Two points from yesterday's Steve Wright show:
1 - He kept banging on about it being fifty years since Buddy Holly wished he'd took the bus instead. This kept being referred to as 'the day the music died', it clearly didn't. I know this because 99% of my record collection is made up of records written and made after February 1959. He'd obviously been told to promote something that was on later called The Hour the Music Died, which dramatised the hour leading up to Holly's death. The clips made it sound awful, like a cross between the Radio Ham and Airplane. Holly would have been so proud. Not.
My parents went to see Holly at Nottingham Palais when they were still courting (What a lovely term. Do people still 'court' each other, like deer?). True to form, Dad fell asleep. Only Dad could fall asleep at a rock 'n' roll gig. He was deeply uninterested in music and probably only took mater to keep her quiet. Dad did anything for a quiet life.
2 - Much as I loathe Wright, he does sometimes play some good records which you can tell he likes because you don't hear anyone else play them very often (see here). Yesterday he played Is it Like Today by World Party. Like XTC and The Auteurs/Luke Haines, I love everything I've heard by them but have never got round to buying the catalogue. The other thing is, what happened to World Party? I know they were mainly an ex-Waterboy called Karl Wallinger, but what's happened to him? Like Talk Talk's wonderful Mark Hollis, he seems to have disappeared without trace. Here's the other World Party songs I know and love (And I know She's the One but only because the fat dancer from Take That covered it. Wasn't Guy Chambers in the World Party orbit at some point?).
1 - He kept banging on about it being fifty years since Buddy Holly wished he'd took the bus instead. This kept being referred to as 'the day the music died', it clearly didn't. I know this because 99% of my record collection is made up of records written and made after February 1959. He'd obviously been told to promote something that was on later called The Hour the Music Died, which dramatised the hour leading up to Holly's death. The clips made it sound awful, like a cross between the Radio Ham and Airplane. Holly would have been so proud. Not.
My parents went to see Holly at Nottingham Palais when they were still courting (What a lovely term. Do people still 'court' each other, like deer?). True to form, Dad fell asleep. Only Dad could fall asleep at a rock 'n' roll gig. He was deeply uninterested in music and probably only took mater to keep her quiet. Dad did anything for a quiet life.
2 - Much as I loathe Wright, he does sometimes play some good records which you can tell he likes because you don't hear anyone else play them very often (see here). Yesterday he played Is it Like Today by World Party. Like XTC and The Auteurs/Luke Haines, I love everything I've heard by them but have never got round to buying the catalogue. The other thing is, what happened to World Party? I know they were mainly an ex-Waterboy called Karl Wallinger, but what's happened to him? Like Talk Talk's wonderful Mark Hollis, he seems to have disappeared without trace. Here's the other World Party songs I know and love (And I know She's the One but only because the fat dancer from Take That covered it. Wasn't Guy Chambers in the World Party orbit at some point?).
While looking for those videos, I found this. I used to love it and haven't heard it for probably the best part of twenty years. Now tell me that You Tube isn't the internet's finest hour.
9 comments:
World Party were one of those band's early 90s Q used to rave about - I only picked up a couple of CD singles but both are belters
Give It All Away
Way Down Now
Did you ever hear Enuff Z'Nuff almost like hippy indie goes heavy metal - got guitar squeals 'n' everything?
Enuff Z'Nuff were one of those bands that always got loads of coverage in Kerrang/RAW etc but who completely passed me by. Rather like Balaam and the Angel.
Or New Model Army for me..did you ever get Metal Hammer? What a random mag' and always a Doro Pesch feature
Steve Wright gets on my tits because, as I've ranted elsewhere, he and his team make so many factual errors. I'm a pedant and proud of it.
Having said that he does champion people like Colin McIntyre and it's good to hear different stuff on the old crystal set. Hell, Wogan has played the last two Attic Lights singles.
World Party - great singles.
New Model Army? They didn't tour, they just got moved on. I'm here all week.
PM - Yeah, I used to have Metal Hammer, which I think was monthly.
There are a couple of reasons for the championing by them of Doro. 1 - It was a British edition of a German mag so they used to get German stories in and translate them (hence their undying devotion to German second-league thrashers like Helloween, Kreator, Destruction etc). 2 - The metal press, in those days, was obsessed with finding lady metal stars for pin-ups. You had Doro, Lita Ford, a woman from your neck of the woods called Lisa Dominique (who I'm pretty sure used to do photoshoots bordering on soft porn) and The Great Kat. Actually scratch The Great Kat (b-dum pssh), she was like a female Yngwie J Malmsteen with triple the attitude (which is off-the-scale attitude). And she wasn't sexy.
Metal Hammer then was edited by a guy called Chris Welch. He was a heavy rock writer for Melody Maker in the late 60s when Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin and Cream were tearing it up. He interviewed and toured with all that lot.
It's still on sale, now run by Future Publications who publish Classic Rock. Classic Rock owes something to Metal Hammer in that they are/were both pretty poorly designed and layed-out.
Have I bored you enough with my knowledge of the heavy rock press now? I'm boring myself here...
Ok next question - what was the name of where the two ginger metal twins (girls) - with their denim's temptingly undone, Gypsy Cream or summat!
Sorry, I'm stumped on that one. I know Nelson, Ricky Nelson's twin sons who used to do limp-wristed rock for the lay-deez. Kerrang! used to call them the Timotei Twins due to their lustrous blonde tresses.
Karl Wallinger had a stroke which interrupted his career somewhat - for a few years i think. however he returned to the touring circuit a couple of years ago. Don't know about recording new stuff. i saw WP here in Australia last year and they were on form.
Thank you, sir. I didn't know about the stroke but I'm glad he's on the mend.
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