This is a follow-up to my last post, not really saying anything new, but wondering if this will stimulate visits one more
The visits seem to have dropped off so still trying to figure out what is going on and whether to keep this URL which may be the reason for the sometimes huge spikes in visits
I am still reading World of Tiers by Philip Jose Farmer and it is a little formulaic but I will persist with it as he is a good writer.
I recently found out that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not others. C'est La Vie.
Today is grey so that's why the post title came to mind . I thought Grimalkin was a witch's cat it in "Macbeth" (it was a familiar of the three witches) , but it's also an archaic generic name for a cat. While I like photographing cats I treat them like dogs and children , ok as long as they go back to their owners. I tag my pictures with #CatsInNam and was surprised to find an Instagram Influencer Profile here. I tried searching for #CatInNam on Google but every site that maybe had something then redirected , so you will have to search for yourself on Instagram or Twitter or my tag @mikeydred96 .
My intention today was to listen to "Citizen" by Steely Dan , a great compilation but missing two of my favourite Steely Dan songs "Dallas" and "Sail The Waterway" which the band thought were so bad that they never appeared digitally, but they appear as vinyl rips on Youtube and I recently rebought the 12" vinyl copy from Discogs. So that's why I am sharing "Dallas" with you.
However I picked up on "Babylon's Burning" a rough and ready guide to punk from 1973-1978 and the four CDs while consisting mainly of demos and live takes was very listenable to my ears. I had been thinking of selling the box but it definitely earned it's place in my collection with lots aof great bands on there, and by four thirty with systems not behaving at work I thought it was a good time to wind down.
Steely Dan will be tomorrow, and my box also contains a burned copy of "Can't Buy A Thrill" augmented by the aforementioned favourites , so I have a lot to listen to tomorrow as well.
This is my lowest posting month since January 2017 which was a sort of aim this year, so that is good, although I now have an idea for a pig posting next month, sharing songs which feature an animal, which should be fairly easy to maintain, but we shall see what I feel like on Saturday. It is easier to write if you give yourself a theme or thread to follow,
I suppose it's similar when you write a story or a book , you need something to hook the reader , and ideally keep them involved. I'm currently watching "Tales From The Loop" on Amazon Prime and finding it a little depressing, but some of the sets are great , looking like a vaguely alternate 1950's close to dustbowl America. The thing is you are captured because you want to know what The Loop is and does , featuring time slips , stopping and starting time , and conspiracy. It's only eight episodes but if there is a series two I probably won't continue with it , but need to hit the end of series one, so it has me in it's clutches.
I use Google Sheets to track my steps and noticed there was a discrepancy is the running total and the summed total , this meant checking earlier sheets , they all balanced, so I individually checked the daily totals and found one in error which I corrected. It was a really odd error but must have happened when copying cells. It's fixed now.
I have two CDs to listen to in the Velvet Underground "Peel Slowly and See" box , then it's going to be Public Image Limited's "Metal Box" and then maybe "Plastic Box" which should keep me going for the rest of this week (probably ten hours of listening.So I'm going to go with "Fishing" for it's awesome looping guitar riff which I first heard on "Plastic Box" by is from "Album"
I often wake and want o find what happens in what I'm dreaming , good or bad. I'm surprised that bits of a dream I woke from a couple of days back have stayed with me. They make little sense although I think where they came from from . Robocop characters working with and attacking a group I was with (probably influenced by the second series of "Altered Carbon" that I finished last week on Netflix , a computer terminal flashing up that I needed to take annual leave (we are getting work reminders about this and I have taken nothing but Bank Holidays this Financial Year, so that is nearly four months without a chosen day's leave) , and I wanted to know if we got out of the "situation" , but I woke fully , so the dream was lost. This does happen to me, and probably everyone quite frequently.
Because I am ahead of the curve on my walking I only have to do 4K steps a day to hit may target for July , which therefore makes me a little lazy, though it means I have more than hit my target this month. I did think that lockdown was going to stop me from doing my million steps every three months but as yet it hasn't. I am lucky that I live in an area with plenty of places to walk.
This week I am continuing with working through my CD box sets and today it's The Velvet Undergound "Peel Slowly And See" , the first CD being demos put together by Lou Reed , John Cale and Sterling Morrison , "Waiting For The Man" being almost Country and Western Swing style and "Venus In Furs" a medieval acoustic work out, these are interesting but not easy listening. At the wekend I was listening to their debut album on vinyl and noticed for the first time that the band's name doesn't appear on the front cover, but Andy Warhol's does.
