A sister piece to “Before they were famous…”
I feel there may have been some bands or artistes that some of us have seen and thought these are sure to be famous one day only for that to never have happened.
Mine is the band Blazer Blazer who I saw several times at the Marquee Club in ’79.
They were a dynamic rock band with great songs. I was sure they were destined for greatness. Sadly it was not to be. All I can find of them on youtube is their single “Cecil B Devine”. It’s great. Enjoy.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ49rKFlMktnQfGP6Sszi1OrOwjM8zXIjN6uDap-uRkwbj7gJS5Yg&s
I remember a couple.
We used to go and see Scared of Heights at The Rising Sun in Sudbury Hill, That London, in the mid 80s. They played mainly covers but did win (I think) the Daily Mirror Battle of the Bands or some such. They disappeared almost immediately. The singer was very much like Wendy James, in fact they were sort of Transvision Vamp before Transvision Vamp.
The other was a single I used to hear in the early 80s which was by a local band called Dream Cycle 7. I can’t remember the name of the track and the internet can’t help with either band.
Two in particular stand out. The Secret Machines and The Unbelievable Truth. The latter seemed to get a lot of airplay on GLR (I think it was) in the late 90s. The debut (“Almost Here”) was a little downbeat but full of excellent songs. It still gets a regular playing chez Firefly. I don’t remember ever seeing them on TV. The follow up was very different and not as good and then they vanished. The main man was Andy Yorke, brother of Thom.
I really thought The Secret Machines would make it. The breakthrough album (from around 2005) “Now here is nowhere” combined Led Zep stomp with Floyd-style yearning and motorik drumming. The songs were lyrically intriguing and live they were amazingly powerful (if rather anonymous). Two follow up albums built on the style of “Now here is nowhere”, but success eluded them. Despite the departure and then horribly early death of one of the brothers in the band, they may still be a going concern. I hope so.
That first Unbelievable Truth album is excellent and deserved to be more heard.
Secret Machines were great. I think they did fairly well, tbh. Three albums and enough of an audience to play biggish rooms around the world isn’t bad going. There’s also an excellent EP of covers that’s worth tracking down if you’re not already aware of it.
I wasn’t, but I will now. Thanks.
My favourite County Durham local band in the late 70s was The Showbiz Kids. There’d been a Toy Dolls connection (indeed both bands released versions of ‘She Goes To Finos’, all about not being allowed into wine bars) and whilst the Dolls ploughed (and still plough) their fast cartoony furrow, The Kids had more depth and looked set to make that transition to the big time. They regularly supported new wave acts at Durham University and dominated proceedings, but it never happened for them. Singer Rob Coyle is now Robert Kane, frontman with the version of Dr Feelgood that features no original members. The rest of them, dunno.
My cousin, Phil Hyslop, was in The Showbiz Kids. He presented me with a picture cover single of “She Goes to Finos”. Which I thought was a cracking tune, still do in fact. I always presumed that Finos was about a popular nightclub in Sunderland, don’t look for it; it’s not there anymore
Here y’go….
Yup that’s Phil in the pic at the bottom on the right
Trouble with that band is that they didn’t give a fuck about anybody else.
To be honest I’m astonished that anybody else had ever heard of them. I’m thinking that “She Goes To Finos” came out around 1978 when I would have been about 12. I got that single but had no other inkling about them and how they progressed form there on. Then years later was browsing discogs and was surprised to see they had an entry, and not only that the lead singer was the bloke from the Toy Dolls.
Tres amusant, Moose!
Blues rock trooper Larry Miller.
I saw him many times at now sadly non loud Running Horse (The pub lost its music licence many years ago and promptly died) in Nottingham.
His live set was frankly incendiary…a bit like Joe Bonamassa…but much more fire…and being a Strat player…much better sound IMHO.
He released…probably still releases well produced albums with some cracking tracks but the mainstream eludes him
Sadly, Larry Millar had a stroke a few years back and hasn’t been able to play since.
Still intermittently gigging are the Kate Gee Band , previously known as Prussian Blue, needing a vigorous fight back when the neo-nazi duo of the same name started up in the states. Broadly blues-folk rock with the soaring vocals of Kate, a bit Annie Haslam like. Sometimes a duo, sometimes up to 6, currently Poli Palmer, yes, that one, is playing with them.
We used to see the Cortinas in Bristol in the 70s. I was never that much of a punk fan, but they were really good, young, full of good ideas and great performers – I really thought they would go places. Made a couple of good singles, did a John Peel session, got signed by CBS and made a rubbish LP which was nothing like them at all. One of the band, Nick Sheppard, ended up in the last line up of the Clash. Most of the band seem to have been really successful at other stuff, so a Cortinas revival seems out of the question, regrettably…
I remember seeing them on a local HTV programme in 1977 and the singer introduced ‘Fascist Dictator’ as a love song. Which I suppose it sort of is.
