Sussed #4

SUSSED a user’s guide to modernism

Issue #004 €5.00

THE BLADES In their own words GANGS There is only one HARD MODS A unified tribe ....and much more

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FOR MODERNISTS BY MODERNISTS

ell it’s been a long year since we last had a Sussed on the shelf and looking back I can say that it’s been one hell of a year for sure. There’s an old saying; "Those who can, do. Those who can’t, write" (or something like that).

Believe me when I say that we were certainly doing a lot over the past year when we should have been writing.

Highlight of the year has got to be The Blades reunion gigs. Totally awesome to see those boys back in action and anyone who doubted that they could deliver the magic as of the old were left eating their words. In celebration of the reunion we have devoted 12 pages to the phenomenon that was/is The Blades. It’s all there including Cleary’s own take on the history.

We give 4 pages to the absolutely talented Jaymokid who kindly created the cover pic (flipping awesome isn’t it?) - By the way Jaymokid has produced a limited run of the cover as prints for sale. His contact details are on the article - tell him we sent you.

We spend some time with Bill Kealy a man well known to RnB aficionados across Europe. We talk to GANGS prior to their recent triumphant London gigs. Continuing our look at the original Mod movement Paul Mulholland shines the spotlight on Hard Mods. We’re delighted to welcome Fiona Dennison on board as a member of the Sussed team and inside she brings us back to her first tentative steps into Mod. And lest we forget we review box-sets, 45’s and DVDs. It took us a while to get here but as John Mills said “worth waiting for”....

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HAVE TUNES WILL TRAVEL Bill Kealy profiled.

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GANGS Dublin’s band of the hour speak.

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ADVENTURES OF A MOD GIRL Sussed’s own Fiona tells a story.

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THE BLADES The fabled band and its fans speak.

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THE YOUNG SCENE Quick pro-quo with young Dublin scenesters

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THE JUNCTION Heart & Soul, Belfast and Pow City, Dublin profiled.

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HARD MODS A unified Tribe.

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THIS IS THE NEW ART SCHOOL Jaymokid speaks.

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THE MEN Interview with the Swedish eccentrics.

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HERE COMES THE NICE Tosh does the interview, Karl does the review.

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FACES IN THE CROWD More than just a review.

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SUSSED REVIEWS

Sussed is brought to you by Joe Moran and Ray Gilligan.

Cover art by Jaymokid. Jaymokid photo by Carl Barlow.

Contributors: Elvera Butler, Fiona Dennison, Anne Doyle, Brian Foley, Tosh Flood, Colm Henry, Jaymokid, Karl Mitchell, Paul Mulholland, Mark Sherlock, Thomas Tighe. ‘Young Scene’ clobber supplied by Rebirth of Cool Dublin - photography by Noel Phelan.

A huge thanks to all who helped and were involved with the Blades spread. Without your help and contributions it wouldn’t have been possible.

If you’d like to purchase copies, contribute to future issues, have your band or club featured, or just to let us know what you think contact: seosaimhm@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/susseddublin

HAVETUNES W I L L TRAVEL small town on the East coast of Ireland wouldn’t necessarily be the normal cosmopolitan setting you’d associate one of the most venerated RnB DJs in Europe to hail from, but such is the case with Bill Kealy. A long time friend of Sussed and everyone else who’s had the pleasure to encounter him on the Mod scene. Since he first started to put little round pieces of vinyl onto dual turntables in the late 1980s he’s amassed one of the most respected and envied RnB collections in NATO. We’ve been talking about pinning Bill down for an interview for quite some time now so catching him on the phone for a chat, with demand for the man’s time as tight as fuck, this was no mean feat...

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So when did you get into Mod? “I got into it around ‘81/82 listening to the likes of the Jam then got into bands like Squire and Secret affair and then from hearing those bands talking about their influences I got into bands like The Action and The Kinks, the Animals and all that kind of thing and from listening to them I got into Black Music from the 50s, the original sounds like…Northern Soul kind of passed me – it still does to be honest.”

music scene then in Dublin than now.

“Yes it was. I remember Squire came over, then you had Dublin bands like The Commotion, The Temps and we used to go to Golden Horde and every night those gigs would be packed.”

Yes I remember those gigs in the Buttery in Trinity.

“I actually saw them in The Buttery supporting The Prisoners.”

Were you playing music around that time or was that something you took up later on?

“Right from back then I was playing music. I started off in a band called The Seizures and we were covering all those bands we just talked about and covers off the Kent albums – stuff like The Magic Touch, Panic with some Jam covers thrown in too – we were typical 16 or 17 year old kids playing what we liked.”

And did wanting to make music come about due to those bands or was there music in your household?

“There was always music in our house as my Dad played in bands all through the 60s. When I was growing up there’d always be sessions back in the house. Dad always played guitar and all his mates were in bands too so it just came as second nature to me though I was never as good as he was (laughs). In fact the whole family is pretty musical, cousins and the like.”

And what years were The Seizures running?

Early ‘86 to around 1990 maybe?”

And what happened in 90, did you just split up?

“Yeah we didn’t fall out or anything. We moved on and the band just sort of … well petered out and we started another band called The Living Stone which did really well for a while, doing all our own stuff and playing in lots of places like Fox and Pheasant, going very well for us and then that started to peter out as well as these things tend to do (laughs).”

But you would still have a liking for Northern.

“Of course, of course but more certain tracks than a whole night of it. I’d much prefer Rhythm and Blues – I wouldn’t even call it RnB I just like that really early sound. Chuck Berry, Howling wolf...when I hear the intro of one of those songs. Obviously there are loads of Northern tracks I would love but RnB would be my preference.”

Any regrets?

“Well it was never going anywhere, it was just a hobby. We all had jobs so it wasn’t a case of us all being on the dole and doing the band as the full time job.”

Thinking back there certainly was more of a live

And at this stage you had moved into DJing, hadn’t you.

“Yeah well when I was in college in Carlow in ‘86 and ‘87 I was doing student nights but when we started the scooter club I always played at

Looking back to the early years – you were a big Blades fan back in the 80s.

“I was. What happened was, I was living in Arklow and as you know at that time there wasn’t much of a scene so I moved to Dublin in ‘84 and luckily enough when I went up The Blades seemed to play about 20 gigs in the first six months so I started going to them and eventually met up with like minded souls and ended up going to other clubs. I couldn’t believe there were clubs that played Soul music and the like and around this time too bands such as The Prisoners and Makin’ Time were coming over to Dublin and I was literally in seventh heaven.”

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So we are moving into the 90s here and you are still in Arklow. What was the scene like down there at that time?

“There was a great scene in Arklow in the late 80s and early 90s especially the Scooter scene.

Interestingly eventhough the Scooter boys were wearing combats and all that. The music was Mod orientated to the extent that even up to the late 90s we were bringing in bands like The Acrylic Tones and The Solar Flares who did their only Irish date with us.”

those. And from the very start I always played vinyl never went down the CD route, ever.”

What was your setlist like at that stage?

Scooter sound; a bit of Northern a bit of everything for scooter rallies really. I was also playing lots of stuff like The Action, The Animals, Kinks, The Who, The Eyes, John’s Children…all that Psyche type stuff that was on the Pebbles Albums.”

So that was the 90s and the ‘Great Goo Ga Moo Ga’ nights. Where does ‘For Dancers Only’ come in?

“Well what happened was, I was doing scooter rallys in England and I was start to get majorly pissed off ‘cause they were playing the same 50 records at all the scooter rallys so I started to do Mod rallys, going to New Untouchables do’s in Brighton and Margate and the Isle of Wight and from meeting people at those do’s I ended up going to clubs like The Mousetrap that weren’t scooter nights at all just full on RnB and then I went to the Hideaway Club in Manchester during its early days and it just blew me away and I realised that this is where I wanted to be and there was nobody playing that type of music here in Ireland, nobody at all and this was the music I was into and I had loads of those records.”

To be fair I don’t think there was really anywhere that was playing that sort of stuff.

“Yeah. I’m sure people will say that there were lots of RnB clubs dotted around Britain but it was the Hideaway Club really brought that sound together – what they call now “New Breed RnB” – they were playing stuff like ‘I Got A Woman’ and all that kind of stuff and these were the records that I had been playing already but there was no one, I won’t say not interested, but you see The Hideaway had people coming from all over the country to hear these records and that’s were For Dancers Only came from.

We were, kind of sitting down there in Wexford and we had all been going over to the Hideaway Club and we started saying we should start playing records like this and see what happens.

And that’s where it came from basically.”

Certainly for me what you just said there – people travelling to hear the records – was what For Dancers Only was to me, it was an occasion that people travelled for.

“And that’s why we wanted it in Wexford. At that time there was great times in Ireland, everyone had a few bob. And coming down to Wexford was great craic. Have a good night out at a night that was always orientated around quality music. From Day #1 we never played boots always original vinyl only. Obviously some people don’t care the format but a lot of the people who came to our do’s appreciated the fact that we played original vinyl only.”

Well it’s the integrity aspect.

“From the very start we were bringing deejays in from the UK. You would have the old argument ‘oh I can’t pay 200 quid for the original so I will get the boot’. My attitude is, well if you cannot afford it then get the deejay in who has got it.”

So who were the founders of For Dancers Only?

“It was Dave and Mary O’Connor who started it and asked me to come in actually. So Myself and Sandra and Dave and Mary. We had Steve Cato playing at the first one. That Was 2004.”

2004! Jesus we were all still mad into our Northern then.

“I never really got into Northern Joe, I mean I was brought up on the Kent albums in the 80s and I still love all that sound, the 60s Soul sound, but I can only listen to I’m on my way so many times.”

But that goes for any scene really, the overplaying of a record.

“But that’s what put me off Northern, that’s not knocking Northern Soul ‘cause I know there are really upfront Northern clubs but I just went in the direction of Rhythm and Blues. It’s just the sound I love. I still go to Northern nights as you know, and really enjoy them, but when I compare them to the likes of The Hideaway, Basics or any of the RnB clubs...”

So back to For Dancers Only any more dates?

“Actually I’ve just been talking to Kev in the Thomas House arranging more dates for 2014.”

So what prompted the move up to Dublin?

“It was just that the last few we did in Wexford were really quiet, you know because of the way the economy went people had no money. We just weren’t getting the people travelling and people were ringing up and saying ‘I’d love to come down but I can’t afford it’. And we were bringin DJs over form the UK and from Italy and the hassle getting flown into Dublin, and then on to Wexford, and back up, and really it was all getting a bit too much. And then Kev from Thomas house came to me and asked me would I be interested in doing something and the setup was all there, and it’s easier for people to come to the do’s, accommodation is there if they need it. It’s all there in Dublin.”

And is that replicated across Europe – the crowds being younger and smarter and very aware of the aesthetic of music and fashion?

“Very much so, right across Europe especially Spain and Italy – there the clubs are seeing three or four hundred and the crowd is very young. I’m not saying that there are not older people but certainly the average age would be mid twenties to thirty and everyone is really smartly dressed. And they are very much aware of the music , when they got into the scene it was always this music. Different to how we arrived at it I guess. We had to feel our way around to see what the direction was but when these kids got into the scene they were going to clubs like the Hideaway and have never known anything different. Fantastic.”

That’s good so a real handing the scene off to a younger generation?

“Yes, really. You have to encourage it. I can’t stand fellas saying ‘ah look at those young fellas coming in….’ disparagingly. You have to encourage the younger ones otherwise it will die, wont it?”

Agreed, it’s all about bringing them along schooling them in the original ideas and mores…

“Well for example there was a band playing at my last gig in Paris called ‘Les Grigris’ from Montpelier made up of teenagers, a little bit

older than the Strypes, playing full on Harmonica drenched RnB. Jesus man they were fantastic! Blew me away. Best band I have seen in at least 10 years, and the interesting part was that all their gear was original 50s amps and instruments, no new gear whatsoever and they had a huge contingent with them as well, not Mods.”

So in that same vein of youngsters making the scene – who is a DJ to watch over the next few years?

“You are putting me on the spot there now…let me think? There’s a guy who played with me at the Paris Mod anniversary called Ryan Brown, smart as hell and hungry to hear new sounds and involved in the Ham Yard in London.”

Yeah he was mentioned in a conversation to me recently relating to a Barcelona night he played at.

“I’ve heard him deejay 10 times now and played with him 3 or so times now absolutely brilliant and, as importantly, he looks the part... total Mod. I will be bringing him over to Dublin this year.”

Something to look forward to...

“And not forgetting Jamie Parr who has stuck to his RnB roots over in London. Still doing what he does.”

What would be a highlight from the first ten years of For Dancers Only?

“I think it was the 3rd or 4th anniversary? Our usual venue let us down and we eventually got the Talbot Hotel in Wexford town. It was a big room and we were really worried that we wouldn’t fill it but people travelled from all over and it was absolutely packed. Definitely the best one… big crowd of Irish and a big crowd from the UK and everything came together on the night. Last year we had a night with David Hudson and Steve Lomard over from Manchester and that was a great night too. In fact a couple of the nights in Thomas House last year were totally rammed which is one of the joys of Thomas House with it being smaller you don’t need too many to get the place rocking.”

Outside of For Dancers Only you’re a DJ for hire travelling across Europe.

“Yeah I’ve been lucky enough the last couple of years I’ve been all over the UK – Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow, London. I’m just back from Paris for the ‘50 Years of Mod’ celebrations. I was in Madrid in January doing the Forum Club, twice played at the Boiler Club Anniversary in Barcelona, Done Mojo working in San Sebastien in 2013, The Italian job in Rimini, Club Varietta in Turin, Clubs in Oslo, Crossfire, Mousetrap all the usual ones.”

Wow! So a case of ‘Have Records Will Travel’ “Well in Europe it is massive at the moment. I played in Rome in early 2013 with Jess Roberts band from London and there was 1,100 people at the gig. Lines of scooters outside, the punters all in their twenties suited up, fantastic like!”

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ith the myriad of good, young, original bands on our doorstep here in Ireland, and especially in the capital, it’s not often that one jumps out at you, and even rarer if they tie in with what this publication is about. If you’re like me and not a regular gig goer you depend on recommendations and sometimes a bit of luck. Such is the case with us happening across GANGS. A four piece from Tallaght in south Dublin, they tick all the boxes for us. Bright, well turned out, proud, and above all bloody good. Having not seen them live before and only having heard three recorded tracks, we just had to nail this mob down for a Sussed profile...

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We meet in a central location in Dublin. You guessed it... a boozer. I notice straight away we seem to be shy a member. Jordan Curtis (vocals and bassist) is caught up in work but I’m informed he’ll be catching up with the rest of them later for a radio interview. Straight away I’m struck with how down to earth and polite these guys are. None of your rockposturing here. They’re busy enough without all that crap and so we immediately get down to business. With no info on the band James Connolly (guitar) clues me in on their origins:

“Summer 2012 I suppose is when it started for us. We’d been mates for ages just kind of been hanging out and playing in different bands and that but then, whatever it didn’t work out so we decided to start fresh and go at it for real. If we’re going to do this then we’re going to do it properly know what I mean? So we hid away and started to write a lot of songs and got all our bits done. Got, like photos done and all and had our image ready to go then we just came out with this new name. With a bang really you know.”

Jonny Halpin (drummer): “We were really prepared for it when we came out. It wasn’t that we had to learn along the way. We’d already done the learning before we came out as a band so when we came out we made an impact.”

JC: “Obviously we still had a bit of changing to do because we have changed a bit over the last year in our style and that but it was just important that we had a bit of a foothold before we began. And I think that’s probably why it went so well at the start because I mean we were only together what three months or something and we were Hot Press ‘Hot for 2013’ . And then supporting English bands and playing pretty good gigs, gigs that we would never have done at such an early stage and any of the other bands or our peers wouldn’t have been doing either. So it was cool.”

JH: We were in a band together but it was nothing serious so we really wanted to make this one serious. We weren’t all in different bands, it was the same band. There was different lads in the band but we were all in it together and then we just went for it together as the four of us.

So there we have it. Seem to have their proverbial shit together don’t they. For a band with an average age of nineteen they’re impressive. Anyway, we get to what this is all really about, the songs. ‘Crumbs In The Bed’ was the first track I’d heard by them. It just so happened, as I was to find out, I’d listened to their tracks in chronological order. Sure, it has a youthful exhuberance to it but to leave it at that would be crummy and downright unjust.

It’s a cracking little tune! Checking in at 2:43 and giving itself barely enough time to take a breath from the killer intro riff to the bridge that just sounds too damn crafted for a band this young. Although it’s fast it ain’t in any hurry.

Great stuff.

JC: “That’s our oldest song (2012). It’s very young and it’s very fast.”

JH: “It sounds angry almost the way it’s not really refined but that’s cool ‘cause we still play it live but it’s almost like you look back on it as in that was our first track and it was a good representation of what we were about then. But we’ve definitely matured.”

JC: “When we brought that in to get produced we were doing these really energetic gigs and

we wanted to kind of reflect that in that track and it did happen for us. We might have moved away from that sound in our recording a bit now, but it still stands for what that time was I suppose.”

‘Down Boy’ is from the same sessions as ‘Crumbs In The Bed’. It features a star turn by Jordan on vocals. Trying to pin down a similarity for the sake of it is something, when putting these interviews together, we invariably tend to do. It’s not ideal, I don’t think it does the readers any favours, and I know bands generally hate it.... BUT, while there is no obvious influence here I was immediately put in mind of early Orange Juice... certainly the vocals reminded me of a young Edwyn Collins. The band seemed a little bemused at this comparison when I pointed it out to them but I’m pretty sure they knew it was meant as a huge compliment.

Dan Smith (guitar): “That was the first track we actually put out as a band. No one had heard any of our tracks so we just threw that one out.”

JH: “We actually don’t even play that one live anymore.”

Shame really they don’t play it anymore as it’s a fine song. It wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the UK Pop charts around 1995. This one clocks in at 2:32 so is a pattern emerging here?

JC: “It’s not like we picked the ones that are the same length it just kind of works that way, where what we think is most appropriate for a single ends up being two and a half minutes long. We don’t need a big long track really.

It’s not like we’ve had to cut them tracks back to be single appropriate.”

DS: “I think our longest song is about four minutes?”

I jump in to remind them it’s actually four minutes 26 seconds. The stand-out track for me ‘Saviour’. It comes from the same sessions as the current single ‘2:15’ (we’ll get to that later) and was aired live in Dingle, Co. Kerry, on RTE’s ‘Other Voices’. At the time of interviewing GANGS this was the only live performance I’d seen of them. Though it’s recorded live from an actual venue it’s still a recorded for TV performance and this wouldn’t be the kind of live experience most bands would be used to. Not in the slightest bit intimidated, they handle it like seasoned pros and give a great account of themselves with a blistering performance of the track.