So we'll go with a take on "All Tomorrows Parties" , I think the drum sound is awesome on this, as I write I'll listening to the first album with the extra takes , but is a definitie experience.
For some reason The Pixies song "Here Comes Your Man" has been going through my head. I don't know why. It is a great song by a great band and also makes me think of The Velevt Undergoud's "Waiting For The Man" which we played if the Marsall Law / Bok first gig. The demos we senmt to John Peel at the time are here though he rejecte dthem for being too primitive, though when we were taken up by Rabid Records they asked us which studio we had used. We hadn't, they were recorded live to a two track cassette player - which could explain John Peel's rejection.
The gig happened on a Saturday, on the Monday mty friend Andy Marshall was the only one left in Marsall Law , between Tuesday and Friday we wrote, learned and found a pick up drummer and played our first gig. We had to ditch the pick up drummer as either he or we didn't have a clue but we finished the gig and it all went down well.
I took a tip from Ollie Halsall on learning to play , to practice with heavy gauge strings and play live with light gauge strings which was great in practice but in small venues caused my guitar to go out of tune as soon as I touched it, though a couple of people said they were impressed my my retuning as I played technique, little did they know......
Walking into work this morning it is very foggy. On the sixth floor you can't see the river, or across the river. With th efog I immediately thought of "Foggy Notion" by the Velvet Underground and was surprised to find the Super Deluxe sets shown below. One thing the Velvet Underground were not is Super Deluxe. They made music that almost anyone could play but they set a template for a million garage bands with songs of three chords or less that could be quiet or noisy but always worth listening to.
The Super Deluxe reminds of phone and broadband companies pushing their superfast and ultrafast services. If it's fast it's fast. that's all you need to know. Same with film and TV with UltraHD etc etc, it's irrelevant how good the picture is if the story is rubbish.
Someone told me I had to watch "Taken" in HD, I recorded it from Film4 and watched it and .... it was just another Liam Neeson film with Liam Neeson being Liam Neeson. I had another friend who told me when you watched a certain sci fi film in HD you could see the space backdrop was a black curtain! I don't want to see that, I want to enjoy the film.
I have the whole original Adams Family on DVD, the picture transfer is appalling but two minutes ito it you don't notice because the script and acting is razor sharp,
Well I'm home after the Liver Biopsy, slightly fragile side and sore shoulders for some reason, but remember the right shoulder being a side effect of the Liver Biopsy.
It's quite amazing that the rooms now have basic TVs although I was tooled up with my Kindle, my Phone and a Matt Haig book, "How To Stop Time".
So I spent some time reading then binge watched Nathan Barley abd was surprised and the number of name actors in it. Benedict Cumberbatch, Noel Fielding, Ben Whishaw and it's written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker and it's thirteen years old and I've only just watched it thanks to All 4,
Again it's been another example of how brilliant and efficient the NHS is despite being under such enormous pressure due to lack of investment.
I also found the 360º Camera app on Facebook on my phone, so that is another plus from today. I now need two days of total rest before slipping back into real life.
Today I was worried I would have my lowest ever step total , but I have hit just over 3K although tomorrow and Saturday will both be very low, then it's a case of trying to catch up.
This morning I was going to share "Hospital" by The Modern Lovers (featuring Jonathan Richman) but that will do for me to sign off tonight. You can hear the Velvet Underground influence in this excellent brooding song, and it's a cool one to sign off with tonight.
Today I had a little free time in the house to myself and decided to listemto some vinyl while catching up on some reading. Today it was still "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, while listening to "Velvet Underground and Nico" , "Strange Days" by The Doors and "Exile on Main Street" by the Rolling Stones.
Then I realised the "problem"
When walking and listening digitally I can listen to an album, even a double album end to end. When CD came out you could listto 78 minutes of music without interruption. When "Godbluff" by Van Der Graaf Generator was released the NME said that it needed to be heard as a continuous piece and vinyl didn't give you that. At the time you would have had to record it on to a side of a C90 Cassette, but CD changed all that.
And therein lies the problem, a side of a decent sounding vinyl album (33⅓ rpm) will clock in at ten to twenty minutes, so the music, while enjoyable runs out fairly quickly for me. I still like listening to vinyl but if I am reading then usually I up every fifteen to twenty misnutes to change the record.
That's all I wanted to say so I will leave you with "Sweet Black Angel" from "Exile On Mainstreet" which was the "B" Side of the lead single "Tumbling Dice".
