IN MEMORIAM: DYAN BIRCH

 Another good (wo)man done gone....

And another footle into the corridors of my consciousness, this probably little known name leaving a big gap in my vault of sounds and scenes. Possibly best known as one of the three frontline vocalists in 1970s soul-funksters Kokomo, she was a hell of a lot more than just that.

Flashback to the early mid 70s. Still at school, if towards the later stages, my musical tastes were broadening. As a boarder at a UK private school on the south coast of England, we were effectively imprisoned for weeks on end, albeit with some scant day release visiting rights into the surrounding community. An enlightened housemaster was keen to make our education rounder than just the slog toward university entrance grades, and arranged for occasional school trips to cultural events. This had included Steeleye Span the year before. I was keen to expand this idea, and had persuaded him of the virtue of Procol Harum, necessitating him listening to a record, and he signed my pass out. Astonishingly, he then, without even the presumed mandatory check, allowed me out to visit the Eastbourne Winter Gardens, where the Naughty Rhythms Tour was dropping by. Naughty Rhythms? This was three bands touring together, taking turns to top and bottom the bill, the bands being the chalk, cheese and chowder of Dr Feelgood, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers and Kokomo. I was a huge Chilli Willi fan, quite liked the cut and thrust of the Feelgoods, but was then unfamiliar with Kokomo. A bit like the Average White band, said friends, but with better singers.

It was a terrific show. I may have discussed it before. The Willi's were great, as expected, Dr Feelgood solid dynamo's, but Kokomo had me completely flummoxed. Loads of 'em, crammed on to the stage, with a hefty waft of Motown/Stax chops that was outwith my then comfort zone by a mile. Yet I was entranced.  Sure, I knew of some of the members, the second guitar and bassist, Neal Hubbard and Alan Spenner, both ex-Greaseband and the man on saxes and flutes on nearly every then current record needing a parp, from Clannad to Bad Company, King Crimson to the Stones, the mighty Mel Collins, that being sufficient to defuse any innate prejudice against the style of music. But it was the vocals that stood out, four singers, three at the front, rounded out by those of the fella on keys. The three at the front were Paddy McHugh, Frank Collins and the person I am writing mainly about, Dyan Birch. Taking turns at lead and backing, each had a distinct personality and, collectively, a stunning ensemble hit.

But it wasn't the first I had heard of them. A dimly recalled hit single of a few years before betrayed a similar sound. That song, Friends, had been a favourite of mine, by short lived band, Arrival, the self-same trio, along with Tony O'Malley, who had also joined Kokomo, as the aforementioned fourth singer and piano player. Having enjoyed that song, with Birch singing the lead, McHugh and Collins alongside a then additional female singer, I was ready to enjoy their new direction.

Birch was born in Liverpool in 1949, it being realised early on that she, McHugh and Collins had something. After Arrival had left the building, the trio and O'Malley expanded the concept, in London, and, in truth, had greater expected of them than was ultimately delivered. Hot on the heels of the AWB blazing a UK blue eyed soul strain, with a stellar range of musicians backing, including also Jim Mullen as lead guitarist, later a bigger name in jazz, they never quite staked their claim. True, it was a time of change, with the long hairs of prog rock gradually being sidelined by the more adventurous turks of pub rock, ahead of then being totally, if temporarily, blown out of the water by punk. For a ten piece band playing melodic, soul-infused rock, this had them somewhat out of time. A slightly diffident first release, Kokomo, in 1975, was followed by the more confident Rise and Shine, three years later. By now I was in London, and caught them a number of times, in pubs and clubs, as well as seeming to be the perpetual support act for as number of lesser bands. Mullen had left, his jazzier noodling actually a distraction, and the band seemed more focussed. But it couldn't and didn't last. Even the kudos of the band having been absorbed into Bob Dylan's Desire recordings couldn't sustain them.

Thereafter came a number of rests and reunions, lasting until the death of Alan Spenner in 1991, he and Birch having been partners. The years that followed kept she and the rest of the 'girls', as O'Malley affectionately called the trio, busy, on the sessions circuit, working with and for Bryan Ferry, Terence Trent D'Arby, Alison Moyet and many more, a delight being to spot them, unexpectedly, on Top of the Pops, sashaying around behind any number of other performers. 

