Crimp Hill

Crimp Hill
'Thinking Man's Blues" c/w 'Wake Up And Smell The Pickles'
Epic EPC 78665
Mick Guitar (Bass), Slim Geoffries (Guitar), Harry Bass (Piano), Heston Blumenthal (Drums), Scraps Delaney (Drums), Pete Frame (Piano), Carl Marley (Drums), Billy Hamilton-Hamilton (Piano) plus 68 others.

As with many bands during the late Sixties and early Seventies, Crimp Hill suffered from major personnel upheavals that hampered their chances of success.

Effectively, the entire band left the group before it had even formed. "It was a little odd", recalled original bass player Mick Guitar. "The original band was meant to comprise me and three other guys who were busy on the session scene. We'd been working up at Trout Tickle on some folk rock with the Spendel guys. There was me, guitar player Slim Geoffries, piano player Harry Bass and drummer Heston Blumenthal.

"We'd agreed to form Crimp Hill and booked a rehearsal but we all got better offers, though I think Slim left music to concentrate on claiming benefits. So that left a big hole in the band, what with there being no members".

But Crimp Hill soldiered on as a band without a deal, a manager or any members. That was until Mick Guitar mentioned the band to a young drummer fresh out of Grammar School, Scraps Delaney. "Grammar School had folded because everyone was either on drugs or a power trip" says Delaney." I was left high and dry and Mick Guitar told me there might be an opening in Crimp Hill".

"I asked Simon if he wanted to join", says Mick. "He asked me who else was in the group. I said 'no-one'".

"After the chaos of Grammar School, where everyone was either on a power trip or drugs, it came as a relief", sighs Delaney, these days touring with the reformed Grammar School. "Rehearsals went very smoothly. But then I got an offer to team up with Mustard, Beans & Boogie. As they were the hottest band on the pub rock scene - and followed by some of the muckiest hippy groupies in Notting Hill - I had to join".

Once again, Crimp Hill had to carry on without any members.

Overall, seventy six different musicians passed through the ranks of the band in its nine year history. "It was the one Rock Family Tree that Pete Frame gave up on" says Guitar. "Even though he was in the group at one point".

Despite the constant comings and goings, the band did manage to release one legendary 45; the wonderful slice of rock, 'Thinking Man's Blues'. No-one knows who played on it or how it got released but it is now valued at £125 in the collector's market. Seek a copy out if you can!

Me & He

Me & He
'Marjoram Marjoram' c/w 'Toes In The Brook'
Butter Discs Butter 06
Sebastian Grant (Guitar, Vocals), Noel Grant (Guitar, Vocals)

Rising from the ashes of The Compact 8, this acoustic duo (twin brothers Seb and Noel Grant) brushed the fringes of the chart in 1972. When it comes to bands like The Kinks or Oasis, brothers can make great music even if they hate each other. With the Grant brothers, the opposite was true. They loved each other dearly but their music was appalling.

It was down to Alan Franklin (of The Alsations) to come to their rescue. Franklin supplied Me & He with 'Marjoram Marjoram', a ditty about the joys of one of the lesser-known garden herbs. But it proved a struggle in the studio.

"Harmonies were impossible", says Franklin. "They could barely manage to sing the same words never mind the same notes".

It was left to Franklin to pick up the pieces. "I just buried them in the mix. I used echo, reverb, 150 backing singers, harpsichette, phased nockatinas, the lot. I think I multi-tracked seventeen autoharps. Eventually I told the boys to just go down the pub and wait for me. I rang up Dorian Peacock and he did the vocals. I never told the boys but I did buy them each a drink. On that fateful night...bless 'em, they were like the closest brothers you've ever met. They would have died for each other, those two".

Which is exactly what happened. On that warm September's evening in 1972, after a long and happy night's drinking, Sebastian Grant saved his brother's life by pushing him out of the way of a speeding lorry. Seb was killed in the accident. Sadly, Noel also died. The force from Seb's push sent Noel headlong over a railway bridge and into the path of an oncoming train.

The Joybeats

The Joybeats ‘The Kingdom Hall Twist’ c/w ‘The World Is Run By Satan’
Released 12th December 1962.
Fontana TF0924

Seth Gaster (vcls, tambourine), Arthur Andrew Wyngarde (tambourine, bells), Christopher Dards (vcls, mouth organ), Ken Orr (bottle-top stick, claves)

The only Leicestershire group composed entirely of practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Joybeats enjoyed a brief if unremarkable career before falling foul of the very faith that inspired them to form in the first place.

They started their music career by performing ‘tours’ of neighbourhoods, moving from door to door in true Jehovah fashion. Vocalist and mouth organist Christopher Dards remembers: "We would knock on a door – we denied electrical doorbells – and when someone answered, we’d burst into ‘Repent Sinner, The End of the World Is Coming Soon’ or one of our other beat songs. Sometimes, we’d get through a whole song and then hand out copies of Watchtower, but usually we’d get the door shut in our faces".

The Joybeats were signed to Fontana after playing outside the front door of A&R man Calum McNaughton-Gaylord, who said at the time: "I signed them to get them to go away. That may appear to be a contradiction, which it probably is".