Unexpectedly (for me) it's raining. I was out at dinner time and was wondering whether to buy an umbrella or to plan a route back to work as much undercover as I could find. I plumped for the latter as I didn't see any umbrellas on sale.
The rain seems to have stoped so there may be a chance of mowing the lawn tomorrow, as it does look quite green and lush now.
I've noticed that when I type I often capitalise my second letters, maybe doing it too fast and another thing is splitting the last "e" of a word and starting a word with that "e". It's always the letter "e". Then sometimes I notice an oddly used word, and I am sure it's caused by some rogue autocorrect as I would have no reason to make such ludicrous errors, but go back through my posts and you will find them.
Today I moved on from the Velvet Undergound demos to the actual first album, and love it, although what I assumed was a guitar riff on "Waiting For The Man is actually a piano riff. While the demos are interesting this is the real stuff.
So I will include (once more) "All Tomorrow's Parties" with that awesome drum and Nico's gothic magisterial vocal lines carrying all before it.
Today on my walk into work I decided to listen to the demos for the first Velvet Underground album from their "Peel Slowly And See" box set. I was surprised to see there are only six songs which I thought would be a waste of a CD , but the opener "Venus In Furs" last fifteen minutes with four takes. on acoustic guitar possibly sung by John Cale.
"Prominent Men" is almost Woody Guthrie-esque and "Heroin" is another acoustic demo reminded me how I'd introduce my new songs to bands I was playing with.
The problem with The Velvet Underground is that often some of their finshed product sounds like demo quality, but they are so vibrant that they are essential listening ranging from noise terrorism to gentle love songs to gothic menace. I still find the bass drum sound on "All Tomorrow's Parties" awesome and the menacing violin / cello backing Lou Reed's living dead vocals on "Venus in Furs" nerve tingling.
It's almost strage that the demos seem to be an almost country and western group, but they are completely transformed for the debut album release. I never saw "Waiting For The Man" as a country song.
While initially the album did not sell, it showed bands what could be done without going high tech. I've always gone for originality over technical ability and the ideal is both, but technical ability without originalty leaves me cold, Toto were prime examples of that scenario, which I think Boston and Rush were two examples of technique and originality.
The thing is the Velvet Underground showed YOU could do it. "Waiting For The Man" was one of the staples of The Bok's live set and we possibly sounded less together than the Velvet Underground but I love the main riff which was also appropriated for The Jam's "In The City" and The Sex Pistols' "Holidays In The Sun".
So that's what I've been listening to this morning and maybe will spin th evinyl tonight.
I've probably written about this before, but was talking with my son-in-law Mark , and daughters Juliet and Kirsty yesterday at an early Father's Day pizza meal at the excellent Dat Bar and Mark and Kirsty were talking about the clarity they got from listening to certain records (the "Blade Runner" soundtrack was an example), hearing things they hadn't noticed before. This is on probably a near perfect set up.
My own set up is a GPO turntable with a Samsung Soundbar with subwoofer which I also use for DVD Audio which also can sound incredible. A particular incredible recording is KirngCrimson's "In The Court of The Crimson King" that sounds incredidle on DVD Audio through a DTS system.
But back to the vinyl premise.andI have witten about it before including a post about the evolution of Music Media here and all of my vinyl posts are here. and there are a few.
When you play something on vinyl you don't tend to skip songs , especially on albums. This is why I preferred singles when I DJ'd as that meant you knew exactly where you were and didn't risk getting the end of an album track or missing the start of another one , although that did happen more than I'd like. This meant I did have a fair collection of rock and roll and also introduced people to a lot of "B" sides and it was remarkable how many pepleonly listened to the "A" sides often missing some absolute corkers, Bowie's "Queen Bitch" and "Holy Holy" spring to mine and The Rolling Stones "Let It Rock" and "Bitch" which backed "Brown Sugar".
These day I buy vinyl for the whole package and was surprised to see that Velvet Underground's eponymous debut had the "Peel Slowly and See" yellow banana skin that was missing from by CD box of the same name.
While enjoying the often excellent artwork and covers, I put an album on and it always plays through to the end. It is also great to enjoy the beautiful picture discs with the mandala effect on Curved Air's "Air Conditioning" or the hypnotic Vertigo Swirl which I am still amazed at. It's like you are about to fall in to a three dimensional time tunnel.
Sometimes these albums contain books and incredible fold outs which often don't translate well into CD (Although I do have some excellent CD packages that are beautifully put together).
