ARE YOU READY FOR A BRAND NEW BEAT? MOTOWN APPEARANCES ON SHINDIG! (1964-65)

If you have time to spare – and it you don’t, make some – here are some fantastic performances by Motown artists on the US music variety show Shindig! Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, the Temptations, Martha & the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, the Blossoms (okay, not Motown but what the hell), Four Tops and the Supremes all singing live during 1964/65. Enjoy.

FIRST STEPS OF THE FACES: THE KENNEY JONES INTERVIEW

The new issue of Shindig! has landed so, in case you missed the previous one, here's my cover story and interview with Kenney Jones about the early days of The Faces. Grab yourself a long drink and pull up a stool...

“The Faces were really boozy, yeah, shit. Brandy and cokes, brandy and ginger, brandy and anything. It had to be Rémy Martin though. We were the Rémy band. Simultaneously we all came up with the idea to put a bar on stage. We’d dress up our roadie in a black suit, white shirt, and he’d be our barman. So when we wanted a drink he’d put it on a tray, towel over his arm, and bring it over. If anyone wanted a sit down during a gig they could go over to the bar and sit there. God knows how we got through a show. We went on slightly merry and came off absolutely fucking rat-arsed.”

Today Kenney Jones, owner of the finest drumstool CV in Britain, is sober but looking forward to a quiet pint later. “I like being straight, I like the idea of being straight, but when the Faces came along, forget it. It got to a point where I enjoyed a day off drinking. I was like wow, I’m straight, what a buzz this is.” Immaculately dressed in a blue three-piece suit with velvet collar and Italian shoes, I suggest his old Modness is still in evidence. “It never leaves you,” he says. As Kenney finishes signing posters for a new CD boxset of Small Faces Decca material he is, with his easy going Cockney charm, quietly excited about getting together with his Faces pals Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood for a charity fundraiser at his polo club. With a Faces 5-disc boxset, You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything hitting the shops I'm here to quiz him about the transition from the swinging Small Faces to the swaying Faces.    

By mid-1968 the Small Faces had long broken from the strict stuffiness of Decca and were settled into the more liberating environment of Immediate Records and provided the label with their masterpiece, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. Released in May, the album spent six weeks at number one, although not, as the band had hoped, as a result of shedding their young audience and finding a more fulfilling acceptance of their musical advancement but due, in part, to the success of their knockabout knees-up novelty ‘Lazy Sunday’.

“We were desperate to lose our teenybopper image, desperate,” remembers Kenney. “We only did ‘Lazy Sunday’ for a laugh; the last thing we wanted was for Andrew Oldham and Immediate to release that as a single. It was really commercial, not at all us. So there it was; another nail in our coffin. It drove Steve Marriott nuts - it drove all of us nuts - but he just couldn’t take it anymore and he was off.”

With tensions increasingly fraught with Marriott on one side and Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones on the other, Marriott, desperate to play with Herd guitarist/singer Peter Frampton in whatever band possible, chucked down his guitar during a New Year’s Eve show at the Alexandra Palace and announced he was leaving. The Small Faces soldiered on, fulfilling contractual obligations to the gigs they had lined up, until they bowed out in inglorious circumstances at the Springfield Theatre in Jersey on March 8, 1969. ‘Tin Solder’ ended the set before Marriott jumped straight back into the fire by signing his Humble Pie, officially unveiled weeks later, straight to the label from which he’d seen little previous money. For the remaining Small Faces, the future was uncertain.

“After Marriott walked out we – me, Mac and Ronnie – were like lost. It was like losing a member of the family. So we just got together once a week in the Rolling Stones rehearsal space in Bermondsey Street, just to have a jam and so we could be together. Not knowing what we were going to do, where we were going to go, but we enjoyed doing it.”

On hearing of the spilt Ronnie Wood, then on bass duty in the Jeff Beck Group, phoned Lane to express his shock about Marriott’s actions. The Small Faces, he said, were his and fellow Beck employee Rod Stewart’s favourite group. Wood was invited to jam and was quickly integrated into the loose Bermondsey set up.

Their paths had only briefly crossed previously but Wood first made an impression on Jones and Lane after the pair had left school and were working in Selmer’s music shop in Holborn testing amplifiers. “One day the Birds, with Ronnie, came up there; we were exactly the same age. I remember looking at him like that [mimes big hair and wide-eyed disbelief]. We didn’t say boo to a goose to each other.”

