COURTIERS OF FASHION

 

COURTIERS OF FASHION

BAND INDEX

Rex Brough says "After Dave Pepper left I, he had one more stab at new romanticism with this band."

Dave Pepper - Vocals, Keyboards, Guitar

Paul Johnston - Drums, Keyboards

Karen Ellett - Vocals

Singles - Courtiers of Fashion (can be bought on the link below) another track The Discussion is on there too.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/sonar-music-25th-anniversary/id329999586

THE COUNTDOWNS

 

THE COUNTDOWNS

BAND INDEX

From Pete Chambers - Godiva Rocked to a Backbeat

From Leamington Spa - formed February 1963 -
Bob Wilson -bass / Gary Mayo - Drums ( who had played in a skiffle band in the army together) Ken Smith - Rth Guitar ?John Harris -Lead Guitar.

John Harris once tuned John Lennon's Rickenbacker for him at the Matrix Ballroom in Coventry , November 1962 where they played every Friday night in a 35 week residency. There were only 4 people on the first night but by the end of the residency the place was heaving.

From Pete Chambers Backbeat article 
" Our first gig was at the Bulldog pub in Whitnash Leamington. They had bigger places to play too, such as The Locarno, Coventry, where they supported The Vernon Girls. From that they began venturing out of the immediate area. They continued to spread their "beat" music all over the area, at every working men's club and dance hall you could think of and other places such as Birmingham and Chesford Grange, where they literally played opposite Leamington band Woody Allen and The Challengers.

"There were two stages there, us on one and the Challengers on the other. We played with all the local bands at some point, The Sorrows, The Avengers and Tony Martin and the Echo 4. Our act consisted of a lot of Shadows and Beatles material, and all the current pop hits of the time' we even supported the Barron Knights at Coventry Police Hall, it was Peter Nutt's 21st birthday, a brilliant night," recalls John.

The band worked as The Countdowns until November 1965, when Bob Wilson got married and left the group, so continuing on a permanent basis became difficult. Although John would act as stand-in for other local bands just to keep his hand in.

Good job he did, as in 1974 Gary Mayo decided it was time to have a Countdowns reunion.
"It was a great night," enthuses John. "We had to beg, steal and borrow amplifiers, we had obviously forgotten a lot of the material, although when we hired the Holbrooks Community Centre to rehearse we came outside for a break and there were 60 or 70 people listening to us."

The band had five reunions from 1974 to 1993. Drummer Gary suffered from osteoporosis and gave up the drums: "He was a great drummer," says John. "And a great guy with a tremendous sense of humour."

In 2003 John, Bob and Ken got the music bug again and played together in the band The Time Machine.

Nowadays John repairs guitars and refurbishes amplifiers.
He said: "The 60s music was quite revolutionary and it was great to be a part of it. We all had a great time, and I believe it was the best time to be into music. I don't think bands today have that kind of atmosphere. If I could do it all again I would, especially with the new technology there is now."

They had a regular booking at the Chesford Grange in the Cellar Bar. They also played the Heath and The General Wolfe at some stage.

The CONFEDERATES

The CONFEDERATES

circa 1965- Source Broadgate Gnome

Beat group

Below Barbara Richmond - 16 year old singer with the Confederates from the Coventry Standard July 8th 1965.

Line up: Barbara Richmond (vocals), Colin Bird (bass), Michael Bird (drums) Malc Swain Rhythm guit. (Malc was also in The Imagination), Dave Dunning - Lead guitar.

5-piece band managed by Donald Bird.

BAND INDEX

THE CONFEDERATES

From the Coventry Standard article below 1965

The Confederates, another 5 piece Coventry group have put aside thoughts of going professional as they believe there are already too many groups trying to make the grade and too few succeeding.

ON THE WAY OUT

Managed by Mr Donald Bird, the Confederates feel there is more security in their present jobs than there would be in the record business.

They will continue as a group however, and have many bookings. Their manager tells me that they are 'quite happy' to remain semi-professional. "After expenses each member averages about 30 shillings per booking." he said.