‘The Kingdom Hall Twist’ was the group’s first single and one of several religious Twist cash-in records out at the time. Produced by Eric Cramps (brother of Steve Cramps, lead autoharpist with The Five Fellows), this jaunty slice of folk-romp was unique in it's use of no instruments apart from percussion.

Dards again: "There were no overdubs in those days so we had to perform ‘live’. My mouth organ was the only real instrument – all the rest played percussion – but I had to sing as well, so the mouth organ was left off the waxing. When I listen to it now, it sounds sparse, jangly and very 'indie', particularly Seth Gaster’s sombre bass vocals". And this is what those sombre vocals sang:

‘Twist, but in a nice way
Don’t move your legs at all
Then come and have a cup of tea
Down at The Kingdom Hall

Twist as Jesus would have twisted
Silently and with care
Twist on your own in a darkened room
And hear the voice of God!’

Eric Cramps recalled that all sessions with The Joybeats were remarkably fast. "Most groups spent half the day sitting on the floor, smoking and joking around, but The Joybeats were always in a hurry to finish recording before the world ended...they were a bunch of idiots, frankly".

The group fell apart after Gaster reported Christopher Dards to the elders for humming a tune on his mother’s birthday.

Gaster attempted to keep The Joybeats name alive, but eventually had a nervous breakdown. His article ‘I deny chlorophyll and condemn it as the green paint of Satan’ was published in Watchtower in July 1987.

Pirate Radio Memories

In 1966, it was difficult for teenagers to get to listen to the pop music they liked. The BBC was only allowed to play one pop record every four years and that was ‘When I Fall In Love’ by Nat ‘King’ Cole.

Television was another no-go area for pop sounds. Apart from the rockin’ theme tune to the police drama ‘Injured In Custody’, there was nothing on at all that even gave the impression that pop music existed.

It was a relief, then, to teenagers everywhere, when Irish entrepreneur Chips McDrib started Radio Way Out. Broadcasting from a psychedelically painted helicopter hovering over the Isle of Wight, Radio Way Out supplied eager listeners with a daily diet of the latest pop sounds, usually hosted by the legendary DJ Dan ‘Freaky’ Tops.

Says Freaky today: "It was a fab groove and that’s an understatement. We were the first to play ‘I’m A Beautiful Rainbow’ by The Hatters, ‘Stuff A Bun In Your Face’ by The Brillo Pads, ‘You Are Invading My Private Hell’ by The Fabs, ‘Percy’s Underground Tree’ by Gormenghastly and many, many other stuff just like that, like".

Freaky has fond memories of the tricks that he and the other DJs got up to when they weren’t lying on a wooden cot being ill.

"Once, I played a fifteen minute track by Condescending Nun. While it was playing, I got onto the roof of the helicopter and grabbed one of the rotor blades. I was up there, spinning around at about five hundred times per second, high on acid. One of my shoes fell off and I never saw it again!

When I listen to the sad mess of Radio One today, it makes me yearn for an innovative station like Radio Way Out, who clearly weren’t afraid of taking risks.

And who’s to say that one day – perhaps when Chips McDrib is finally released from prison – we might once again hear the mind-blowing sounds of ‘I Don’t Want To Have Your Baby Anymore’ by Dawn Christie blasting out of our radios.

Well – I can dream!

The Gas Pomegranate

The Gas Pomegranate – ‘All Your Ideas Are Rubbish’ c/w/ ‘Try Me For Size, Baby’
Released 14th January 1965. HMV POP 4591

Sebastian Raspberry (vcls, bass), Edgar DeFries (autoharp), Neil Teddington (box & stick)

A classic put-down song in the tradition of The Tinkerbells’ ‘Call Yourself A Girl?’, this almost unbelievably fast number finds singer Sebastian Raspberry sneering insults at all the romantic hopes and dreams of the working classes.

Raspberry was a member of the famous horticultural Raaspberries (sic), the family that invented the raspberry, the fruit which even today takes their family name.

All teenagers at the time of the recording, The Gas Pomegranate didn’t even have a drum kit in their line-up. Says Raspberry, now married to an Iraqi princess, “Neil had this box - I don’t know where it came from – which he used to bang with this stick he had to get a rhythm going. It sounded better than most drum kits”.

Nevertheless, when Neil Teddington’s box finally disintegrated, he was sacked from the group.

Raspberry and autoharpist Edgar DeFries continued as a duo for a week, then decided to call the week a day, shortly before the record was released. “We quite liked the idea of that”, says Raspberry. “It could have gone to number one and there’d be no group! What would they have done on Top Of The Pops then? It would have brought down the whole music industry and all the ugly little working-class bloodsuckers that run it. It would have been our finest hour!”.

The call from the BBC did not materialise, however, as ‘All Your Ideas Are Rubbish’ stiffed before it even hit the shops and to this day no one knows why.

DeFries went on to join Egg Thermometer, again teaming up with Teddington, who had eventually acquired another box.

The group’s unusual name also has an interesting history. In an interview with The Newport Argus in 1966, autoharpist Edgar DeFries explained: “I was tripping out of my head on mushrooms when I suddenly had a craving to eat a pomegranate. There were none in the house, even though I had plenty of kumquats around the place as usual. So I turned on the gas and attempted to fashion a pomegranate from the gas. When I came ‘round in the hospital, I’d forgotten all about it and promptly went home to the charred remains of my flat”.