The Birds, out to the west of London were a popular live attraction with their soulful yet ballsy R&B attack and strong Mod image. Their debut single, written by Wood, ‘You’re On My Mind’ came out in November 1964 and with a television appearance already under their belt were seen by the fledgling Small Faces as kindred spirits. Mention of the Birds has Kenney follow up with memories of another band cut from the same Prince of Wales cloth.  

“One of the bands I really loved from that time were the Action. I thought they were fucking excellent. They should have been the biggest thing since sliced bread. I kick myself every day and question why they weren’t. Because they were so good, their music was good enough, they were better than most people and they had a great name.”  

By 1969, the Action were in a similar situation to the Small Faces. Singer Reggie King had left and the remaining members forged on without him. With Reggie then without a band or recording deal it’s interesting to speculate how he might have filled the slot vacated by Marriott. I idly suggest Kenney could’ve asked King to join. “Humph, yeah, that’s right, we could have done,” he replies without conviction, humouring my flight of fancy.

But of course Rod Stewart proved to be the perfect choice. “After a couple of weeks Ronnie Wood bought down his mate, which was Rod Stewart. Rod sat there on the amps watching for a few weeks. He loved it.”  Like Wood, Rod had paid his dues around the live circuit, and had the Mod pedigree after stints with Steampacket, Shotgun Express, Jeff Beck Group and even deputising on occasion for an absent King in the Action. Woody knew this when inviting his buddy along but the pair played it cool with Rod watching Lane, McLagan and Wood’s half-hearted attempts at singing.

“One thing that was apparent was Steve’s powerful voice was not there. We were playing good enough music but the vocals were very polite. I kept thinking there’s a fucking great singer sat over there so I took the bull by the horns. We’d have a break in the evening and go over to the pub, drank loads and loads of brandy and cokes, shit like that, quite pissed, so I took Rod to one side and said ‘Do you fancy joining the band?’ He said ‘Yeah, do you think everyone would let me?’ He really did jump at it.”

Rod didn’t put himself forward? “No, Rod’s very careful in the way he approaches things. Rod and Woody’s wages in the Jeff Beck Group was sixty pound each, which was a lot of money in those days, but this was an opportunity to get away from them. That evening Alvin Lee of Ten Years After was having drinks round at his mews house, so I said to everybody there ‘Look, I’ve just asked Rod to join the band’ and all I got was ‘Oh no, we don’t want another prima donna, someone that’s gonna walk out on us’. But they were totally different personalities. Steve was like a little bigmouth, the Artful Dodger who turned us all into little Artful Dodgers, but Rod was Rod The Mod, he had a great personality, he was a right pisstaker and he taught us all how to be even more pisstaking.”

With the new band starting to take shape a couple of extra ingredients found themselves dipping into the mix. Woody’s brother Art, previously of the Artwoods, and Kim Gardner, formerly of Pop-Art hopefuls the Creation begin a short-lived association which saw them join forces to stagger out of the Stones’ basement and on to the stage.

“We were in there for weeks and Art said ‘Look we’ve got to get some gigs’. He got us these gigs but we never had a name because we never for once considered we’d call ourselves the Small Faces, or the Faces, or anything like that. To us it was a completely new entity and that’s what we wanted it to be, so a name would come much later. So Art went out and booked us under the name Quiet Melon. A stupid name, but we were stupid anyway. He got the name out of the air. I think he looked at a melon and said ‘That melon’s quiet’. Typical.”

A couple of tracks from this period were finally released in 1994. Kenney doesn’t recall the songs. “I don’t even remember doing it”. They offer a snapshot to those rehearsals and sound like what they are, the formative Faces – easily identifiable – but with Art Wood taking lead vocals with Rod providing backup. Unfortunately for Art, as it was through him the tracks got recorded, it’s his harsh vocal which distracts from any potential contained in ‘Diamond Joe’ and ‘Engine 4444’. With no takers for the material and after a few low-key gigs Art and Gardner’s involvement ended which left the others looking to get started in earnest.

