At least at the beginning, the Flying Lizards were not so much a band as an avant-garde experiment in Pop Music conducted by musical and visual artist David Cunningham and a rotating handful of experimental musicians.
The Flying Lizards landed in the UK music charts in 1979 and were seen on TOTP performing a rather bizarre rendition of The Beatles song “Money”.
They’d already had their debut single, another cover version, that of the Cochran classic “Summertime Blues”.
As a tween buying these singles and appreciating the uniformity of those yellow and blue sleeves, my interest waned after the single “TV”.
So, forty years on, what has reignited my fascination and admiration for a band who, at the time, no-one could take seriously?
This for starters.
The Secret Dub Life Of The Flying Lizards was a surprise and a pleasant one at that and would have fitted in well anyway at a time when I was listening to the likes of Augustus Pablo, The Scientist and King Tubby.
It could be considered a hidden gem but at least it inspired this post and caused me to dig through their album catalogue to find out just what else had been going on. Here’s a mini-bio of the band, taken from the AllMusic archives.
BIOGRAPHY
The band were the brainchild of David Cunningham, a well-respected avant-garde composer, producer, and visual artist, and it became one of the first salvos in a long and fascinating career. Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954, and once told a reporter he first took up music in school as a way of avoiding playing rugby with his schoolmates.
Cunningham later developed a keen interest in both music and visual art, and he left Ireland when he was accepted at the Maidstone College of Art in Canterbury, Kent, where he studied film and video installation. While in school, Cunningham began doing live sound for rock bands playing on campus, which led to an interest in recording and music production.
In 1975, Cunningham self-released an album of minimalist music, Grey Scale and using borrowed gear he recorded a deliberately harsh and minimal version of the old Eddie Cochran hit “Summertime Blues,” with art school chum Deborah Evans contributing flat, tuneless vocals. Cunningham claims the low-tech single cost just 20 pounds to make, and after it was turned down by a number of labels, Virgin Records picked it up for release in 1978, under the assumption that it was inexpensive enough to recoup its costs quickly.
Released under the name the Flying Lizards, “Summertime Blues” attracted enough press attention to sell a few thousand copies, putting the project solidly in the black, and Cunningham decided to take another stab at reconfigured pop.
With its clanking prepared piano, crashing percussion sounds (a combination of tambourine and snare drum), and another monotonic vocal by Evans, “Money” was considerably more manic than “Summertime Blues,” through the recording budget was similarly cheap, and the single became an unexpected chart hit both in Europe and the United States.
Cunningham’s deal with Virgin was for only two singles, but with “Money” climbing the charts, they signed him to a new contract, and the Flying Lizards’ first album soon followed, which featured dub-style audio experiments with improvisational musicians Steve Beresford and David Toop bent interpretations of pop music constructs along with the two freak hit singles.
The album sold just well enough to justify Virgin financing another Flying LizardsLP, but 1981’s Fourth Wall put its focus on the eclectic experimentalism of Cunningham’s music, and despite the presence of another bent cover of a pop classic (in this case Curtis Mayfield’s “Move on Up”) and contributions from Robert Fripp, Patti Palladin and Michael Nyman the album was a commercial disappointment though it received strong reviews. By this time, Cunningham was devoting much of his time to producing other artists (including This Heat and Wayne County and after releasing 1984’s Top Ten which combined Cunningham’s eccentric take on pop with sleek electronic textures and the vocals of Sally Peterson — Cunningham retired the Flying Lizards.
I think the Lizards should be fondly remembered as welcome contributors to the music scene at the fag end of a decade that, arguably. was the best for diversity apropos music and fashion. They seemed to disappear after that batch of yellow and blue sleeved singles and had I not researched the band now, I wouldn’t have got to hear all of their extraordinary cover versions. This one I like most of all and it seems fitting to end this article on. I wondered what Tom Jones made of it… what’s new, pussycat?
The first in a series of ten mixes documenting the dance scene be it happy hardcore, techno, trance, acid house… classics and lesser-knowns fused together in a melee of mayhem.
It’s nineties nostalgia at its finest. Loving the Cartouche – been a while since I heard that tune. Here’s the playlist. Something is about to happen – something wonderful.
1. FORCE LEGATO – System
2. ANALOGUE DYNAMIX – A-syd Again
3. CAPRICORN – 20Hz
4. UNO DELIC – Farenheit
5. JONNY L – The Ansafone
6. KICKS LIKE A MULE – The Bouncer (Housequake Mix)
7. 4 FOR MONEY – A Moment In Time (Rising High Dub Mix)
8. QUAZAR – Midsummer Night’s Dream
9. THE SHAMEN – Possible Worlds
10. COMA CLUB – Untitled (B1)
11. CARTOUCHE – Feel The Groove (Underground Remix)
12. CODE INDSUTRY – Fury
13. JENS LISSAT – The Future
14. FORMIC ACID – Trance Dreams
15. QUADROPHONIA – Quadrophonia
16. THE HYPNOTIST – Pioneers Of The Warped Groove
17. URBAN HYPE – A Trip To Trumpton
18. THE SYSTEM – You’re In My System
19. SPOOKY – Schmoo (Stripped Down Dub Mix)
20. THE ARC – Something Wonderful
With Th’ Faith Healers remaining one of my finest loves and having recently been reunited with a long-lost Mouse On Mars number, I wanted to explore this Too Pure outfit in closer detail.
I was aware that other stalwarts, PJ Harvey and Mclusky were on there but who else? That Mouse On Mars track was on this compo which I’ve just ordered from Discogs.
The compilation appears to be a one-off too though I am grateful for it having this version of Don’t Jones Me that I much prefer to the one on Lido (Th’ Faith Healers).
