A Horse With No Name

The Brickmaker's pub was a ten minute walk from my house and I often went there. The beer was ordinary but what attracted me was the music which could sometimes be quite special. Danny Bryant, The Hamsters, The Brew, The Quireboys, Wilko Johnson have all been on there, and I consider that this was where Ed Sheeran first started his career with the Next Big Thing competition.

     One Thursday evening I turned up there to listen to Barry Homan, a real blues rocker from Austin, Texas who played very loud jazzy rock and blues such as Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a great tonic to listen to after a day at work. Due to the high standard of his performances he had a large local following and the pub was heaving with excited music lovers. I stood next to a blues colleague , Peter, who was very keen to tell me that

     “Not only do we have Barry tonight” he said with his eyes shining, “we also have a man singing in the interval who used to be with Dr and The Medics, this will be a great night”. Well, did he mean Clive Jackson who had the number one hit from a copy of Norman Greenbaum's Spirit in the Sky? This would be a “glam” event. So I took my place on one of the shabby but comfy upholstered seats next to the stage, and enjoyed Barry Homan's first set, loud electric blues and excellent guitar playing; and looked around for a long thin man with black spiky hair wearing Kiss like makeup and long white flowing robes. I couldn't see anyone like this.

     Barry's first set finished and he stood down, so who would be next? I was very curious when an older man, tall but not as tall as Clive Jackson, with long grey hair, an experienced face and much denim and cheesecloth took to the stage with a guitar and sang a few electric folky songs that I did not recognise. I talked to the pub encyclopaedia who informed me that this was John Fiddler, half of Medicine Head, who had several number one hits in the seventies along with a continuing presence in the music industry; not Dr and the Medics but Medicine Head. Can't you get your facts right Peter?

     By now I was feeling more relaxed after a pint of Stella and my ears were ringing with the noise of the two finished sets, and John Fiddler sat down next to me. Oh My God!!! He has sat down next to me! What do I do? He is so good looking and handsome and he is looking at me and smiling, looking at me!!! I say the first and most stupid thing that comes into my head.

     “Didn't your group get to number one with A Horse With No Name? I was trying to impress him with my wide and deep music knowledge. His face went dark, blank and bored

and I knew I must have said something dreadful and stupid.

     “No, no, no, A Horse With No Name was done by America” he sighed , “ My group got to Number Three with One And One Is One, and had other hits such as Pictures In The Sky, Slip And Slide, and Rising Sun.”. He sounded disappointed and bored, though I could hardly hear him as my ears were ringing. I tried to reply intelligently and meaningfully but I could hardly hear my own voice and could not be convincing any more. I felt small and stupid and was fighting a loosing battle. Mercifully Barry Homan's second set started and I was rescued from my own petard. So that was that.

     A few days later I was analysing all this and remembered that in the nineteen-seventies when I was a teenager some posters of Medicine Head, John Fiddler  sitting next to Peter Hope-Evans, were printed in the the teenage magazine Jackie. I had stuck them on my bedroom wall, and I had listened to One And One Is One and liked it a lot. I had even made a crude “mix tape” containing this song by taping music straight from the radio onto a reel to reel tape recorder, although the joins when I turned it on and off to cut out the disc jockey's rantings could be clearly heard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Head
And a memorial of Barry Homan RIP
https://barrydavidhoman.com/

Nostalgia In Long Playing Records

I hated “pop” music as a child and I thought that the TV programme Top of The Pops was boring; and Radio One was just dreadful. I liked anything that my mum liked, so I was very much into opera and classical. She liked opera so I did too, and I loved Carmen, Aida, Madame Butterfly. She took ballet lessons as a child so we often listened to Swan Lake. I loved Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture and exploded along with the cannons. My dad had bought me the singles of She Loves You (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!) by the Beatles, Return to Sender by Elvis P, and Telstar by the Tornadoes so I loved those too. Then of course there was easy listening. But we hated Tom Jones. 

I asserted my independence around the time I went to Secondary School so that was when the revolution started. But I would never go into the local record shop Hamilton Sounds and go into one of those space age booths to try new music, I thought they were scary.

This was in the days before the internet and it was very difficult to discover new music unless it was on the radio or television;  things are much more different now.

So Albums in no order of preference:

1  17-11-70  - Elton John

Bought for me by my dad. I thought I was being clever and hip to own this but I was wrong. I never listened to it beforehand and it wasn't very good. It was a live album and he didn't do very good songs on it. Towards the end it sounds like he is shouting angrily at someone. Oh dear, how much folly the young do have. What a waste of a birthday present.

2 Greatest Hits  - John Denver

At school it was fashionable to be “into” folk and there was sometimes a folk club. I now know that this album is more :"Americana”, not really English folk. Another mistake. I knew about him as we had an American pupil at school who sang his songs at our Folk Club.  She was called Holly Duell and was the daughter of an American serviceman stationed at a base near our school.  His name was Commander Duell.  We once had some German girls at the Folk Club on a German exchange visit and the boys used to go for them in a big way.  One sang "Michelle" (Lennon & McCartney) for us.  She was very good.

3 Journey -  Colin Blunstone

I must have been very mixed up – I thought I was buying Home Thoughts by Clifford T Ward as I liked the song called Scullery.  I had no idea that Colin Blunstone started out with the Zombies and was mixed with Rod Argent. But when I got it I loved his voice and he really is a wonderful singer. “Say You Don't Mind” (though that was written by Denny Laine) will stay with me forever- I wish I could write music like that. Saw him recently singing with Rod Argent on Later with Jools Holland. He still is very good; so breathtaking the way he brings his guitar to life.

