The Future Is Past

Post Sex Pistols/Grundy Interview at the end of 1976 punk bands appeared almost overnight across Britain. Not since the skiffle boom of the late 50’s had so many people been prompted to pick up a guitar, learn three chords and form a band. Manchester in particular asserted its position as the punk capital of the North but everywhere, even Norwich was able to boast a band or two. The notable…

Jordan, born Pamela Rooke and later named Jordan Mooney has passed away. I read the news via a tweet from Jonathan Ross followed by the inevitable fully of responses ranging from the absurdly grandiose ‘without Jordan there would be no punk ‘ to the  more mundane ‘who?’. It may seem absurd to those of us who lived through the punk wars that there are people who need to ask that question but it…

What happened to UB40? Its not unusual for a band to lose its Mojo, Slade, Lindisfarne and Dr Feelgood all fell from grace in the 70s with the pressure of coming up with new product but they found new ways of keeping going and adapted to the changes in the music business. No one fell from artistic grace as rapidly as UB40 but only in an artistic sense, for decades they remained pretty much the…

25.. Tears of a Clown, The Beat

Back to my own personal ‘tracks of my years’ and a tie in with one of the musicians we lost last year. The Beat were the perfect pop group for a couple of years. Luckily for them the Two Tone movement exploded just when they were hitting their stride catapulting them to a kind of fame just at they hit their creative peak. Birmingham has never been a fashionable city, but it’s spawned some great…

RIP Burke Shelley of Budgie

I had hoped to stop writing about dead people but I couldn’t ignore the passing of Burke Shelley .Budgie we’re never of the first bands I ever saw live and I wrote about about it some years ago . Here’s an early The Future is Past Post http://thefutureispast.co.uk/2015/07/12/enter-budgie/

It’s got to end sometime, life that is. As mentioned in my last post, last year saw a fine crop of deaths which got me thinking. There are people I’ll miss a bit and others I won’tmiss at all. But there are a few who will leave a huge void when they shuffle off to that great gig in the sky. Who are they? Obviously, it’s a personal thing but I’veidentified a handful that for me will leave the…

The Grim Reapers Work in 2021

As might be anticipated there’s been a bumper crop of musicians and singers passing away this year. Its only to be expected, the heros of our youth are now older people. A lot of the departed, Phil Spector, Sylvain Sylvian or Gerry Marsden , are all names familiar to me but didn’t really impact on my life. The ones below are more personal. Les McKeown The Singer with the Bay City Rollers passed…

Ring Out Solstice Bells – Jethro Tull

What is it about Jethro Tull that I just don’t get? They’ve got folk and blues and Jazz influences, flute solos, intelligent lyrics, cod pieces, a sense of the absurd, tricky time signatures, theres a whole load of stuff to like. I’ve accommodated Gong or Gentle Giant both with the same unique sensibilities. Yet Tull leave me completely uninterested, not bad just..well, nothing…

As music declines as s force in our cultural lives there’s an inverse blooming of analysing the past.  We are living in a golden age of documentation which has probable reached its peak with the ‘Get Back’ documentary which would take the best part of a working day to watch. Theres also a plethora of platforms SKY, Apple, Netflix, TV (especially BBC4) as well as YouTube, so many in fact that…

I’ve not posted a whole lot this year, partly because my job involves a ton of looking at computer screens and partly because I thought a break would do us all good For obvious reasons 2021 has been a bit of a dud for musical events in my life so a yearly round up is going to look a bit like the last turkey in the shop. Quite whether I’m ever going to embrace the gig experience again,…

Following the passing of Charlie Watts another 80 year old man has left us. Michael Chapman was hardly a household name. In the 70s I was aware of his existence, it’s possible that I might have heard him on the John Peel show but that was the limit of his impact on my consciousness it’s only been in the last four years thanks to the miracle of Spotify that I’ve been able to access his…

Charlie Watts..end of an era

The death of an 80 year old man surrounded by his family doesn’t sound that a big a deal but the loss of Charlie Watts is on every bit as significant as the death of Louis Armstrong or Howling Wolf, he’s a link to a past that has now  gone forever. Much is made of Watts as a thwarted Jazz drummer but in the early Stones he effortlessly made the transition from R&B to pop. He was good enough not…

About a month ago YouTube decided I really needed to see more videos about the Animals. Fair enough, I always like the band just like I enjoyed most of the 60’s groups.Eric Burdon has always been the main focal point of course but there was also Alan Price on keyboards, bassist Chas Chandler who had another career as manger of Hendrix and Slade as well as John Steel the unremembered but hugely…

24: Whatever gets you Thru the Night..John Lennon

Lennon’s time in New York City wasn’t hugely significant from a musical point of view. Prone to inertia and laziness he relied rather on the muse coming knocking. A lot of the time he lacked others to spark him into some real creativity and tended to fall back on the music of his youth. Probably the period of most creativity was the time he spent away from the person he considered to be his…

Paul McCartney saves Christmas

You are 78 years old. Your mother dies when you were 14. Your closest male friend is gunned down and your wife and ‘baby brother ‘ bandmate are taken by cancer. And that’s all before you reach the age of 60. Like anyone who has lived a life Paul McCartney has baggage. And like everyone else he’s been locked down for the last nine months. He’s been making music for over 50 years, not just…

The Lonesome Death of John Lennon

I try not to engage with the news to much, its pretty much a constant babble and I assume that anything of real importance will get though to me somehow. I had assumed that the 40thanniversary of John Lennon’s death would somehow be a big deal. There was a certain symmetry to that tragic event, he has now been dead almost as long as he was alive and the anniversary of his last birthday certainly…

23: Oliver’s Army…Elvis Costello

Watching an episode of ‘The Crown’ recently I was reminded of the Falklands war. At the time I was unemployed and living in a house which had heating one room only. Having survived a cold damp winter and facing an uncertain future I considered the possibility of the war escalating and national conscription happening. I don’t know what would have happened if that has transpired but my thoughts at…