Next is from an article on LOUD AND QUIET. Words by Dominic Haley
10 years, 120 releases and countless DIY bands –
the story of Too Pure Singles Club
From the get-go, Too Pure had always been a launchpad for new sounds, so seeing it consigned to the history books was a real blow to fans of DIY music.
Founded by Richard Roberts and Paul Cox as a more traditional label in 1990, the label had a knack for spotting future movers and shakers, famously teaming up with 4AD to release PJ Harvey’s debut album ‘Dry’ in 1992.
In the late ‘90s and early 2000s Too Pure built on this success, releasing albums from cult indie artists such as Mclusky and Electrelane. However, this run of success came to an end in 2008 when Beggars decided to merge the label with their sister imprint 4AD, but luckily it was decided that the popular singles club would continue as a feeder for the group’s bigger labels.
Since then, the label’s modus operandi has been to champion new, cutting-edge music – and they’ve been pretty good at it over the years. Specialising in limited run vinyl singles, they’ve kicked off some of the best-known bands in indie, punk and experimental music.
They were the first label to release music from the likes of Bear Hands, The Crookes, Jeff The Brotherhood, Esben & The Witch and Pulled Apart by Horses, who have all gone on to great things after Too Pure introduced them to the world.
“I used to work in the warehouse at Beggars, which was awesome,” says Riddlesworth explaining his part in the story. “You had every release down there. It was like a cross between Willy Wonka and Fraggle Rock. Anyway, I started helping Jason White (Beggars’ resident press manager) who ran Too Pure at the time with the mail-outs, just because, I really liked helping out. He was like – ‘I’m too busy, so if you want to do this and look after this label, then just run with it?’ I was more than happy to do that.”
Being a singles club rather than a traditional record label allowed Too Pure to do things that other labels couldn’t. Rather than having to trek down to your local store, the idea was to send the music directly to people’s homes so for just fifty quid a year (sixty-five, if you were outside the UK). Subscribers received a monthly, limited, hand-numbered 7” single on coloured heavy weight vinyl. Whatever didn’t make its way out via the mailing list was then sent to the shops.
That meant quality was always at the top of the list of priorities for Too Pure. As well as releasing good music, the whole idea was to put out collector’s items. “We were always a 7” label – that was the deal. All the singles were mastered at Abbey Road as well, which was great for all the new bands, as it was pretty much the first single for most of these artists.” It was a bold (and pricey) commitment. “The cost of 7″s is one of the reasons we’ve had to stop. It’s become way too expensive now. This is so boring, but if you think a £4.50 dealer for two tracks would cost you like £7 in the shops now. So, that’s £7 for two songs when you can get an album in the shops for like £15.”
To be a Too Pure subscriber was an unpredictable journey – each month the label’s releases could be wildly different from one another. One month you might get a gentle freak folk track and the next month you could be listening to some caustic hardcore. “I just got to do what I wanted. The whole attitude was ‘keep your head down and put out what you like’,” says Riddlesworth. “I’ve been dead lucky there. No one ever said, ‘you need to put this out, or feature this’. I mean if they had told me that kind of stuff it would have been brilliant. I’d just been like ‘fuck it – I’ll put that out.’”
This led to an interesting relationship between Too Pure and its followers. Talking to Paul, you can feel the genuine affection for the people who rode the ride with them. “It was an eclectic mix, so you had to be fucking nuts to like everything,” he laughs. “We had like stuff by Grimm Brides, who are great, but admittedly they are like noise, which isn’t really to everyone’s taste. But, you know what, every year I’d do a little survey to find out what people liked best, and you know what, on the whole people liked a little bit of everything. It’s been really cool.”
Th’ Faith Healers
Th’ Faith Healers are:
Roxanne Stephen, vocals
Tom Cullinan, guitar/vocals
Ben Hopkin, bass
Joe Dilworth, drums
Absolutely devastating. I remember the first time I ever heard th’ (no ‘e’ please) Faith Healers. I was driving to my stupid job (in a candy store, no joke) and found myself stuck in a mammoth bumper-to-bumper jam on the highway. Crackle, crackle… something new floated over the airwaves… a sultry, growly female vocal snaking around in a thumpa-thumpa beat… slinky, cool… suddenly the whole thing turned savage. The singer hissed through her teeth, the guitars (sounded like 50 of ’em) stuttered and spat, and the whole damn thing went into hyperdrive. The storm settled into a heavy groove, both hypnotic and chaotic at once, the song corkscrewed and churned and ended only when it thudded into the ground with a crash. Work (and the rest of the day), needless to say, paled in comparison to this aural onslaught. Utterly perfect… I was in love.
Rewind to 1990: Paul Cox and Richard Roberts are hosting shows at the Sausage Machine Club, in the basement of the White Horse in Hampstead. The two decide to start up a record label to showcase the bands emerging from this scene, Too Pure. Their first signings? Th’ Faith Healers, who else?
Tom Cullinan played the guitar, Ben Hopkin played the bass, Joe Dilworth pounded the drums and former Falcon barperson Roxanne Stephen did the vox-thing. Their first appearance came on the first-ever Too Pure release, a live compilation called Now That’s Disgusting Music, all comprised of bands that had played at the Sausage Machine. It was a tune called ‘Jesus Freak’, and it, basically, came snarling out of your speakers, grabbed you by the throat and demanded that you love it. You were left with no choice but to comply.
The first Healers 12″ appeared in mid-1990, and contained the tracks ‘Pop Song‘, ‘Delores’ and ‘Slag’. The single appeared following a tour supporting Lush, and was followed with an alcohol-drenched headlining gig in November at the LSE.