“When it came to doing something more formal, one day we were down the Speakeasy and I bumped into Billy Gaff, who was working for Robert Stigwood at the time. We all still thought we were signed to Immediate Records. So I told Billy and he said ‘I can get you out of that, no problem’ and sure enough he did. That’s how Billy became our manager; we thought the sun shone out of his arse for that. But what we didn’t know was we were already out of it.”

What Billy Gaff failed to mention was the Small Faces contract with Immediate had already expired in June 1968, but with nothing more than a gentlemen’s handshake he set about securing a record deal. “Ian Ralfini was taking over as head of Warner’s UK. He wanted to sign us so we said great. It was only when it came to signing the contracts we went ‘Hold on a minute, it says Small Faces, we’re not the Small Faces’. They said if we didn’t have a name like Small Faces nobody knew us, so they’re signing the Small Faces. We went ‘Nah, no way’. So we had a big hoo-ha. Eventually they said they’d sign us but we wouldn’t get the money, which was to be a thirty grand advance. So between us we came to a decision that we’d sign the first album as the Small Faces – so we’d get the bloody money – and thereafter we’d be known as the Faces, as there was nothing small about us anymore. It couldn’t have been better in a sense. It saved us the bother of trying to find a name anyway and I was so pleased to get away from being called Quiet Melon”.

Preceded by the single ‘Flying’ (“A fucking great track,” says Kenney) and recorded in De Lane Lea Studios in Queensway between August ’69 and January ’70, First Step was released in March 1970, its title downplaying expectations. They needn’t have worried as the ten tracks laid the blueprint which only required fine tuning for the rest of their days: rocking and rolling, bluesy boogieing, folksy reflections and soulful instrumental grooves. The LP closed with a number inspired by the Soul Brothers Six minor 1967 hit for Atlantic, ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’, and crystalized the Faces signature sound of a rumbustious rhythm and booze house party. 

“There’s some nice songs on there,” thinks Kenney. “It’s a very honest album. What you hear on the album is what we had at the time. ‘Devotion’, that’s lovely; ‘Around The Plnyth” was one we used to play a lot on stage; ‘Stone’ was typical Ronnie Lane – ‘Once I was a stone…’ but it’s a fucking great song. With the release of the album it felt like we had a new lease of life, a breath of fresh air and we realised it wasn’t all over and we had a future. We didn’t really think about any expectations. We knew we had to make an album but we didn’t know what direction we were going in. We were finding ourselves because it was that early. We just were what we were and that’s what people loved about us. Slightly dishevelled but each one of us were fucking great competent musicians.”

First Step, which spent only one week on the UK chart (number 45 with a mullet), included two instrumentals in a Booker T & the MGs vein which ramped up the soul quota, such a strong influence running through all the Faces. “That’s right and there was in the Small Faces but we could never play it on stage because everyone wanted our hits. But when we played together in the studio we were jamming all that stuff. Loved it but then we had to go and do the dinky-dinky-dink. ‘Looking Out The Window’ was really just an instrumental jam but ‘Pineapple and the Monkey’ was more based on a Booker T kind of influence with a bit of ‘Cissy Strut’ by the Meters in there. I loved the Meters.” Kenney proceeds to play some mean funky air-drums and human beat box which this writer sadly cannot adequately do justice with the written word. 

It was the rich blend of soul and blues and the Faces approximation of it – with Rod’s sandpaper rasp, the locked-in rhythm section, the warm organ, and Woody’s country picking and bottleneck slide – which marked them out from the straight blues, heavy rock, or more progressive bands of the era. They swung. Or, as Kenney puts it, they had feel.

“The Small Faces had real telepathy. No one told me what to play and I didn’t tell them what to play. We just knew. It was almost a similar thing in the Faces but in a more ragged way. Why it worked with the Faces was because of the feel. Just feel. You played with your emotions. That’s what a musician is, that’s why we’re all sensitive people, you know. You can really upset us easily. You play you, you play what you feel. It’s no good if you feel lousy. People say to me it must be great being a drummer, you can take out all your aggression on your drums. Now, if I’m angry I don’t go anywhere near my drum kit. I play my drum kit and I respect my drum kit, I don’t take it out on my drum kit.”