I suppose the, now defunct, band I’ve seen the most, but who never quite made it was my mate’s band Drugdealercheerleader. They formed out of the slightly more successful Water Bratz, and went through a few names (Sugar Rush, Electric) before settling on DDCL. Thinking up good band names wasn’t their forte! I think glam punk was the best way to describe them. They were solid live and my mate, the singer, was a great frontman. They self released a few promo singles, before getting a deal and releasing a few singles and an album that just fell short of the charts (I’m talking top 200 here, not top 40!). They got onto a Classic Rock cover CD though.
Truth be told, their album was not a good representation of the band’s sound. Ian agrees with me that it was mixed poorly, with the vocals buried somewhat. They split up not long after (they all had proper jobs, my mate being a scientist!) and won’t make a comeback because the drummer, a founder member and key part of the group, sadly died of cancer a few years ago. He was Ian’s best mate and I know he wouldn’t do it again without him.
He’s living the dream through his 16 year old guitarist son now. He won an Olivier award for his part in Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock and plays in a band that spun off the show. They got a golden buzzer on the X-Factor, before using the next round to play their own song, rather than playing it safe with another covers medley, losing to a Chelsea pensioner. They’re being heavily promoted though and are playing to a packed O2 later this month, as chief support to their mentors, McFly, so fame and fortune beckons. They write all their own songs, which is impressive for 14-16 year olds. They’ve also got young girls listening to more rock based music than they usually would. Jake’s a heavy rock fan and will either end up in a rock band or as a session guitar for hire, as he’s crazily good for a young kid.
Fellow nerds on here might have heard of them, but these are all massive in my house and unheard of by civilians. My kids can name the lineups, and everything.
Furniture: years scraping a living as an indie band, one #21 hit (Brilliant Mind) then the label went bust the day after their masterpiece album was releasesd. Years of legal trouble, next album dribbled out, gave up shortly afterwards.
The Bible: one indie album, one appearance on Wogan to promote #51 single, album released with little push from label, gave up when they lost on a German TV talent show to a man with a revolving tie.
The Fat Lady Sings: string of indie singles, limited chart success in Ireland, second album produced by ‘baggy’ Steve Osbourne just as Britpop arrived, split.
The Dawn Chorus: indie/rootsy Americana-ish band from Southsea, near Portsmouth. One of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. Debut album pick of the year by Planet of Sound (on Channel 4’s ceefax service). Follow-up took ages due to growing lineup and relentless touring. Burned out, they split after a 3-date farewell tour, third album never completed and given away on Bandcamp.
I now count the main performers of all four acts among my friends.
I have “Johnson” (sp) by the Fat Lady Sings. Great album. Terrible name for a group, though.
I’m just realised, my final sentence makes it sound like all my friends are failures. Paging Dr Freud.
Oh, go on, then. Here’s the #56 smash hit, Drunkard Logic.
Clearly a bit of a fellow nerd. Loved Furniture’s “hit” single and seem to remember the b side was ok too…”Love your shoes,” I think?
The Bible were alright too, got a cd single with Honey be good AND Graceland on it. Good stuff.
Pretty sure I’ve got Arclight by FLS on 7inch too.
Never heard of the Dawn Chorus however.
Love Your Shoes was one of Furniture’s self-released flop singles and, re-recorded, the flop follow-up to Brilliant Mind.
I can not express my love of The Dawn Chorus highly enough. If I won a million quid, I’d give it to them to reform. They combined Americana, the big music era Waterboys, the raggle-taggle of the Levellers, the ska of The Specials, and Paul Butler’s wonderful trumpet arrangments.
Here’s the title track of the debut, The Big Adventure:
and Schumann from the follow-up, The Carnival Leaves Town, featuring some lovely trumpetery.
“I left my masterpiece on the shelf, I could barely even compose myself” gets me every time.
Both CDs are available from Music Magpie via the dodgers for 58p.
Really like those but the Amazon search I did had them at nearer £40 each!
Music Magpie:
If that gives you no joy, I think Paul Butler still has a box of each in his spare room.
Ordered. Thanks Steve.
Thanks Steve! I opted for EBay & music magpie had both of them as a “buy one get 50% off a second” so less than £2.50 for the pair.
The unreleased third album, Tremendous Magic: Lost Songs 2008-2012, which also includes all the single b-sides from those two albums is available for pay-what-you-like at:
https://thedawnchorus.bandcamp.com/
I also have the rare-as-rocking-horse-poo self-released debut maxi-EP/mini-LP, Town/City. I will PM you all later.
Oh, and if you like The Dawn Chorus, check out The Retrospective Soundtrack Players, effectively the same band with a different drummer.