In February ’91, the band released the Picture of Health EP. The lead-off cut, ‘Gorgeous Blue Flower’ quickly became a staple of their live set. Reviews were unanimous with praise, live shows rousing successes, so, naturally the band… took a six-month vacation! Th’ Healers re-emerged in the autumn with the In Love EP, featuring a Healers classic, ‘Reptile Smile’ and two other cuts. It galloped to the upper reaches of the indie chart and the band found themselves playing a Christmas party at the Camden Palace.
Meanwhile, Too Pure was rapidly becoming the most talked-about indie label in Europe. Th’ Healers debut LP, Lido, finally appeared in 1992, and featured eight tracks (seven originals and one cover, a mesmerizing take on Can’s ‘Mother Sky’). From the full-throttle mayhem of the amazing ‘Hippy Hole’ to the gentle acoustics (spiked with acid-soaked peppermints, no doubt) of ‘It’s Easy Being You’, Lido served as a perfect souvenir of a brilliant band.
Live shows from the Lido era seem to have taken on legendary status. In reference to Cullinan’s guitar use (abuse), Melody Maker said: “If you give this man a coloring book, he would not draw inside the lines … [Cullinan] squeezes almost every musical idea of the last decade through a mincing chukka beat, and don’t we love it … th’ Faith Healers give me butterflies of giant wingspan in the stomach”.
Th’ Healers’ follow-up to Lido, Imaginary Friend, was finally released in late ’93 to a rabidly-awaiting public. If anyone was expecting another handful of crash ‘n’ burn ravers, they were in for quite a surprise…
“Imaginary Friend is the sound of a group that have sat back, reassessed their strengths and decided on a change of tack,” remarked Paint It Red magazine. “Th’ Faith Healers have looked inwards and come up with a universal cry of despair.”
The album featured only seven tracks, the last of which was a numbing 20-minute dirge, ‘Everything, All at Once Forever’. Amongst the darker hues, however, lie hidden some sparkling pop gems. ‘Kevin’, ‘The People’, and especially ‘Heart Fog’ all eschewed the trademark Healers feedback fuzzbombs for a newfound sense of restraint and control. “Colossal tension … superb stuff,” praised Select.
But it wasn’t to last… in the spring of ’94, th’ Healers imploded. Shortly after returning from a string of US shows (where they supported the Breeders and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), the band decided that they’d done all they could do. Rather than limp along halfheartedly, th’ Healers opted to call it quits.
A compilation of early 12″ singles, L’, which had been released in the UK in ’92, was finally made available to US audiences via Too Pure/American Recordings in 1995. Tom now plays guitar in his new band, Quickspace Supersport, and Roxanne has resumed her studies.
In early 2006, th’ Healers regrouped after the US label Ba Da Bing! released their Peel Sessions on CD. Although there are no immediate plans to record new material, the band have announced a brief tour in March and April 2006.
Th’ Faith Healers began life as a punk cover band in which Ben played drums and Tom on guitar. Settling on The Faith Healers as a suitable moniker, they were soon making drunken fools of themselves at every available opportunity. Joe saw them and something at the core of their shambolic mess appealed — so when a vacancy arose, he jumped at the chance to join. Ben and Tom remember Joe’s joining as the point at which they started to become serious about their music, despite the initial attraction being the band’s relaxed attitude.
Three gigs later, desperate to play somewhere other than the Dublin Castle public house, the threesome recruited expatriate Scot and sometime Falcon barperson Roxanne, principally because the promoter at The Falcon had promised them a gig just so he could see her sing. They dropped the ‘e’. Joe later claimed it had been stolen by Thee Hypnotics, and a legend was born.
Amongst the crowd at these primitive gigs were Richard Roberts and Paul Cox, the most implausible record company executives imaginable, who had decided to set up their own label in order to ‘go public’ with some of the emergent talent they’d been putting on stage at their Sausage Machine Club in Hampstead’s White Horse basement. Too Pure Records’ maiden release was a compilation, Now That’s Disgusting Music, that put new bands alongside the more established likes of Mega City Four and Silverfish. Th’ Faith Healers contributed ‘Jesus Freak’, and soon afterwards accepted the invitation to become Too Pure’s first signing.
In mid-1990, Th’ Healers recorded their first 12″, ‘Pop Song‘, ‘Delores’ and ‘Slag’, which was released following a nationwide tour supporting Lush. Suddenly, alongside Silverfish, Th’ Faith Healers were touted by the press as prime movers in the Camden Scene: a loose aggregation of North London-based grunge/noise merchants whose followers indulged in a dance known as The Lurch and frequented gigs at The White Horse, The Falcon and The Bull & Gate. The Lurch (as both the scene and everyone involved in it became collectively known) convened for its Biggest Night Out in November at the L.S.E., where Th’ Healers played a headline gig of such alcohol-fuelled proportions that Tom doesn’t remember it happening at all.
February ’91 brought forth the Picture of Health EP, featuring the lead track, ‘Gorgeous Blue Flower In My Garden’, which the band regard as their most accessible moment. The EP gained them even more glowing press, and their first headline tour was pretty successful until Birmingham, where Ben’s bass amp gave up the ghost and a bemused audience were treated to a bass-less 35-minute version of ‘Slag’.
Just as the fame and fortune beckoned, Th’ absurdly perverse Healers decided to take a six month holiday, finally returning to the studio in the autumn. The resulting In Love EP was fraught by technical problems and is seen as an underachievement by the band. Nevertheless, ‘Reptile Smile’ and company followed the first two twelves into the upper regions of the indie chart and completed a trilogy of bizarre sleeve designs that gave a whole new meaning to the word ‘tasteless’.