As for the band name, the album was credited to Small Faces in America and, more accurately, Faces in the UK. Not that the identity crisis - which saw them billed throughout 1970 as variously Small Faces, Faces, Small Faces with Rod Stewart, Faces featuring Rod Stewart and, in a forecast of what was to come, Rod Stewart and Small Faces -  caused much confusion with few expecting to hear Rod sing ‘Tin Soldier’ or ‘Rollin’ Over’. “The Small Faces didn’t hit it off in America so the Small Faces to them were this [the Faces]. I can’t remember there being any confusion about it over here. People knew straight away it was a new band.”

 The album cover, shot by Martin Cook at designer and Ronnie Lane’s fellow Meher Baba devotee Michael McInnerney’s flat in Richmond, graphically displayed the changing times. The days of high-end Carnaby Street fashions, of dressing to adorn posters for teen mags, were behind them as they embraced the prevalent mood and strove to be judged only on the music and not an image. From today’s vantage point the Faces, in that photograph, look magnificent in an understated way. Sat on the sofa, drunk on homemade punch, their fabulous exaggerated Mod hair and couldn’t-care-less attitude is still used as a template by bands today albeit with a calculated knowingness rather than a genuine off-the-cuff stance. The honesty of the Faces music matched here by their garb.  

“I remember the picture being taken because none of us knew what to wear because we didn’t have an image. The Small Faces became very much about the image. In the Faces image didn’t come into it, it was take it or leave it. We just wore what we wanted. We didn’t even care about it that much. So we tried to look respectable and Rod was sort of Rod, because in those days he had holes in his shoes, stuff like that. He had cardboard in his shoes in this picture. And Ronnie Wood being the arty person had the book. We didn’t know what the album was going to be called. It was only after Ronnie picked up this First Step, how-to-play-guitar book, that we called it that.”

Whether the state of Rod’s dilapidated footwear was symptomatic of the band still waiting to cash their thirty grand advance or of his notorious stinginess, Kenney doesn’t say. In fact, Rod was doing okay for himself as he’d already signed a solo deal with Mercury Records prior to penning the Faces contract. “We didn’t know Rod had signed to Mercury for a solo album,” claims Kenney, “he didn’t tell us. He only signed it because they gave him an advance and there was enough to buy a Marcos sports car but then he had to do albums.”

Rod’s An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down – complete with grubby tramp in a dirty mac chasing small children across a field as the choice of cover photograph – beat First Step to the shops in the UK and the US (where it was retitled The Rod Stewart Album and had with the dubious artwork replaced) and was followed later in 1970 by Gasoline Alley, both featuring contributions from his band mates, as Rod sought to ride two interlocking careers in tandem. In time this proved unmanageable as his solo success went stratospheric but initially it worked fine.

“Joe Moss at Warner’s and the head of Mercury Records were close friends, that’s how we worked out a deal to maintain it,” explains Kenney. “Rod should’ve been with the Faces but found he had to deliver an album, so he did. So they worked out, Mercury were sly bastards, that they released Rod’s records at the same time so we were promoting his album as much as ours. They were pushing him big time. In the end I thought it was quite a good thing, the way it worked. We both benefitted.”

The band’s schedule now increased as they gigged to promote their record, and Rod’s, especially in America. “It was amazing to tour America because we never went there with the Small Faces. We did all these clubs. The first time one we played was in Detroit with the MC5. Everyone loved us and by the time we got to Boston, or the next place, the word of mouth had gotten out, that’s how it travelled then. In those days, we’d do a gig, right from day dot, and invite the audience back to the hotel to have a party. And they came. That stayed with us all the time. That’s why we became this fun loving party band. The audience got pissed with us and we got pissed with them. And then we played music with each other, like one big family.”

That accessibility endeared them all the more to their fans. They were a proper people’s band, all sharing the same good times.  As their success escalated, so the Faces partying increased as boozing, groupies and rearranging hotels became outlets to relieve on tour boredom, proudly earning a ban from every Holiday Inn in America. “We had more fun really in the Faces than we did in the Small Faces. We could be more rebellious.” The more innocent japes would begin on the Atlantic crossing. “You wouldn’t want to fall asleep with the Faces on board. You could smoke on the plane in those days, so anyone who fell asleep would have cigarettes on them, butter, custard, anything. Butter was a great one. You’d put it on their head and it would slowly melt and go down their face and then you’d put ash in their hair.”