JC: “Crumbs in the Bed and Down Boy were part of our earlier sessions. We had a big batch of songs that would’ve been more to that side but now there’s been a slight shift in influence. We brought out ‘2:15’ as a single because it’s a good bridge between to the two sounds it’s not going to be like people can’t handle it, or it’s a totally different band it’s just a good bridge between the two. Saviour is probably a bit closer to the new influences.”

JH: “When we brought out Down Boy the singer had just gone seventeen. Our singer is nineteen now so things change. We change together all the time. We set that out from the start that with our image we’d always be the same. It just comes across in how we feel.

We wouldn’t just say we’ll dress this way because it’s just something we want to do to make people like us. We just do it for ourselves. It’s not fake.”

JC: “It happens together as well because we hang out so much, like all the time, so pretty much at any given stage we’re all on the same wavelength.”

Okay so we’ve determined what dictates the band’s strong image. Each of GANGS appear to have an individual style code. I have to ask who’d be their personal style influences:

JH: “I would go for probably Terry Hall and all The Specials really. I think they just looked the dog’s bollocks. All Mod Cons Jam was really good. I like that period of their style as well.”

DS: “60s kind of influenced stuff. I like how The Beatles all dressed similar to each other eventhough there was all different personalities there later on in their career which kind of appealed to me.”

It’s at this point I comment on Dan’s resemblance to a young George Harrisson circa Beatles For Sale.

JC: “I suppose it is the 60s thing. We’re definitely leaning more towards the sharper style end of Mod, it’s not like, casual I suppose.

A bit more formal for me anyway. It’s important. It’s how we want to dress. We feel good when we look like this, it’s just a part of it all. It’s important that when we’re seen together that we look like the band.”

JH: “There’s too many scruffy bands.”

It strikes me there’s quite big interest in GANGS. I can see why if I’m honest, but at the same time I’m surprised they’ve garnered such interest in such a relatively short space of time.

JC: “Yeh people like the songs from what I can tell. There’s a lot of people turning up to the gigs.”

DS: “When we first started out it was a lot of fifteen year old girls now there’s a lot of Mods from back in the day who’ve come to the shows and said they like us a lot.”

JC: “It is something that’s appealing to a younger crowd too and that was important to us from the start as well. I mean if you can’t tap into your own age group.... You don’t want to be a nostalgia act and I think we try and do that in our song writing. What we say in our songs is what we want our generation to relate to.”

Sounds familiar? Such a bold statement could be perceived as contrived in print but talking to them it couldn’t be further from the truth. They genuinely mean this and there’s no reluctance here or fear of taking up the baton. In fact it seems to be something they relish. Every band has there own approach to song writing so how do GANGS go about it and how does all of this impact on the overall shape and appeal of the band?

JC: “It’s come to the point that there’s no real formula for it. It may have started out that it’d be myself or Dan would do instrumentals and Jordan would put the melodies over it but now it’s such a communal thing. Everyone puts their own little stamp on it and it wouldn’t be the track it is without that.”

DS: “If someone records the demo and you listen to it when it’s finished it’s like two different songs.”

JH: “When we were actually in the early days coming out as a band, we decided that we

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wanted to be a band where it wasn’t like Jordan Curtis and Gangs it was just Gangs.

Who’s YOUR favourist member, who do YOU like. Because that’s our favourite bands, you like a certain member, it’s a proper gang.

That’s why we’re called Gangs because we decided that we wanted to come into it with a gang mentality and anyone who liked us could be part of the gang. It’s all preconceived really.”

JC: “It’s definitely something at the start we put a lot of emphasis on. We don’t really anymore but it still stands that people coming to the gigs start to dress a bit similar to us or be influenced by the same things. Just start to kind of be a part of the band.”

JH: “It’s cool to see a movement and that’s what we’re trying to start. And it wouldn’t be a Mod revival it’s not like that. We don’t class ourselves as a Mod band. We wouldn’t go round saying that ‘cause then you just get pigeon-holed. We want everybody to like us you know what I mean?”

DS: “There’s nothing exclusive about it anyone can be into it.”

Right so that’s us told then. I like this band, they don’t fuck about. With the absolute desire to put song writing first they’ve organically attracted the inevitable interest from the UK. Showcase gigs in London in late March, one of which being in the famous Dublin Castle in Camden, couldn’t have gone better with them going down a storm, and with them being headhunted for the ‘March of the Mods’ tour, GANGS are a band still surprisingly unphazed by the whole thing.

JC: “When we started out we had very high hopes. We need to get over to England and start playing gigs straight away. We were probably a bit naive maybe to think we could just jump on a boat and go over but now it’s come to the point that we’ve been asked to come over. And we have the means to go

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over, and we have the songs and we’re confident going over. We can’t wait.”

JH: “We feel we’re going over with a bit of, we’re really determined to blow people away.

It can get a little bit stagnant in Dublin kind of playing the same places all the time so it’s almost a sort of an adventure you know.”

Again, having no prior information on GANGS and literally approaching this interview with a blank page, it’s really out of my own curiosity I enquire about label interest

JH: “You could go into it and it could just sound like bullshit ‘cause every band talks about it.”

DS: “We have no money from them yet.”

JC: It’s definitely something that a lot of bands get hung up on, like searching for the contract, but for us we just need to keep our heads down and keep writing our music and keep playing the gigs. I think all of us are fairly confident it’ll happen and when it does it’ll be big.”

JH: “It’ll go to your head a little bit and you can start to worry about it and it just takes over everything in the band. We don’t worry about all that we just let our manager deal with that kind of thing.”

JC: “We’re going to start travelling around Ireland a bit more ‘cause we’ve been to Kerry and Derry for Other Voices so it’s something we want to do a lot more of.”

JH: “It (Derry) was class because when we got there there was a load of people who’d come to see us. They came out from Donegal and places around. It was brilliant to see that the songs had spread that far and people actually knew the words.”

So the single then ‘2:15’. let’s get this reviewed: Well for a start it has hit single

written all over it. The strength of the verse melody would be a chorus for most bands.

Anthemic nearly in it’s build-up. Yes they are a band with a universal appeal but the clever minor chord change of the chorus leaves me with no doubt in my mind this shower will immediately appeal to readers of this mag. A hefty middle-8 instrumental change builds into a rally cry of ‘Big Billy Bollox you’re bringing me down’. Did they really say that? All this set against the backdrop of a clever little video promo recorded on a beach in Dingle while on a break from recording. And it really suits the track. You see, they’re no slouches this mob.... down there for dancing my friends.

Currently it’s only available as an itunes download but for a scabby 99 cents you’d be insane not to hop on and click the button.

JH: “We don’t know yet but i think the next thing will be an EP. We’re feeling pretty good about these new songs. If you came to see us play in 2012 there’s no songs that we played then, only one actually, that we play now.”

Okay I didn’t get to talk to the singer which pissed me off a little as I was left with a couple of unanswered questions like; how did you wear white Levi’s on a beach on a winters day and get away with it? I would have liked to have commented on the way he moves with the bass and how it reminds me of how Marriot moved. Apparently when they were together in different incarnations Jordan was just the singer but finding themselves bass-player-less he was happy to take up the role, a role I was told he’s become ‘very comfortable with’.

Since interviewing them I did manage to catch GANGS live headlining one of the ‘Retro Revival’ nights in Sweeneys, Dublin. Had I only caught them by accident that night I would have hunted them down anyway and begged borrowed and stole to have them feature in Sussed. Do yourselves a favour and keep abreast of these guys’ development.

We see great things from them

the adventures of a mod girl... engine cough and a backfire. Looking up to see what was causing the commotion I spotted a group of Mods (or so I later learned they were called), trying to start a blue scooter. Hmmm, how cool did they look. All short haired, sporting straight legged jeans with little turn ups and huge coats with fur around the collars. My heart did a little flutter! I had no idea what they were but I knew that I wanted to know more.

IN THE VERY EARLY 1980's, I WAS A CATERPILLAR WAITING TO BECOME A BUTTERFLY....

Well, not really, but I was a little girl, who really wanted to a sophisticated young lady.

Not for me, the bad perms and Farah Fawcett flicks that my friends sported. Most of them still wore flares! Walking home from school one day I had become seperated from my friends. Daydreaming, I hadn't noticed the group of teenage lads across the road. Until there was a loud

Everyone, has one of those friends who is an aficionado on everything. "Oh, they are called Mods", she announced, and when we were passing some older girls who were already in secondary school, she pointed them out as being ‘Modettes’. Even in their school uniforms these girls looked very different from the rest of the crowd. Neat short hair, flat pointy shoes and straight skirts, they looked like they had walked out of my favourite Sixties movies. I had found my calling.

When I had my eleventh birthday I took my pocket money to the record shop in Northside shopping centre and I bought my first record. It was a Madness album and it cost me the huge sum of £5.49. Whilst it was fun, the music didn't really do it for me.

I didn't like to admit it, but my Dad's records of The Kinks and The Animals did more for me. I wondered was it okay to like old music like this? In town with my Mum, a guy in one of those huge green coats walked past me with The Kinks painted on the back of it in white paint. Maybe I wasn't

such a geek after all. With a bit more investigation I discovered other Mod music; The Who, Small Faces and Motown. I was yet to dip my toe into Mod revival. I hadn't heard any apart from on Top of the Pops, and it hadn't made that much of an impression on me. Now for the image overhaul.

Convincing my Mum to let me have my long wavy hair cut took me a while but in the end she gave in. Though she was surprised that I had gone for a classic bob and she asked me "has the bob come back into fashion?"

Shh, Mum, it may have been in fashion before but it couldn't possibly be as ‘cool’ as it is now! I raided my Mum’s wardrobe and discovered a slim fitted dress that I never saw her wear. When I asked her about it she shrugged and said, "that was my going away dress but it went out of fashion years ago.” Really? To me it was just perfect, orange and cream check with no sleeves and a boat neck. I just had to have it. Now sporting my new hairstyle and my classic dress, I thought I was the bee's knees. My friends thought I was a little strange as I didn't look like them, but they smiled and told me, "it's just a phase, you know." "Yes", I smiled, "you are probably right.”

Little did I know that this was just the beginning...

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SUSSED 10

L

ate 2013 rumours went into overdrive about the possibility of a Blades reunion. In October 2013 it was officially announced The Blades would reform and play two shows in Dublin’s Olympia theatre in December. These shows were to sell out at a rate that even took the band by surprise.

The fans weren’t a bit surprised. They stormed the ticket booths on release. For some this was the chance to relive their past days of passion, hero worship, and being a part of something and for others simply to experience first hand what these glory days must have been like.

Sussed had been planning a spread on The Blades for quite some time but weren’t sure how to tackle such an undertaking. We wouldn’t say we’ve put together the definitive piece on The Blades, we believe that has yet to be done. In the end we decided not to approach this as a written article. Apart from this introduction and a few interview questions, everything else is word for word the band and its fans version of events......

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PAT LARKIN The Original Drummer

If I’m told correctly the Blades’ genesis was 1977 as a three piece. For the benefit of our foreign readers who was in that original lineup and what kicked it off?

“The original line up of the Blades proper was Paul Cleary, Lar Cleary and Pat Larkin.

We formed in 1977 in Ringsend. In the beginning there was six of us who all started to learn instruments at the same time. We played one gig in a local CYMS hall playing covers by Iggy Pop and the Sex Pistols . We were told by the committee in no uncertain terms that we would never play there again.

The cheek of us playing God Save the Queen. We broke up after that and myself and the Cleary brothers stayed together. We had nowhere to rehearse, so Paul would write a song put it on a cassette and give it to me, I would listen to it in my little van and put drums to it.”

debut with either side being a contender for the A-side. How did this deal come about and how did you tackle distribution?

“U2 had invited the English Press and English record companies to the Baggot Inn over a 4 week period. They kindly asked us to join them at all the gigs. They were very good to us . We got reviewed in English music papers for the first time and with great encouragement from Dave Fanning we had interest from English record companies. We signed to an English independent record label ran by Roxy Music called Energy Records. They put a lot of effort in to the release of the single with posters, badges and we had the first Irish single with a picture of the band on the label. We thought this was amazing.”

“we used to get a bit of trouble from bouncers”

What was Dublin like back then for a fledgling band trying to land a gig?

“I had never seen live bands except wedding bands or a cabaret band, but determined to play somewhere we heard of gigs in the Magnet Bar on Pearse Street. We went along and there was five bands playing in the one night. We looked at each other and realized we were better than most of them. A band called ‘Strange Movements’ gave us a gig and that started us on the Dublin scene.”

Were there any particular influences on the band and what type of stuff was in them early sets?

“Paul and Lar were heavily influenced by Motown and introduced me to the whole Motown beat thing (no big drum solos just keep the beat). I was a huge Jam fan and seeing the Sex Pistols play Pretty Vacant the previous year changed my life. I now believed everyone had a chance.”

Given that the first release was 1980, we could assume the period prior to this was the hard work part. Was it difficult building a fan base and what kind of fans were you attracting?

“After the Magnet supports we found McGonagles in South Anne Street.

We got a support from U2 amongst others and began to get a following.

One of the reasons was our set was nearly all original songs with a couple of Motown covers. Most of the other bands were doing a lot of covers. We got a big enough following to risk a residency in the Magnet Bar. It was packed every night.”

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The first release on Energy records, Hot For You c/w The Reunion is a blistering

It garnered a lot of domestic airplay. An early champion of The Blades was Dave Fanning. How important was he to become?

“Every time an English A&R man or music paper that came to Dublin Dave put them on to us. He was a big champion of The Blades and played us all the time on his radio show which was the number one radio show for live bands and he had us in making Fanning sessions to beat the band!”

The follow-up single, Ghost of a Chance c/w Real Emotion’, is another little pop gem. I’m particularly struck with the quality of production on these early releases as I assume you wouldn’t have had anything near the recording budget of your British counterparts.

“Ghost of a Chance was recorded in Mayfair studios London and produced by John Hudson who was a famous producer at the time. The recording was very interesting. I was playing the drums on a different floor to the other two guys and couldn’t see anybody, which was new to me and a bit scary. John wanted to get a different drum sound so had me play the track at twice the speed. Which had my head wrecked but I got it eventually and when he slowed it down with the track it sounded great. The record company brought us on an English tour playing the Hope and Anchor, the Marquee and a bunch of other gigs including support to Paul Young.”

Another track from this period that resurfaced on the Raytown Revisited LP was Muscle Men. Was this a potential single at the time and were there other recordings we never got to hear?

Muscle Men was also produced by John Hudson in London and is one of my favorite Blades songs. I think it was one of Paul’s best. We used to get a bit of trouble from bouncers in those days when we socialized.

They sometimes wouldn’t let us into venues we were playing in. But sadly it never saw the light of day until the Raytown Revisited album put all our unreleased stuff together with the singles.”

What can you tell us about the, now famous, Baggot Inn residency?

“Well the Baggot Inn was a short residency with U2 and Dave Fanning as DJ. There was a group of fans around at the time called ‘The Black Catholics’ who used to wreck gigs. They would sneak into gigs and throw glasses at the bands they didn’t like.

They never threw glasses at us, but the gigs were jammed every week. We had a long running residency in The Magnet which ran for what seemed like years.”

The first incarnation seemed to disappear as quickly as it arrived. I’m loath to ask but I feel our readers would be fascinated to know what brought about this all too premature demise?

“I was the first to leave the band. I was having a lot of trouble accepting the direction our manager was not taking us in.

He seemed to wait for opportunities to knock instead of us banging on them. There was an Irish producer working on Top of the Pops and had U2 on the program. We sent our manager over to London to get a slot for The Blades which was our next logical step on the ladder to fame. We had done the Late late Show. He came back from London with drumsticks with my name on them and other presents for the lads but no TOTP. I ran amok and each gig we did after that on a whistle stop tour of every town in Ireland including Derry and Belfast, I was arguing with the manager. It got too much for me and I told the lads I was leaving but I hung on and waited ‘til they got a new drummer, Jake Reilly who I lent my kit to until he got his own. He was a Blades fan who knew the set from day one. After I left the band I joined a Motown band called The Temps and we supported The Blades in the TV Club which was very weird for me. I then joined Those Handsome Devils, The Subterraneans, The Foreman and then formed a Rockabilly band called The Mosquitoes which are still going. I dropped my sticks for film making and have a small film production company called Misery Hill Films. I make short films and documentaries, including an ongoing doc called The history of Irish Mods.”

BRIAN FOLEY The Bass player 1981 present

So if my timeline is correct your entry to the Blades was 1981? Who was this new lineup and how did it come about so quickly?

“The original drummer Pat Larkin left in 1981 so Jake Reilly replaced him and then Paul decided that he would switch from bass guitar to rhythm guitar and that’s how I came to join on bass. So the band became a four piece with Paul on vocals and guitar, his brother Lar on lead guitar, Jake on drums and me on bass.”

The next release, The Bride Wore White c/w Animation, must have been recorded pretty instantly. How long did it take from recording the track to it getting airplay?

“The bride wore white had already been recorded with Paul on bass before I joined.

For the b-side Paul just recorded ‘Animation’

on his own so that’s how the single was released so promptly.”

The single was hailed critically. Did the band feel any pressure as the finest exponents and even saviours of Irish Pop? “Well I didn’t feel any pressure personally.

Maybe Paul did as he wrote all the songs but saying that, he was always a very prolific songwriter and he always seemed to have new songs at his disposal.”

A throwaway questions (more so for me if I’m honest…). Who would The Blades have considered contemporaries during this period?

“Contemporaries would have been bands such as ‘Auto da Fe’, ‘Tokyo Olympics’, ‘In Tua Nua’ and…..’ Aslan’ (whatever happened to them!).”

Was the love affair between young Dublin Mods and The Blades unrequited? How did you feel about your fanbase being 80% Mods?

“Yeah, I liked the mods. I remember we had a keyboard player who played with us occasionally and after his first gig with us, he sat in the dressing room and said ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like a crowd of young civil servants going mad!’ I guess he just didn’t understand the Mod mentality. I loved The Jam but mind you I was a big Clash fan as well. Both groups had great energy and intelligence. I don’t know if our fanbase was 80% Mods, maybe it looked that way because they made more noise. Certainly outside Dublin It was the usual mix of gig goers.”

If The Bride Wore White was The Blades’ (MK-II) calling card then the following single, Revelations of Heartbreak c/w Rules of Love, sounds like a band setting its stall out. The introduction of brass must have been pretty exciting?

“The introduction of brass was exciting but it also came about due to another upheaval.

