Vanilla Fudge - You Just Keep Me Hanging On

[Jamie Renton]

This was subsequently amended to "If you're at a party and "Come on Eileen" comes on..."

[AndyM]

I (cough cough) quite like a couple of Moody Blues tracks. But you can't be nasty to me, I've had a stroke.

And yes, Adam, 'No Milk Today' is fantastic. Only big hit with "folorn" in the lyrics ?

[will vine]

So a consensus is shaping:

Vanilla Fudge
The Moody Blues
Ten Years After

I feel the need to ride to the defence of the guilty here.

I saw Ten Years After a couple of times. They were new, loud, bluesy, jazzy, and exciting. Which was all I asked of them.

Never saw The Moody Blues. Although I thought them a bit pretentious - well heck there were plenty way ahead of them in that queue, they made some extremely catchy, charming, and well produced records.

Vanilla Fudge...Well I guess like a lot of guys given the freedom to stretch out and play for the first time they overstretched themselves a bit.

There was of course, in those days, a lot of talk about musical freedom of expression and this was always in a three-legged race with the fast buck. Nobody was quite sure what was right or wrong and nobody knew exactly what would fly off the shelves. Rock wasn't a focus group designed thing, it was a motorway pile up of self-indulgent jazz, bad blues, dodgy poetry, and heroic amplification, and, that said, I would happily defend the creative efforts, if not always the final product, of dreadfully unfashionable groups like Blodwyn Pig, Blood,Sweat, and Tears, Ginger Baker's Airforce, The New Animals...........

Anyone who'd put the above guys in the "worst of" list obviously never stood through a gig by Blossom Toes, Stray, or Principal Edwards Magic Theatre.

[Rob Hall]

Principal Edwards Magic Theatre.

Thank you Will: that's the name I've been groping for for the past two days.

[NormanD]

Norman: Vanilla Fudge more fun than the DC5 or Herman's effing Hermits?!! Are you on mandrax??!!! Have you listened to "Bits And Pieces" (amongst the most Neanderthal records) or the sublime "No Milk Today" in the last three decades?!!!

In answer to your shocked use of dembangers:
1. For that one VF song, yes, more fun
2. No. You got any?
3. Sadly, yes, too many times to call. Hence 1.

[gary booth]

Off On A Tangent Warning!

About a year ago at work a fellow postman walked into the office and was met by several colleagues shouting "Here, Millsy! They've just been playing that song (on the office radio) by Barry Manilow about your missus. (Millsy is married to a woman called Mandy)" He replied, "I didn't know he done a song called 'Lazy, Miserable, Bitch'." Yes, I work with blokes who can make Fred & Barney seem like modern men. I was going to say it's not 'big or clever' but the speed of his reply sort of makes it 'clever'.
Anyway, my mate Rod Demick is currently working with songwriter Scott English (can you see where this going....?) Scott co-wrote 'Mandy' (the revised title from 'Brandy') and roared with laughter when he was told of the Millsy' quip. He's a straight talkin' guy from Brooklyn.

BUT -Scott English also co-wrote Hi Ho Silver Lining (and produced it) and also wrote 'Bend Me,Shape Me' . Rod joked, when he goes round to Scott's place in Maida Vale he regularly helps him carry the large royalty cheques that arrive through the letterbox.

[NormanD]

Principal Edwards Magic Theatre.

Thank you Will: that's the name I've been groping for for the past two days.

I attended a music theory course that was taught by one of PEMT's ex-members. She told me this in hushed confidence (so even she must have known the grim truth). I said that I'd never seen them and asked her, as a joke "Were you the one who did a swirly dance in a velvet cape?" She replied "So you did see us".

[Rob Hall]

'Bend Me,Shape Me'

I loved that record. I can still remember half of the lyrics: "You've got everything that I need, and baby you know it/You could make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet..."

Andy Fairweather-Lowe had a pretty good voice on him.

[Adam Blake]

a lot of talk about musical freedom of expression and this was always in a three-legged race with the fast buck.

What a wonderful expression. Thank you, Will. I will certainly nick that at some point in the future.

[gary booth]

'Bend Me,Shape Me'

I loved that record. I can still remember half of the lyrics: "You've got everything that I need, and baby you know it/You could make this beggar a king, a clown or a poet..."

Andy Fairweather-Lowe had a pretty good voice on him.

I agree about the song and the singer. Amen Corner were always on in our house due to my brother's love of them. It was AFL he modelled his hair on and impersonated with the Dunlop tennis racket. But have you seen AFL lately? Is there anybody in music that looks less like they did then...now? Possibly David Essex?

[Adam Blake]

I saw Ten Years After a couple of times. They were new, loud, bluesy, jazzy, and exciting. Which was all I asked of them.

I still use Ten Years After's version of "Woodchopper's Ball" off their second album "Undead" as a teaching aid - as an inspiration for aspiring bass players and as a warning to guitarists.

[AndyM]

Stray

There's a blast from the past! I went to school with someone who was related to somebody from Stray. Out of doggedly persistent familial loyalty, he always, ALWAYS brought them up when debates about best bands came up. Nobody was as good as Stray.

Fuckwit.

[Adam Blake]

You couldn't avoid Stray on the London gig circuit in the mid 70s. They were one of those poor bands who got within sniffing distance of a decent record deal and then had it dashed away from them by Punk. Just as well, really.

(For what it's worth, the first band I was ever in briefly secured the services of a spiv manager who managed to get an A&R man from EMI to come down to one of our rehearsals. This would have been Summer '76. He turned us down on the grounds that our "roots were in the wrong places". I can't imagine what he was getting at but it might have had something to do with the Atomic Rooster and Lynyrd Skynyrd covers. His next signing was a band called The Sex Pistols of whom we were deeply suspicious...)

[Ted]

What about Wishbone Ash?

Like Ten Years After only worse.


In the fire, the king will come.
Thunder rolls, piper and drum.
Evil sons, overrun,
Count their sins - judgment comes.

The checkerboard of nights and days -
Man will die, man be saved.
The sky will fall, the earth will pray,
When judgment comes to claim its day.

See the word of the prophet
On a stone in his hand.
Poison pen revelation,
Or just a sign in the sand?

The checkerboard of nights and days -
Man will die, man be saved.
The sky will fall, the earth will pray,
When judgment comes to claim its day.

See the word of the prophet
On a stone in his hand.
Poison pen revelation,
Or just a sign in the sand?

[Adam Blake]

What about Wishbone Ash?

Not 60s. The subject of "The Worst Band of the 70s" is possibly even more fraught with danger...