Even during performances nobody was safe. “You never knew what was going to happen with the Faces on stage. I think it was at Kilburn, behind the stage door was a pub, right on the corner. So, I started the drum solo off to ‘(I Know) I’m Losing You’ and I soon realised something was different, I couldn’t see them watching me anymore. All of a sudden there was no one there. I played away a bit longer. Where the fuck are they? After about twenty minutes they came back in. They’d been in the pub. I don’t even like drum solos.”

The Faces spent their days and nights in a near permanent sloshed state in a way which differed from the Small Faces. “I didn’t really drink back then and the Small Faces were more into the drugs, except me, which was why I couldn’t live with them in Westmoreland Terrace in Pimlico. All on speed, and LSD, you fucking name it. I could never do that. The most I’d have would be some uppers maybe, some blues. Moonie got me into those a bit. He’d just pick up handfuls, and I’d go ‘I’ll just take one’. I was like a bag of nerves. I could never do cocaine although I tried it. I’d be playing away like this [mimes huge rush of energy] and then all of a sudden you’d go whoop [deflating noise], it would just leave you, that buzz would just go. And then it’d come back again out of nowhere. Forget it.”

After the package tours, screaming fans and 20 minute sets the Small Faces endured only a few years earlier, playing to audiences who wanted to listen, and being in a band able to extend themselves came as blessed relief to the Faces.

“The Small Faces always wanted to be known for our musicianship as we were getting better and we wanted to lose the teenybopper image, so with the Faces it was very different, I felt like I was finally being appreciated as a drummer. I think everyone felt a little like that in the band. We were playing more meaningful stuff. We could play lovely blues, stuff like that, and not ‘Lazy Sunday’. That’s what we wanted to be and why Marriott and Humble Pie got the head start on us, got to American before us, but we overtook them and it happened really quickly.”

It certainly did. 1971 was an incredible year for the Faces, far outstripping any expectations. The band released two more albums, Long Player and A Nod’s As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse, plus Rod’s Every Picture Tells A Story went to number one simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic with the single ‘Maggie May’ inescapable. They were now major league box office and until they spilt in 1975 enjoyed all the trappings that brought. “For a while we were more successful than the Stones, believe it or not,” says Kenney.

I ask Kenney if he wishes to sum up his days with the Faces but it’s clear he has no intention of ringing last orders just yet. “No, not really. I’m still having a good time.” Raise your glasses, to the Faces.

This article first appeared in the 50th Birthday Issue of Shindig!, published 11 September 2015

THE PRETTY THINGS at SHINDIG! 50th ISSUE PARTY, ROUGH TRADE EAST, LONDON

The Pretty Things, Rough Trade East, Bethnal Green (Thanks to Gray Newell for photo).

Booking midnight to six men The Pretty Things for an event billed as running from seven to nine always had the potential for confusion and so it proved. As I sauntered into Rough Trade East off Brick Lane at 7.25pm to celebrate the 50^th issue of Shindig! magazine the star attraction were already halfway through their set and into ‘SF Sorrow Is Born’ followed by ‘She Says Good Morning’.

It’s a slightly weird sensation watching a band in what feels like the late afternoon, in a record shop, stone cold sober so it took a while to acclimatise but after a couple of tracks from their new LP – ‘The Same Sun’ and Turn My Head’ – they had me clicking a Cuban heel in appreciation to the rhythm and bruise hat-trick: ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, ‘Midnight To Six Man’ and ‘Rosalyn’. Founding members Phil May and Dick Taylor cut familiar figures. Dick, hunched over his guitar, playing searching solos, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, never seeming to age having looked his 72 years since 1971; and maraca shaking Phil still wearing his hair long, only with a wider centre parting. The pair were joined by Frank Holland on guitar, George Woosey on bass and Jack Greenwood giving it some youthful stick on the drums. They can still pack a punch.

The lights came on briefly before Pretties manager Mark St. John jumped on stage to say they’d love to do another song, if we wanted. We did. St. John also used the opportunity to plug the new album, The Sweet Pretty Things (Are In Bed Now, Of Course…), saying it was available on vinyl and that was still the correct way to purchase music; “everything else is just storage”. His argument might need tweaking but one gets the gist. A feisty version of ‘Roadrunner’ was dispatched and the Pretties set up shop to sign a long queue of LP purchases and chat to admirers. Phil, from previous experience, loves to gas and was bang on form as usual. 