"We think that the big beat is on the way out but though folk music is on the increase, it will now replace ordinary pop music."

There are four boys in the Confederates and one girl, 16 year old Barbara Richmond. Barbara the singer is an apprentice hairdresser. 

Mr Bird's two sons Colin 17 and Michael 15 play drums and bass guitar respectively. Colin has just returned for Germany with the Corps of Drums of the Coventry school of music  after playing hte kiel festival of Music there.

Concrete Parachute

 

Concrete Parachute

BAND INDEX

Concrete Parachute were from the Leamington area and a going concern c 1973.They were being managed by John Bow (Bargent) of Rouguestar Promotions.


The line up consisted of -
Frank Steed - Vocals
Nick Dee - Lead guitar
Barry Ousbey - bass
Robert Board - Drummer
Jig Johnson - Rhythm Guitar
Paul Fulford - Organ
I'm not sure who Graham Osborne was but he appears as a contact on the band card.

The band had an interview with Apple Records,see the press cutting for more details.

Drummer Jim Pryal wrote "One of the band was called Paul ? He lived in Warwick, red transit."

See entry for Cheeky.

The band cards were in different colours - Yellow, pink and dark blue. I got mine from John Bow of Rougstar Promotions in 1973.

Manager John Bargent - aka Bo or Bow. John was also a co-founder co editor of Hobo Coventry Music and Arts magazine with Trev Teasdel.

Concert (Dave Pepper band)

 Concert (Dave Pepper band)

BAND INDEX


Concert c1975 -
Dave Pepper says "This was my First paying band! Think i was 17 here!! The vocalist was an Elvis sing alike!"

CONCERT

 

CONCERT

BAND INDEX

circa late 1971-2

Martin Barter (organ), Tony Morgan (bass), Jim Allen (saxophone), Steve Harrison (drums).

Christmas 1971, I got a Christmas card from Coventry bass player Tony (Mojo) Morgan with this diagram inside. A newly proposed Coventry band. Tony had played in bands with Steve Harrison  and Jim Allen before. However I don't the band got off the ground and Tony now has no memory of it. The evidence for it is this Christmas card!

Tony played in lots of bands before and after this from The Mick Green Blues band with Steve harrison to the Coventry ska band in 1979 - 91 EMF with Jim Allen on Sax - they won the battle of the bands and made a single for RCA. Steve Harrison eventually played for La Homme de Terra in the 1980's. Martin Barter also played with many bands from Coconut Mat in the early 70's, now with Joe O'Donnell's Celtic band Shkayla.

Tony Morgan wrote on the original version of this post "Thanx for reminding me Trev my mate. It was such a long time ago now that it's hard to remember everything. Good one Trev.....Peace...Mojo."

Tony Mojo Morgan later with his band The Hoochie Coochie Blues Band in Wales where he relocated to.

COCONUT MAT

 

COCONUT MAT

BAND INDEX

COCONUT MAT (Heavy Metal)
circa 1970 Source Hobo and Errol McGrath

Line Up - Left to Right

Martin Barter (keyboards) Errol McGrath (Lead Singer / Guitarist) Terry Price Drummer / Billy Campbell (Bass)

Errol McGrath told us 

 "Terry Price and I formed the band. I was the lead singer and guitarist with the band, Bill Campbell (Bass) was with ‘Eggy’ at the time playing with Roger and Nigel Lomas but they were in the process of splitting. Myself and Terry went to audition Martin Barter (Keyboard) at his home, Martin was a lovely guy and we were impressed immediately.

We enjoyed a limited success playing many of the rock clubs around the midlands and supporting some headliners ‘Status Quo’ etc. When the band split Terry went on to work (road manager –I think) for the glam rock band ‘Sweet’ and then ‘Wizard’ (aka Roy Wood). He moved to the US (Beverley Hills no less) and became vice president of ‘Tasco’ the PA hiring company, the last time I saw him he visited me in Coventry on his way back from Germany organising Elton John and Tina Turner tours.