Original member Lar left the band and that really set us back but then Paul wrote a new batch of songs. They were full of amazing brass arrangements and so we reemerged even stronger as a five piece.”

played around the country and the rest were just one-off gigs with the odd excursion to London.”

Can you shed any light on Paul Cleary’s solo release from ’82 Some People Smile c/w What’s That She Said’?

“Ithink Paul had performed the song ‘Some People Smile’ on an RTE programme and it got a good reaction so Reekus decided to release it as a single.”

1984 saw the release of the title track off the album, The Last Man in Europe c/w Sadlands. Things must have been starting to kick into overdrive by now? ”The release of the album after so many false dawns was more of a relief than anything. After all, we’d been through the mill with American record company Electra who paid for the recording but then wouldn’t release it (It’s a long story). Anyway by a twist of fate we had kept the distribution rights of the album in Ireland so it was released on a small Irish label, namely Reekus records. It would never have seen the light of day only for that. Of course there was no money to promote it so what should have been our day in the sun turned out to be our swansong.”

The LP has too many personal highlights to pick out just one. Any particular standout tracks or moments on there for you?

“Well ‘Downmarket’ will always be a favourite of mine. Forget about ‘Summer in Dublin’, if you want to know what it was like to live in Dublin in the early 80’s then this song encapsulates the greyness, the misery and the lack of hope. I also like ‘Pride’. The chorus gets me every time.”

“what should have been our day in the sun turned out to be our swansong”

The next full Blades release was 1983’s Downmarket c/w You Never Ask. Up until this point the releases seem almost annual.

How hectic was the gig schedule by now?

“In 1983 ‘Downmarket’ was released as a single. It was produced by Bill Whelan who then ruined his reputation by writing ‘Riverdance’! The gig schedule was never too hectic because we really only had a cult following and so there was probably only about 15 or so regular venues that we

“Personally I never liked the production on the record. To me it just wasn’t the sound of the Blades, and I didn’t think the songs needed the female backing singers, the sitars and saxophones. We did a live broadcast out in the radio centre in RTE and that for me captured the real sound of the band.

The songs on the album are all great but they were just too overproduced for my liking.”

For such a highly polished and produced product it appeared to be recorded in a relatively short space of time. What was the actual duration from start of recording to release?

“Well as far as I can remember the recording took around a month. We rehearsed the songs with the producer for a week prior to going into the studio. I remember the name of the rehearsal studio was Nomis (owned by Wham’s manager Simon Napier Bell) and in the other rehearsal rooms were bands like Culture club and Talk Talk. With the album not getting any major exposure we seemed to be gigging in ever decreasing circles and I suppose there was a sense of impending doom.”

SUSSED 13

Finally a reworking of Downmarket c/w Truth Don’t Hurt was released in 1986. Why did the band feel this re-recording of the song necessary? It divides opinions to this day over which version is superior.

“Well that was the version of ‘Downmarket’ that was on the album. I think it’s better than the Bill Whelan version which seemed a bit lacklustre with the acoustic guitars and the bit of synth in the background. No comparison!”

I’m told on good source you have some cracking ‘stories’. Are there any particular moments/highlights you’d like to share with us?

“Ah yes the stories. I’m afraid they can only ever be told in a darkened room…..with a lawyer present! I suppose when it comes down to it the records are there and for a few brief moments we did shine in what was a grey, dark era on this godforsaken island.

But for me the Blades were all about the gigs. We used to travel up and down the country, hit a town, turn the amps up to eleven and destroy what ever ecosystem was in place with our strings, sticks and brass. It was pure blood and thunder.

We’d come off the stage and there’d be skin stuck to the guitar strings, blood on the fretboards and two gallons of sweat dripping from our shirts. Maybe U2 had three chords, the truth, and God on their side but we had white socks, black loafers, and the ghosts of Jim Larkin, George Orwell and Sam Cooke guiding our souls.

slow song to calm things down but the plug got pulled anyway. To us this was just another gig. Maybe a little bit more raucous than normal. Though looking back at it now with the benefit of hindsight it was a miracle that no one got seriously injured. It was strange but there was something about our gigs that just seemed to galvanize particular groups of teenaged, acned youths. In the TV club there’d be over 900 souls stuffed into the place and you could see the steam rising and feel the floor moving with all the mayhem and just when you thought things couldn’t get any more insane there was always a few kids that would jump off the balcony just for good measure.

At the Baggot inn the fans that couldn’t get in used to dance outside in the rain while singing along to the songs. It was even more surreal outside Dublin. We used to play in the AOH (Ancient Order of Hibernians) hall in Dundalk. The bouncers were all exboxers and they were forced to relive their glory days when the Mods arrived en-masse.

Those bouncers didn’t know what hit them.

They’d be Fred Perried, Dr Martened and Ben Shermaned before we ended our first number.

“at the baggot inn the fans that couldn’t get in used to dance outside in the rain”

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One infamous gig I remember was the RTE sponsored ‘Lark in the Park’ in St. Anne’s park in Raheny. It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon, children out with their parents picnicking on the grass. There were three bands on before us; ‘The Rhythm Kings’, ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ and a synth duo whose backing tapes kept speeding up due to power surges from the outdoor generator.

Then it was our turn to take the stage.

Prison haircuts, scowls to match. One-twothree-fourrrrrrr! Opening guitar riff from ‘Last man in Europe’, bass drum off the Richter scale, deep rumble of the bass, and then the brass went straight for the jugular as Paul sliced through the crowd with some power chords.

All hell broke loose! Every disaffected youth from the Northside of Dublin had shown up and no one had thought to put up crash barriers. The PA was rocking back and forth precariously. The RTE crew were trying furiously to link arms at the front of the stage but to no avail.

Mothers held their babies close to their chests as they made for the exits. The stage got invaded. We tried to do a

Ah yes, those were the days....

Alas, our incursions into the heartland would become fewer and fewer and our blessed brand of soul was now considered redundant by the men in suits. A floppy fringe and a Casio keyboard were now the required tools of the trade. ‘The Human League’, ‘Depeche Mode’ and ‘Soft Cell’ were coming over the horizon. The machines were taking over.

The funny thing is, it had all been foretold in one of thegreatest pop songs ever committed to vinyl; “Not a ghost of a chance….we never had.“

PAUL CLEARY The Singer-Songwriter

“So we went in for a rehearsal for the first time in years. Sounds clichéd, but it’s like we’d never been away. So once we said hello and started picking up the guitars it was the same deal. Most of us had played together in the Olympia when I had ‘Crooked Town’ out but before that the last time we did a proper gig as The Blades was ’86. That one was to promote the album but had some Blades and Partisans songs in the set. This one might have one Partisans? Maybe ‘Dublin City Town’ and ‘Some People Smile’, but it’ll be 98% Blades songs. Even if we do covers they’ll be covers The Blades used to do.”

(At this point I show him a copy of the final Blades set list commandeered from the stage by Mark Sherlock): “I’d forgotten we did Tears of a Clown! We’ll certainly do ‘Lost Again’ I think. I remember this song vaguely

(‘Building Sound’). I think it was a sort of reggae thing? Someone would probably have to play me the first few chords then I’d pick up on it.”

(Doubts creep in as to whether this actually was the set from the final gig..) “I don’t see ‘Last Man in Europe’ though. We used to start with that and ‘Badlands’ second.

Maybe your mate came to the gig one song late?

People have always said why don’t you get the band back together. Well I’d always say never say never, but…” (pauses) “I wouldn’t want to compromise the integrity of the band. I just didn’t really see the point and another reason was I didn’t think there’d be a big enough audience to do it you know.

People had been asking me over the years and I’d say well maybe, but the more I was asked…. I mean even when I was picking the kids up from school mums and dads saying ‘why don’t you play?’ and I’d say ‘eh because….’ and I’d have no answer for them. After I’d said maybe I thought don’t be so precious about it then I did a couple songs at the Phil Chevron testimonial and even before that I was thinking if I’m going to do it now, with people coming back to Ireland for Christmas, the diaspora if you like, this would be a nice time to do it. And I was reasonably well received at the Phil Chevron gig so I just said, ah Jesus, look…”

(Speaking of the effusive online reaction to his appearance at the Phil Chevron show): “It was great! Just goes to show a bit of praise and encouragement goes a long way.”

Is he surprised at the reaction to the possibility of a reunion gig: “I am! I genuinely am! Having said that I still didn’t think... I was saying to Elvera (Elvera Butler, the gaffer over at Reekus records and the orchestrator of The Blades reunion), look somebody mentioned the possibility of a second night, this is before any tickets went on sale or anything, and honestly I said are you mad! There’s no way we’d do a second night. I was being realistic, I said ‘If we can sell out the Olympia after such an amount of time to me that’s something’. Jesus I couldn’t believe it! Two days or something and the tickets gone! And that was just down to social media or something wasn’t it? I’m beginning to realize it now.” (the esteem in which The Blades are held).

We get analytical about Blades songs and finally get to find out if our interpretations of the songs were correct: “I suppose working class life really is what I was writing about.

But, you know, it’s great to be part of a band, I suppose, that are a part of people’s lives. And it’s not something you can plan.

It’s only looking back when you hear people talking about us that you realize that it’s an ambition you have as a songwriter. You don’t really know whether it’s ever achievable you know? But when fans say those songs were part of their lives, it’s really what a songwriter wants to hear. It’s a great thing to hear! But you don’t know at the time. It means you’re not wasting your time. Some people will analyze your songs, which is great, which again as a songwriter is what you want them to do but you’re

nervous when they do it. You hope they stand up, you never can tell. But I’m beginning to appreciate that now. If you had said this to me at the time, well… you just want to get to next gig and get on and make your record and you don’t really have time to sort of, have an overview, if you know what I mean?

So it’s great to hear people understanding the songs and analyzing them a bit. It means that the work you put in is worth it.

You’d still spend time trying to choose the right words. Even the very sound of the word and whether you can sing that word at a certain pitch, or the way you’d move your mouth and stuff can be very important but also that the word mightn’t go out of fashion in terms of the song, that it can be part of the song and still have some integrity. Might sound odd but it shouldn’t. They’re important things as a songwriter and it’s great when they’re appreciated.”

We talk Mod: “No it wasn’t (Mods who initially picked up on The Blades). Another thing I remember it was something I never rejected because I like the idea of Mods and I like the music they like so therefore it was never really shoe-horning it with me anyhow but I was always wary of being specifically branded as a Mod band because, not because of the Jam, which were a good example of not only a vaguely Mod band, but a band who stood on their own merits. More the Lambrettas or bands like that even Secret affair which were just, ah Jaysus that’s too much, too categorized as a Mod band and it’s a straightjacket. Which I never wanted to be in.

When we started we would have been almost a Punk band. The reason I say that is I wanted to identify with that new movement. When we started playing our own gigs in the Magnet we advertised it as Punk Rock, simply because the Magnet was a venue for cabaret as well and I wanted people to realize this was a band writing their own songs. The Mod thing started for me maybe around the early ‘80s.

So I started seeing parka jackets and that and I thought ‘Jesus this is alright, I don’t mind this at all’. Because, although I wasn’t too stylish a person myself, I always had reasonably short hair.” (At this point he’s reminded how well a turned out band The Blades actually were). “And I’ve always liked the music Mods like. I’ve always been a Motown fan, always liked the Jam. To me it wasn’t a big deal. Now I wouldn’t want… any artist always fears rejecting other people so I wouldn’t go ‘I can’t play this place because I’m not a Mod’, that would be unnatural to me. You’re selfish” (as an artist). “You want everyone.”

The cross-over between Mods, Punks, Skinheads and The Blades straddling all three with ease: “I remember playing one gig in the Baggot Inn and it was particularly obvious to me from the people up the front.

There were three or four stereotypical Punks and another three or four Mods. I remember thinking ‘Jesus Punks and Mods at the same gig’, and there was no animosity at all. Now that only happened for a certain period. I also remember playing the Baggot Inn one Summer there was a couple of Skinheads too. A couple of Skinheads used to hang around with the Mods, and there were a few Skinheads up Grafton St. used to hang around with Punks. So there was this sort of mix of cultures which I thought was ideal in a way. It was perfect for us. Obviously you’d always like to reach more people but nobody got excluded. That was important. Not just for me specifically but I think that’s important for all songwriters and singers that they don’t exclude anybody. That was quite stark to me when I was up on that small stage in the Baggot Inn. We had been in London just before this playing a festival organized by the GLC, I think it was on the South Bank somewhere? There just happened to be a lot of Skinheads at that gig. It could’ve been a ‘Rock Against Racism’ gig? Some Skinheads from Dublin too, so for that day we were a Skinhead band. I didn’t mind and coincidentally our hairs were particularly short and we still wore suits as far as I remember? It was just an example of a different sort of subculture. And it didn’t matter to me as such.

The only thing I had with Skinheads was I was wary of the racism. This was one of the reasons we started doing ‘Young, Gifted and Black’. It was us sort of saying this isn’t us at all and most Skinheads who came to our gigs weren’t that way inclined anyway.”

“when fans say those songs were part of their lives it’s really what a songwriter wants to hear”

Personal vocal influences: “Vocally, favourite singers at the time? Well it’s always been The Beatles. So Lennon and McCartney, as singers not only songwriters.

They’re probably my biggest influence. I sort of learned to sing playing Rubber Soul because of the split stereo thing. You could turn down one speaker and have the music and it didn’t have the main vocal. It was almost like early Karaoke. I don’t know whether it was a re-mastered stereo mix but there was vocals one side, music on the other. I could sing along with Rubber Soul!

And I think Revolver was like that too? I loved Elvis Costello as a vocalist. I did like Paul Weller and his great energy as a singer but he wouldn’t be my favourite vocalist.

The one’s I loved I’d never touch or get near, to me the three best probably would be

SUSSED 15

Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder. They’re just out of my league. I mean McCartney and Lennon are probably out of my league too but McCartney and Lennon would have influenced me more in that, I could sing a bit like them sometimes if I tried. And the songs were Pop music.

Although Smokey’s was Soul but Pop. But Smokey has such a high beautiful voice and Marvin was just fantastic. It’s knock-out stuff isn’t it.”

Paul’s phone rings at this point: “Don’t go yet lads…”

The burning question on every Blades fans mind. How come they didn’t make the jump across the Irish Sea to find the fame and fortune their contemporaries did: “We were at the starting blocks with them but that’s the way it goes. I think at the time I did harbor some resentment. I don’t know because looking back on it they never did anything wrong to us to be honest. Never badmouthed us, we played a lot of gigs with them and they never gave us bad sound when we played before them, never mistreated us, always quite civil really. I took a fair few shots at U2, maybe I was resentful? I’m still not a religious person so their born again stance irked me anyway but I should’ve left that aside. I took a couple of cheap shots at them and it’s not something I’m very proud of because they didn’t really do anything wrong to me.

There was one gig I remember playing, an example of how naïve they were themselves in a nice way and how humble… they got Dave McCullough over to see them, a guy who was writing for Sounds and Sounds was as big as NME at the time you see. I remember the soundcheck and he was there and they did a very powerful soundcheck. I may not have been mad about the music but I knew a good professional band when I heard one. Fuck me their sound was really tight and loud and Larry (Mullen) was in particularly good form. Anyway, Dave McCullough was doing some article on the Dublin scene but he was principally there to see U2 because they had paid and brought him over. There was nothing wrong with that because that’s what people had to do, was to pay the journalist to come over.

Not a back-hander, pay his expenses. So we played our gig, I thought we played okay.

Maybe we were a bit nervous because the big guy from Sounds was there but we did okay. I thought we played well, but it’s hard for me to objective. They came on and I thought they were quite good. In the meantime I’d gone upstairs when we’d finished. I saw a bit of them. Dave McCullough came up to do an interview with me. Their people are saying ‘the band are on now Dave’ and he’s still talking to me. Around the time Secret

Affair had just released some singles and I was telling him ‘look I’m not mad about it’.

Right, so he’s talking away and they’re coming up telling him the band are on. He goes down, I went down and I thought they were powerful for what they did.

They were just coming of age I thought. Nevertheless, afterwards I’m upstairs talking to Bono, it must have been for about half an hour, the guy is worried at this stage. I’m saying ‘you were fine’ you know. And he says ‘it was you he liked it’s the fucking Blades, he’s gonna give The Blades the great review’. He’s saying this, he was very….?

But I knew he (McCullough) was convinced from the soundcheck alone but I didn’t want to say this to Bono, just in case he was right. But I knew the way he was looking at them during the soundcheck they’d clinched the deal anyway. So look, he was getting really nervous and at this stage so I said ‘it’s you he likes, he’s gonna give you a great review’.

But that’s an example of how nobody really knew at the time, I didn’t know. I knew they were very good that night. In the review itself, it was so good a review, it was the one that really pushed them. The headline was ‘if Geldof is John the Baptist then Bono is….’

He gave us a reasonably good review, he said The Blades were good, showed some good potential, a bit nervous, blah blah, but worth seeing. But he was fucking knocked out by U2. Now I’m using that as an example of how they weren’t the big swinging mickeys that possibly, I had given this image of them being. That’s the example of him being fragile, and nervous, and not big-headed at all. Anyway I just wanted to put the record straight there you know. Now there are some people who resent the fact that The Blades weren’t big and U2 were and that’s fine. I think it was just us missing the boat. A series of things.

It’s very hard to analyze. I’m not now (bitter).

I may have been at the time or maybe I suppressed it at the time and it came out in other ways but there’s too much water under the bridge. I wouldn’t have met the woman I’m with now, I wouldn’t have my kids. These things sound clichéd but they’re true. Who knows I could’ve been divorced with a coke habit, you wouldn’t know.”

“it was you he liked, it’s the fucking blades”

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From here on in and the possibility of future gigs/recordings: “Ah no. It’s enough for me to concentrate on doing this right. And I want to do it right. Well to the best of our ability we want to. It has more than a slight attraction.” (the initial roar of the crowd, which as it transpired was louder than anyone could have imagined!) “But I’m so sort of thorough in some ways or finickity I’ve always taken that as a given simply because that’s the easy part. It’s to sustain the gig for an hour and a half is the hard part. And I’ll appreciate that and I’ll be raging if it doesn’t happen, but then I’m thinking ahead. The easiest part of the gig is the first couple of songs most gigs bury in the middle and it’s sort of subconsciously understood by the

crowd. So you have to have a good start and a good end and don’t make the middle too flat. So I’m trying to get all that sorted and see what song will work where. It’s a good exercise and it’s healthy because I want people to pay in, leave the gig and think ‘great, glad I went, wasn’t shortchanged’ and give them the best possible show. And that’s ego as well, that’s not just me being a great bloke. I do want people to have spent their money and got something for it, I also want them to think ‘he didn’t short-change us, the band were rehearsed, they played the songs they said they’d play, they did the best they could’.