I’m listening to my (signed, obviously) copy of the album now and enjoying it. It sounds like the Pretty Things, a good thing, and not a million miles from SF Sorrow. Fifty years from their debut LP it must be said they make a better fist of new material than, say, The Who. Eight original tracks - 'And I Do' and the aforementioned 'Turn My Head' standing out after first few plays - plus covers of The Byrds’ ‘Renaissance Fair’ and an obscure 1972 Sky Saxon/Seeds song ‘You Took Me By Surprise’. They get a bonus point for that last one. Rest Sky's soul. 

Anyway, after the Pretties left the limelight, tipsy Shindig! editors Jon Mills and Andy Morten grabbed the mic to say a few words. Well, Andy said a few words, Jon said plenty more, thanking contributors and readers alike in a speech pitched somewhere between a milked Oscar acceptance, a censored Derek and Clive routine and a tenth pint you’re-my-best-mate-you-are session in a Salisbury pub. With hirsute seven-foot Jon clutching his little pal Andy under his arm he looked like a big mama bear protecting baby bear. Fifty issues of Shindig! celebrated with fifty years of Pretty Things albums. Congratulations to them both. 

THE FACES' KENNEY JONES INTERVIEW in SHINDIG! ISSUE 50

The 50^th birthday issue of Shindig! is now in the shops and, if you excuse me whilst I play a quick little flourish on this here trumpet, includes my article on The Faces and interview with Kenney Jones as the cover story. Toot-toot-ta-toot.

I’d love to say Shindig! editor Jon Mills and I rocked up at Kenney’s country mansion in Surrey for beers on the lawn (which was a possibility at one stage) but the interview eventually took place, five weeks ago, at the offices of Universal Music in Kensington. We sat in one of their swish meeting rooms drinking coffee out of china cups and dunking biscuits whilst chatting for over 90 minutes. We decided beforehand to concentrate on the early days of The Faces with the focus being their first album and stuck to that quite firmly although obviously there was overlap with the Small Faces and later success. Wasn’t entirely sure how much there was to say but ended up with over 4000 words and the mag devoted over ten pages to the band (with some cracking photos). It did mean though I didn’t get to ask about Kenney’s time with The Who and drumming on “You Better You Bet”. One day.

One unexpected bonus was Kenney happening to mention The Action in glowing terms. Stick me within ten yards of anyone who was around the 60s music scene and it’s evitable I’ll ask them about my favourite band but Kenney’s tribute – “They should have been the biggest thing since sliced bread” - was completely unprompted, which made it sound all the more welcome and genuine.

There’s a new five-LP/CD set of the Faces’ four studio albums and a disc of rarities out now entitled You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything. For a two week period I don’t think I listened to anything other than The Faces (with a side helping of early Rod).

And finally, to help Shindig! celebrate their 50^th issue, they’re holding a knees-up at Rough Trade East down in Bethnal Green with The Pretty Things playing a live set on Thursday 8^th October. Free entry, can’t be bad.

WILKO JOHNSON and ROGER DALTREY at the SHEPHERD'S BUSH EMPIRE

Issue 38 of Shindig! is out in newsagents today, containing  - amongst many other things - welcome features on Nigel Waymouth, Mary Love and John Sinclair. It also includes my review of Wilko and Daltrey’s gig from last month. Their album, Going Back Home, was released on Monday and sounds exactly as it should.

I don’t know if Wilko Johnson created a bucket list but making a new album with Roger Daltrey for Chess Records would be an audacious dream for most yet for Wilko, he simply got on and did it without any fuss. Tick, job done.

Ahead of release they’re in Shepherd’s Bush showcasing Going Back Home – a collection of new recordings of Dr. Feelgood songs, Wilko solo songs and a Dylan cover - for the first time. Accompanied by Norman Watt-Roy on bass and Dylan Howe on drums, for thirty minutes Wilko juts from side to side, chops at his guitar strings with his open hand and machine-guns his audience, belying the doctor who gave him an expiry date of four months earlier. As engaging as ‘All Right’, ‘Barbed Wire Blues’ and a drawn out ‘Roxette’ are, it’s impossible not to feel the expectation hanging heavy in the air awaiting Daltrey’s appearance.