After a Christmas party at the Camden Palace where even the Christmas tree was too pissed to stand up, Th’ FaithHealers set about recording their debut LP Lido whilst Too Pure became the most talked about independent record label in Europe. Th’ Healers singles were compiled on a CD, L’, for overseas consumption, and the band’s first John Peel session was released by Strange Fruit Records on an LP of sessions by Too Pure artists.
In another stroll down Memory Lane, perhaps better named as Mammory Lane on this occasion, it’s a fond and retrospective nod to those old slapstick softcore movies that were on a par in the seventies with the Carry On films, though the Confessions quadcore had more revelations, full nudity for one thing (in the case of the ladies) but the success of these productions was built on that same saucy seaside, titter titter, “No sex please, we’re British!” vogue and of course a natural wide-eyed curiosity for these ‘all rather adult’ flicks.
A few years back I managed to download all four of them for free and here I’ve produced a thirty minute montage of those softcore scenes, the naughty bits, the funniest bits – knickers and knockers galore, which I hope will please the viewer.
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Across the four movies the staple actors and actresses were Anthony Booth, Bill Maynard, Peter Cleall, Windsor Davies and Doris Hare, in fact Confessions From A Holiday Camp is rather like a remake of Holiday On The Buses.
I’ve not watched all of these films in entirety though Ive probably seen enough. Just surprised I’ve never come across Sally Thomsett or Paula Wilcox – if they weren’t in these movies then maybe they were busy doing other things.
Words now from Nigel Burton at the Northern Echo on Robin Askwith and there are quite a few of them so grab a cuppa!
Forty years ago Robin Askwith’s career had become a pretty good metaphor for the entire British film industry taking in, as it did, horror, sex and television sit-com spin-offs. Confessions of a Window Cleaner was the most successful film in UK cinemas in 1974 – and the critics hated it. Askwith, who took the job to keep paying the bills, came to be defined by the Confessions series. He appeared in four – although it seems like more due to the number of cheap, er, knock-offs with similar names – and spent the next decade trying to live them down.
Forty years later the Confessions series, and a handful other sexploitation films, have undergone a critical reappraisal. The same newspapers whose contemptuous critics once dismissed them as tawdry tat, now hail them as important ‘social documents’ of public tastes in the 1970s.
Kicking back with a coffee, Askwith seems to have had the last laugh: “The critics hated them, but we were packing the audiences in at a time when nothing else did. People were queuing round the block to get into the Sheppard’s Bush Odeon.”
Askwith started out with high hopes. After being expelled from school for running down his headmaster with a motorcycle, a chance meeting with film director Lindsay Anderson led to a role in ‘If’, a critically acclaimed satire of public schools.
Acting seemed like the perfect career choice: “I was earning 49 quid a week, driving a Triumph Herald and picking up the girls. There was no way I was going back to learning about Karl Marx.”
His timing was lousy. After a productive period when American studios poured cash into UK pictures, the British film industry was about to enter a dark period. Struggling with their own financial problems, Hollywood producers scaled back their investment and, almost overnight, money for new films dried up.
Askwith segued from critically acclaimed dramas like ‘If’ into TV sit-coms such as The Fenn Street Gang, Bless This House and Please Sir!, and indie horror hits Tower of Evil, The Flesh and Blood Show and the bonkers hit Horror Hospital (now a cult classic). “I had bills to pay,” he says matter-of-factly, “and the films made lots of money. That was the British film industry back then.”
Ironically, the Confessions films were actually made with American money (from Columbia) which gave them bigger budgets – and better casts – than the thematically similar Adventures rip-offs made by Stanley Long.Askwith says he originally turned the role down (“I read the script and couldn’t understand it. I thought ‘What’s all this about bubbles coming out of my arse’?
It sounded ridiculous.”) but took the role when offered a multi-picture deal. In fact, he signed up for six Confessions films (based on the books written under a pseudonym by Christopher Wood) – a remarkable deal for a young actor at the time – and when Confessions of a Window Cleaner succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations that looked like a canny move. Today, the success on that scale would set an actor up for life but in 1974 he says: “I had fame – but no fortune. My 20ft high face was on the side of buses, but I was still getting on the same buses.”
Even by 1974 standards the Confessions were pretty tame stuff. They had more in common with saucy seaside postcards than the hardcore bump ‘n grind stuff being filmed in Europe and America. The ‘dirty raincoat’ brigade were disappointed by the sex scenes which were played for laughs and filmed in the best possible taste.
Askwith says: “I’d done conventional sex scenes before in films like Tower of Evil but the Confessions movies were nothing like them. My character usually ended up buried under bubbles, covered in paint or hiding under the bed.” That didn’t prevent Window Cleaner being banned in Colombia and Spain, and Pop Performer in South Africa, however.
The series ran out of steam after four movies – Columbia’s financial troubles meant it couldn’t afford the fifth, Confessions in a Haunted House – but Askwith says he found it hard to get work afterwards. “I lost a role in a TV sit-com because I’d done X-rated films, so I went on a world tour called Further Confessions of a Window Cleaner that was very successful.”
Askwith went on to star in the TV sitcom Benidorm later on. I never had a window cleaning job, or was a pop star, or even a driving instructor so clearly missed out on a lot of bonking. Fair to say that the Confessions movies were harmless fun and British sauciness at its best – or worst, depending on your palette,
So my cat who is some kind of psychotic serial killer chased a small Chaffinch into the lounge last Friday.
At first I thought the bird noises were her playing with one of the toy birds I had bought for Duchess.
VILLAIN OF THE PEACE
When I realised what it was she was tormenting, it got itself behind all the TV and stuff so I had to use a measuring jug to get it in there and to examine it.
The way its eyes looked up at me told me that it knew, if this makes any sense at all, that I was doing my best to help it. That it knew it was in safe hands.