You don’t end up on a stage by accident or by being humble.”

Unreleased material: “I think there are a few songs but I would argue that” (Their release worthiness). “There’s certainly nothing of the quality (of Last Man in Europe) production wise. There might be one or two? There’s certainly an album of songs but they’d be scraps and allsorts. There’d certainly be some demos. The quality of Last Man in Europe wasn’t top quality, it’s good quality production so I don’t think so.

But I’m my own biggest critic. Look, again it’s hard for me to be objective about the songs. I’ve never been a sloppy songwriter.

If you like what I’ve done then you will like the other stuff. That’s all I can say, I’m not saying they’re great songs. I certainly give my all to the songwriting.”

We quiz him on a couple of songs: “eh? I don’t know now? It’s a long time ago (Stand

By Me Now). Was it maybe about suicide?” (the death of the band maybe?) “No it wasn’t. You could make that suggestion and be allegorical. I don’t think I was writing about that? I like it myself. We did it in Windmill Lane on the cheap. I think we used a drum machine. It’s one of those songs that I thought we could have done better but I was pleased with how the song turned out. Some of the songs I can’t remember immediately why I wrote them or when I wrote them. Something will jog your memory, certain words at the time, and it’s like ‘bang’. Like the song ‘Stand By Me Now’, I’m at a loss but I’m pretty sure...? I don’t know. I’ll probably go home tonight and go ‘Jesus yeah!’ Again I don’t know.

I’m hopeless at these things (the chronology of ‘Some People Smile’ and why it was labelled as Paul Cleary when there was a full band on it?). It’s only me on it. If you listen to it there’s very little on it, it’s only a snare and a bass drum which I did myself, there’s acoustic guitar and a bit of a (mimics the electric riff). I remember the studio in Miltown, a very old studio. There’s a tiny bit of keyboard which I did myself. I probably did it because maybe I didn’t think it was appropriate for The Blades or didn’t think it was very good material? Which would automatically assume there was a certain Blades sound? But I don’t know the reason why it was a Paul Cleary record? Or maybe I wasn’t brave enough to call it The Blades?

I don’t know. But I’m glad I did it. It’s a simple song but I still like it and it’s certainly not of a time or a period. It could have been the Everly Brothers, but I’m not bigging

myself up to that level. That word has been hijacked (Pop). I’d use it to describe the likes of the Undertones. I’d call them a great Pop band. But now what people regard Pop as is the likes of westlife or is it boyzone? Crazy stuff! The Buzzcocks to me were a Pop band eventhough they came from the Punk era.”

The Blades’ first public appearance in 27 years being on national TV: “I sort of wanted a bit of nerves because I asked to do it live. I didn’t want to lip synch or mime over something we’d recorded in 1984. So I asked Elvera. It’s unusual for them to sort of accept. I said ‘see if we can get it live’.

She said ‘do you mean live vocals?’. No live, everything live! They wouldn’t have it normally. I don’t know how many times they’ve let a band play live but very seldom.

A lot of people knock RTE but they let us do it live. I suppose they trusted us. There was a little bit of nervous energy I suppose but the brass are very good people, very professional. They’d played Downmarket so many times and yet when we’re in the dressing room they’re to one side working it out, warming the instruments up, real pro’s you know, and really dedicated. Lads I gotta run. It was a pleasure.”

MILL BUTLER The Roadie; White Socks Black Loafers

“Okay a start point...my older brother took me to my very first gig. It was at Dalymount Park and it was Bob Marley. I was in awe, music took over my life. I started going to as many gigs as I could around Dublin and came across The Blades after I got into the Mod thing. I became a huge fan immediately, I even hitched to several gigs to see them around the country. They would always spot me and take me back to Dublin with them. One night at The SFX I was sitting at the side of the stage and Mark Venner (then Manager) asked me did I work. I said no, he said you do now. Vinnie (‘The Wolf’) the roadie would show me the ropes...couldn't believe it! From then on I became a part of The Blades. They were an amazing bunch of people. I spent a lot of time with Brian, we became great friends, and still make contact a few times a week by email. Brian was a great influence on me, he gave me books to read, films to see. Paul was a very funny lad.

Very Dublin with his humour. I remember certain conversations with Paul, some printable!!..

was going to be electric. I remember one of my favourite things about the soundcheck was they would jam, and being a huge Clash fan one day I was stood by Jake and Paul started playing London Calling, the power from the 3 lads (Blue Brass never done soundchecks) was awesome! Paul could easily match Strummers howling, or they would just jam reggae tunes...every hair would stand up on me when I would go out and do last checks before they went on stage ‘cause I remember the crowd would chant MILL MILL GIVES US A WAVE!!..

There was a real buzz in the dressing room before gigs at the TV club. We knew it would be packed and the crowd never let the band down. The crowd were very important to the boys... and I can tell you when you stood on the side of the stage and the intro to ‘Last Man’ began well I can still feel it now, that will never leave me....

It was the same at the Baggot, but to me the TV club was where the lads felt at home... just cast your mind back to St Paddys day gig there. I still recall that night to people today.

I will always remember becoming a ‘stylist’ for the band. One day before a gig I arrived wearing a beret!!, and Paul loved it. Next gig they all arrived wearing one!!... One day we were travelling to Limerick, all wearing our berets, and up front we spotted a prisoner escort heading to Portlaoise (probably IRA), so as we caught up and started to overtake we all put sunglasses and berets on and drove by. You could see the panic on the army boys faces! One member of the band (can't remember who) gave them a full moon. Good clean fun.

My worst memory with The Blades was sitting in the front bar of The Baggot before a gig with Brian Foley and new posters were up saying ‘Paul Cleary and the Blades’. I knew something was up. Then Brian pointed to the poster and said do you know what that means?... Of course I did, it was the end of the Blades and the seed for the Partisans. I was gutted, not because I was no longer going to be the Roadie for the Blades... but it was the end of what I always saw as Irelands best band. At the last gig (think it was Bantry in Cork), Paul was introducing the band during the gig and I was sat at the side of the stage doing the lights and after Paul had introduced the band he saw me and goes to the mic and says ‘and last of all Mill on keyboards’... of course it was a lighting desk but then again we were in Cork!!! That was my last gig and one of the saddest days of my life because this band were brilliant musically and lyrically and they had that personal feel for the fans.”

“to me the blades were the tv club and the tv club was the blades”

To me The Blades were the TV Club and The TV Club was The Blades. From the morning of a gig there ‘til right before they went on stage every nerve was tingling with excitment, just knowing no matter what, it

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The last fan WILLEM DUNHAM Ontario, Canada

I differ quite a bit from most Blades fans. I'm 25, Canadian, and have never seen them live.

In Ottawa, our citywide library system holds a DVD of a documentary called From A Whisper To A Scream: The Living History of Irish Rock.

Groups I had heard of like Thin Lizzy and U2 were showcased and then there was something that came up with an incredible sound. It looked a bit like A Hard Days Night with three guys playing their instruments while a camera swooped down to get a few smooth crane-shots. It turned out to be a band called The Blades with their song "The Bride Wore White", and a few interviewees went on to speak of how this group is considered one of the greatest bands in Ireland to never receive the worldwide fame they deserved. That recognition alone sealed the deal. A fascination with Ireland started when I became a fan of Father Ted and later bought my first car (a DeLorean). So it was really only fitting that I would start to really get into The Blades. To not much of a surprise, there weren't any Blades CDs for sale in my area and around this point in time I was too young to be buying any off the net. So I scoured music-sharing servers with the hopes of finding anything. Among tons of Ruben Blades (one of the cops from Predator 2) tunes, "Downmarket" would often be the one song to pop up. Over time, I managed to find three or four songs in total. Eventually I came across an LP of Last Man In Europe on ebay that I immediately purchased, and amongst my collection of vinyl, it is the rarest (not even my signed copy of Neil Hamburger's Great Prank Calls can amount). Besides the amazing songs, one of the reasons they appeal to me is their obscurity and especially to North America. I've never heard any of their music used in any sort of advertisements or films. I sometimes like to think I'm the only fan in the province of Ontario. I created a Facebook fan group for them and for quite a while, I was the sole member. Wasn't until too long that it amounted up to around a hundred members who began to post personal collections of photographs and recordings; these were people who had seen, met and grew up around these guys. Lately, we've shot up to around 400 and I keep getting requests to join everyday. I'm quite happy to have contributed to building interest and a place for many to share memories.

ANNE DOYLE Dublin, Ireland

I was lucky enough to get to see The Blades live a couple of times. I say lucky because I was still in school, obviously underage so going to gigs in pubs was a bit difficult. The first time I saw them in the Baggot Inn I was blown away. At only 16 or so, I thought their SUSSED 18

music was fresh and exciting and it helped that Paul Cleary was the closest thing to perfection I had ever seen. I was probably a little in love with him and a huge fan of the band. I had flyers and pics of The Blades plastered all over my bedroom wall along with all my other mod paraphernalia. At the gigs, the band never disappointed, belting out all the sounds I loved accompanied by their brass section. This was unlike any of the tripe in the charts and that’s why I LOVED it! Many of their fans in those days were Mods and half of the buzz at the gigs was mixing with sharpsuited blokes and girls with bobs in their hair, wearing twin sets and ski pants. I suppose like the majority of their mod fans, I felt a great sense of belonging to a particular scene then and The Blades were at the cutting edge of that exciting scene and I was definitely hooked. Another nice memory I have is when I was travelling home from town on the bus to Clondalkin one night when Mill, their roadie, sat down on the seat beside me. We chatted about loads on the journey home and he told me what it was like working with the band. I thought this must be THE dream job to have (well, I was only 16). They were all just so down to earth and well, normal. I honestly believe that Paul Cleary is one of the best songwriters this country has ever produced but this obviously never reflected in their record sales and sadly for their fans, this ultimately led to the band’s demise. There were plenty of gigs alright with The Baggot Inn, the Lark in the Park in St. Anne’s and then The T.V. Club. Now looking back they have to be one of the best bands to come out of Dublin IMHO. Favourite song? That’s a hard one to call, they’ve too many really great records but ‘Hot for you’ would probably come the closest. And now it’s amazing how many of the fans are still around and counting down the days to the two reunion gigs in The Olympia. Hope it sends a good message to the lads. Feels like being 16 all over again.

Roll on the 13th Dec!

PAUL DAVIS Dublin, Ireland

I never saw them live back then, I was too young. I did interview him for a fanzine I was doing in ‘84 though and remember him saying that they weren't a Mod band but Mods liked them. Years later I was in Bad Bob's to see some band my mate knew the drummer in and said to my mate "That's Paul Cleary over there at the bar." My mate said it wasn't, "what would he be doing in a place like this?" he said. So I went over and said "You're Paul Cleary, aren't you?" And he was stunned!

"You know who I am?" he said. "Of course I know who you are," I said, "you're an absolute legend. The Blades were one of the best Irish bands ever." He was genuinely taken aback at someone recognising him and that anyone remembered The Blades. This is the humility

of the man. To think, U2 supported them in the Baggot. Only goes to show you that the nice guys don't get the breaks.

KEV FITZPATRICK Limerick, Ireland

I can distinctly remember the sound of Clearys' guitar reverberating as the punters out muscled each other for viewing and dancing positions. More a scooterboy '85 crowd than my preferred sharp Mod style on show. Not that it mattered to me....The Blades were on stage on yet another "Farewell Tour" and once again, I was a forlorn figure standing outside; Desert boots, grey mohair trews, white OCBD and Faux Shetland crew neck, wrapped in my trusty green parka and I was not getting in.....it was 1986 I was 16, but looked 12. I was destined to spend many an evening as Smokey once sang "on the outside looking in.” The Blades were the band of my youth, yet the closest I came to ever seeing them live was standing outside The Pink Elephant in Limerick or buying bootleg cassettes outside Todds on a Sat afternoon and later travelling to see The Partisans. On Dec 13th when The Blades take to the Olympia stage the 16year old me will finally be allowed in....and he can't bloody wait!

PAUL SAWTELL Cambridge, England

I can't remember how I first became aware of The Blades. It would probably have been through the flourishing Mod fanzine network of the early 80s of which I was a part (editor of ‘The Right Direction’ and ‘Fire & Skill’). It was around this time I bought the early singles from Cambridge Record Fairs Hot For You and Ghost Of A Chance. Gobsmacked by the energy, passion and pure brilliance of these singles, The Blades immediately became a ‘must buy’ band. I would buy anything by them as quality was assured. This comment is not to be taken lightly. Very few bands fall into this elite bracket, but The Blades are right up there with legendary bands such as The Jam and to a lesser extent Secret Affair. I loved The Last man In Europe album, and Raytown Revisited. Both originals I have kept to this day as well as the Paul Cleary & The Partisans mini lp Impossible. Downmarket the single was of course a classic and I don't use that word lightly either. I remember seeing the band on TV at the time all dressed in immaculate white tops and black berets,sharp and very Mod! Possibly the most famous Blades fan (or one of the most famous!) was Ready Steady Go dancer Patrick Kerr, sadly no longer with us. I interviewed him shortly after the release of

n s i n E u ro p e Last Man. I lent him the album to review, he loved it! His review appeared in Fire 'n Skill issue 4 if memory serves me correctly. Well many years have passed since those heady days of the 80s and the Mod scene, of which The Blades were a part, is still alive and well.

Fast forward to 2013 and The Blades announce a reunion concert...and then announce another reunion concert! I only hope they return to England for gigs in 2014 once more so us English Mods don't miss out.

The Alley Club Cambridge (of which I copromote) awaits The Blades!

LOUISE DUGGAN, Dublin, Ireland

A first for me was the TV club. The Blades, a must see, Dublin band, was the suss from the mods in town. It was a full house, with a very definite division of gangs in the crowd. The boys arrived on stage with a very serious, business attitude towards providing their audience with tops tunes. What I noticed with The Blades was that they were actually talented; they had something to say with their music, which was simple, with an added great beat. I watched them work so hard to an audience that either meet up with their pals to join in with every word and tune the band were delivering, or throw themselves off balconies to imitate Quadrophenia, (that was showing in the Adelphi on Abbey Street at the time). I was smitten, and from then on I attended most of their gigs, with a few outside Dublin, ‘82-86. The Crofton Airport Hotel was yet another invitation to the very certain group of lads that wanted to show what tribe and position they came from. The Blades, this time couldn’t perform as the whole place was in uproar, pint glasses flying, and blokes boxing the heads of each other. I spend that evening taking glass out of a friend’s arm and was really pissed off with the upset. A few people were badly injured, but survived to tell the story.

Politics was a huge part of The Blades and the lyrics in their songs was a true reflection of the bitterness towards the establishment of Ireland. The audience sang out their anger and for me was very inspiring. I followed them to the benefit gigs they supported, and one I remember distinctly was for the Dunne Stores strikers. Paul was a very serious moody fella, which I was extremely attracted to, every song he sang I believed he was singing right into my eyes. The first single I bought was Revelations of Heartbreak. With its brass, this was the sound I wanted, following Downmarket, Last man in Europe and so much more. Their delivery was constant with the occasional covers of My Girl by the Temptations and Tracks of my Tears from Smokey. I always thought The Blades sounded so much better live. Their recordings sounded a little bland and lacked the rawness and edge they had to offer, even

with todays technology could it be captured?

Many people regarded them as a Mod band in the early days and others shunned the idea. I didn’t care. They definitely were inspired by a mixture of sounds and attitudes from Soul to Ska with a Pop beat. Night life in Dublin ‘86 was opening up, live music and clubs where springing up everywhere (The Catheral Club, Sides, The Source). The Baggot gigs for The Blades were just not filling up, and these new trendy clubs were pulling in the crowds. People were moving on. (Remember the only way a band got a break was to leave Ireland.) The love affair was now coming to an end. The farewell gig for me was the Olympic Ballroom. It was supported by Shark Bait, with their lead singer Dave Finnegan throwing himself into the crowd from the stage. The place was packed for the goodbye gig. The hall was a mixture of pride and sadness, and again the boys delivered well. While the crowd chanted for more, Paul raised his head in question and asked the crowd why we didn’t buy The Blades records to keep them there. My brother, friends and I were heartbroken, holding our handmade flag and buying all their records. Why they didn’t make it? Luck wasn’t on their side.

recording. “Played to death” was the next phrase I got used to. Later that year it was announced that the entire Blades gig from April would be broadcast on September 1st, cue another blank tape. Again both buttons pressed and the announcer says “Good evening and welcome to the In Concert series, tonight we present a band who performed in April of this year, tonight you can hear all of that concert, it’s the Blades.”

Not 100% true, as when this broadcast was over I thought there was something missing. It turned out they didn’t include “Same Old Song” which was the second last tune from Aprils broadcast. I still have both tapes and have put them onto cd using today’s technology. Two songs from the gig were included on RTE’s In Concert album Young, Gifted and Black and Show Some Concern.

THOMAS TIGHE Dublin, Ireland

A lot of the heads I knew were into 60’s, Soul, 2Tone, etc., but not so much into live bands.

This was the one thing missing for me, a proper gig, not records playing in a corner.

Luckily there was a friend of mine, Derek Maguire, who was a few years older and who’d been to see The Blades a few times, he brought me to the T.V. club to see them. A great night, the energy of both band and crowd was amazing. Live they were in their element, no record could capture that. This was the first of three Blades gigs I managed to get to before they broke up.

As a younger version of myself, I remember the radio was always on at home, not that there was a need for another voice to add to the ones already there but it was a source of news and most importantly, music. This was where I heard particular songs for the first time, one such tune which stuck in my memory was The Blades Downmarket.

Those were the days, the eighties, when radio still mattered (depending on the station/DJ).

It was in 1985 when I started going to Bubbles and hanging out with like-minded people, finding oneself getting into the tunes and clothes of choice. But as it was the mideighties, 15 year olds and money were not the best bedfellows, mainly because you had none. How does one manage to get clothes, music and socialise? “Necessity is the mother of invention” was a phrase I was coming to know well at that time, so I always had a pack of blank cassettes for emergencies and copying albums I’d borrow off friends. Another phrase I was hearing was “Home taping is killing music”, in my case I was killing it with love and since then I’ve not stopped buying records, to this day I still buy at least 2 or 3 a week. One such emergency was when I heard announced on the radio (RTE Radio 2) that they would be broadcasting a Blades gig as part of Dave Fanning’s ‘In Concert’ series on April 23rd at 9pm. So there I was hovering over the buttons on my tape player/radio combo. 8:59, 9:00, Clunk! Both buttons down and

The Blades Live from RTE Radio Centre 1985: April 23rd; Revelations of heartbreak / My girl / Downmarket / Time tunnel / Those were the days / I heard a cry / Not so blue ( aka Memory lane) / Same old song / Young, gifted and black.