One street and fifty years from where Daltrey fronted a fiery British R&B band at the Goldhawk Road Social Club led by a uniquely styled song writing guitarist, he’s back doing it again. With the addition of Daltrey, the always welcome sight of Merton Mick Talbot on keys, and Steve Weston blowing a mean blues harp, the sextet breathe new life and power into Wilko’s songs.

It’s an ideal combination, Wilko does what he does best – cutting razor sharp shapes and sounds - and Daltrey, at last, gets to wrap his vocal chords around fresh material. Stripped from the security of The Who, his familiar moves, his microphone twirling, Daltrey is out of his comfort zone but gamely throws himself centre stage, dancing like a slightly awkward fella at a wedding. His voice is still strong and any ragged edges are far better suited here to the blues-based ‘Going Back Home’, ‘Some Kind Of Hero’, ‘Sneaking Suspicion’ and ‘Ice On The Motorway’ than anything the theatrical Townshend may now throw at him.

They make a natural pair, full of down the boozer geezerness and old rogue charm. If Daltrey fluffs some lyrics, then so what? “This is a lot of shit to remember at my age,” he jokes, “you fucking come up here and try to do it”. When Daltrey asks if they can slow down so he can catch his breath he nods towards Wilko and says “Fucking cancer, it speeds him up, gives him energy”.

Whatever gives Wilko energy – determination, bloody-mindedness, luck, the stars – it rubs off all around him, from the band to the squashed, over-capacity crowd. It’s an emotional night but the overriding emotion is joy, as shown in the huge grin worn on Wilko’s face throughout as he looks across his left shoulder to see his bandmate, that bloke from The ‘Oo, belting out his own songs and a pandemonium inducing version of ‘I Can’t Explain’.

An encore gives a second airing to the rip-roaring ‘I Keep It To Myself’ before, without any fuss or sentimentality, a quick wave and dignified exit. Tick, job done.  

THE CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND IN SHINDIG! ISSUE 27

When one reviewer remarked that the artists featured in Shindig! didn’t always warrant such lengthy coverage the editors got a right bee in their beards. I sympathised with the reviewer as I can’t be bothered reading ten pages about bands who made a couple of records and trot out familiar stories about once supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the Grimsby Town Hall on a wet Wednesday. Mind you, I’d happily read 5000 words from Reggie King’s barber or the Sky Saxon’s dog sitter, so it’s strokes for folks I guess.

Nobody though interested in Shindig! will begrudge the Chocolate Watchband their twelve pages and superb front cover photograph this issue. Their slightly confusing story has been told before but they’re garage punk royalty with enough spectacular songs you need the fingers on both hands to count them, so they’re entitled to tell it again. If the Rolling Stones took blues and rock ‘n’ roll from America to Britain and sold it back to the yanks, the Watchband added their magic and slung it - indirectly - back at us limeys, although it would take years for us to cotton-on to their nuggets. Their songs, clothes, attitude, mystic and sideburns were some of the reasons I wanted to be in a band. I was thrilled to met singer Dave Aguilar backstage in 2005. For some reason, after waiting patiently for his autograph, I decided to ask him at the precise moment he dropped his trousers. “Hey man, can you just wait until I put some pants on?” he said, quite reasonably. See below, with pants.

Elsewhere there are features on The Fallen Angels (which I won't read); The Wheels (which I might); an old squeeze of Keith Moon’s, the actress Joy Bang (which I have, read I mean); and an amusing look at Toby Twirl who discovered that Stockport gigs were filled with pensioners more interested in pie and mash than hipsters flickering their fingers through liquid light shows.

The best issue I've bought for a while. Available here and there for £4.95.

SHINDIG! - ISSUE 20

When Reggie King died in October I was privileged to be asked by Shindig! to write an obituary. The result was more well meaning than well written but is published in the January/February edition. Despite the sub-heading claiming I was a “long-time friend and fan” I should clarify that although we met on a number of occasions I’m certain he never remembered me from one time to the next. I had planned to interview him again for a forthcoming project and am now kicking myself for dilly-dallying. A lesson learned. For The Action to lose both Reg and Mick Evans during 2010 was especially cruel.