My immediate neighbour Laura took it to keep an eye on it in her garden because she wasn’t sure it was able to fly.
At one point she told me it had gone but then it was back and wasn’t moving. Maybe the rains last night were the killing blow and this morning she had it in her hand, telling me that it had just passed on.
It upset me immensely. I couldn’t begin to tell you how much I love and care for animals but another neighbour Tim told me he saw Duchess on that day carrying the bird looking as pleased as punch.
It’s in their nature, I understand that but I don’t like the idea of death and seeing it close at hand was horrible. The hardest thing I’ve had to do today is bury this poor creature.
No way could I just put it in the trash. I used this vape box as a makeshift coffin, put kitchen towel in top and bottom for dignity.
Then Tim offered it to bury it and used some twine for the cross you see.
And then with the windows open I thought of a funeral song. I’d play my favourite right now, Transatlanticism (Death Cab For Cutie) but as beautiful as that is, it’s too maudlin in melody.
Then it hit me, Eels! I Like Birds is just perfect, buoyant and easy on the ear.
Tim was outside and laughed when he heard it start up, realising the poignancy. Trust you to think of that, he said.
Goonight little angel. I am so sorry for what my cat did and for your premature end.
Rest in please and I’ll tweet this to let the bird world know about you. ❤️
I grew up with LBC. I can go back a far as the days of Monty Modlyn! I never really liked listening to music at night. So spoken word in the form of phone-in shows were for me, far more entertaining. When talkRADIO and the subsequent talkSPORT came into being, I discovered a new world of amusing presenters. Some were known as shock jocks; Brian Hayes for example on R2 is sorely missed because we really don’t have anyone of their like as a replacement.
talkRADIO had the likes of Jon Gaunt and James Whale for the controversy club while I preferred the more MOR Ian Collins; he’s to be found I think, but don’t quote me on it, at Radio London or 5Live these days.
Brian Hayes could be as obnoxious as he was refreshing, depending on your preferences in audio entertainment. I found this online and post it here in tribute although I;m fairly sure, given my appalling maths, that he is still with us at the age of 83.
Among the sadly departed of course is Mike Dickin. His untimely death was a huge loss to broadcasting, at least, so say I. When he came along on talkRADIO with his gruff voice and the ongoing debate and conjecture that he had often had a few before taking to the airwaves, the irony was that he often told callers to “take more water with it”.
As a logophile and defender of the English language, I was pleased at Dickins’ ban of the word “basically” or the term “at the end of the day”/ Callers who transgressed in this way more often than not had their call curtailed.
Stiff Little Fingers said that you can’t say crap on the radio – but Dickin did, as you will, hear now in this relatively short montage I’ve put together using some of the very few clips that are available on Youtube.
One clip that used to be there but has sadly been deleted was of a time when Mike recounted a time when he’d been on a train and had to suffer (and we’ve all been there) a person with one of these smartphones (at the time not so prevalent as they are today), where this chap was constantly calling on his phone: “this is (so and so) – could you put me through to” repeatedly, a real pain to listen to for other passengers.
Anyway, the chap got up at one point to use the loo, leaving his phone at the table whereby some brave soul got up… “I kid you not” (said Mike), took the phone, slid open a window and calmly let go of the wretched thing.
So what of today’s presenters by comparison? I’m drawing a contrast here between morning and evening listening on LBC. In the small hours there exists (and he will insist on this being true) a phenomenon by the name of Steve Allen.
Now there are times when I despair and there are times when he makes me laugh. It would be so easy to write disparagingly about Steve who probably is the queen (and I use the term loosely of course) of morning airtime.
His photo (they all seem to have him looking forty-something although he insists that he is of an elderly persuasion) doesn’t add up when while listening he sounds so much younger.
You can call him the biggest egotist, the campest DJ.. he really couldn’t care less!
He has a set-list for topics of conversation. I was jotting down a top ten and got as far as seven but ostensibly he will bang on mostly about the spike. The spike is when he comes on air and the listening figures for LBC rise from three to five. He will insist that actually this is four figures territory.
Type 2 diabetes which he has; hard to criticise on a health condition but boy does he mention it a lot!
Costco, that’s another one, Twickenham and surrounding areas of course, of which let’s see him in the raw, well not literally of course) in this video clip that’s almost a decade old now.
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Pants. Can’t forget pants. All well and good that Steve prefers M&S and whether it’s Y-fronts or shorts is not the issue, it’s the amount of airtime he spends talking about his undies or pants in general which some may find odd.
But let’s have it right, Steve Allen is important for his vernal assassination of…. Z-listers!
In the wee small hours, major, sorry, minor celebs such as Peter Andre and Gemma Collins are regularly put down, it’s really great to hear and often has me in stitches.
As I say, he is Marmite. Love him or hate him, he does what he does and will hopefully be doing it for years to come yet. Here in full is his, at the time of this going to press, latest catch up.
And on LBC in the late evenings (but only on Fridays and Saturdays) you can find this guy. I only discovered the show recently and became an instant fan.
Nick Abbot muses on the current topics in his own style with hilarious in-house sound effects and his imitations of most people and things in general are fantastic, none better than his verbal take on “Donny” aka Donald Trump and “fake news”.
Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself. Here’s last Friday’s show in full which includes regular caller Ranjit from Birmingham.
So there it is, Quality broadcasting does still exist. You may have to search long and hard to find it, given the plethora of choice that there is via DAB radio, podcasts and streaming.
I just wish that there were more clips available of the old school guys though; they really were something else.
The relationship between music and football has evolved over the years, but it’s fair to say the twin pursuits have always shared some common ground.
Recently, we have seen the slow demise of the traditional FA Cup final song, in a move which has paralleled the decline of outlets like Top of the Pops on which to perform the music in question.