However a vinyl album seems lest disposable that digital media and makes you feel you have something. The size also gives designers space to work, and the laser etchings and holograms are more amazing enhancements that couldn't be done on CD and I am still amazed that they have been done on vinyl.
For Father's Day I was given "Exile on Main Street" by The Stones and "Strange Days" by The Doors.
There will be no remote skipping when I listen to these albums and I will enjoy every minute. I thought I would treat you to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" to show you the Vertigo Swirl.
Yesterday was spent on Trans Pennine trains to an from Leeds and while they look nice, the seats are not the most comfortable, and though they run from Liverpool to Newcastle there are only three carraiges so they do get fairly packed , though I managed to get a seat there and back so that was a plus. Coming back from Leeds, which is an awful design of a station there was meant to be an Aberdeen train on platform 9D which never appeared, must have been a ghost train.
yesterday I didn't hit my rough daily walking target but I'm still on target to hit 340K for November, though looking out of the window cars are frozen up, so although it's not raining or snowing (yet) it may be a very cold walk in to work, though I may end up taking the bus, we shall see.
The other morning I was listing to the first Velvet Undergound album (well actually the first disc of the "Peel Slowly And See" box set , named after the peelable banana skin cover designed by Andy Warhol) . The album didn't sell that well but reputedly caused more bands to be formed than any other album. Of course now it sells by the barrowload and in varies from the siophisticated influence and drone of John Cale "Venus In Furs" , to the garage band / drug mentality of Lou Reed "Run Run Run"/ "Heroin" with the Germanic influence of Nico "Chelsea Girls" / "All Tomorrows Parties"with descents into pure noise "European Son" / "Black Angel's Death Song".
One thing really hit me is the monster drum sound on "All Tomorrows Parties" which combined with Nico's vocals and the manic piano is an awesome sounding song today. So to kick of Friday, that's the song I will leave to enjoy.
.. that's a Google Pixel phone, I have now got to rationalise what I download and put on the phone. No 50Gb of music like I could have on my Sony or Samsung because they have an SD card, no lot's of photos and videos, I need to utilise the space mor judiciously. I could pug a stick in but that would be sooo asking for trouble.
Every app uses up space, every picture , every instagram video, and all the music.
But say I limit the music to 10Gb, that's like fifteen to twenty albums, so isn't that enough, really?
I can only listen to one album at a time and twenty albums should see me through a week. I remember a friend telling how they had looked after a vicars house for four days , there was him , two girls, one record player and four albums including the first Velvet Underground album. If four albums was enough for three people for four days, then fifteen albums should be ok for me for five days.
So today's album was not the Velevt Underground , but David Bowie's "Low" , the first of the Berlin trilogy. When it came out I remember thinking that the melody of the opening song "Speed of Life" was very similar to Deep Purple's "Woman From Tokyo" and I still think that today. For some reason I thought that side one only had five tracks ( along with side two's four , the psychedelic Krautrock influence coming to the fore there), and tehre actually five songs bookended by two instrumentals. Whether it's me or my age , Bowie's music is timeless and sounds as fresh now as when it first came out.
Some of side two was appropriated for Philip Glass for his "Low Symphony", very atmospheric feating vocals in a non existent languaguage though "Weeping Wall" borrows the melody from "Scarborough Fair". Incidentally Philip Glass scored the film "Candyman" based on a Clive Barker short story and the music enhances an excellent nighties horror film.
I'll leave you with a live take on the opener from "Low" in 1978 , enjoy your Sunday night.
Today is the first day back at work after the Christmas break and my mind is very confused. You are suddenly cast from a world in which you call the shots back into the world where the employer and money men call the shots. I wanted to lie in bed, I wasn't sure what day it was , or what time it was or what needed to be done. There's still a sinkful of washing up , but that can wait until I get home.
I think really what I need to do is to get myself out more when out of work, but it is so convenient to watch my recorded films at home where it's nice and warm , and I can go to bed when I want, only to hit the rude awakening of another day at work.
It's not that I hate work, I just hate that it stops me from doing what I want. If I could socialise and do things during the day the rest at night, I would totally love that, but just at the moment work provides me with the ability to do what I want at weekends and at night.
I think lots of people will feel the same, but I am going to be positive about this. It is wet outside and it's a new day, a new month and a new year, with new things to do, new opportunities to take and new avenues to explore.