4 Electric Warrior  - T Rex

Who could not like this? And I had a “porky prime cut”:  at the vinyl pressing some people used to etch words into the run off space at the centre. There was some marvellous artwork on the inner sleeve of Marc and Mickey as sort of mystic nature waterfalls in the sky. T Rex wasn't just about electric guitar pop, and there were some slower more deep soulful songs. Rick Wakeman played keyboard on “Get It On”.  I was thrilled when older that the film Billy Elliott used this music as some of its' soundtrack. I was much older when I learnt that Marc's hair wasn't natural and that he permed it.

5 Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat – Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber

This opera marked the beginning of the now famous partnership. We all had to own a copy of this at school, it was de rigeur.  It was first brought in to a Religious Education lesson with Miss Rideout, who thought my work was sloppy, by a boy called Graham Jennings;  my friend Sally and I used to listen to it a lot together at home while debating who was the most handsome, Tim or Andrew; we decided Tim. But we didn't like the picture of David Daltry on the cover as he looked like he was posing. I even played violin in the band that accompanied the school production.

6 Angel Clare  - Art Garfunkle

Another mistake. But JJ Cale did play guitar solo on it. Well, it wasn't really that bad. He actually didn't write any of the songs on it, he was just a performer singer carried along by Paul Simon.  I didn't play it very much; I thought it was boring.

7 Ummagumma  - Pink Floyd

My boyfriend  gave this to me on my 15th birthday and I thought that I had reached the top of being hip and cool.  I wore flares embroidered with daisies in chain stitches, wore my hair long, made homemade long skirts,  and burned joss sticks while writing my O Level literature essays drinking home made wine.  You can really bop around to the variety of type of music on this LP.  Side 3 and 4 are still so great.  All the tracks were longer versions of the shorter ones on their other albums, a great classic.  Somehow I got some of the surfaces dirty and it wouldn't play and I was scared that my boyfriend would be angry with me, so my mum went out and bought me a whole new replacement and I was so grateful to her for that.

8  Tonton Macoute  - Tonton Macoute





I picked this LP up very cheaply in a remainder sale and loved it for its' uniqueness and individuality.   It was another one I played while writing my O Level English Literature essays on Friday nights  while drinking home made rhubarb wine from the demijohn on the windowsill and burning joss sticks.  I didn't know about jazz much then,  and I really liked this, sort of trippy and cosmic. I found  nice history of the group here:

https://www.discogs.com/artist/883675-Tonton-Macoute .


9  Fog on The Tyne  -  Lindisfarne




Our groovy, hippy hip English teacher , Mr Cowley,  gave out the lyrics on a sheet for the  track "City Song" and we read them while listening to the track being played on a cassette recorder.  Then we had to "discuss"  the lyrics.  After that, while on holiday staying with my Aunt Rose in Exeter with my friend Sally,  I found a cassette of Fog On The Tyne  going cheap in W H Smith.  I couldn't play it straight away as my Aunt didn't have a cassette player and had to wait until I got home.   It was a long wait.  I remember a lot of  the toe-rags in our English class liked the lyrics for  the title song "Fog on the Tyne"  because of "we can have a wee-wee, we can have a wet on the wall"........little children.

10  Fresh Liver - Scaffold

My boyfriend and I first met each other in May, and in the following August we had already pre-booked separate holidays.  I was in Exeter and was really missing him badly even though I was with Sally and she was great company.  I knew he wanted this LP so I  sacrificed most of my cash for him.  He was coming home by train from Newquay and changed  trains at Exeter.   This was wonderful!   I hung around Exeter St Davids station for ages one morning just to catch him when he changed trains and it worked!  We met up just for a few minutes where I gave him this LP and he gave me a little china animal with orange hair.  On researching  The Scaffold I was amazed by how many famous people worked with them, for example Elton John, Jack Bruce and Graham Nash.


11 Reflections In A Mud Puddle  - Dory Previn



This was another record/artist I was introduced to by my English teacher Howard Cowley.  In the lesson we were each given a sheet of the lyrics to "Doppelganger", then we listened to the track twice, and then there was a group discussion.  His first question was "what does 'doppelganger' mean?", and my friend Sally was the first to make a brave stab at the answer.  I thought her answer was totally adequate, but he liked to refine it, being the senior intellect. The next work from the album we listened to was the second side in its' entirety being "One Last Dance For My Father"  which we thought the lyrics was so good that we wanted to take the  sheet  home to study them.

Looking back on it, Mr Cowley was excellent in developing  in us a good love of and critical faculties for analysing literature.  We loved his lessons because we did very little writing and there was hardly ever any homework.  But I don't think he liked me very much.  We also studied the Mersey Poets, you can't gets much better than that!

I have developed a life long love for Dory Previn; I hate Andre Previn for what he did to her.  I even saw her live once in 1977 in a theatre in Hammersmith, with  Renaissance as a second group, and not many people can say that.

12 Camembert Electrique  -  Gong



In those days records cost around three pounds and I earned about two pounds fifty pence  a week doing a student job washing up in a pub cum Steak bar called the Plough (run by Schooner Inns).  So when the record Gong was advertised for sale at fifty nine pence (Yes!!A whole long player, not even a single for fifty nine pence!)  we all went for it in a big way and had to buy a copy. I had never heard of Gong and knew nothing of their music, but as it was affordable I got one.  As far as I know most of my community got one.  I don't think I ever played it.  I always wondered why it was so cheap, and why couldn't the other musicians and groups do this too.  It would have made my life a lot nicer.  Now, because of the modern miracle of   Wikipedia I know that Richard Branson was behind this.  If you are interested the details are here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camembert_Electrique


I find this so interesting and wish Wikipedia was around when I was younger.