We played a cross section of heavy rock stuff, some we wrote ourselves others were covers of top bands of the times and some you might not class as heavy rock i.e. 'Ride My Seesaw' (Moody Blues), 'The Kids are alright' (Who) even a heavy version of 'River deep mountain high'. The bands we liked at the time were 'Deep Purple, ''Led Zepplin', 'Blue Cheer', 'Naz'. 

I went on to form a club bands ‘Amber Sin’ and ‘Streetlife’ and played most of the WMC’s in the midlands. In 1986 I moved to Bournemouth and formed a club band with my son ‘Lloyd’ (14 years old) on lead guitar (he was better than me). I currently play solo gigs in pubs." "Other act we supported were Jeff Lynn, Status Quo, Pink Floyd etc."

Memories from Trev Teasdel

Coconut Mat opened for Wandering John at the Walsgrave Pub gig (Pete Waterman's venue)
and this where i saw Coconut Mat.

c 1970. I was introduced to Coconut Mat by Pete Waterman while we were both working for the GEC (General Electric Company) Stoke works Cov. Pete of course wasn't world famous then although he was already a centrifugal force on the Coventry music scene - as a former R & B singer in the 60's band Tomorrow's Kind and Coventry's top soul music DJ - 7 nights a week - on top of a full time job in wiring dept of the GEC! Pete certainly earned his success by hard work, the night shift of DJaying being the enjoyable bit!

Pete had just put music to my latest lyric A Lotta Rain is Fallin' I had written at the GEC  and Pete then introduced me to Billy Campbell who was the bassist with Coconut Mat and also worked at the GEC. Coconut Mat was a heavy rock outfit at the time when bands like Black Sabbath, Free and Led Zeppelin were arising on the national music scene.


(Pic show Martin Barter (left) as he is today playing keyboards with folk band Shkayla)

 I didn't know Bill's background at the time until I read it on the Broadgate Gnome Music site but Bill used to play bass for The Eggy circa 1968 / 69 with Roger and Nigel Lomas of the 1965 hit group The Sorrows. Roger Lomas was later involved in the production side of some the Selecter records.

Listen to the Eggy on Youtube - 

The Eggy produced a single which wasn't a hit - called You're Still Mine/B: Hookey (Spark SRL1024 1969). The music was described by Broadgate Gnome as 'Freak Beat' and vocalist Bill Bates was formerly in The Boll Weevils.

Pete had liked my lyric enough to put music to it and repeat the line 'There's a lotta rivers flowin' but the sea's learned how to fly" in the song and on the strength of it asked me to write something for Coconut Mat.

As coconut Mat were a heavy rock band influenced by the current Black Sabbath / Led Zepplin genre, I thought I'd write an evil lyric about living in a rat-race city like Cov with it's pollutants and hurry n haste.. perhaps with Led Zeppelin style vocals.

Bill turned the lyric down saying 'you can't have a hit single with the word Beelzebub in it!' I had no idea they were thinking about singles!  Bill nicked named me Beelzebub forever afterwards rasping it as Beez -le-bub'. Ha 5 years later Queen had a No 1 hit  with Bohemian Rhapsody and lo and behold - it had the forbidden word Beelzebub in it!! 

Here is the turned down lyric

The City Fires

Amidst the conflagrations
Living substances survive.

Squandering their energies
In the furnaces they thrive.
Making haste that’ll only guarantee
An early grave.

Chorus...

And the cities burn, 

And the cities burn
And the cities burn
You’re gonna die
You’re gonna slowly die
You’re gonna slowly die too young
In the city fires
In the city fires
In the city fires.


Preachers scream from the steeple
That we’re heading for hell
But tell me people if this place ain’t worse than hell.
Making waste that'll only guarantee an early grave.

Bridge..

The evil witch has cast her jinx
Beelzebub now rules.
Pandemonium’s the song he sings
As he swallows all you fools.
And he’s gonna drink your blood
As your bodies slowly burn


Chorus repeat..

By Trev Teasdel 1970