Kokomo again rose from the ashes in 2008, but Birch's health was failing and her voice beginning to go. She retired from the band in 2014, a victim to the COPD that eventually finished her off, this year. Kokomo continue sporadic performances, now down to Collins, McHugh and O'Malley, fleshed out by a roster of exemplary sidesmen and women, if, when possible, often also featuring a returned Jim Mullen, Alan Hubbard, Mel Collins and percussion superwoman, Jody Linscott, herself an original. At no performance does a mention of Dyan Birch go unmade, with tributes to her part in the story and legacy of the band. Truly, the voice of an angel, singing, below, Aretha's song of the same name:

As an afterword, here's and interesting piece I dug out, relating the the period between Arrival and the establishment of Kokomo. Likewise a set of great video interviews with Frank Collins, that go into some depth his shared history with Birch. 

R.I.P., Dyan.

LESSONS: FALLING IN LOVE WITH MY TEACHER/DANNY ADLER

 

Sting was famously a teacher, something the lyrics, and video, of the Police hit Don't Stand So Close make no small reference to, although surely in fantasy, it seeming hard to imagine any teenage girl being enraptured by the gormless looking Gordon. But this is not about him, this is the other side of the coin. This song is the world of crushes and besottedness, and relates more to the phenomenon of the spotty teenage oik, gazing in slack-jawed awe at the woman of his dreams. Add in the scenario of an all boy school, maybe a boarding school, and you can see how it happens, that teach being, perhaps alongside Matron, the only female form for mile, age and comeliness no hurdle for the bubbling surges of testosterone. And it's actually quite a bit creepier than Sting and co.

At least Danny Adler, onetime guitar jockey for pub-rock stalwarts Roogalator, made no bones about it. An unheralded talent who went largely unlauded then or later, he started off a guitar for hire in Cincinnati, getting gigs with some of the local blues scene talent, folk like Bootsy Collins and Slim Harpo. He later moved to San Francisco, hooking up with further bigger blues names, such as John Lee Hooker and T-Bone Walker. Another packed suitcase had him later being part of Frank Zappa and (later) John Lennon acolytes, Elephant's Memory, in New York. So quite how he came to be in London come 1971 is anyone's guess, other than the wanderlust that had led him to study jazz guitar in Paris.

Roogalator were a classic right band in the wrong time, and they shoulda and coulda, were it not for that timing. Part of the fizzing pub rock scene, where any style of music, whether derived from blues, from country, or from soul could make a name and a living of sorts, provided the sounds were held in sway by a tight rhythm section and the songs were short(ish) and catchy. The stirrings of an antidote to prog, more accomplished and more innovative than the later dawn of punk which, in turn, kicked pub rock off the stage and into the footnotes. And, yes, it's true, many of the denizens of that early 70s movement revived and reinvented themselves as new wave dawned, becoming elder statesmen feted to this day, your Nick Lowes, your Elvis Costellos, Graham Parker even. Not quite so was the lot of Adler, although he was, for a time, part of the studio band set up by Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe, under the names, variously, of the Disco Brothers and the Tartan Horde. Nothing of any great repute came therefrom, but it is interesting to consider what if made the the cut for the band Rockpile, instead than Billy Bremner.

No relation to the similarly London locked harmonica king Larry, or at least I think not, he then retreated to his roots in blues and boogie boogie, next popping up as part of the often Charlie Watts and Jack Bruce helmed collective, Rocket 88. In truth it was probably more the baby of Ian 'Stu' Stewart, the perennial 6th (Rolling) Stone, whose barnstorming piano play was a permanent fixture in their early career, even if his lantern jaw and short hair had him officially sidelined as their roadie. Lured in by the prospect of Watts and Bruce, neither of whom showed, I caught a memorable show by this two pianos and lashings of brass throwback to the 1940s, at Dingwalls Dance Hall, the fabled venue at Camden Lock, London. The nerdy looking guitarist with an astonishing tone was Adler.