If anyone is in the Cambridge area, TDC/TRSP frontman Kyle Evans is playing a solo gig for me next month.
The Bible were great. Me and my girlfriend went to watch Gary Clark out of Danny Wilson and Boo Hewerdine was supporting him. We didn’t recognise him, so were delighted a few songs in when he ‘covered’ a Bible song. When he did another we were saying that he ought to sing some original songs, instead of just singing songs from another band, even if we liked the band, and even if he was singing them rather well. He then sang a couple we didn’t know, but we said that even his own songs have now started sounding like the Bible. It was when he sang Honey Be Good that we had the first inkling that it might actually be the bloke from the Bible…
They were great. Their career is a salutary lesson to successful indie bands of the potential horrors of signing to a label, which is then taken over by a faceless major.
All members of The Bible are still working in music (keys man Tony is a music lecturer at Brighton poly, and played with Oasis).
One contender for the song I’ve heard most would be Honey Be Good, which Boo has to play at every gig. In the 5 or 6 years I spent as his driver/roadie/merch, it was the trigger point in the evening for me to go to the gents.
Byzantium – Chas Jankel’s band at the time – never really got where they deserved to be as a band. I saw them several times and they were always great live. They also included the man known these days as Shane Fontayne, who I most recently saw play with Graham Nash. So you have some idea of the talent on-board.
A couple I had high hopes of…Gypsy (the UK lot). Played their first album to death.
And Gin House, a bunch of larrikins from Newcastle, who won a battle of the bands thing and got to make an album at Abbey Road. That was it. But I liked them.
Of course it’s not hard to see now why they didn’t make it.
‘larrikin’
That’s a great Australian word!
Back in the early 70s we all tried to out do our schoolmates by championing the most obscure , usually awful ,prog band and there were quite a few to choose from ( bad prog is very unpleasant in my experience). However my band were Continuum and they were fab – even if when they played my home town of Rotherham (what a scoop) there were less than 10 people in the audience. Their 2nd and last album Autumn Grass is genuinely rather brilliant in places and the second side is a single eerie piece redolent of music you might find on low key British horror / supernatural films of the same era . You can find it on YouTube.
Amsterdam…the songwriting chops of Ian Prowse, the glamour and sass of Genevive Mort, the keyboard skills of Dr Nigel Hopkins, winners of the NME best new band award, championed by Elvis Costello and John Peel. Should have been massive.
Circa 1995-97 in Belfast was a golden age of great acts that never got anywhere (and the beginnings of a few that did – Cara Dillon, Foy Vance, etc.).
Here’s one of my faves – the mighty Stonefish, who were among four mid 90s Belfast bands who reunited in September past for a charity show I organised.
Not quite ‘never famous’ as they had a couple of hits back in the late 80s, but they should have been bigger (if they had carried on)…… River City People….
Remember seeing them at one of the balls at Manchester Uni and after that had a top 40 hit, saw them as a support act for, I think Prince at Maine Road, Manchester.
I recall being ever so slightly smitten with the lead singer, Siobhan Maher – I think it was the hat.
I’ve thought of a couple more. Ruth was the band led by a pre-Aqualung Matt Hales. They were a sort of Britpop crossed with Ben Folds Five and their only self-released album, Harrison, is fantastic. They renamed themselves The 45s for a two-single deal with Mercury, then later self-released the album.
I saw Ruth play on the back of a flatbed truck at a county fair in Guildford, was blown away and became their roadie for the day.
Matt Hales went on to live in LA, become stupendously rich writing for telly, marry a model/actress, and work with The Blue Nile. Where did it all go wrong?
Here’s Chicken:
The Ponyl Collaboration are Cambridge’s answer to the question “what happens if you cross Tindersticks with Belle & Seb.?”
They’ve been around since 2007, their masterpiece was 2009’s If These Are The Good Times, played on my 40th birthday, went on hiatus, had kids, released the excellent follow-up last year (my vote for AW album of 2018), played a couple of gigs, are currently recording a new album, and are going to play my 50th. So there’s time yet.
Here’s Model / Actress:
I was wondering which AWer it was that put me on to this band.
Do you mean they played at your 40th birthday party? That’s très cool!
For 6 or 7 years, I did a night in a Cambridge pub once a month with my partner in crime. Two live bands and DJs (often me). It was the first Saturday of every month. My 40th was a Tuesday and the gig was the following Saturday, so strictly speaking, I was 40 years and 4 days.
I’ve booked them for my 50th next year, along with garage-psych band Violet Woods (they sound like Stereolab on steroids, so Mrs F is going to hate them) and all-girl pop-punk trio Pink Lemonade (they’re all young and attractive, so Mrs F… etc). I can’t wait.