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Soundtracks To Our Lives Weekending 19/03/11
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machineryelf
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Re: Soundtracks To Our Lives Weekending 19/03/11
Mar 22, 2011, 16:04
IanB wrote:
machineryelf wrote:
Lone Star were excellent, even if John Sloman was a Plant clone to the nth degree, Nutz had something too,still have a couple of their LPs , one of which has a 'What Is And What Should Never Be' rip off so blatant it's really quite amusing, not sure where the Heavy Metal Kids fall, first division relegation or more likely 2nd division promotion hopefuls, they did manage to avoid aping Zep & Purple more than many bands at the time
Quartz were top notch live, but they never delivered on record IMHO, even the Quartz live album showed a liberal amount of plod
You could obviously make a decent living back then from touring the small clubs,where else did all those 4th on the bill acts in the music paper ads come from.
Punk had pretty much killed trad rock by the time I got around to gig going but people were still in awe of gigs by George Hatcher,Chris Spedding, Crawler and Bethnal[none of whom made any records worth listening to more than once IMHO] and AC/DC were still playing clubs to folk as interested in drinking as the music. I suppose if ten people in the crowd of every club they played enjoyed SNAFU enough to buy a record then it was enough to keep them going.


Nutz also had a big CSNY influence at least on the first two albums.

The problem with that era was most bands were the sum of other people's parts but not parts that were fused. They just had different influences that emerged from song to song. At least Lone Star were a little more the complete package in terms of having some individuality. Still, can't really argue with the guitar that opens Nutz Two and resolves into a Sweet style campy chugger that suggests that they had a couple of Queen albums too.

It all came together on Hard Nutz though that is more obviously Zep influenced. On stage I remember them as being a Purps type, Hammond driven metal boogie band.

The HM Kids were definitely more Watford than Stoke City with a sound pitched somewhere between Goats Head Soup and Tomorrow Belongs To Me.

Didn't Bethnal get adopted by Sounds as an East End quasi punk band? I had a single or maybe an ep that featured an Animals cover. They had a fiddle player. Never saw them.

Saw Crawler a few times out of loyalty to those that had been Kossoff's band mates. With the benefit of hindsight they were crap. Ditto the O Band / Band Called O who also threatened to join the top tier for a couple of years. College circuit and City Hall bands by and large and yes it must have been an ok living even with people paying 75p to get in.

That said the second division was dominated and clogged up with a bunch of perenials who seemed to be stuck in rock purgatory for about five years. There were also a lot of mid table, too big for the Roundhouse too small for Hammersmith / The Rainbow acts that ended up playing the New Victoria or somewhere like that.

Then there were all the relegated sides looking to get back up into the 1st division like Paice Ashton and Lord and Streetwalkers.

All very static though, especially as it would take most new acts at least three records to get a sniff of a shot at promotion. Three records is a long time in rock n roll even back then. How many musicians started a recording career in 74, looked all set to enjoy a decent life as a mid level rock n roller by the end of 75, only to have their hopes and dreams torn away in 77 while all the major label money piled on the New Wave.

Steve Gibbons anyone? Moon? Druid!!!


The O Band, your memory is better than mine, totally forgotten them, Bethnal did Who covers, and IIRC tried to go punky/reggae , their own stuff was the usual OKish but they used to encore with a drawn out Baba O'Reilly which was brilliant, probably how they survived so long. I used to go and see a local band called China Doll on a regular basis just because they used to encore with 'Freebird', they chucked a few covers in with a few originals but all we ever wanted was the 20min finale

I think a lot of the bands were just people who could play and had big record collections,or had one driven individual force like Micky Moody or Glenn Hughes, who kept them going until they were poached by a big band, and the rest of them gave up.Look at Nazareth , a prime example of team grit & determination, just about enough inspiration between the 4 of them to make it listenable and rest was nose to the grindstone, that's why they played midwest gigadrome way before Marsden & Moody got there with Coverdale

Lone Star had something though whether it would have stretched beyond 2 albums we'll never know, not sure if Eddie Van halen would have killed them off if punk didn't , the first Van Halen album was a big a nail in the coffin as punk, suddenly all those years refining that bit of blues/funk/soul and pentatonic widdling impressing the crowds didn't cut it any more, and strutting around like Plant wasn't so impressive once you'd seen DLR, all your clubs are full of punks and disco so you have nowhere to go and anyways nobody wants you
I imagine half of them packed it in, and the other half cut their hair and ended up 4th on the bill at the punk gigs. meet the new boss same as the old boss.
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