After the demise of that project, itself probably accelerated by Stewart's death, Adler became an integral part of another collection of UK jazz and blues veterans, the De Luxe Blues Band, many of whom were seasoned session men from the 60s british blues boom, as indeed was Dick Heckstall-Smith, the ex-Colosseum reedsman, who later joined. Eventually his itchy feet again caught up with him and he returned to the USA. Since that time, the early 1990s, he has been continuing to plough his own idiosyncratic furrow, as well as buffing up his Roogalator and other back catalogues. The featured song for this piece comes from a collection, Hub-cap Heaven, about which I can find little, other than the purchase link below. The song is from 1986, seemingly the album part of a trilogy about early postwar England and America. Maybe. His personal website is intriguingly incomplete, his material, new and archive, seemingly best sourced through Bandcamp, with information via Facebook, as well as sporadic new offerings. Any guess as to whether or how this supplies a living is open to conjecture, but, if it works for him, all power to that.

Hubcap Heaven.

IN MEMORIAM: BARRIE MASTERS

It is the early to mid '70s, an awkward time for the awkward young men with a penchant for the music of the day and earlier. Probably a bit young for prog and still at school when the full hippie vibe was the freak flag of the day, earnest young men with spotty faces and serious record collections already under their belt. With developed tastes already embracing country, folk and other roots genres, they were a large and restless tribe, seeking a brand, seeking a label. No, I am not talking about the assault of punk rock; they were already just a tad too old and learned for that. And, anyway, we are ahead of ourselves, it being yet to ignite. I was there. I was (am) one of those boys wanting to be men. And pub rock was our saviour, whether we were old enough to go into pubs or not.

This is not the place for a discourse in this overlooked yet influential musical movement, beyond an understanding that it provided the loosening of the established masonry that punk would later pull down, if for however briefly. But, via Brinsley Schwarz, Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers, Dr. Feelgood and many others, a melting pot of styles and influences were put into the mix, thrown up in the air and allowed to land, with a ramshackle 4/4 beat and a cheeky smile, short and tuneful songs to put you on your feet. Out of the movement came many of the now established names of current music, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello being probably the best known, as well as the germination of what then did beget punk, Joe Strummer being a member of the 101ers ahead of forming the Clash. Resolutely tending to be avoidant and ambivalent of style or uniform, pub rockers were of all shapes and sizes, fashion often thrift shop, hair allowed to be long or short, styled or merely as nature intended, facial hair optional rather than a then spurned accessory. Proudly uncool, even. Eddie and the Hotrods fitted well that template. But, in front of the motley bunch of urchins on instrumental duties, they had a cataclysmic and archetypal angry young man in singer, Barrie Masters. They had been around for a while by the time of their break through, chugging out covers of 60's garage rock.

Do Anything You Wanna Do

I was too young to go into pubs, and whilst, yes, occasionally I did, these were not the London pubs that celebrated and created the movement. That came later. I had to rely on the inkies, the musical press, NME and Melody Maker, and the TV, Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test. And they provided me plenty. TOTP was the weekly chart show, Whistle Test more for the serious (and insomniac) polymath. I devoured both. I remember my first sight of the Hotrods, probably at home, half past seven on a thursday night. Crammed between dross like David Soul, I recall being so bloody excited. They were fast, they were passionate, they were exciting, making my head whirl. Instantly my favourite band, I bought not only the single, 'Do What You Wanna Do', but the album, 'Life on the Line', too. It being 1977, punk had begun, and whilst they certainly sounded punky, there was a touch more melodicism in the undercurrent of bass and the choppy rhythms. But they didn't look it, flared trousers may even have been involved, plus they had a singer called Barrie. Apart from Clive, there can be fewer less rock'n'roll names. And that, I guess, became the problem. A flourish of singles and they were gone, overtaken and subsumed by altogether rougher looking lads. Like the Damned and the Clash. The Sex Pistols, to all intents and purposes, had, by then, been and gone. (Although, for their infamous near debut, in February 1976 at the Marquee Club, guess who the Pistols were supporting? Yup, the Hotrods.) Because of all this and despite all this, for those brief moments and for that summer they were my favourite band.