The other 83 pages are filled with folk with great hair who weren’t afraid to experiment with music or fashion. I direct you to the photograph of 60’s chancers The Nerve in their suits of polythene and Sellotape. Wear your best underpants. I’ve never really got The Soft Machine but will give them another shot purely on account of how wonderful they look on the cover.

Shindig! is available from good record shops, discerning newsagents and via their website. Priced £4.95.

SHINDIG! ISSUE 18

It’s been scientifically proven it’s not possible to make great music if you have hair stuck above your top lip. The penny seems to have dropped at Shindig! this month who’ve had a smart revamp and the new issue is the most mod friendly for ages: articles/interviews with The Birds, The Remains and The Purple Hearts, an in-depth look at Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, half a million reviews and barely a moustache in sight. That would be enough in itself but it now comes with a Happening! supplement focusing on current bands and events to keep things moving forward. Plus – there’s more – a 21 track download (Mojo take note) featuring the likes of the Len Price 3, The Fallen Leaves and Race Horses. The best music magazine just got better.

Increasingly available from better stocked newsagents or see shindig-magazine.com, priced £4.95.

ROKY ERICKSON at The FORUM, KENTISH TOWN

It’s the stuff of legend: Roky Erickson, front man for the first self-proclaimed psychedelic rock band, the 13th Floor Elevators, took over 300 acid trips, was busted for a small amount of pot, pleaded insanity to avoid jail, wound up in a Rusk secure prison for the criminally insane, diagnosed schizophrenic, treated with electroshock therapy, drugged to the eyeballs with Thorazine, formed a prison band with a bunch of child killers, became a reverend, was released three years later when ruled sane enough not to harm himself or others, was convinced he was a Martian and wanted to call his child Alien before settling on R2-D2 for a year. That’s far from the whole story, for that see Paul Drummond’s heroic telling of the whole incredible saga in his exhaustive biography Eye Mind.

For readers of Eye Mind, and especially viewers of Keven McAlester’s 2005 film You’re Gonna Miss Me, it’s an astounding achievement that Roky is back performing at all but his reluctance to play 13th Floor Elevators songs mean “Splash 1” and “You’re Gonna Miss Me” are tucked away at the end of his set. How enjoyable the preceding hour is depends, to a degree, on your tolerance for ghoulish heavy metalish ruminations on two headed dogs, demons, Lucifer, vampires, zombies, bloody hammers and men with atom brains.

Whatever, and however, he played would be enough for those simply wanting to pay their respects and offer encouragement to a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer who suffered for his art, and paid the price, more than most. Yet Erickson, although uncommunicative (not even a hello or thank you) and rooted to the spot in an eerie autopilot mode, is in fine performing fettle; playing sturdy rhythm guitar and his voice – that much imitated demonic Texan garage rock drawl – in such great shape there’s no need for the devil’s sympathy vote.

There are occasional stodgy moments but the playing of his sympathetic band is largely sprightly for such dark material. “Starry Eyes” adds a beam of light and “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer” sounds swiped from the Stones right under the nose of Primal Scream.

As Roky leaves to loving and rapturous applause he gently raises his fists and a glimmer of a well earned smile peeks through the mass of hair and scraggy Father Christmas beard.

An edited version of this review first appeared for Shindig! magazine

SHINDIG! SEPT/OCT ISSUE

Hip music magazine Shindig! has received a welcome wash and shave, and for the first time in ages thankfully doesn’t feature anyone with a beard on the cover; instead going for the immeasurably more pleasing features of Julie Driscoll, who is covered in-depth.

Among the things I like about Shindig! is the mix of lengthy features and snappy, to-the-point, reviews; plus coverage of bands like, in this issue, Wimple Winch and Spirit, neither I’ve listened to for yonks yet am now keen to rediscover. Also, an amusing encounter with Question Mark of ? & The Mysterians and an interview with Kim Fowley: “If it’s a soloist I want to hear a teardrop in the voice. If it’s fast I want to see teenagers hurling themselves through the air”.

Despite being rooted in the past, the free CD of 20 current bands looking backwards to look forwards is not only surprising in depth but quality too, and puts to shame all the bin botherers Mojo dishes out.

Available from “all good record shops” but there’s more chance of finding a copy of “Desdemona” in the local charity shop than one of those on your high street, so best subscribe from www.shindig-magazine.com.