway (see photos below).”
He has a point!
But then again, why on earth not?
Cab was doubtless one of his idols
I am very keen to learn more about August’s half-brother, Stony Browder Jr, the co-founder of Dr Buzzard. Stony died in 2001.
In the interview that kicked off this thread., August talks about what a big influence his brother, who was a trained musician, had on him.
Here’s an amusing clip showing the band when they were nominated as Best Newcomers in 1976. All of them were dressed in character for the event.
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi2346037273/?ref_=nmvi_vi_imdb_5
I’ll keep digging for more stuff.
In the meantime, here’s an interview with Cory Daye who was the singer of Dr Buzzard’s-, talking about shopping for vintage togs.
August was very impressed by Cory’s singing.
and wrote a song about her and his brother.
I just stumbled across this excellent clip of Dr Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
One interesting detail is that the two girl backing singers are fetchingly dressed as hotel bellboys. (Or should I sat bell girls??)
Coati Mundi on vibes and August is the bass player.
“(Or should I sat bell girls??)”
Belles?
I listened to their self titled album at the weekend and it is very good. I heard Kid Creole before Dr Buzzard so don’t share your friends view.
It is one of The Rough Guides 100 Essential Soul CDs. The review concludes “these fashion-mag wannabes have created a record that is as moving and smart as any other album in the history of soul”. High praise!
Thanks @Alias.
I googled your quote and it led me this enthusiastic review by Phil Shanklin who had also read that Rough Guide review.
https://reviewsrevues.com/2015/08/
He quotes the Rough Guide:
“August Darnell and Stony Browder Jnr construct a fantasy world in which show tunes swing, the ghetto is filled with golden age Hollywood glamour, and heartbreak can be exorcised with a witty turn of phrase. Granted on paper it sounds like the most retrograde, revisionist kind of record, but on the turntable it’s one of the most fully realised, dazzling artefacts from the black bohemian intelligentsia and the first great single-artist disco (album)”!
He also makes several interesting observations of his own.
Here’s what Shanklin writes about Soraya/March of the Nignies from the second Dr Buzzard album;
“The most bizarre of all is “Soraya/March Of The Nignies” but actually perhaps most clearly demonstrates the direction August would take as Kid Creole with its reference to “mulattoes” and “tropical gangsters” and a Caribbean feel later utilised in his big hits such as “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy”. A theme which often runs through the Coconuts work is that “There’s Something Wrong In Paradise” and this is certainly the case here in the mutli-cultural world of the Buzzards as Cory takes on the role of a jungle big game hunter on the look out for fraternising between the races. The whole thing is rhythmically peculiar, but it does manage to sneak into the subconscious, with a mix of upbeat cheerful sounds and obscure and dark lyrics and moves into a bizarre march with a combination of whistles, percussion and African-sounding chants. Lyrically, just what is going on here? It must be one of the few disco-influenced songs to address racism in such chilling terms;
“Soraya, bring big gun/ We’ll deal with them one by one/Soraya, shoot shoot run (Shoo shoo, voodoo)/ Soraya, bring big gun/and let’s have some bloody fun/ nignats do the rats in”
Your guess is as good as mine- but it works. ”
Here is that Rough Guide in its entirety. Dr Buzzard are on page 116..
http://www.ferrispark.com/audio/DOCUMENTS/GROUP3/23FE430C0A40D0BA.pdf
Well worth a browse.
I learnt that the band took their name from Dr Carrash Buzzard, an itinerant musician of the 1940s who had a minstrel show..
And that August and Stony’s mum was French Canadian and his dad, Dominican.
That’s great @kaisfatdad. Pre Kid Creole they completely passed me by. I’m currently reading Vivien Goldman’s book Rebel Musix, Scribe on a Vibe Frontline Adventures Linking Punk, Reggae, Afrobeat and Jazz. This is a collection of her writing for the music press in the 70s and 80s. With a title like that I couldn’t resist. She also wrote Kid Creole and the Coconuts Indiscreet. I’m tempted to get hold of a copy after this thread.
The Jesse Rifkin book we mentioned arrived today. I’m looking forward to the Mutant Disco chapter.
You’re reading some really interesting books @Alias.
Your mention of Vivien Goldman’s Indiscreet ( the fictionalised biography of the band which I’d never heard of) led me to this Guardian interview with her.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/20/vivien-goldman-kid-creole-musical-cherchez-la-femme
She and August wrote a musical together.
Here’s the book she wrote:
https://www.abebooks.com/9780946391233/Kid-Creole-Coconuts-Indiscreet-Goldman-0946391238/plp
I just stumbled across Malando, a band from the Netherlands, having great fun doing a cover of that fab Dr Buzzard hit, Cherchez La Femme.