Ignore Them

Of course, the band never went away. Sure, they broke up, reformed, broke up, reformed, Masters the only constant, and looked to be going on forever, the oldest teenager in town, and still looking good. (Well, quite good.) So it was a shock when, suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly, he died,  probably a heart attack, aged 63. 2019 had been an eventful year, with a successful tour in support to similar 70s refugees, Belfast's Stiff Little Fingers, followed by a celebratory gig, drawing back a legion of ex-members to play a "Done Everything We Wanna Do" concert in April. Was this a warning that the show couldn't go on forever? I don't know, but should anyone even be surprised that it probably will, the residual members of the last band, continuing into this year, first performance tonight? Somehow the Hotrods, as they will be, won't be quite the same without Eddie. And completely different without Barrie.

Done Everything We Wanna Do: the show

R.I.P.

You know you wanna do........

HORSE/S: PAUSE FOR A HOARSE HORSE/HOME

Country music has always had a chequered history over here in the UK, there being an understandable suspicion of the more rhinestones and bouffant hair variety that, for so many years, gave even the genre a bad name outside its immediate milieu. Personally it was always the 'and western' that put me off, only many years coming to know and love quite what that might mean, as in western swing. But country-rock, or perhaps as we now should call it, americana, that's a whole different plate of beans. Us brits have taken to that in a big way, both in terms of growing our own and offering a sometimes more sympathetic audience to visitors as they get at home. Todays piece is decidedly too old for americana, being from the early 70s, when bands like Cochise and Starry Eyed and Laughing were adding influences culled from The Byrds and the Burritos.  The pre-punk of pub-rock, the early backlash to the some of the preposterousnesses of prog, saw also a lot of country tropes mixed into the pot, alongside soul and straight ahead rock'n'roll. Brinsley Schwarz, an early home for Nick Lowe, and Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers were frontrunners, influentially if not necessarily in sales. Nowadays there are as many gritty blue collar banjo and steel bands over here as, well, in a short Nashville street. So a few, my favourites being Camden's Rockingbirds. Plus several festivals devoted to the genre.

Home had only a brief window. Resolutely 3rd tier in terms of attainment and success, famous as much for where the members went next as in their own right. The track above comes from their 1971 debut, the sleeve illustration giving a fair idea of where they were hailing from and striving at. I actually bought this at the time, it various surviving culls on my collection, as history re-decided my earlier tastes. However there was clearly a hint of something, the twin guitars of Laurie Wiseman and Mick Stubbs soaring higher than the journeyman songs and vocals, mainly provided by Stubbs.  Bass was provided by one Cliff Williams, yes, that one, and was more adventurous, say, than his later job, with drums and background keys courtesy Mick Cook and Clive John.

A second record followed, the eponymous 'Home', by which time they had ditched John and ploughed, generally, a yet more earnest west coast vibe, if more Outlaws than Eagles, winning over fans from the bands they played support to. But those fans weren't putting their hands in their pockets, and the moment called for a prog-rock concept album, echoing similar bands in similar circumstances, Camel and Wishbone Ash, last gasps of the longhairs before punk blew down the doors. (Of course, history also reminds us that the longhairs never actually went away, just having shorter hair and shorter songs, most continuing to this day.) The Alchemist was the 3rd and last album put together by Home. Stylistically different, it isn't all bad, if desperately dated.

Stubbs left and the remainder of the band toured as Al Stewart's backing band, before going their separate ways. Wisefield joined, arguably appropriately, his guitar style being eminently suitable, the above mentioned Wishbone Ash, Cook joined the Groundhogs and, earlier keyboards man, John was by now with Man. Stubbs, surprisingly, as the songsmith and singer, or possibly because of that, struggled the most, largely disappearing from view. The big ticket fell to Williams, filling the AC/DC bassist role for the next 39 years. A waste of his talent, IMHO, but what do I know, as his accountant might remind me.

Pause.

The early 70s were a bumper time for would be jobbing musicians, record companies falling over each other to give multi-disc contracts to barely out of school buskers, allowing them to build up their skills, hone any talents and, eventually, or so the labels hoped, repay the investment. Bands like Home were everywhere, chock full of musicians often later making a greater inroads elsewhere. Often with back catalogues mostly forgotten, I enjoy looking back and remembering. This piece began musing on country and english. Funny how it seems to have ended elsewhere.