September 1st; The last man in Europe / Ghost of a chance / Sadlands / Real emotion / Hot for you / Pride / Boy one / Tears that tell the truth / Lost again /Show some concern /Revelations of heartbreak / My girl / Downmarket / Time tunnel /Those were the days / I heard a cry / Not so blue ( aka Memory lane) / Young, gifted and black

KEN SWEENEY Dublin, Ireland

My brother was in The Vipers and The Vipers’ bass player Brian Foley ended up in The Blades so I started hearing them through my brother really. I think I’d heard Hot For You and I really liked it and then Brian Foley joined the band and Brian was up in our house a lot where I grew up so I went in to see Brian playing. I think the first time I saw them was in Bray just after they got the brass section. And then we went out to RTE myself and some friends, Peter Devlin who ran ‘Real Emotion’ fanzine. The studio had been double booked so instead of sending them home RTE got them to play in the car park. The footage is on

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Youtube and it’s funny because someone seemed to think that myself and my friend who were Mods, were Bono and Larry Mullen which shows you how fucking mad people can be on the internet!

I was probably too young to be into them before Brian joined. I really liked that early line-up but I didn’t see them live. Paul Cleary had been a fan of The Vipers so my brother was friendly with them. My brother used to lend them guitars so one of the things we got back was a lot of Blades demos at the time.

The first time I got to hear a lot of The Blades songs was on these demos that used to be in the house. Not only did we have band demos we also had Paul Cleary’s home demos.

Some of those songs like Downmarket I would’ve heard from a little 4-track Paul Cleary had so it was great then hearing the whole band doing them. I remember walking into the Baggot inn, we got in early for the soundcheck and they were doing a song called ‘Birds of a Feather’ and they were just incredible! Brian Foley and Paul and Jake, without the brass. It’s so important that some of the stuff gets out because there were some brilliant songs. There was a song they did around the time of the Falklands war called ‘Clarion Call’ with brass on it. Touch of Smokey Robinson with the lyrics of Billy Bragg. I remember another Blades song called ‘Solo’. Just great melodic songs. If you heard the demos and more importantly the Dave Fanning sessions of Last Man in Europe they were fantastic and they don’t have that eighties production so hopefully now Paul will let some of this unreleased stuff get out. People who remember The Blades know what The Blades sound like live and the sound of The Blades live is not the sound of that album. The first line-up which was his brother Lar Cleary sometimes known as Lar Schreiber and one of my favourite guitarists, and Pat Larkin. Then Brian Foley joined around the time of The Bride Wore White.

Then you’ve got the brass coming in, like Revelations of Heartbreak, Downmarket, and all that. So I’d say there’s probably an album (of unreleased material) out of each of those periods. It’s a shame that all the other bands inferior to The Blades got to make a lot more records when Paul Cleary was sitting on a goldmine of songs, and that goldmine is still there. Elvera’s been really kind to me at Reekus and she played me things that I haven’t heard in 20 years and they are as good now as when I heard them 20 years ago. The songs are so beautifully structured and well put together.

I’ve thought about this a lot. I suppose the reason a lot of people liked The Blades at the time they came out was because a lot of the bands we’d liked like Dexys Midnight Runners and The Jam, they’d kind of disappeared off the landscape at that stage and The Blades reminded a lot of people, especially Mods, of those bands. This was when a lot of Irish bands were sounding like U2. The Mod thing was very important to them although they certainly weren’t a Mod band. The reason The Blades were able to move from the Baggot Inn to the TV Club and start playing huge gigs was because they had this huge Mod following. The likes of the Lark in the Park gigs it seemed like thousands of Mods turned up. They just timed it really well. Jake Reilly is pretty close to being a Mod, he certainly would be the most Mod of the lot. A lot of people were Mods in the 80s because we didn’t want to walk around the Ilac Centre dressed as a pirate.

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It was incredible when the whole Elektra records thing happened because they were this huge American label and they got involved with The Blades. Someone in a Dublin newspaper got word of this and they were going to write about it. The Blades management brought this guy to court placing a barring order that he couldn’t report this in the paper. Whoever the journalist was, I remember he wrote this big story about this Dublin band that was going to sign this huge deal. He didn’t say it was The Blades; ‘I’m not legally allowed say who this band is but all I can say is they’re really sharp’. The gigs back then were pretty fucking scary and you’d get all sorts of crazy people turning up. TV Club was amazing. I went to see them in Trinity (College Dublin) once at a lunchtime gig and all these Mods turned up and started dancing at lunchtime in the middle of Trinity!

I remember Paul Cleary coming out and he’d play that opening riff to Last Man in Europe and that was pretty fantastic. They were exciting gigs. Once or twice my band played with them and that was fantastic as well.

You’ve got to remember this was at a time when Irish bands weren’t allowed stay in Ireland and play in Ireland. You had to go to London like the Boomtown Rats did and make it big. And if you didn’t after a year or two people would be sort of pointing at you going ‘what the fuck is going on with this gang, they must be fucking useless’. So I think that’s what they suffered from. Bands like the Frames and all sorts of people these days can hang around Ireland and build up a following here and make a nice living. Bands didn’t do that then, they had to go to London.

A band would turn up in Dublin, they’d be absolutely amazing, everyone would be into them, they’d disappear to London, and that’d be the last you fucking heard of them. The Blades didn’t really do that. The people who liked The Blades really liked The Blades and that’s why they can sell out gigs now.

Eventhough I’ve heard it a million times Downmarket just switches on things in me. I thought they had a great image, I thought Paul Cleary had a great voice, I think they connected. The most important thing about a band is that they should sound like they come from a certain place. They should be of their place. The Beatles were of their place, they were from Liverpool and they sounded like they were from Liverpool. The Clash, or The Jam sound like where they come from. The wonderful thing about The Blades is they sounded like they came from Ringsend, Dublin! You could hear a Blades song on a beach in Australia and it would make you think of Dublin. That’s what made them unique at the time, because a lot of Irish bands at the time sounded like they were session musicians in LA. They had fucking pony tails and bass players playing in ridiculous ways. We didn’t really have a live band, we didn’t go to gigs until The Blades came along. We went to see English bands when some of them would come over. The Jam played with The Vipers in ’78 but by the time I came to being a Mod in the early 80s The Jam never played over here. So all we had were visiting bands like The Kinks and people like that. But The Blades were our band. We could go and see them every week, we could get intoxicated going to see The Blades week after week after week, listening to them and getting to know all the songs. And that’s why they were special to us because they were our band and they were playing live in our town.

SUSSED REVIEWS

On December 13th and 14th 2013 The Blades reformed for two sold-out gigs in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.

Mark Sherlock, original Blades fan and Sunday Socialite reviews the first of these shows:

For years there had been speculation, rumours, gossip about The Reunion. But when The Blades finally reformed for two shows at The Olympia it was a dream come true for the men and women whose lives their songs had soundtracked. For weeks the excitement had been mounting and on the night friends old and new packed the bars in the city which had inspired their heroes. As fans filtered into the venue, reality hit and the electric atmosphere in the room hit fever pitch - would The Blades be as good as people remembered? Would they still have the same magic? Anyone with doubts need not have worried - the roars and excitement the band were greeted with when they stepped onto that Olympia stage was just the beginning of a night that will never be forgotten by ourselves or Paul Cleary and the lads - it was nothing short of spinetingling. Emotions were running high from the start - disbelief turned to amazement and then pride as the sheer joy of the audience grew with every chord change and scissor kick. The Last Man In Europe, The Reunion and Downmarket were belted out in quick succession in a moment that had many pinching themselves to make sure it wasn't a dream. The Blue Brass sounded triumphant but the stars of the show were the three band members who've lost none of their passion or skills in the wilderness years.

After more classics including Hot For You, The Bride Wore White and You Never Ask, the band were as exhilarated as the audience. Cleary was in high spirits and was genuinely moved by the crowd’s reaction to his return. During his solo set which included My Girl and Some People Smile Cleary dedicated his version of Everything I Own to his late father, marking the fourth anniversary of his death. There's no doubt his dad’s spirit was in the room as no-one who ever loved Paul Cleary would have missed this special moment. When the band returned they broke into fiery versions of Ghost Of A Chance and Heatwave.

As the 10.30pm curfew approached, I can't have been the only one who wanted time to stop, just for a bit, so that we could make this amazing night last a little bit longer.

Years later most of us are and always will be standing at that bus stop so it's very fitting that a fan spotted Paul Cleary making his way to the gig by bus. If there was any justice in the world, Paul would have been chauffer-driven from his mansion in Killiney.

But then, there are plenty of people to preach about world poverty while living in the hills. Thankfully Paul Cleary is back to speak for us.

ELVERA BUTLER, The Record Label

The Blades played some great gigs at my venue in Cork, The Downtown Kampus, back in ‘79/’80, and I was pleased when they approached me about being on Reekus after their split from EG. Our first collaboration was The Bride Wore White, which we recorded in Windmill Lane studios, with the b-side Animation – this was released in March ’82. This release won ‘Best Single” in the Hot Press Awards that year, with Paul Cleary bagging the accolade ‘Best Songwriter”, beating off competition from the likes of U2 and Van Morrison. In addition to the top slots, they figured in the Top 3 in three other categories including ‘best group’, ‘best male vocalist’, and ‘best home based band’. Later that year, Paul recorded the sublime Some People Smile as an inexpensive b-side, but on hearing it I felt it just had to be heard by everyone else too, so persuaded the band to allow us to release it as a single. It was, as expected, very well received when we released it for Valentines Day ‘83, and Paul got invited to perform it live on the Late Late show.

In March ‘83 I moved to London to set up a base there for the label – Andy Foster, my partner, and I had been offered a partnership in the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, which was also a venue for live shows. Our other main band at the time, Big Self, were getting a lot of attention from the British media, and London seemed the place to be to progress the bands on the label. We had good distribution through DMS, who had other up and coming bands including The Housemartins, and got reasonable airplay for Downmarket when it was released, including Kid Jensen’s show on daytime BBC 1, and Capitol radio. Then The Blades got signed to Electra in the US, via Andrew Loog Oldham who saw them playing at Lisdoonvarna: he had a remit to sign seven British bands for Electra and The Blades got included in that package. The Last Man in Europe album was recorded, but when the first of the British package released in the US failed, and there were personnel changes in Electra, the rest of the releases got shelved. Fortunately our London lawyer had a connection in Electra, and secured the rights of the album for Reekus; the album got released in Ireland to great reviews, but just as it was about to be released in the UK, the distribution company we used went into liquidation, and the master got tied up for some months in the ensuing debacle. Meantime we secured a release for the album in France through Disc A-Z, and then arranged distribution in the UK through RCA. By this time I had sensed a change coming in the band, and put Paul’s name in the title of the album, so while the Irish version of the album is just ‘The Blades’, the UK version is ‘Paul Cleary and the Blades’. Besides airplay, we got some good press for the album in the UK, but the band was gone and there were no shows to promote it. But it’s great to see the band back again!

SUSSED 21

SUSSED 22

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SUSSED 23

the junction

From time to time the junction focuses on two Irish clubs.

Hoping to bring profile to each club, we give the run down on music policy, dress codes (if any) and the kind of cats you’d expect to see down there. This issue focuses on Heart and Soul and Pow City, one an established Northern Soul and Motown club in Belfast, the other a fledgling Rare Soul night in Dublin. Each equally deserving of a mention and of course your consideration...

Heart and Soul will be celebrating its 3rd

anniversary in August 2013. The dub is organised and promoted

by Tony Spence, Gerard McCleave, Karen Buchanan, and our resident DJ Robert Glennon. We formed it in 2011 along with another friend Jane Skilling. All of us were young mods in the 70’s and 80’s revival and all still fully participate in the scene in 2014.

We are a Northern Soul and Motown club with all the records played at 45rpm and have gained a reputation across Ireland and beyond due in part to the fantastic tunes played by the many excellent DJs who have guested but mostly the amazing, friendly atmosphere that is shared and enjoyed by evervone who comes through the door. Total strangers have become firm friends in the space of an afternoon. The fact that we push the boat out and provide free food to our guests plus a free After Party only adds to the occasion and the vibe. So what you get is great music, dancing and a great craic from 3pm to lam - still all for only £5.

Heart and Soul is held in Club Mono in Ann Street, Belfast, slap bang in the centre of town. It's actual a rave and modern dance venue for teenagers and young adults with weird hair who drink bottles of Blue WKD and wear dreadful clothes so it's as far from the Twisted Wheel or the Scene Club as you could hope to get.

But the venue and the bar and facilities are superb and the layout suits us perfectly. Obviously lot of the people who attend Heart and Soul are Mods or part of the Mod scene but we are definitely not exclusive and want people from any background to come along. l don't think it matters where your references come from because it's all about the love of the great music that is Northern Soul and Motown.

Who has played Heart and Soul? Robert Glennon, Russ Winstanley, Brian Rae, Paul Davis, Tony Hanlon, Paul May, Peter Brady, Jim McCracken, Bill Kealy, Jacqui Carroll, Soulman Clarence, Phil Saxe, Brian 45 Phillips, Harpo Doyle, Pete Roberts, Olof theSoul Man, Jim Larmour and Paul Welsby.

When can I get there? We run every quarter on a Sunday from 3pm until 9pm and the next dates are 15th Ferbruary, 4tth May and 24th August, the latter two falling Bank Holiday Weekends this year SUSSED 24

Pow City is a new soul club to hit Ireland this year.

Launched By Paul Grant and Darren McDonnell, the club’s first night got off to a great start in February. We wanted to put on a soul night which was for everyone, from the most hardened Soulie to the ordinary Joe on the street (pun intended). The main focus was on pouding 60's soul with a peppering of R&B, Crossover and Funky edge ghetto grooves to keep you dancing.

The club itself is named after a hard hitting Soul record by Freddie Scott & Orchestra. Thumping from start to finish with growling vocals and blasting horns, this to us was exactly what we'd envisioned the club to sound like, and with both of us coming from a Mod and Northern Soul background our decision to name the club after such a great record was an obvious choice.

Situated in the basement of The Thomas House, the venue is perfect for the particular type of sounds you'll hear at Pow City. As you descend the stairs, that driving beat will pull you straight onto the dancefloor. Our first night couldn't have gone better, from the moment the needle hit the first record we knew we were in for a good night. The usual soul suspects were there along with plenty of new faces and the dancefloor was packed the whole night through. A big thank you to the DJs and more importantly everyone who supported the nigh. We hope to see you all again at the next one.

The night is held on the second Saturday of every month and with a full bar and drink promos in the basement, Pow City has got you're Saturday night SUSSED!

Follow us on facebook for updates.

HARD MODS a unified tribe “They all need a bleedin’ good bath” exclaimed a young short haired attendee of a hippy happening in 1967. With no business being there, who were these ridiculously out of place tearaways? Not alot has been documented about the first of many changes the Mod movement was to undergo. Often misunderstood and overlooked, this late 1960s incarnation was just as valid and in many ways more important than its predecessor and little did anyone know at the time the impact and influence it was to have on future generations of Mods and Skinheads.

Guest contributor, Galway’s Paul Mulholland, a life long Suedehead and Soul fan provides a fascinating insight into the evolution of Mod and the birth of a new movement that would change the canvas of popular youth culture forever....

Tiles nightclub Oxford Street, 1966

SUSSED 25

s

o what is a ‘Hard Mod’? It was American sociologist Dick Hebdige who came up with the term in the early ‘70s used to describe the Mods of the mid to late 1960s, who would eventually be referred to as Skinheads.

It was however just that, a term. It’s generally accepted that it wasn’t until ’67 that the ‘Hard Mod’ began to be noticed, standing out defiantly against the ever growing middle class bohemian scene of swinging London.

A small group of them would appear briefly in film footage of The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream concert held in London that year. Unimpressed with the antics of the day they would let it be known that these ‘Happenings’ simply weren’t happening for them.

They were more at home in Tiles on Oxford street, dancing to Jeff Dexter’s DJ set of Soul, R&B and Ska or maybe some homegrown live acts like Jimmy James and the Vagabonds or Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band.

By ‘67 the styles and tastes of the Mod had begun to splinter.

Most of the midsixties Mod and R&B bands were tuning into the psychedelic world of progressive rock and soft drugs by this time.

Illustration taken No longer considering from the 1969 Melody Maker article themselves Mods, they ‘it’s a mod mod mod world’ SUSSED 26

would invite many of their loyal fans to join them on their ’trip’.

However the football loving, pill popping, all-night dancing, conservative Mod would stay true to his roots with a clean living, no frills ethic. Hair was kept short, in rejection of the popular bouffant or longer styles of the day. They would stick with the all American Ivy League look, in favour of the newer more commercial costume styles. This look inspired by king of cool, Steve McQueen would define the ‘Ivy’ style wearing a Baracuta Jacket, Brooks Brother shirt and Levi 501s or staprest with a pair of burgundy wing tipped brogues. Mohair suits were also considered an essential wardrobe item, worn mainly at night and came in a range of plain and two tone tonic fabrics.

Being members of city street gangs, ‘Hard Mods’ would have revered villains like The Krays and Richardsons. Throughout the UK Mod gangs roamed the city streets, looking for kicks and thrills, Glasgow being a particular stronghold for the some of the largest and most violent Mod gangs. In Manchester the Mod style continued to thrive, and at the Twisted Wheel mohair suits worn with a number four crop was very fashionable during ’67.

Ska or ‘Blue Beat’ (as it was better known in the UK) was making its mark with records like “007 Shanty Town” by Desmond Dekker scoring a hit and the ever popular “Club Ska ’67” LP also released the same year. Mods loved dancing to Ska, often sharing the floor with Jamaican Rude Boys.

Impressed by the West Indians, the ‘Hard Mod’ would begin to emulate their ideas and styles. Some beginning to wear their hair cropped with a ‘razored in’ parting and trousers worn high above the ankle to reveal boots or socks. The tempo, melodies and style would go through some revolutionary changes over the coming years, evolving into Rocksteady and eventually becoming Reggae.

While the Flower Power generation and ‘Summer of Love’ caught the attention of the world, away from the spotlight the Hard Mod carried on as normal. Unhindered he would continue with a love for sharp dressing and black music. His style and taste would influence and inspire a new generation throughout the UK council estates. For this new breed, changes in fashion and styles would emerge from the terraces, becoming harder and more ‘street’ by the day.

The expression ‘Peanut’ was used to describe the closely cropped hair now sported by these lads. Another new and daring choice was the adoption of work boots (often steel toed) as an alternative to previously worn Desert and Chukka boots. One reason given was “to even up the odds with the Greasers” and with the addition of braces this look created quite a stir, and turned heads instantly. Commonly referred to as ‘battle wear’ or “rucking gear’, and what was widely adopted as the tradition of ‘having it out’ with their sworn enemies would continue for quite some time.

