Cardinal

 Cardinal

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Nigel Clark (guitar/vocals). (Maybe spelt Clarke - not sure). Duo from Harbury / Southam c 1969 / 72. Acoustic duo.

Trev Teasdel's recollections -

Played various types of venue including folk clubs, St Osburg's,. Coventry Arts Umbrella club for the HUMPOESIC HAPPENING July 12th 1972, which I organised.

Not to be confused with The Cardinals operating in Coventry in 1964

Nigel was from Harbury / Southam near Coventry. I first met him in a non musical setting at the Coventry Butts Tech College in 1967 / 8 - both apprentice electricians. Nigel was apprenticed to the Electricity board and I to DF Gibbs (next to the General Wolf pub). We were both on a day release course.

 We became mates through music  - Nigel played guitar, Simon and Garfunkel and I wrote

song lyrics. Nigel had an interest in Psychology and in the lunch hour we'd go to the collage library and he'd get me to take out psychology books which I thought would be good for my writing. RD Laing, The Forgotten language Erich Fromm (An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths), Psychology of Thinking, Fundamentals of Psychology and I started to buy a psychology magazine and wrote two songs from the case studies The Ups and Downs in the Life of Mr Toil and Strife which Nigel put to music later on and performed as far as I know at their gigs at St.Osberg's. The other was Mrs Stress and Strain - video below.

Erich Fromm was useful as an introduction to symbolism and Paul Simon's songs of the time were depictions of social forms of alienation.

Nigel left the Electricity Board and came to DF Gibbs as a TV engineer in 1969. Here he introduced he lent me Dylan and Beatles songbooks to encourage my lyric writing, 

In 1972, I bumped into Nigel again at the Lanch Polytech gigs and invited him to do a gig with Cardinal at the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club.

No idea what Nigel went on to do musically as we lost touch.

Below is one of the songs Nigel put music too back in 1968 (although I never heard him play it.). Maybe influenced by Paul Simon's Big Bright green Pleasure Machine a bit.

 THE UPS AND DOWNS IN THE LIFE OF MR TOIL AND STRIFE (Trev Teasdel 1968)

 He's sittin' on his posterior, feeling he's inferior

 with a sudden burst of hysteria, he acts upon an impulse.

 Chorus

 One day he's up and around

 Next day you'll find he's fallen down.

 He cannot keep his feet on the ground.

 The Ups and Downs in the life of Mr Toil and Strife

 The Ups and Downs in the life of Mr Toil and Strife

 

 He's sittin' on the railings, contemplating his failings,

 Unable to reach compromises

 with the problems that he so despises.

 To him his virtues are inconspicuous

He feels he is ridiculous

The grass is greener over yonder

Of that he likes to ponder.

 (Chorus)

 On occasions his gusto tends to ascend

but on many things that does depend

Company and success

inspire him more than words can express.

 The figures of authority are the root of his inferiority

His hurt he tries to hide as they tread upon his pride.

 

An endless life of labour

An unsociable next door neighbour

A life of little variety, A life that's full of anxiety.

 ...............

A follow on song from this in Mrs Stress and Strain 1969 (re written in the mid 70's)