From a Shots perspective, we use Apache on the East Bank but haven’t, so far as I know, released an official single.
I’m not a fan of The Shadows or sixties music in general so even for sentimental reasons it wouldn’t maker the grade for this particular top ten.
Because there are the two animals: the official club song and the topical song, made by bands whose members supported a particular team (I think The Yobs for exame were Spurs fans but don’t quote me on that) and who would pen poignant lyrics about life on the terraces.
During the 70s and 80s boom time for footy songs, had we been in a higher echelon, perhaps we might have seen and heard such a thing.
Growing up, Reading were our chief rivals. Add Pompey and Bournemouth apropos Hampshire derbies. Woking was largely unheard of, just another concrete jungle up the road.
I looked at the Planet Football website and they’d got a list of 77 songs and Reading made an official release.
They Call Us the Royals
This sounds like the theme song for a new flavour of crisps, or the montage music from a film starring one of the lesser-known Disney Channel stars.
Now that IS embarrassing.
Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put the Reading at the top
Put the Woking in the middle and burn the fucking lot
I’m sure there’s a tune there somewhere – maybe 50 Cent? Or back in the day Sham 69 or Cockney Rejects would have made a decent fist of it.
Or imagine Champione given the technno / trance treatment – that’d work.
Oh Champione
the one and only
the Aldershot
they said our days are numbered we’re not famous anymore
but Shots rule non league football like they’ve always done before
If you look at the web music press, NME, Ranker and the like have all the usual suspects, Vindaloo, Three Lions, World In Motion… no mention of Half Man Half Biscuit any place.
Glenn and Chris singing Diamond Lights or Kevin Keegan’s “Head Over Heels In Love” are surely instant dismissals. As are things like Embrace with “World At Your Feet” – these are simply bog-standard.
There are tenuous works that almost make the cut that I’m quite fond of. Subbuteo gets a mention in The Undertones’ “My Perfect Cousin” and who knows why arguably the Wedding Presents’ best album was named George Best!
Others just failing to make the grade here are Collapsed Lung’s “Eat My Goal”,
Off the top of my head I could think of four absolute shoe-ins for a top ten football songs of an independent vein and I scoured the internet for the rest; and here they are.
10. DEPTH CHARGE – “Goal!”
It was 1990 and this appealed to me because at the time I was listening to the likes of Transglobal Underground and African Head Charge,
In any event, most of us like the hyperbole of overseas football commentary so this one cuts the mustard.
9. THE FARM – “All Together Now”
Peter Hooton wrote the lyrics in his early 20s after reading about the Christmas truce of 1914. The song was first recorded under the title “No Man’s Land” for a John Peel session in 1983. In 1990, Hooton wrote the chorus after Steve Grimes suggested putting the lyrics of No Man’s Land to the chord progression of Pachelbel’s Canon. To shorten the song for radio, the producer Suggs cut the song to three verses from its original six. It has been used by numerous football teams since, as well as by the Labour Party for their 2017 general election campaign, often played during rallies.
8. THE FALL – “Theme From Sparta FC”
Mark E Smith is a veteran of football songs, from ‘Kicker Conspiracy’ in 1983 to a World Cup song. His finest contribution has to be ‘Theme from Sparta FC’, still part of The Fall’s live set and the theme music to BBC’s Final Score.
7. BILLY BRAGG – “God’s Footballer”
If I hadn’t researched all of this properly then this treasure might have fallen by the wayside, I was only playing Don’t Try This At Home the other day and this track is unskippable, The Molineux nod and the sound of the crowd at the end put the icing on the cake here.
God’s footballer hears the voices of angels Above the choir at Molineux God’s footballer stands on the doorstep And brings the good news of the kingdom to come While the crowd sings ‘rock of ages’ The goals bring weekly wages Yet the glory of the sports pages Is but the worship of false idols and tempts him not
God’s footballer turns on a sixpence And brings the great crowd to their feet in praise of him God’s footballer quotes from the gospels While knocking on doors in black country back streets He scores goals on a Saturday And saves souls on a Sunday For the lord says these are the last days Prepare thyself for the judgment yet to come
His career will be over soon And the rituals of a Saturday afternoon Bid him a reluctant farewell For he knows beyond the sport lies the spiritual
6. MORRISSEY – “Munich Air Disaster 1958”
Mozza’s sad and heartfelt tribute to the Busby Babes deservedly wins a place. I think he could have titled it less directly but it’s straight and to the point and not a bad Morrissey number. Whether a Manchester United fan or not, in football we should always remember and respect those men whose lives were curtailed.
5. SULTANS OF PING FC – “Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass)”
Probably the first and only musical tribute to Nigel Clough! Irish band The Sultans of Ping shook the music world with all the vigour of a mild bout of indigestion when they strolled onto the scene in the early 1990s. They did leave behind a few decent tracks, including this ode to Cloughie Jnr. The track is available on the excellently titled album Casual Sex in the Cineplex!
Give him a ball and a yard of grass/ He’ll give you a move with perfect pass/ Give him a ball and a yard of space/ He’ll give you a move with godly grace/ He ‘s a nice young man with a lovely smile/ A man can’t have no greater love/ Than give 90 minutes to his friends.
4. PINK FLOYD – “Fearless”
Perhaps a surprise selection to a few but I’ve been thinking outside the box. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at Anfield and in particular sung before a midweek European night game is poignant enough.
The song has been adopted by other clubs too, notably Celtic, but if you hear the song you predominately associate it with Liverpool FC,
3. YOUSSOU N’DOR and AXELLE RED -‘Les Cour Des Grands’
As an apprecianado of African music, it’s unsurprising to me at least that this fits the bill. It’s a decent video (despite the poor pixel quality) and has the added spice of match commentary. was chosen as the official anthem for the 1998 FIFA World Cup held in France.