Initially girls adopted a less severe look. Many would continue with the hairstyle of Jean Seberg, while others opted for the trendier Julie Driscol crop, cut short, longer at the sides and high on the fringe. A plain button down shirt, a short plaid Aline skirt, white tights, slip-on shoes with chunky heels, high tongue and chain or buckle completed the look. Girls’ suits were usually an off-the-peg three quarter length jacket and skirt in trevira. As with the earlier Mods, girls often carried weapons and drugs for the boys to avoid being searched.

“WHEN FLOWERS DIDN’T SUIT MY SHOES” the peanut soundtrack

Prince Buster All Stars (Prince Buster - 1964) al capone

Great Yarmouth Scooter Run 1967

By ’68 the ‘Peanut’ was on the move and this distinct style was spreading rapidly through towns and city centres.

Oxblood commando boots, jungle greens, sleeveless jumpers, Ben Sherman (plain or striped), Brutus (tartan check) and various styles of polo shirts were all staples in the Peanut wardrobe. Other essentials were a Levi’s jacket in either cord or denim. In cold weather, or when riding scooters, Parkas remained popular, along with the sheepskin coat, mac and donkey jacket. The daytime look of boots, army greens and denim was inexpensive (unlike the traditional tailored mohair suit) and accessible to everyone. This in turn attracted a whole new generation of cropped-headed youth. The individualism of the earlier mod was by now superseded by the uniform look of the newly termed ‘Skinhead’. There were many names and labels but ‘Skinhead’ seemed to fit best in describing the ‘down to the wood’ crop. Some believe that name ‘Skinhead’ came about as a term of abuse shouted by the ‘Greasers’.

As ’68 became ’69, skinheads were everywhere, though some still referred to them as Mods. Music journalist Chris Welch took note in a derogatory article published in Melody Maker in Febuary 69’ titled “It’s a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World.” Here he describes them as a “new menace to society” and states that “Mods are apathetic, to the point of total ignorance, towards rock and roll. They idolize nobody.”

Welch (a devotee of bands like the Small Faces and The Who) didn’t hold back. While being interviewed by the same paper about his ‘Tommy’ project in April that year, Pete Townsend himself looked on with great uncertainty claiming that “The mods are coming back to Britain. To think I was like that once. The only reason they wear short hair is because you get kicked out of pubs if you’ve long hair. It’s frightening.”

That same month Desmod Dekker scored the first no.1 hit for reggae with ‘The Israelites’. Skinheads and Reggae were by now inseperable. However it would be the free Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park that summer that would mark the Skinheads coming of age. A couple of hundered Skinheads on the lurch for trouble with the Hells Angels at such a high profile event couldn’t go unnoticed. The word ‘Skinhead’ would rarely appear again without ‘aggro’ and ‘bovver’ being mentioned in the same sentence

Alton Ellis (Treasure Isle - 1967) cry tough

breaking down the walls of heartache

The Bandwagon (Direction - 1968)

The Maytals (Treasure Isle - 1964) dog war

open the door to your heart

Darrell Banks (UK Stateside - 1966) The Slickers (Blue Cat - 1968) nana

Jackie Edwards (Magic - 1966)

i feel so bad

Phyllis Dillon (Treasure Isle - 1967) perfidia

i can’t turn you loose

Otis Redding (Volt - 1966)

Tommy McCook & The Super Sonics (Volt - 1966) ska jam

10

SUSSED 27

SCH aRT

It was when s down and got to see his work. His current website is showing The Jukebox G Clearly a lad going places, Jay deigned to answer some questions for us in b where I lived.

I currently own 3 scoots. A 1957 Vespa VNA in original paint, a 1960 British registered Lambretta TV175 series 2, and a 1962 Vespa GS160 (Papavero).

I'm part of the ‘Low Numbers’ scooter club, a bunch of like minded scoot enthusiasts with a taste for the cool and the vintage. We do a couple of rallies a year and a few London Rideouts as well as local stuff.

I also like collecting vinyl and spin a few warm up tunes at the Touched by the Hand of Mod night at the Clarendon in Leamington Spa as warm up for Eddie Piller and Dean Rudland’s monthly residency.

Who is Jaymokid?

I'm 37 and live in Warwickshire in the Midlands with my long term partner and our 2 and a half year old daughter.

How did you get into Mod life?

My mod persuasion grew out of 90's Britpop. I was a massive Ocean Colour Scene and Oasis fan. OCS's Mosely Shoals album cover was shot in the Jephson’s Gardens park in Leamington Spa, and the Album was recorded in Woodbine street round the corner from SUSSED 28

Was there art in your family growing up?

Sort of yeah, my dad used to be a traditional draughtsmen for a local architects firm close to where we lived.

He has a great eye for construction and he taught me about perspective, vanishing points etc. During the school holidays I would go to his office and sit at his drawing board spending hours drawing pictures of my favourite things, mainly Coventry City footballers, Adidas trainers and BMX's! I used to draw for fun all the time and I still have loads of my old sketch pads. It’s great to look back at them occasionally and see how certain styles and techniques I

used as a kid have stayed with me albeit a little more refined these days.

So your family’s support pushed you towards Art? I never made a conscious decision to get into art. It was just the thing I was okay at. I painted from an early age.

My Granparents gave me a set of old oils which I loved. Oils take an age to dry so your canvas is still live and editable. And I read a lot of comics.

Most kids would spend hours copying

HooL

s sometime last year that Sussed stumbled across Jaymokid on twitter someone tweeted an image of his. It wasn’t long before we tracked his site Glory series inspired by the lyrics from some well-loved tunes on the scene. between creating great art-work...

Did you study or are you self thought?

I studied briefly and then got a job. For the last 15 years I've worked as a Video game artist, so my doodling ability has developed on a daily basis.

From the solid foundations of my traditional drawing skills I've developed a whole new digital skill set. I've learnt to animate, understand colour theory, conceptualise characters, build 3D environments etc. These all play a part in my own Artwork.

Marvel Superheroes, learning the technique of how to draw muscle bound blokes. But I was never a big Marvel or DC comic reader as a youngster. They were too American for me. I was more of a Beano and Dandy type of kid, I loved the humour, and looking back, the British sensibility. It’s only in later years I've come to appreciate the graphic novels and regret not reading more earlier.

Have you exhibited publicly?

Yes, I've a had a couple of shows. The biggest was alongside Horace Panter (The Specials Bassist) at the Whiteroom Gallery in Leamington Spa. I've also shown work in other venues in and around Warwickshire as well as Birmingham and Bath.

You focus heavily on the Mod/soul scene - where you get your inspiration from?

Whilst working in Video games I grew increasingly frustrated. I'm not a gamer, I don't play games. But I was surrounded by people who did, I was the oddball, who had 7" records and 50 year old car spotlights delivered to work! Then my 9-5 artwork started to be compromised by people directly above me whom I didn't respect. I needed to create something for myself.

Something that couldn't be watered down or changed by anyone just because it didn't look like fucking Angry Birds! So I drew on the things in life that inspired me outside of the office walls – Music, Modernism and British youth cultures.

I love the Modernist ethos - the style and the detail. Whether it’s the cuff of a suit or the balance of a front rack full of original accessories, the fact someone has gone to that level of effort greatly appeals to me. And with time you grow to appreciate subtlety. Music is also a

SUSSED 29

project that takes me back to my roots, to a degree, working on some canvas pieces using Acrylics and oils. But I’m still very much at the experimental stage. But it’s fun picking up a paint brush again.

great passion of mine. My musical taste is very broad. So I married my two hobbies together using the only talent I have, and my Jukebox Glory images were born.

What is your favorite art genre?

LowBrow. Rob T Williams, an American Artist and pioneer of the LowBrow art movement of 60's America. He painted hotrods and crated underground comics. His Super Cartoons are amazing. If you've ever seen the sleeve Illustrations of Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction, you are familiar with Williams work. I guess you could say my art is 'Mega Lowbrow' Its for the man on the street.

It has simple and personal meanings behind it. I'm not trying to turn the establishment on its head with my work.

What medium do you work in?

I guess you'd call it mixed media. I usually start in my sketchbook, using old fashioned animators blue pencils to jot ideas and thoughts down. I then scan my workings into my Mac and ink them up using Adobe Photoshop.

Although I'm working digitally, I try to keep the processes as 'traditional' as possible. Simply drawing the outlines and colouring in, with a few handy shortcuts thrown in.

Digital art still has an air of taboo around it in some Art circles, the assumption that you press a button and its all done for you is common place amongst the uninformed, but a lot of thought, man hours and technique go into every one of my pieces. I never hide the fact I work digitally, unlike some who use digital images as a base and overpaint them and pass them off as painted artworks.

That said I am working on a side

SUSSED 30

Do you take commissions?

Yes. People can come to me with a song in mind that means something personal to them (or a partner). For example, they may have a certain image in mind, or they leave it entirely up to me. I'll then construct a composition based on the info they have supplied. Luckily so far my work has been received very well, which is a great feeling as a lot of time and effort goes into them. I try to avoid caricatures and I like to keep images as subtle and ambiguous as I can.

What would your dream commission be?

I'd love to do an album cover for Ian Brown, or a Paul Smith T-shirt perhaps.

I remember reading that Pete McKee created a piece for Noel Gallagher and that catapulted his work to another level. I imagine if you're lucky enough to get that chance it opens the door to new opportunities. I've done a commission for Andy Lewis (Weller Bassist and top DJ) and I believe that Mr W has a print of my Broken Stones Piece. But I'm just as happy working on something for a normal geezer down the pub that wants a piece for his wife's 40th. They all come from the same place.

What price do you sell your pieces?

Commission are priced on request.

Drop me a line and we can discuss your piece and once I've factored in all the details of your request I will drop a quote back to you. No obligation obviously.

Are they all unique or do you do print runs?

What I say to all of my clients is that, after a set period of time (usually 6 months) I retain the right to sell 50 limited editions of that piece of work.

This helps me keep the price of the original piece down for the commissioner in the first place. No one has ever had an issue with that so far.

How has your art been received by the Mod scene/further afield?

With today’s social media it’s never been easier to get yourself noticed.

But it does take time and effort to be constantly switched on to Twitter and Facebook etc. Something I’m not great at to be honest. But all the vibes I've

had back have been really positive. I've had great feedback from people as far as Spain, Italy and the Canada for example. I've sent a couple of pieces out to China which would have been impossible without social networking.

I'd also like to thank Eddie Piller and Dean Rudland for their support on the Modcast, and Warren Peace has supported me greatly on his We Are The Mods radio show which is really appreciated (cheers lads!).

What is in store for the near future?

This year I plan to get a new website launched with a shop and a few other bits and bobs that will engage people and I'm currently working and focused on its design. I have a few irons in the fire with a couple of more high profile commissions, and I'm in talks about having another show, something different to your normal starchy Gallery affair. But my main ambition is to get my TV2 Lambretta finished in time for Brighton in August. It’s only taken me two years so far!

Where do you see your art progressing?

I have so many ideas bubbling away. I have a series of football related pieces that are still in my sketchbook. I also need to finish a series of Skinhead images that I've been doing for a long time, as well as keeping the commissions ticking along. I haven't set any targets or goals because it affects my work when I try to churn stuff out for the sake of it. And as I mentioned earlier some off canvasses are also on the cards. Hopefully the new website will open new possibilities.

Contact Jaymokid:

@jaymokid www.facebook.com/ArtByrne www.artbyrne.co.uk

SUSSED 31

Our Joe has this knack of tracking down some right obscure acts from some of the most far flung corners of the globe just to feature in this magazine for your edification. With each issue I look forward to see if he can top his previous discoveries.

He’s outdone himself this time unearthing another cracking outfit in the shape of The Men. Hailing from Lund in southern Sweden, featuring Niklas Kilenstam on Drums, Ola Främby on bass and backing vox, Sven Köhler on lead vox and harmonica, Olof Wallberg on guitar and backing vox, and managed by Joakim Kilenstam, The Men tell their story and you get the blow by blow on recordings to date....

A Brief History: JOAKIM: “It all started off inside my head with a vision of creating a great band. I had seen Olof Wallberg live with his own Colubrids, always putting on a blistering show. Olof had a great voice and a very expressive guitar style. In Sweden we don´t have Pete Townshend but we do have Olof Wallberg. My brother Niklas Kilenstam had been a Mod since we were kids and had always been an extraordinary drummer.

A very unique drum style, a crossing between Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell and early Bill Ward. I wanted to know what could happen if he was put together with the best of the best. So one night I spotted Olof Wallberg in the bar. I literally pushed my brother towards Olof and said "it’s time for you two to meet; we are starting a new band". Ola Främby came along from his own band The Girls as a lead singer and guitarist. Now he teamed up with The Men, bringing his bass guitar and his outstanding song writing skills. Shortly after we had the most suited singer Sven Köhler from The Sinners taking on the job, adding his great voice and live performance. With Sven in the band the journey started for real.”

NIKLAS: “Olof Wallberg and I actually started The Men in a bar back in December 1999. A month or so later Ola Främby was in. After trying a number of oddball singers the best came along! Sven Köhler!”

OLA: “We'd all been in different bands, with all that that entails, before we got together.

So the initial idea was to just play songs that we dug (stuff like Daddy Rolling Stone, Cool Jerk, Heatwave) for the fun of it and no more. Play a few gigs, but steer clear of songwriting, chasing record deals and the rest of it. And now here we are, four albums later!”

OLOF: “Niklas approached me one late night in a bar in Lund around 1999. A night before I had watched him perform inspiringly with another band in Lund.

Boosted by beer we talked about our unique ability of capturing the energy and message of The Who and we there and then somehow decided we should form something in order to show that to people.”

NIKLAS: “We actually recorded a 7 song EP with Olof and Ola singing. Sven came on just after that. Some of those songs ended up on the first album as well,” SUSSED 32

OLA: “We'd been together for about a year, I think. But we were quite tight, and had gigged a lot by then.”

Songwriters: SVEN: “It's so great that when you get to know each other even better, musically, and having found our sound and style with the debut cover-album we started to write songs together. It's me, Ola and manager Joakim (brother of Niklas). And sometimes Niklas and Olof have ideas for new songs too. It's a winning team.”

OLA: “Yeah, getting that unthinkable record deal for a cover album! Can you believe that? After that record our manager Joakim started nagging at us to write our own songs, which wasn't really hard since many of us had been the songwriters in our previous bands.”

On mellowing out: NIKLAS: “A VOX amplifier can´t produce a mellow sound, so never!”

SVEN: “Nope, we're still punks.”

OLA: “Totally, I hope! I mean, we have done four high-explosive and edgy records now I for one would love to do a cool, smooth, warm and mellow album with these guys. And yes Niklas, sure you can do mellow on a VOX! That swampy tremolochannel...”

OLOF: “I would stop it going the mellow path.”

JOAKIM: “Now you see what kinda job I’ve got. Make something good out of this soup.

But I totally trust the songwriting processes we have, where all ideas are welcome and tested. If we are not pleased with the results, we will never record it. At the end of the day it’s a way of life, writing songs and trying to create something new, out of something old. Or maybe the other way around.”

Best gig: SVEN: “Our best gig so far in my opinion was in Melbourne 2011 at ‘Pop Goes the Curfew’ festival by Purepop Records when The Men as the last band got encore after encore and finally had my daughter Isabella up on stage singing Lulu's hit song Shout with us. What a huge success!! And after that we had to do another extra and did

Daddy Rolling Stone! It was helluva gig in St Kilda!! It inspired us a lot for the next album "This Way", recently released in Sweden and soon released worldwide too.”

OLA: “I agree with Sven, Melbourne.

Germany and Spain were great too.”

OLOF: “The Prince Bandroom gig in Melbourne is still a milestone since it proved our ability to highlight a festival and do a longer gig without breaking the spell.”

JOAKIM: “Purple Weekend 2007 (Spain) together with mates The Creeps was a big night. I was very proud when I heard people around me singing along ..."I’m Your Man...I´m Your Man". Our Spanish retailer had done a good job selling loads of albums so our fans came to watch the show. But I wish I could say something about the UK live mod events, but so far we haven’t been invited.

The live sound: OLOF: “Live you get not only the sound.

Live we are able to put a spell on the audience also with our characters. You experience a full-scale performance. And in our case this is so much bigger than the mere sound.”

OLA: “The first album, yes, it's more or less a live album. Mr BBQ and All Time High on our latest are pretty close.”

JOAKIM: “I would say I’m Your Man from the album The Men - Return is as loud and raw R&B as it gets if you just turn up the volume and pretend its live.”

Plans for the year ahead: OLOF: “Putting a spell on more crowds in Europe and elsewhere.”

JOAKIM: “Trying to reach out and connect with the crowd we know is out there but we still haven’t met.”

OLA: “I'm looking forward to Niklas’ development of our own custom-designed line of K-amps, to match the great K-drums!”

SVEN: “To release This Way worldwide digitally and hopefully play live in Buenos Aires, Montevideo & Santiago. And in Europe too of course.”

Contemporaries: NIKLAS: “Len Price 3 is a band today which is top notch.”

OLOF: “Haven’t got a clue.”

Ireland anyone?: SVEN: “We really want to come and play in Ireland. The sooner the better!”

OLA: “Oh, that would be marvelous! We've got some requests to come actually (which we sing about in the track My New Black Sailing Shoes), so hopefully. I would sample your local beers, to see if there is anything besides Guinness.”

You can listen to one last song before you die - what is it and why?

NIKLAS: “My Generation on full throttle! Go with a bang!”

OLA: “Easy - It Won't Be Long, by The Fabs. It always makes me stop whatever I'm doing, to just listen. Lennon could have died there and then, and still be the greatest. On the other hand, perhaps you should pick something you really hate, to make death more welcome.”

SVEN: “Ha ha that will be with an Irish band!! I just can't stop loving U2's great song ONE and the version with Mary J Blige....it makes me wanna die a little bit...”

OLOF: “Baba O’Riley – The Who.”

JOAKIM: “If Tomorrow Comes from our last album. It’s not so typically Mod, but has beautiful lyrics, wonderful acoustic guitars performed by Ola. Sven’s song performance is touching me deeply. It’s really sad but gives hope for a great future.

Thanks for letting us speak Joe.”

Releases reviewed by Joe:

I have often ruminated on the vagaries of life and how being in the right place at the right time has allowed mediocre talents to be given a chance that they are not particularly deserving of and the obverse of that coin the myriad who, no matter how hard they plug away, just do not progress to that global, or even, regional platform. This latter group plying their trade in relative obscurity. I guess the ones who cannot hack the lack of world dominant status just pack up their things and go home whereas those with the staying power of artistry stick with their form and continue to successfully produce their version of art. The Men i guess would be a case study for this latter group and just on the cusp of breaking out in my opinion.