Anyway what should we play to kickstart the new work year? "What Goes On" by The Velvet Underground , that's what we'll play , five minutes of total brilliance that anyone can play, and when we ask "What Goes On?" , we go on , the greater things.
When I was at primary school my headmistress Mrs Walsh told us that a genius who could see and explain things very simply. She gave the example of a guy who went to a match company and said he could save them a great deal of money for actually stopping doing something.
In those days match boxes were sandpapered on two sides. He posited that people always checked for where they were goig to strike the match , so the boxes only needed one strip of sand
paper instead of two. At a stroke halving the company's sandpaper bill. It does sound obvious, but until he came along no one had thought about.
I am currently reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time" , and there is no down in my mind that the guy is probably in the genius category. The book is less than two hundred pages, but is packed with content and not a word is wasted , which means it is slow going , but his style of writing comes across with a "Go On, You CAN Get This!" message.
That's a long probably unconnected intro to what this post is actually about . I may have blogged about this or touched on this before but it is really about musical genius. If someone were to ask for an example , Jimi Hendrix , Brian Wilson , Lennon and McCartney are probably goig to come over in responses and there's no doubt that these were musical Genii . I would add Joni Mitchell , PJ Harvey , Kate Bush and Sandy Denny to that list as well , but it's annoying that music is seen as a boy thing. Girls are good too.
The problem is that most of the music that these artists produced was complex, and taken to extremes by bands like King Crimson , Emerson Lake & Palmer and Yes. One of the main ironies was that of Yes's initially simplest constructs "And You And I" is a lovely melody set to basically three acoustic chords , but by the time it's finihed it hits ten minutes with lots of additional bombast. I still love it though , and it was released , uncut as a seven inch single.
Ok we're here , real genius is to do something musically so simple that anyone can do it. Songs with three chords or less. The Velvet Underground's first album didn't initially sell many copies but everyone who bought it formed a band. The descening G riff from "I'm Waiting For The Man" can be heard in "White Riot " by the clash, "In The City" by The Jam and "Holidays In The Sun" by The Sex Pistols. The inspired Jonathan Richman , who's "Roadrunner" is only two chords "D" and "A" which any one can learn on a guitar in minutes. Van Morrison's Gloria and The Who's "I Can't Explain" are more examples of easy to play songs , along with The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" a staple of any garage band's repertoire , and The Kinks "You Really Got Me" and "All Day, and All Of The Night" also fall into this area.
Another example of genius is the one note guitar solo. If you can make one note sound good you are a true genius. To this day I am only aware of two examples of this "I'm A Hog For You Baby" by The Coasters and "Tommy Gun" by The Clash. To do that , is inspired genius.
So I've bookended this post with those two songs , sitting an Amazon MP3 selection in the middle for you to sample. Love to hear your thoughts on this , and sorry this one has gone on a bit
The intention was to really not do much this weekend , but I've ended up to doing work , shopping, making beds , and am going to write another two posts on my music blog here due to the fact that I've been to two excellent gigs this week, one for the opening of The Old Fox in Felling with Rigid Digits and the other for a Nick Cave tribute gig and the Tyneside Bar and cafe featuring my friends Jon Lee, Sheena Revolta and Bethany Elen Coyle, though obviously I don't need to say anything about them here otherwise I'd be repeating myself, although repeating yourself is a good way of filling up the page , that's if you you feel you have to fill up the page, which I don't as I'm not being paid for this, just doing it ofr myself and maybe for. your entertainment.
It's funny how when you maybe don't want to do much, you sometimes find lots of things to do, like I set up a Facebook Your One Song page to see what peoples' favourite song will be if they only had a choice of one! I would hate to only be able to listen to a single song but, the thought of minimalising the Desert Island Discs concept appealed to me. It's like while I have the utmost respect for guitarists who can play complex tunes in complex times with complex solos, I have have a great deal of respect for the one note guitar solos and single (ok maybe two or three) chord songs because that enables ANYBODY to get up and play a song.
Examples are "I'm A Hog For You Baby" by The Coasters, "Tommy Gun" and "White Riot" by The Clash , "Roadrunner" by Jonathan Richman and "Gloria" by Them - there's an instant set list for any band.
Anyway the music I've choset for this post post is "What Goes On" by The Velvet Underground, which The Bok covered for their first gig in the seventies, the band formed on Wednesday, first gig on the Saturday and we'd written half a dozen songs by then!
Anyway I've got a lot of stuff done so far, two more blog posts to go and then I may sit down and watch some catch up TV. Hope you are having a brilliant weekend .