2. COCKNEY REJECTS – “War On The Terraces”
English punk rock band. Their 1980 song”Oi, Oi, Oi” was the inspiration for the name of the Oi! music genre. The band members are loyal supporters of West Ham United and pay tribute to the club with their hit cover version of of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” – a song traditionally sung by West Ham supporters. From a Youtube uploader:
Peel loved them, Morrisey loves them, Shane Mcgowan and Ricky Hatton loves them….the music press hated them, the West Ham loving Cockney Rejects. A volatile cocktail of stree punk, working class values and football mayhem, these young East End urchins felt they were taking Punk back from the Kings Road posuers and back to its grass roots. The Vdeo is a brief history of English hooligansim in the 80s and 90s, it contains some scenes people might find offensive but hey, this is the rejects…it weren’t ever gonna be pretty.
I’m not posting that video here. There’s enough glorification of football violence as it is.
While putting this topic together I discovered that on their Out Of The Gutter LP they have a song called Calling The Shots! Maybe I should now adopt that for this blog as its anthem! My official video will now duly be reworked.
War On The Terraces is the flipside of the We Are The Firm single.
NUMBER ONE!
This was a favourite of John Peel. It’s always been my favourite footy song for it’s lyrics mostly, an honest resonance of a Saturday game in the eighties and a match made on the terraces. A Certain Ratio getting a mention is another plus point. The lyrics are dreadfully misrepresented online so I’ve endeavoured to correct them and print the majority of it here.
SERIOUS DRINKING – “Love On The Terraces”
Her name was Sharon, She came from Southend With sister Karen, A little skinhead, She liked football, She liked snooker, She liked A Certain Ratio, She liked the Cockney Rejects!
Love, love, love on the terraces Love, love, love on the terraces,
At the stadium, by the river, Buying her programme, And a silk scarf, She had a nice face, And blonde hair, She wore a tracksuit, She was beautiful!
Love, love, love on the terraces Love, love, love on the terraces, Love, love, love on the terraces Love, love, love on the terraces,
It got to halftime, The same as usual, There was a brass band and a Norwich disco
The match got lively, another goal went in another fight broke out then I saw Sharon.
It was love at first sight as the gangs began to fight But I couldn’t give a toss cos this match would be no loss
She’ll never walk alone She nabbed my programme, She broke my heart.
From a Guardian article:
Serious Drinking were my favourite of the Norwich bands. They took their name, they said, from Garry Bushell’s habit of ending interviews in Sounds magazine by popping to the pub with the band for some “serious drinking”. Their instrumental skills were rudimentary. They sang about drinking, about football culture, about country girls becoming punks, in the style of stupid stories told in pubs. Not for nothing was their debut album called The Revolution Starts at Closing Time.
There’s not a lot to say about the musicality of Love on the Terraces. This song will never be more than a footnote, and no one will write books about Serious Drinking in years to come. But listen to it and you’ll know this was a band having fun being in a band. And then wonder how many contemporary indie groups sound like they could play a party at your house without killing it.
Football related songs and good ones really are few and far between. I’ve achieved this by managing to eschew the quite excellent Anfield Rap too.
Circa late eighties and the hip things on the box for alternative music fans were Eurotrash, Rapido and,,, Snub,
Snub TV was an alternative culture television program that aired from 1987 to 1989 as a segment on the Night Flight overnight programming on the USA Network and subsequently for three seasons on the BBC.
So if like me you’d grown up under the aural guidance of John Peel’s radio programmes, suddenly many of those bands could be seen raw on Snub, rather than just the odd *and some of them were) appearance on TOTP.
The original US program was developed by executive producer Fran Duffy and aired as part of Night Flight on a fortnightly basis. The first 2 seasons were produced in the UK by Pete Fowler and Brenda Kelly. A third season was produced in the US by Duffy with help from Giorgio Gomelsky.
In 1989-1991 a UK version, produced by Fowler & Kelly, aired for three seasons on the BBC and was syndicated to the pan-European TV channel Super Channel and in other countries in Europe, such as Russia, Portugal, Denmark and Greece,
Snub’s early focus on emphasis on the indie and underground music scene in the UK was very much informed by Kelly’s position as editor of The Catalogue, house magazine of The Cartel record distribution group, plus Fowler’s work producing videos for bands. As the BBC show developed the program covered the rise of Madchesyer documenting such bands as Stone Roses.
Snub TV was created by Pete “Pinko” Fowler and Brenda Kelly, who met working at Rough Trade records. Kelly was a budding music journalist and Fowler was a cameraman filming live gigs and promos for Rough Trade bands such as the Smiths and the Go-Betweens, before moving on to video work at Southern Studios.
The pair combined their talents for a new cable show in the US put together by anglophile Fran Duffy, which first aired 30 years ago, in 1987. Snub TV was shot in the UK for about £700 per episode, edited at ITN and Fed-Exed to the US each week, where it ran for 14 episodes.
It featured artists such as My Bloody Valentine, the JAMMS (later KLF) and Björk (in her first TV appearance, with the Sugarcubes). Britain took note, and it was soon acquired by Janet Street-Porter, then head of youth television at the BBC, where it ran for three seasons from 1989 until its demise in 1991.
Despite a healthy chunk of Snub footage being posted on YouTube, the show is not officially available anywhere and huge parts of it – including almost all of the American strand of the series – cannot be viewed at all. Pinko hoped for a release last year, but interest didn’t equate to money. “We were close to putting a DVD out of all the American and English series. I wanted to do it well, to use up outtakes and do fresh interviews with bands that are still pertinent, but nobody was willing to give us the budget to do it properly,” he says. “I want people to see stuff they’ve never seen, it just needs a few thousand quid and we can make something special. I’d love to do an eight-hour box set.”