From my point of view their back catalogue is strong and is knocking on for over a decade. Their 2010 LP release Four Good Men And True was a cracker of an album so the opportunity to hear this new collection was a chance to see what’s been going on in their development over the past few years. As one would expect for a group around for the past 13 years The Men are moving into that period where their sound has been honed and pretty much perfected.

Delivering pitch perfect melodic pop, this album is the strongest set I have heard from the lads and is very much a strong contender for a top three placing in my albums of the year. Sven’s vocals are in particularly top form and like an old pair of desert boots the vocals are, dare I say it, more comfortable with this set that I have heretofore heard. Lyrics too are

representative of their stage in life - no longer in the first flush of youth and with growing families the days of running around looking for kicks are gone so tracks like Don’t a duet between Sven and his daughter Isabella and the lines ‘clean up the mess in your room/and do your homework, right!’ are realistic and refreshing and should strike a chord with the ever lengthening average age of the scenesters.

Elsewhere with big heavy sounding guitars the Swedish combo really lay their stall out with the Sax heavy St Kilda Beach. My New Black Sailing Shoes has flashes of mad RnB mixed into a hodge podge of styles weighing in at a hefty 6 mintues plus. Heartaches And Headaches (my absolute fave form the LP) gives us a heady mix of Led Zepplin, heavy guitar licks and backing vocals with the ghost of Ray Manzarek peeking in from the edges. Delicious stuff that evokes those heady days of classic early West Coast Rock. Anyone Will Do - a contemplative study of that middle aged characteristic of settling for anyone when that special someone never ended up as yours. Dreams In Colour a vaguely psychedelic outing channeling that late sixties vibe once again. If there was more justice in this world (certainly if I was the arbiter of success) and based on this outing, The Men would be striding across the continents banging out these rocking tunes and killing audiences with their hard hitting sussed music. For now all we can do to make that a reality is to keep supporting them and spreading the news The Men really are the men!

SUSSED 33

This January saw the release of the lavish and hugely anticipated Small Faces Immediate years box-set entitled ‘Here Comes The Nice’. Small Faces aficionado Tosh Flood gives Sussed a first hand account of what it was like to be involved in the project plus guest reviewer Karl Mitchell gives us the rundown.

How did your involvement in the project come about?

My involvement came about through meeting with the Small Faces remasters/box set producer Rob Caiger in London in 2009 while I was over doing gigs with The Duckworth Lewis Method.

Thomas Walsh had helped out with picture sleeve and demo scans from his Move collection for The Move box set which Rob had also produced and just by chance he mentioned that he'd been asked to oversee the Small Faces complete catalogue. We spoke about them for an hour or so and he saw that I was an uber-fan and knew (very nearly) everything there was to know about them and their recordings. He asked if I would like to be involved and I was delighted to accept. Bit of a dream really...

As a lifelong fan this must have been exciting?

It was! The hard part was keeping it quiet from all of my Mod mates - They might want to hear the stuff before it was released! The most exciting thing was being in the cutting room with Kenney Jones as "Ogdens" was being cut to vinyl. A pinch me moment. I turned to

SUSSED 34

Kenney after the first track went down and said "That knocks the bollox out of anyone else.”.."Yeah.It fucking does" was his reply.

Did you come across many surprises or gems?

Pretty much all of the material that's on disc 2 and 3 on the box set. Hearing the stripped down "I Can't Make It" for the first time along with all the takes before the master was pretty special. Also the vocal only "Wham Bam Thank You Mam.” In the past all of their recordings were copied from very clean vinyl or other CDs of copies from very clean vinyl, so to hear all of the tracks from the original tapes was in itself great. The real gems where the out-takes that Rob sent to me, where you could hear the band work out the songs and the banter between them. I love all of that stuff.

I referenced every single track in the archive against what was previously released from the 60s until now and then whatever alternate takes or mixes were available against those previously released, finding some unreleased ones along the way. Unfortunately a lot of multi-track masters got junked which is all

explained in the book in the box set, but Kenney Jones had some great tapes at home and Rob Caiger turned up a good few multi-track masters and many unused master tapes in the USA which turned up some interesting mixes and clearer versions including a stereo version of "Afterglow" which had never been issued.

I can tell you that Small Faces never recorded "Love Is Here And Now You're Gone" but they did do "Be My Baby" and hopefully that will turn up someday. Rob has turned up a few more Immediate multi-track tapes since the box set was compiled, so hopefully they'll turn up some more Small Faces recordings amongst them.

One of the many things that was good was to see the original tapes for things like "Call It Something Nice" and to be able to clear up exact dates for the recording. It was done in 1967 so could never have been up for the mythical "1862" album. Also, the live in Newcastle gig on Disc 4 is pitch and speed corrected from a master tape which turned up in America. Much better quality!

Another nice thing was having the photo archive sent over to suggest which

previously unseen pictures to include on the re-masters and the box set. Truly the coolest looking band ever.

A glaring ommission would be the 'autumn stone'. was there any particular reason for this?

Take 2 of "The Autumn Stone" is included on the box set under the song's working title "Jenny's Song.” The original version will be on the September 2014 release of "The Autumn Stone" which will also include bonus tracks not featured on the box set. There will also be a release of the US only "There Are But Four Small Faces" on double CD with bonus tracks released in April 2014.

Was there any talk of the project being more expansive taking in the Decca years or was this strictly an Immediate project?

Originally I think that was the plan but there was all kind of record labels changing hands going on behind the scenes over the past few years and that's why the delay on the box set and Universal decided they didn't want to be involved, so that meant the Decca material was out. There was nine discs of material put out for the 2012 remasters - four discs with Decca and five with Immediate and if you include the four on the box set along with the two on "The Autumn Stone" then that's fifteen discs in total all taken from original tapes. Hats off to Rob Caiger for finding them all and to Rob Keylock for tape restoration and the new mixes from multi-track, and to Nick Robbins for the great job on the mastering.

Having been involved in this are there any other projects you think warrant the same treatment?

I think the bonus tracks with The Jam's back catalogue is a bit shoddy. I have better stuff on bootleg, but if they're ever

doing a proper box set they should give someone like Andy Davis a shout. He's the man for that job.

I wouldn't give 5 years of my life over to doing what I did on this, and I did it as a fan and as someone who wanted to see my all time favourite band represented as they should be. I won't be listening to them for at least another 5 years though...

What is your most treasured small faces item?

Besides my collection of UK stock copies, their albums, foreign picture sleeves, demos and the test pressings for all of the 2012 to 2014 re-masters... it's the archive I was given during my time working on the remasters and box set.

And most coveted?

Steve Marriott's voice!

But being realistic - a complete collection of their autographs.

SUSSED REVIEWS SMALL FACES - HERE COMES THE NICE: The Immediate Years 1967-1969

After much rumour and release date slippage it’s finally here, the long awaited Small Faces Immediate box set. Firstly lets cover what this isn’t. This isn’t by any means an exhaustive collection of their Immediate work, in fact Ogdens is barely touched upon. Nor does it contain any new songs, lost covers versions (The Supremes - Love is here and now your gone, etc..) or Marriot’s lead vocal to If you think your groovy, the only what you could call new ‘song’ is Jones/Lane bass and drums instrumental noise fest that frankly left me cold.

What you have here is the culmination of a re-issue program started in 2012 to remaster the Small Faces recordings from the best available sources. I think I am right in saying that the latest re-issue program is the first time that the original multi-track masters were used for their immediate recordings, speed and pitch corrected. If you pull out one of the multitude of Small Faces ‘best of’s’ out there and you can instantly hear the difference, the clarity of these recordings is astounding. While all the Decca masters were neatly filed away in the Universal archive little remained of the Immediate records recordings.

One of the dictates of the liquidation and sale of Immediate records in the early 70’s was that the master tapes should all be destroyed. The other being that future royalties should not be paid to the

Immediate artists, both of these were vigorously enforced. The hard work of Rob Caiger and his team who managed to source these multi-track masters from various sources - including fans who rescued tapes from a skip outside of Olympic studios where again the Small Faces recording history was about to be binned - is nothing short of miraculous.

So what do you get for your money? It’s a beautifully packaged box set comprising of 4 Cd’s (75 tracks), 4 vinyl 45 reissues (2 French EP’s a one-sided promo for the first Immediate album and an early take on Call it something nice which was a proposed single at one time, here titled ‘Mystery’), a 72 page colour hard back book on the Small Faces including detailed song-by-song annotation, a lyric book, some photographs and postcards, some posters and a signed certificate from Kenney and Mac all held together in a 10” x 10” box.

CD1 contains all the Immediate worldwide single and EP tracks beautifully remastered in glorious mono. It sounds like very little compression or noise reduction here, to these ears anyway and has a lovely fidelity when played loud.

CD’s 2-3-4 are the real meat of this box set containing as they do the Small Faces ‘in session’, we get to hear them in the studio working on Tin Soldier (here called ‘Anything’) & I can’t make it among others. We also get alternative takes, remixes and stripped down versions.

CD4 also contains the live recordings that first appeared on The Autumn Stone, although here the original Pye Studio master tapes have been used, the screaming has been toned down and the recordings pitch and speed corrected.

So is it worth it?, that depends on how you feel about the Small Faces, for me it was a no brainer. I appreciate it isn’t cheap but at only 3,000 worldwide it’s an instant collectors piece. If you want to hear the Small Faces like you never have before then buy this.

SUSSED 35

FACES

IN T HE

r

ecorded history has by its very nature been skewed by the bias of the documenter and must always be viewed as being but part of the story. Inherent in the bias is the negation, in almost all cases, of the opposing view, the opposite experience, and sometimes, the truth.

The one sided approach generally is a result of agendas either overt or hidden and skilfully masked in the clothes of an 'honest account'.

It's only really in the last few years and the free availability of technology that stories that would hitherto have been hidden have now the opportunity to see the light of day. Revising the past and setting the record straight to accommodate the multiple sides to history can only be a good thing and ensure that future generations are equipped with the correct information to evaluate and consider what has gone before, either to ensure no repeat of the mistakes or to perpetuate the correct way of behaving in this world.

For Mods the hidden agendas have always been a bone of contention. The media spotlight of the mid 60s covering the, let’s be honest, tame and sporadic beach 'riots' has been a recurring theme and has been used as a lazy and sometimes derogratory (though the latter usage is receding thankfully these days) way of describing Modism. To be fair there have been pretty few Mod led initiatives to counter that mainstream viewpoint, content as we have been to keep the media we 'own' focused at our kind - a sort of unconscious "whats the point, they just don't get it" attitude and kept our periodicals and other ventures underground. Then there's the other aspect and the one that really irks me - that whole paternalistic view epitomized by, in my opinion, the ride out at the Olympics and the incessant knowing smiling affection displayed by smug British celebrities and fashionistas.

Bottom line is that it was high time that the scenes individual voices SUSSED 36

were heard and allowed to become part of how we see ourselves. True there are those who see the scene as being something they do on a Saturday night, get dressed up, have a few drinks, head out with their mates and have a laugh. For others there is a dedication, no maybe dedication is the wrong word implying as it does that there is a blind faith there whether the pursuit of the lifestyle is right or wrong, lets start that again; For others there is a conviction that Mod lifestyle is the only one for them and espouses something that these days seems to be out of fashion - attention to detail, respect for one's self and the camaraderie of like minded souls.

Emma-Rosa Dias allows the latter group’s voice be heard and in their own words they explain what makes them tick and in the process we add another thread to the rich tapestry that is Mod life.

The commentators are not the usual 'professional' Mods that we all know (and, I hasten to add) love. Rather these are the faces that one sees at clubs and events quietly going about their lives.

There was a rather brilliant book some years ago that i read called A People’s History of America, that gave the butcher, baker and candlestick maker’s view of the birth and cohesion of the USA told in their own words and representing the micro rather than macro views that we are all well aware of. I see Emma Rosa Dias’ Faces In The Crowd as being akin to that project - getting the ordinary Mod to explain what it means to them and in the process getting a truth that would otherwise be overlooked in any, necessarily, skimpy overview of such a broad and diverse scene.

Anyway, the roots of where the movement began have been well and truly noted (though maybe not always assigned the significance deserved) so to understand how it started for one person we can begin to translate that to an understanding of not only the movement but also to a degree gain an insight into what makes folk do what folk do. What pushes this person towards a life where a most important aspect of one’s day is the seemingly insignificant detail of what color socks to wear to ensure no clashes with the jacket/shirt/tie?

The commentators on this documentary all display what I can only say is a love of the lifestyle and their responses to Emma's gentle probings are voluble and informative on a personal level and as a mechanism to see the wider picture they are speaking for all of us who would sit in the camp of convicted Modernists. What is plainly evident is the genuine love of the various facets that make up the scene whether it be the clothes the music, scooters or just the bonhomie and familial comfort.

For my money this is the core of the documentary and kudos to Ms Dias for shining a spotlight on these individuals.

I mention above the democratization of technology allowing previously disenfranchised observers having their say and putting their side of the story forward as a complementary point of view which is a great thought but there are some other factors to consider for that point of view to be taking seriously - the method of exploring the subject matter to engage the viewer and also the production values. Unfortunately we as a species have become more sophisticated and demand that our media is slick, High-Def and skilfully executed. Production here is spot on and reflects the subject matter’s attention to detail.

The soundtrack (Big Boss Man original) is apposite for the doc, camera work is fluid and handled well. Dias has the subject matter wrapped up - her love of Mod shines through and she is engaged with all the commentators.

You wont gain much more information on the origins of the Mod scene from this documentary - that's not its point. What you will get however is an insight into the individual Mod’s infectious love of the lifestyle and thus I guess it gives an insight into how a youth cult has transformed itself into a vibrant, progressive and ultimately self sustaining lifestyle. For that above all, I salute Emma and the team and i look forward to seeing what the next installments of this series will deliver

SUSSED 37

SUSSED REVIEWS

A round-up of current 7”s, Albums, Box Sets, DVDs

summers day with golden light saturating the landscape, dust motes floating gently in the air.

Dreamy.

The Travellers Stay/Don’t Look for Me (Lemoncake)

The Allah-las Every Girl/Had it All (IL)

It’s no secret that Sussed has a soft spot for this combo. Their last 7" was reviewed in issue #3 and was one of my favourite releases of 2012 and became a staple of my deejay set. Having had an advance peak at the artwork for the sleeve I was itching to get my hands on the single and give it a listen.

Almost a year waiting but as they say good things come to those who wait and being honest this is very, very good. To me it's like stripped down Northern with solid drum beats underpinning the beautiful vocals from Gemma. Guitar breaks sneaking in from the corners deliver a tight melody and whilst this is no stomper its incessant rhythm will worm its way into your ear and take up residence - a true sign of a well crafted tune. Flip over and Don’t Look For Me takes off with some Detroit type drums and a lovely almost beat ballad vibe. Again Gemma’s vocals are the commanding presence here stressing the 'Dont' with an insistency you'd be a fool to ignore. Hard to pick a favourite side of these two so I won’t bother. Definitely will be placing this one in my top five for 2013.

The Young Sinclairs Hurt My Pride/Croque Macadam (Market Square) Kicking off with a classic Small Faces riff this is the strongest I've heard from these lads expansive catalogue. Strong garage vibes reminiscent of Stepping Stone with hints of The Zombies lurking in the corners.

This is retro without being SUSSED 38

pastiche or parody. Guitars are suitably jangly and there’s some nice quasi-fuzzy bits in the middle, plenty of harmonising oohh aahhhss that will keep the Psych fans happy. Flip it over and you get the majestic Someone Like the Hawk.

Dylanesque in its simplicity and all too short at less than two minutes. Also included is the growling sleazy garage of Nothing to Say – I can imagine Eric Burdon and co giving this one a outing in their heyday.

Nailed it lads... Nailed it!

The Young Sinclairs Engineer Man/Problems (Market Square)

Second outing this issue for these lads and this one is ramped up, flip you the bird rock with attitude. With an intro that could have come from America circa 1970. But it’s The Who inflections that are strongest here and this one quickly settles down to late sixties rock wig out.

Gloriously over blown in places this is music on a grand scale. I can almost see Daltrey straddling the monitor in his fringed jacket chewing up the stage. And that fecking riff! it’s just gorgeous. But flip it over for a more summer of love vibe.

With shades of The Byrds, if this side was a movie it would be shot on Super-8 at the end of a

there is a whole other facet to California and one that is less of a playground. There are the mountains where the bodies are buried, where the night gnaws on the bones of the missing and the cloying mist covers the last gasps of a dying blonde haired hitchhiker. Tell Me is most likely the soundtrack for that part of the state….

Jacco Gardner The End of August/Notus (TIM)

Straddling that time between the garage and West Coast rock scenes the Allah-las have carved out their own space. On this release they are perfectly showcasing their retro sensibilities as well as their knowing understanding of the lexicon of those two genres.

With the languid delivery of the vocals and that seemingly dark rumbling of an implicit threat Had it All is like the dark underbelly of the LA dream.

Brooding and menacing. Every Girl is the swagger of a garage band having fun but still maintaining an attitude of Fuck you. A little more melodious this side though no less dangerous.

The Allah-las Tell Me/Sacred Sands (IL)

For those of us who don’t hail from there the overriding vision of California is the sun and the sea – the Beach Boys surfing in harmony, the girls in bikinis but

We’ve been a fan of this wunderkind’s output for some time now and reviewed a previous release from the man in an earlier issue. This time out Gardner is in a more contemplative mood and delivers a down-tempo Baroque/Psych classic. With his airy-fairy vocals and navel gazing shapes this one will be a fave with the fans. Flip Side Notus is more of the same. Not as immediate as the last 45 I reviewed (Clear the Air/House on the Moon) but there is a certain charm factor to this outing.

Xiantoni Ari Just Say You’re Wanted/What’s it Gonna Be (ACR) Ari is the daughter of Gwen Owens hence the cover verison of her Ma’s big niter sound. I dare say that this was a daunting endeavour to embark upon, covering a much loved classic. However Ari does the song justice – she doesn’t change anything just gives us a faitful rendition in the style of her mother. Nothing wrong with that and worth the five quid alone but

SUSSED REVIEWS

The Riots One Seven Wonders/On the Run (TFA)

the main payback is the other side. Let’s get this out fo the way immediately - this is not the Dusty classic but it is every bit as good. Think Northern Soul mid tempo femme, think plaintive vocals a la Maxine Brown or Melba Moore. Think lashings of string orchestration and you’re getting the picture.