Apparently we are due an Arctic Storm , a good friend tells me, and that's confirmed by the cold wind, rain and weather forecast, but it is December 22nd. Today went into town and it was quiet. Went to The Stand in Newcastle for dinner (at 2pm - that's dinner time!), and bought a book of short seasonal stories called Twas the Night Before, Before Christmas' in aid of NECA (North East Council on Addictions) , there's more details here. I immediately saw there was a story by mate John Scott so read that with more than one guffaw as I ate my tempura coley.
I'd been considering the Lou Reed song for my December list for a few days, but thought it would be a bit depressing, but it is a very listenable anti war song , and a good way to remember the great curmudgeon. A very intelligent man who wrote songs that everyone can play, that is a stroke of pure genius and what made the Velvet Underground truly great. If you you pick up a guitar you can play a Lou Reed song and sound good and cool. I will now have to do that for you won't I?
Anyway enjoy your day, night , and I may as well include a bit of John Scott at the bottom for you to enjoy too.
Today its the second of June and was thinking of something to do with the day for the June's Tunes task , and my first thought was Sunday Morning by The Velvet Underground , well actually it wasn't , it was U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday , both fine songs but I am trying to keep off the obvious track , and for some reason Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" came to mind.
The reason for it is the phrase "Two Too Know" , which actually found its way into the Oxford Book of Fine Verse , despite the song being controversial as it was about a man who's "strange hobby " was stealing ladies underwear from washing lines at night for his own nefarious purposes. The wiki link is here.
Anyway in the rest of the news , the weather is good , and I way have a wander along to day two of the Green Festival as the weather is gorgeous again. Just realized over the last two weeks the weather has been gorgeous over the weekends and rubbish during the week , just what you want for any normal person.
In 1976 Andy Marshall had a gig to fulfil with his band Marshall Law. Unfortunately the band left before the gig took place so after a a phone call or two The Bok (singular of Box) was formed . Simon Clinic (aka Tony Eyre) original vocalist left before the first rehearsal, but in true punk fashion we wrote songs for the gig as well as a few covers to spread out the set. All gigs were in and around Preston in carious clubs , pubs and halls. The band consisted:
Andy Marshall - Guitar - Vox - Songs
Mike Singleton - Guitar - Vox - Songs
The Hippy Mark Lester - Bass
any drummer we could find but mainly Dave Topping
Songs were chosen for lack of chords and ease of playing and obvious influences were Velvet Underground , The Damned , Jonathan Richman. Covers we did included:
Waiting For The Man
Psycho Killer
Rue Courier (Roadrunner - in French)
Shot By Both Sides
The Passenger
Gloria
Egyptian Reggae
Songs titles I remember apart for the demo list were:
Sick of Beer
Tennis
Rant and Rave
Accident
Magic Eye
We had a gig in the basement of a pub in Preston. I had been using Ollie Halsall's trick of practising with heavy guage strings and playing with light gauge strings. This meant you could play very bendy sols and chords , but also in the hot sweaty confines of the pub basement the guitar needed continuous retuning as I played . Guy came up to me at the end and send he loved my inplay tuning , didnt have the heart to tell him it wasnt planned. The DJ didnt like us and when we launched into Magazine's "Shot By Both Sides" he started playing the record as loud as he could, The crowd took umbrage and trashed his decks - nice show of appreciation! Anyway .......
........Basically the idea was to choose some songs record them and despatch to people who mattered in music. John Peel tahanked us but said we were too primitive! Stiff Records apologised that they sent us a pre printed rejection letter , but Rabid Records of Manchester wanted to record us and put out a double "A" side single of "Mystery Band" / "Happy Birthday" , with an accompanying video involving pies , bikes and aqualungs!! . We went to Rabid's headquarters in Manchester but everyone had buggered ogff to the CBS launch of John Cooper-Clarke's Disguise In Love. Graham Fellows aka Jilted John aka John Shuttleworth dropped for rehearsals for the Jilted John album . He reckoned we looked like students. Also Martin Hannett did a lot of work with Rabid artists!!
An unexpected side effect was that a lot of girls stopped talking to me because they thought we were going to be on Top of the Pops!! Never could work that one out , the only time being in a band had an adverse social effect!!
After cups of tea and making plans the guy asked us what studio we had used . Studio? We hadn't a clue but the reason for John Peel's dismissal may have become apparent. Anyway Rabid records went bust fairly quickly after that and the band sort of didnt go any further though things could have been different.....