Snub was where I first saw that Ultra Scene video for Mercy Seat and that’s as good for you today as it’s always been.
The 84-minute compilation video I’ve produced here is a best-of in essence; selected songs and interviews from the three series.
In making it, I was reunited with a few long-lost forgotten loves, notably AC Marias “Just Look” – I was quite excited when I saw that,
I’ve also tweaked, jazzed up, however you’d like to call it, the picture quality and sound where possible as the footage from th shows is via VHS standard,
I trust you’ll enjoy these memories as much as I have in knitting them together.
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
House Of Love – Destroy The Heart Ultra Vivid Scene – Mercy Seat Fugazi – Suggestion AC Marias – Just Talk Sonic Youth – Teen Age Riot Pixies – I Bleed We Are Going To Eat You – Heart In The Hand The Sundays – Can’t Be Sure Spacemen 3 – Revolution The Telescopes – Celeste Catherine Wheel – She’s My Friend The Fall – Bill Is Dead A Certain Ratio – Tribeca Loop – From Centre To Wave Blue Aeroplanes – …..and Stones Ride – Drive Blind The Wedding Present – Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? Jesus Jones – Info Freak Dub Sex – Swerve Pale Saints – Insubstantial Inspiral Carpets – Commercial Rain The Mekons – Ghosts Of American Astronauts
Oh boy, arcade games oughta be fun. Okay, we all know a lot of games are scripted but this one really takes the cookie.
First off, take a look at the booklet, Tells you everything except explaining how the gameplay actually works, notably the revolving yellow diamond. There she is, on the green, showing you where your ball will land.
The video below demonstrates just how poorly this has been written apropos where your shot will more ofteen than not, end up. Scientifically impossible in a lot of instances.
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This video doesn’t exist
I’d been playing this for months, having played EG2 on the PS4 which also contains some very questionable flaws, however, nowhere near on a par with this.
Then there’s the wind factor. Ever been to the beach when the wind is 5mph? It wouldn’t even disturb your towel. Yet here, 7mph is like some kind of a hurricane.
But the one thing I noticed above all else is how, once you;re doing great, let’s say you’re five under after the front nine, suddenly your ball will be finding bunkers or water hazards or practically anything will happen that will rob your of all your hard work.
Just an occasional blip? Sadly not, this happens over and over, so clearly scripted against you it’s beyond belief.
Then there’s your CPU players. Now I’ve made just two eagles in this time, which actually is a plus point in the game, We all like a challenge and the harder the game is, the more realistic it is and makes for a far better challenge.
So when these CPU’s are pulling off five or six eagles in a round, in all conditions, how realistic or fair is that? Sometimes it’s asking you to shoot a 61 just to be in with a chance in a tourno,
Notice also how as soon as you do well, other CPU’s will suddenly be producing unbelievable results. One that springs to mind is on Aloha Beach, a par 4 where I’ve only birdied it once, Justin (who thinks he’s Rose or Westwood) reckons he can eagle it!
The one aspect this ‘game’ is decent for is chip-ins. Get your ball on the fringe, give it a bit over the red flag on your power bar and eight times out of ten, in she goes.
Apparently people gush about this ‘game’ and have “never encountered the issues you have” but seemingly then I must have a faulty disc. But no wait – the last one was just the same.
Maybe the most scripted video game I have ever played and if people like to sit there and accept the poorly coded shennanigans then they must be very easily pleased. Or they are just happy to be fucked over.
In essence, this is a poor show and is only fit for one thing.
As if any more evidence were needed, I decided to road test this boring piece of bollocks by choosing one of the easiest courses, Fujizakura CC, where I had previously scored a 61.
I got a pen and notepad handy to record just what these CPU fantasists were about.
I played a couple of rounds, noting the usual suspects, namely Jeffrey and Maile, resetting the console at the 17th hole where, predictably Maile was already thirteen under. 😂
In the third round I birdied the first five holes and finished twelve under which I let go onto the memory card as I had at least gone a hole better than my previous.
Here’s what the ‘game’ decides had happened despite playing in tornadoes and rain.
MAILE – 59 including seven birdies and three imaginary eagles
JEFFREY – Four eagles and six birdies, fuck me, he’s some kind of robot!
MIKEY – A more than improbable three eagles and six birdies
HERSHA – Four eagles, six birdies
HASHIMOTO – TEN birdies, oh fucking BRAVO!
So there you have it, a ‘game’ that is scripted to death and about enjoyable as cancer.
A golf game that asks you to score a 59 or better just to scrape through a tournament when achieving an Eagle is about as rare as a decent British prime minister is not only an insult to an average person’s intelligence but just taking the piss.
Some ten days later I tried Mount Sakura CC and noted down all the usual suspects.
I quit after the front nine when it imagined that the ball went out of bounds causing a double bogey and one of the classics where the ball would have landed on the green according to their math but amazingly landed half a mile from it.
In that front nine, there were twelve fantasy eagles recorded by these characters! Do you ever see proof of it, any evidence?
Fuck off ClapHanz, your ‘game’ wins the prize fir the worst PlayStation game ever Hanz down.
Three gigs later, desperate to play somewhere other than the Dublin Castle public house, the threesome recruited expatriate Scot and sometime Falcon barperson Roxanne, principally because the promoter at The Falcon had promised them a gig just so he could see her sing. They dropped the ‘e’. Joe later claimed it had been stolen by Thee Hypnotics, and a legend was born.
February ’91 brought forth the 
Acid Mouse Music 