The Warlock Hobby

‘The Incredible Changing Girl’ c/w ‘Early Morning Whimsy’
Released 21st February 1969. Philips 836 992-4
Jimmy Paltrow (electric organ, vcls), Cornelius Moon (Aeolian Wind Harp), Seth le Mesurier (drums & percussion), Noel Dards (tympani, bonang)

Accrington’s The Warlock Hobby (formerly The Dinners and The Heavy Mob) were formed from the ashes of several bands in the Accrington and Burnley area. Jimmy Paltrow had originally been the guitarist in Hostile Parrots, until a disagreement with bass guitarist Vivian Klooger (later of The Gorgon Field) made him decide to leave and join The Rainbow Men.

The Rainbow Men’s line-up included one Noel Dards, who left to join The Apricot Moths (later famous for their single ‘Open Pie’, although Dards did not play on this waxing) after a decision to pursue his interest in Gamelan instrumentation such as the bonang.

Although Dards and Paltrow were not in The Rainbow Men at the same time, both men’s decisions at this time meant that they would meet again, even though they had not met before. Neither had met The Apricot Moths’ autoharpist Jeff ‘Jif’ Keeler.

Paltrow’s decision to switch to electric organ caused friction in The Rainbow Men, who already had an electric organist (Captain Jimpy ‘Nonce’ Cummings-Townshend), so he became the electric organist for Kirstan Teague’s backing band, The Standing Men (which also featured Steve Hunt-Balls, later of The Piss Chickens). Teague had been the harpsichordist with Grunt fArMm, a band whose line-up also boasted Aeolian wind harpist Cornelius Moon.

Shortly after Teague quit, Moon left to form his own band, The Moon Men and recruited Roger ‘Pisspot’ Farbes, who had met Seth le Mesurier when le Mesurier played bongos with The Deciders (of ‘Really Frail Girls’ fame), due to the fact that le Mesurier and Farbes had the same girlfriend (Jenny Green, sometime dancer with Grunt fArMm). Paltrow quit The Standing Men and joined The Teenage Babies in August 1968, shortly before Teague disbanded the group and became a solo act.

Incidentally, Jeff ‘Jiff’ Keeler was the cousin of Kirsten Teague and later joined The Deciders as autoharpist (after le Mesurier had left the band).

When The Apricot Moths broke up in September 1968 (the 14th, Paltrow’s birthday), Noel Dards started going out with Jenny Green, who introduced him to Seth le Mesurier, with whom she was still having a relationship (she was also involved with top Manchester hairdresser Rupert Timbleby at the time and ‘Blow Off’ actors Terry Cocker and Rudy Schmidt, both of whom frequented Jangles club in Manchester on ‘dirty night’, which took place on the second Wednesday of each month).

Dards and le Mesurier took an instant dislike to one another but decided to ‘try some things out’ to see if a musical collaboration might be on the cards, even though le Mesurier was about to join The Deciders and was edging away from percussion.

Dards and le Mesurier felt the interplay between bonang and drums to have commercial potential and thought about recruiting an Optivideophone player or a third bonang player until Dards broke his leg in a skiing accident (caused, indirectly, by Ajax Rampling from Gog Army).

Anyway, they all joined up eventually and formed The Warlock Hobby (after it had been called The Dinners and The Heavy Mob). Jenny Green was later briefly engaged to Martin Van Gogh of The Eventually.

‘The Incredible Changing Girl’ was deleted five days after release, but, strangely, its b-side, ‘Early Morning Whimsy’, was not.

Ironically, ‘Early Morning Whimsy’ was later covered by The Teenage Babies and became their first single.