The 45s It Ain’t Over/Devil of a Woman (Wicked Cool)

Right from the get-go this one lays its stall out. With a heady dose of classic Rock/Blues mixed in with some late Seventies Dr. Feelgood sensibilities this is the dogs bollocks! Singer sounds well mature despite his tender years.

It’s a rollicking wig out that will have you recalling any number of the great beat groups.

Accomplished? Hell yeah! confident? Bags of it to spare.

The b-side Devil is another cracking cut and to my ears is the best of both sides. A catholic blues construction this one would be worthy of any of the great Brit 60s bands. These are only kids? Fuck me but they are talented. An essential piece of plastic.

Before I go any further I have a confession to make – I am a fan of this Russian Trio since I first heard them back in 2012 and was bowled over by their fusion of Mod, Punk and Power-pop. I have bought all their releases and even went so far as to source their White Trainers Community output. I interviewed them for Sussed and constantly play their LP’s on my mobile devices. So when I say that this release is up there with anything that I have heard in 2013 you could be forgiven for thinking this is hype. But it’s not. These boys are adept at both constructing and executing perfect Power-pop. Ironically their previous output has been criticised as being too referential, however in this the references to Beatles/Stones, Jam/Clash, Oasis and Blur are in the lyric and the boys have crafted musically their own sound. It’s a thing of beauty.

Mercury 13 Searchlight/Again, Again, Again (Cooking Soup)

On the face of it this doesn’t` really fit into any of the genres

that your average mod would be listening to. It’s lacking that edge really. And then you listen to it again and start to peel away the layers. There’s a definite jazz swing going on and hints of Style Council laid back construction. Top side is a beaut and has been described as Liverpool’s finest love song and it’s a gentle little sojourn in the tender side of things. Flip side is a beast of a different colour and puts me back into my Moddy boy days when I would stand gazing at stages with sharp suited cats banging out power chords. But here it’s like The Jam were taken away to somewhere sunny and let loose in a studio. There’s a definite melding of styles on this one – ye got yer Mod, you got your sub-New Romantic and ye got a bit of LA Woman just in there for fun. Exhuberant little ditty for the adventurous.

Suedehead Lying in Bed/Waiting Room (ISRS)

Coming at you like a melange of Dexys, Joboxers and Fine Young Cannibals with oodles of Motown and Northern riffs, these boys have been a revelation to me over 2013. Consistent well crafted Pop songs from a time when Pop wasn’t a sneering put down. Huge nods back to Motown with white boy soulful vocals and a wall of brass, make this top of the class. B-side is mental to start with and then kicks off into 100mph Joboxer vibe. These lads have given the world four EP’s of impeccable tunes, go check them out at suedehead.bandcamp.com (recommended: New Traditions, Long Hot Summer, Small Town Hero)

French Boutik Ici Paris (Copasedisques)

The follow up release from these French cats has us back in familiar territory of laid back French Pop with breathy lyrics, subtle harmonies and clever production. The four tracks here – spread across two 45’s –are well crafted and display neat Parisian subtleties and the expected FB signatures. Where the first release had a certain insouciant charm FB have solidified this into a more matured confident sound. This is a band at the top of their game. ICI Paris, the title track, is like a warm summer spring, Giacomans confident delivery over the quietly burbling organ and underpinned by some todie-for harmonising, conjure images of the young streets of Paneme. Pousse Au Crime is a cat of a different colour and is redolent of the guilt eating at the soul after the act has been executed. Facile is an organ led wig out with the whole band throwing themselves fully onto the dance-floor. Kinky Allumette, the only English track, is a jaunty swinging workout with Serge on lead vocals and could be the theme track for a movie.

Love it. I’ve said it before – go buy this release.

Nick Waterhouse This is a Game (IL) Another 45 release from Waterhouse on his own IL imprint and once again he is serving us up some dirty RnB replete with honking sax, chunky guitars and Waterhouse’s soulful white boy vocals. Those who missed out on his Some Place release that we reviewed in an

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earlier issue should be scrambling to secure a copy of this as it will sell out. There’s a harder edge to this RnB than his previous releases but it’s a perfect dancefloor sound and will cross over to the rocking clubs (or has it crossed over to us from there???). A few years ago this sound would not have been played but thanks to the mainstream Mod appreciation of the late 50's RnB sound this will get played at the smarter clubs.

Lack of Afro Recipe for Love (Freestyle)

This is the latest release by multi-instrumentalist and ubertalented Adam Gibbons. The simple accompanying video showcases just some of Gibbons’ musical prowess (yes that actually is him playing all the instruments). What comparisons could you make here? Think if Gamble and Huff wrote for Motown records around 1966, coupled with a young Marvin Junior on lead vocals and they came up with a tune specifically penned for the Northern Soul mob and you’re in the ball park. This little stomper carries with it all the potential to SUSSED 40

be a dancefloor classic for the modern era. We’re particularly struck with the vocal talents of Jack Tyson-Charles. This boy is one to watch and even gets a songwriting credit on this. Trivia time; Jack is the son of actress Cathy Tyson and Actor/DJ Craig Charles. Freestyle records on top of their game too with their usual highly polished production.

A winner all round.

Brand New Sinclairs Ten Blue Pills (Bip-Bip) Healing Souls (Flow Y Nata)

In this day and age – where the quality and sheer quantity of good Mod oriented music is staggering – one can be forgiven for overlooking the odd band here and there, more often than not they are middle of the road, quality wise – good but nothing to write home about. However to overlook a band that is producing top quality tracks of sheer artistry is unforgiveable.

As much as it pains me to say it I am guilty of this, but in defence I cite the sheer quality of the music I have been exposed to in the recent past.

Two years ago during one of my many forays across the web looking for new music I chanced across a youtube video that pushed all the right buttons for me. That the image of the band was pretty much Mod with a very stylish ‘M’ made it all the better.

That track was Eleven and the band was Brand New Sinclairs.

A quick follow up across the search engines and I managed to contact the band and purchase two of their LP’s and rubbed my hands together anticipating delivery. Odd thing

is that when I got the LP’s home they went up onto the shelf and I pretty much forgot about them and there they languished ‘til I had a bit of a clear out last month. And herein lies the tale….these two Lp’s are possibly the best things I have heard in a long time.

Hailing from Barakaldo northern Spain, this 4 piece, Ana Sinclair (voice), Andi Sinclair (guitar), Julio Sinclair (bass), and Birdy Sinclair (drums) has been around since 2007 wowing audiences with their blend of sixties Soul, ‘Ye-Ye’ and melodic garage vibes. In 2009 they released their first LP Ten Blue Pills (Bip-Bip) stuffed full of danceable grooves prescribed to cure away whatever ails you.

Contained here was the track that got me on their trail and loving their sound along with 9 other funky cuts that had me shimmying to myself in the record room. I know I am a bit of a divil for reviewing records and saying “this is the best thing since the last best thing”, however I really cannot fault either the songs or production on this long player. Being pedantic I could cite at some points that Ana’s vocals are a little too raw particularly on track You Run but that would be just churlish. True they could have done with a bit of polishing but she makes a good account of herself on the other tracks here.

She’s not a soulful diva however her voice does possess a charisma many lesser vocalists would give their eye teeth for.

Fantastic long player stuffed full of high points – Eleven, Bongo Time and the glorious Magic Man – all crackers amongst a solid musical set.

In 2011 they continued the theme of music as a restorative and released the Healing Souls LP on new label Flow Y Nata delivering a cohesive and explosive set opening with a riff heavy instrumental work-out on Here We Come via 10 serious slabs of raw and dirty garage infused with a heavy dose of funk and soul and finally finishing up with the jazz funk rock fusion of Here We Go. Production is spot on and there is a definite swagger and a

grown up confidence this time around on this set. I guess it’s a maturity and knowledge of their craft and knowing what they want to achieve that lets them nail each track . With not a slow track in the whole set this LP is aimed at the dance floor and they certainly wig out in places mixing up the genres whilst keeping the BNS sound to the fore. It’s painful to have to select any out as a favourite but the excellent Heal My Soul and Wanna Be Your Girl are two highlights. Ana’s vocals throughout are bang on the nail and complement the grungy sounds superbly. You will probably, at this point, realise that I am a fan of the group and their sound.

The band is in the studio this March to commence the recording of the new album and then once the post production is finished they will be back on the road touring. If I was a gambling man, and based upon the sets they gave us on their two LPs thus far, I would put good money down that their new set of tunes will be as strong and as catchy as we have become accustomed to. The LP’s are still available on the web – either the vinyl releases or you can go the digital route easily enough – doesn’t really matter how you get to hear the sets – quality is quality is quality.

Buy Healing Souls at: http://www.florynatarecords.com/ interpretes/brandnewsinclairs_e n.htm

SUSSED REVIEWS

Myron & E (with The Soul Investigators) Behind Closed Doors/Turn Back (Timmion)

In other words, the business!

You could be forgiven for thinking this record is from a different decade and you can be sure if it was it would command big money. At less than a tenner you'd be crazy not to nip down to your favourite record store or hop onto your online guy and pick up a copy.

In The Lap Of The Mods The Action (DVD)

The Freedom 35s Dante’s Peak The great thing about Myron & E is when you hear one of their recordings you know straight away it’s a Myron & E record.

Although their influences are explicitly worn on their sleeves they’re very much their own men as musicians and song writers.

The same can be said for The Soul Investigators. The Timmion house band’s sound is instantly recognizable. They’re probably more commonly associated with Nicole Willis but this time they’re teamed with Myron & E to produce one of the strongest Timmon 45s yet. It would be unfair and lazy to simly describe Side 1 (or ‘Soul Pick #1’) Behind Closed Doors with one of the many adjectives synonymous with uptempo Northern Soul.

This is a stand-alone Soul track.

And it just happens to be a bloody great dance record too.

The production is certainly a throwback to around 1970 with a percussion track which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an early Curtis record, but the melody and message of the song is very much its own. No saccharine sentiments or boymeets-girl-boy-loses-girl messing about here. Opening with a bitter moan of ‘She’s Worse’ and a chorus of ‘Your friends think I’m doing you wrong, they don’t know what you do (behind closed doors)’. All the good affairs of the heart stuff is served up here in equal measure; spite, suspicion, resentment, etc.

In stark contrast the flip side Turn Back is a stripped back slowed down groove and in the great tradition of classic Soul singles complements its furious A-side perfectly. There’s a distinct Persuaders meets Delfonics on a hot Summer's day vibe on this.

Sounding like a cross between Booker T & The MGs, James Taylor Quartet, Dave Davani Four with shades of Small Faces, and looking nothing like they sound, The Freedom 35s are fast becoming one of my fave live bands doing the rounds at the minute. Coming out of Belfast they’ve already cut their teeth on the scene up North and this, their first official release, includes three original tracks under the banner ‘A Delicious Cocktail Of Grooves’. I’ll buy that for a dollar.

The lead track Dante’s Peak is aptly titled. The main riff intros the track with guitar, followed by organ, bass, then drums. After that it’s pretty much blue touchpaper stuff. With huge dynamics and crescendos, everyone is showcased here, with drums being the star turn and some damn tidy cowbell action too it’s gotta be said.

Definitely a bit of me this. We’re into full on spy-movie mode with You Can Always Keep Those Blue Jeans On. Think Psyche at the Go-Go and you get where we’re at. Again, this one doesn’t let up. Another winner. Black Mamba sees a slight shift in pace. If the previous tracks were 100mph then this would be doing about 90. Probably fair to say if Jazz music took LSD the Freedom 35s would be its dealer.

Hang on, we could be onto something here!

I remember well the actual day that I first encountered The Action. I was on one of my forays into the city scouting for Soul music. To be honest, outside of Kent Albums and the odd Soul Supply/Goldmine comps, we were mining a desert but the walking kept us fit and the hope of finding the motherlode kept our hearts light and youthful.

I ended up, as we all invariably did whilst on the hunt, in Freebird records. Flicking through the racks of plastic covered LP’s I picked up The Ultimate! Action and flipped it over to see the track listing ‘I’ll Keep On Holding On’ (Marvelettes), ‘Hey-sha-loney’ (Mickey Lee Lane), ‘Harlem Shuffle’ (Bob and Earl) and a host of other tracks that I didn’t know. But I liked the look of the lads and even if I didn’t like it I dare say I could punt it on for what I paid for it (£4.99). I got the disc home and stuck it on the record player – first track to come out of the speakers was I’ll Keep On Holding On – I know what I am about to write is a cliché and more often than not it’s used in cases where the reporter has been mildly impressed with some event or other and cannot think of a superlative to adequately convey his/her engagement with said event and ends up going over the top to be safe – but I can safely say that I was well and truly blown away. Hearing that song was an awakening. Here was a group of London Mods capturing the essence of Soul music but injecting it with the distilled youthful outlook of the 60s. I must have listened to that LP’til I wore the groove out. I picked up a couple of the accompanying 45’s and they also

got a hammering during my music sessions in the front room of 12 Seaview Avenue. Over the years those discswere lost, gifted or sold but I always kept a place in my heart for The Action.

I’d heard many years ago that there was footage of The Action playing some gigs at the end of the century. Released on VHS it was long deleted and nowhere could I find a copy. And then last year a chance perusal on the NUTS site informed me that this had now been copied to DVD and was available to buy for a paltry few quid. I had to have it.

The chance to see the band was not something that I was likely to pass up and with the lifestyles of some of those chaps it wouldn’t be long before the original line up would be an impossibility (I later learned that Bass player Mike Evans died in 2010). The footage is made up of the aforementioned gig at The Dome in 1999 interspersed with musings from the band members and some original 60s footage.

There is also some input from Phil Collins (executive producer of the doc and long time uberfan) and he expounds on his experiences in the 60s and getting to play with them in the 90s at the reunion gig in the 100 club. There are vox pops with some London faces and fans and of course lots and lots of music. I shall be honest but the years were not kind to King’s voice as for a lot of the tunes he strains to hit the notes that he once used to bandy about with a laissez faire attitude, however musically the band are as tight as they were back in the day. And to see the crowd receive them with such love and admiration is great to see. I shall be honest – the copy I have has a constant buzz that goes through it that is most noticeable when there is only dialogue to contend with – during the music its not a major distraction. It’s a pity that it’s there as this really should be something that you should be able to play loudly in your house and revel in the majesty of The Action. Would I recommend you buy it? I would have to say yes.

It may not be the best produced nor capture them at their best but if you are a fan then just to see them playing live together on stage is something that’s worth a few bob.

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h

Joe gives the recent Universal rare Motown 7” box the once over.

Which, if we’re honest, could probably review itself...

ow does one tackle a Motown review? The company’s roster of artists was such that there seems to be an endless supply of tracks for Universal to release and repackage and of late the quality has been hitting the mark every time. Having been focused on the repackaging of the mainstream hits they seem now to have switched to the tracks that weren’t major hits.

It’s a testament to the quality of the label that 55 years after its founding there are still releases that have the collectors salivating. I guess it was the system they had in place getting various artists to record the same track and then selecting the best to release that meant there would always be a vast back catalogue that could be drawn upon as product Universal has not been backward in licensing tracks for release and the seam is still being mined to this day. But for all rare Soul collectors it’s the 45 records that have always been the holy grail and with this release from Universal they have delivered a thing of beauty.

So what do you get for your hard earned? Seven discs on the famous Black Tamla Motown label – all inside company sleeves, liner notes compiled by Richard Searling AND a download code to secure the tracks digitally and presented in a neat little hard box. Doesn’t sound like much does it? Well when you consider the tracks that are on the discs then you would need to go some distance to beat this for value for money:

Vinyl 1 side A; Marvin Gaye This love starved heart of mine (It's killing me) Vinyl 1 Side B; The Spinners What more could a boy ask for Vinyl 2 side A; Frank Wilson Do I love you (Indeed I do) Vinyl 2 side B; The Originals Suspicion Vinyl 3 side A; Diana Ross and the Supremes Stormy SUSSED 42

Vinyl 3 side B; Stevie Wonder Just enough to ease the pain Vinyl 4 side A; Four Tops Clip my wings Vinyl 4 side B; Tammi Terrell All I do is think of you Vinyl 5 side A; Barbara McNair Happens every time Vinyl 5 side B; David Ruffin I can't be hurt anymore Vinyl 6 side A; The Temptations Forever in my heart Vinyl 6 side B; Kim Weston You hit me where it hurt me Vinyl 7 side A; Chris Clark Something's wrong Vinyl 7 side B; The Isley Brothers My love is your love (Forever)

That’s some line up I am sure you will agree. Whats not to like there?

One can expect that any group of musicians and songwriters at any period in time will come up with a half dozen stone cold

SUSSED REVIEWS

classics over a period of years.

There will be other releases from them that are good and then there will be a lot of misses.

What’s staggering is that Motown consistently delivered top of the charts material and for years this consistent quality made them literally ‘The Sound of Young America’. You only have to listen to the sheer beauty of My Love is Your Love with its opening strings complementing Ronald Isley’s falsetto and then flip it across to the sublime shimmering Stormy

by The Supremes or the storming Love Starved Heart, to get a concept of how truly original Motown was and forever will be.

Loath as I was to open up this box set I really had to as I just could not wait to hear the Four Tops and their included cut here Clip My Wings. I had heard of it but never heard it so Xmas day 2013 will be seared into my brain as the day I heard this tune. Young Levi doing the business over a typical Motown collaborative effort by the Tops and ably assisted by The Andantes. Point perfect harmonies over a rumbling bass-

line with that famous Motown backbeat filling out all the spaces. Damn near perfect in my book.

Then there’s Chris Clark’s Something’s Wrong – originally intended for Stevie Wonder.

That never happened, but it left the door open for Clark to wrap her tonsils around it and give us a Northern Soul dancefloor favourite. But I guess you know that – you’ve been dancing to it for years.

All in all this is one collection that will be talked about for years. I should point out at this juncture that there were problems with some of the boxes. Missing/duplicate discs and some tracks skipping but all I can say is that the box I got has all the discs. I have yet to actually play the discs themselves….something as sacred as this set needs a brand new needle and a clear dancefloor for me to worship the majesty that is Motown

SUSSED a user’s guide to modernism Coming up in issue #005: soul on camera ryan brown angel city records profiles reviews, features, interviews, and much more....

Many thanks to the following without whom this wouldn’t have been possible: Mill Butler | Paul Cleary l Paul Davis l Shauna Davis l Emma-Rosa Dias | Pat Dillon | GANGS | Louise Duggan l Willem Dunham | Kev Fitzpatrick | Jannette Flood l Bill Kealy | Pat Larkin | Darren McDonnell | Jamie McCluskey | Aaron Mullenhales l Tony Spence | Ken Sweeney | The Men