Mark Of The Covenant

Mark of the Covenant

‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’ c/w ‘Mummy, Not The Shears’.
Released 16th July 1968. Regal Zonophone RZA 93356.

Mark Steele had spent most of his life in mental institutions of one sort or another and was signed to Regal Zonophone the day after he was released from The Feltham High Security Bedlam Zoo House For The Very Deranged.

Zonophone’s A&R man, Sussan (sic) Taylore had seen the trend for weird, psychedelic lyrics become ‘trendie’ (sic) after The Trembling Hands hit number forty-one in the pop charts with ‘Hide In The Attic’. He decided to get his own casualty to cash in and get promoted.

"I was on the lookout for people who had been recently released from the Loony Bin. I know it isn’t very fashionable to call them Loony Bins now but that’s what they were called then", he says today. "And they still are today, as far as I’m concerned. Loony Bins, Loony Bins, Loony Bins. Where the mad and demented are housed. I reckoned that all that psychedelic nonsense came from there 'cause it sounded like it had been written by a madman, so I wanted to get one of my own".

Rushed into the studio on a stretcher, Steele was given half an hour to write both sides of his debut platter. He came up with ‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’ in two minutes seven seconds, using a cheap Biro.

This was a place where:

Gooseberries squeak and quack and tingle
With pingle wringle fingle wingle

Accompanied by Morgan Rapsfield and Roddy Ginseng from The Acrobats, the resulting recording was a delightful mesh of Japanese traditional folk and squealing feedback. Says Ginseng: "Mark had no melody, so I pinched this melody from a traditional Japanese folk song and it seemed to fit. The original words were something about hedgehogs, so we jettisoned them and replaced them with Mark’s unhinged, toxic, but ‘trendie’ (sic) view of the world. I thought it would be number one in the hit parade for sure, but nobody bought it. Not one copy".

There were rumours (and still are) that an album had been made by this wayward genius, but this was not true, according to Taylore. "There were rumours that an album had been made, but this was not true. There still are rumours that an album had been made, in fact. Who are we talking about?"

There was no album but there was a single. It was called ‘My Dream of Gooseberry Heaven’. The b-side, ‘Mummy, Not The Shears’, was covered by Niblet O’Connor (formerly of The Shyt) on his fifth solo album ‘Gonk Crazy!’.

SCHLANKETTE

SCHLANKETTE
‘Trauma Elektriche’ c/w ‘Futurik Der Zeitgeschlunger’
EINGANG RECORDS EINS 2783.1
Gerhardt Gerhardt (Synthesisers), Manfredd Schnelke (Drums), Heni Brown (Electronics), Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt (Percussion)

At the forefront of the new wave of Kosmiche Musik, Gerhardt Gerhardt and Manfredd Schnelke met at the Schwarzkopff Institute of Hair & Music in Munich.

“We study under the great German avante garde composer Julius Eissel”, Gerhardt tells me on the phone from his farm near Dusseldorf. “Eissel was a genius. He tore up the book of rules, starting with conventional compositional structure, then traditional time signatures and eventually destroying the concept of the orchestra, the orchestra arena, the audience and instruments”.

In 1969, in his work ‘Deconstructing Destruction’, Eissel staged a performance during which an entire venue was torn down and burnt as the audience and musicians fled into the night. “Eissel arrived on a steamroller”, remembers Gerhardt. “He had laid out the music sheets in front of him. He conducted the piece as his steamroller crushed the stage”.

The recording of the event was held up as a sacred landmark pointing a new direction for German popular music . Up to that time, it was generally considered to be 'trapped in a whirlpool of bland' as musicians copied the tired grooves of American rock and roll.

“Manfredd and I were in a beat group called The Crazy Boy Guys and released ‘Hey, Look At Me Over Here Please, I’m German and I Am Enjoying The Dancing’.

But their experiences with Julius Eissel changed everything. “We threw away our instruments. In fact, we recorded the sound of us throwing away our instruments. It was a big seller. That helped us forge our new direction. And we also saw the advantages of taking many drugs”.

In 1970 Gerhardt and Schnelke started a commune in Hamburg. “We built a giant vagina out of willow and lived inside the wicker womb with our animals. We tended our livestock and made love to our women. Sometimes vice versa”. They were also introduced to an early version of a synthesiser by electronics genius Heni Brown. Remembers Gerhardt: “It was a machine that made very strange oscillating noises if you looked at it the wrong way. It would not respond to touch. You had to look at it”.

“It would go ‘whoooooowhooooo’ if you looked at it in a sarcastic way. Or ‘brittttttah brittttah’ if you looked at it very quickly and then looked away as if you didn’t mean to look at it”.

With their first synthesiser on board, and having invited the eccentric percussionist Rolf-Harische Wubblebodt to flesh out their sound, SCHLANKETTE became a reality. In 1971 they released the definitive Krautrock epic ‘Drohn’, featuring the insistent driving sound of Schnelke’s drums and the ethereal dream landscapes of Rolf-Harische’s whistling.

A single, ‘Trauma Elektriche’ followed:

‘I need to drill a hole
In the wall I drill a hole
In the wall is a wire
Elektriche trauma’

The band folded in 1972 following a spate of sexually transmitted disease and foot and mouth.

Michi Mochizuki

Michi Mochizuki
‘Me No Like Hiroshima’ c/w ‘Pretty Tokyo Street Boy’
Released August 23rd 1964.
Pye International 5N 30007

Recorded to cash in on the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 1964, ‘Me No Like Hiroshima’ is both an offensive and absurd recording. Michi Mochizuki was the then wife of record producer George Capfeld, who was hoping that the record would compete with Atari Yamamoto’s official Olympic theme ‘Wind Chimes In The Desert (Death To The Gaijin)’.

Although Miki had no recording experience and had never sung, her plaintive voice, varispeeded to a near chipmunk level, had a childlike charm which appealed to certain listeners at the time.

The backing track was loaded with bells, gongs, wind chimes and out-of-tune guitars, which Capfeld believed would convey an authentic Japanese feel or aura and that didn’t really work on any musical level whatsoever.

Today, Capfeld still stands by his decision to release the track: "Mickey, Michi – whatever she was called – was great. She sounded like a cute, Japanese gerbil or fujiyama. It was an easy record to make because Japan is culturally very similar to Britain. It’s on the same latitude and longitude, it has the same weather and it has frequent earthquakes. It’s the Britain of the east, really. I’ve never been there. There’s no point".

Michi and Capfeld were divorced after two weeks of marriage, shortly after the record was released. "We had problems with the Japanese government about that song and I’m sure that’s what caused the breakdown of our marriage. That and the fact I preferred boys".

Although the record’s lyric content has no connection to the Olympics whatsoever, they deserve quoting purely as an example of what you could get away with in 1964:

‘Me no like Hiroshima
It am not no good
Yankee boy he drop him bomb
But on a universal level we are all to blame
Bengo, Bengo, Bengo Bengo!'

The b-side ‘Pretty Tokyo Street Boy’, is, thankfully, an instrumental.

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!