IN MEMORIAM: MARTIN STONE

Phew, 2017..... I felt I had to wait for this piece, mindful how sharp the scythe has seemed to be in this year just gone, culling indiscriminately from the ranks of musicians I have chosen to fill my ears with these last 40 odd years. I guess none of this should be a surprise, these are individuals in, usually, late middle age with lives often, um, well lived, shall we say, strangers not to the occasional pick-me-up in their primes. And some not. Indeed, some of the best livers, to follow the metaphor, clearly have superlative livers and still live on, maybe to give us cause for rumination. And copy for future years.....

Spoilt for choice, my subject may not be or ever have been a household name. That is, unless you lived with me in the early 1970s. I was at boarding school, that peculiar english idea of bettering the child by removing the parents, and, stranger still, l was loving it. Clearly, and as stated here before, I was an odd boy, and I enjoyed to distance myself from the Floyd, Sabbath and Purple of my peers, diving, in preference, into the splendour of folk and country influences, Fairport Convention and the Flying Burrito Brothers, studiously devouring the inkies for ever new and arcane bands. So when I heard of Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, my interest was immediately tickled.

An unwieldy mix of hippy redneck culture, filtered through a peculiarly anglocentric prism, to incorporate 20s pastiche, blues and bluegrass, the Willis were in the frontline of pub-rock, the pre-punk evanescence of a simpler music to the prog and pomp of that time. I was hooked. I think they were perhaps the 2nd band I ever saw live, at Hove Town Hall, mesmerised by the stick-thin guitarist,  with what looked like a woollen tea-cosy on his head, peeling off staccato bursts of notes, each droplet lithe and discrete, quite different from the searing screech de rigeur back then, and indeed even now. Retrospectively more of a jazzy stylisation, though the notes were determinably blues in origin. The rest of the band were no slouches either, later Resident "Snakefinger" Phil Lithman, on guitars, fiddle and lap steel, later Attraction Pete Thomas, on drums and the 2 Pauls, "Bassman" Riley on, um, bass, and "Dice Man" Bailey on guitar, sax and banjo.
Bongos over Balham I bought on release, later to discover this was their 2nd album, there being an earlier, nominally duo album, Kings of the Robot Rhythm, featuring just Stone and Lithman and some cameos from assorted guests. Of course I bought it, along with the various compilations that appeared later, the lifespan of the band being distinctly short. Stone continued to drift about the pub-rock circuit, for a time a member of the 101-ers, Joe Strummer's pre-Clash band and, my last live sighting of him, the memorably named Jivebombers. And then zilch. He disappeared.
Being the geek I am I had to look backwards to get my fix, unearthing quite a few of his back pages, starting with Mod group, The Action, later morphing into psychedelic kaftan and yakskin afghan coat botherers, Mighty Baby. I think it was here that he defined and individualised his trademark guitar sound, not least as extended guitar wig-outs were the order of the day. Actually quite a challenging listen, attuned ears always expecting the aforementioned screech of his contemporaries, but worth it. Spells with various other bands, Savoy Brown and famed Ladbroke Grove mavericks/crazies, the Pink Fairies, appear in his c.v., never being quite in the right place at the right time for fame and fortune.
But where did he go to when the music ended? Intriguingly, a 2nd career beckoned and into which he became a far greater legend, disappearing into the little known sub-culture of bookrunning or bookscouting, the apparently cut-throat world of 2nd hand books, whereby fortunes could be made or lost by finding the right first editions in dusty bookshops and library collections. Stone's reputation was of the best, being described as having an uncanny knack of knowing exactly what was there, by smell or intuition, on entry through the door of a bookshop seemingly identical to the one next door. This is described way better here, or by reading White Chapell, Scarlett Tracings, a novel by Iain Sinclair, wherein the chief character, a Nicholas Lane, is unmistakably a thinly disguised Stone. I had become aware of this second life through my purchase of a re-released Mighty Baby LP, with extensive sleevenotes and an interview with Stone, but I always wonder how many of his book people were ever aware of his musical past. And vice versa. Certainly his music fans found it difficult to keep up with him, so it was quite a shock to me to hear and read of his death.
R.I.P. with a burst of their nearly, in my imagination, hit single......

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