You can blame that Rol character for this.
In yesterday's edition of his acclaimed and entirely original Namesakes series he featured an act from the stalwart but long forgotten 1980s label Dead Hedgehog. I mentioned in the comments that back in 1984 I had discussions with the Dead Hedgehog Head Honcho about including one of my bedroom band's tracks on one of their compilation cassettes. Unfortunately the label went the same way as the hedgehog shortly afterwards so our 15 minutes of fame was snatched away from us.
The track in question was "Do The Torvill and Dean", a totally shameless attempt to cash in on their then recent success at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Rol made the mistake of asking whether a demo of "Do The Torvill and Dean" still existed. It does, so here we are.
We called the band A Cuddly Pair, a name chosen from a photo of two kittens on my mate Simon's Mum's kitchen calendar. We would regularly visit the kitchen during breaks in our recording sessions for a cup of tea and some of her excellent home-made jaffa cakes. They were a very important consideration when choosing where to record and probably the only tangible benefit of being in the band.
Only one of the three of us could play an instrument properly and none of us could hold a tune in the bucket - these days of course you can get computer programmes to deal with that sort of minor detail. This made mainstream success unlikely but it meant that what critics have called the endearingly amateurish ethos at Dead Hedgehog seemed a natural fit for us.
The sound quality is very ropey - it turns out Woolworths own brand cassettes weren't designed to retain high resolution audio for forty years - but helpfully that masks the even ropier quality of the performance. The line-up on this track was AJ on vocals and boxes, Simon on guitar and me on jazz penny whistle. Enjoy! Or Endure!
One proper band that did go on to achieve more after getting their first break on a Dead Hedgehog compilation was Jesus Couldn't Drum. Their 1984 single "Even Roses Have Thorns" has long been a favourite of mine, and hopefully now it will be one of yours too.
I have also bunged in an Incredible String Band song for reasons that will become obvious. Their willingness to record themselves banging and blowing anything that makes a noise was a great inspiration to A Cuddly Pair.
"Do The Torvill And Dean" - A Cuddly Pair
"Even Roses Have Thorns" - Jesus Couldn't Drum
"The Hedgehog's Song" - The Incredible String Band
Finally, here is some more from Jesus Couldn't Drum:
Well that was a birthday treat! The Status Quo guitar and the Jazz penny whistle coming in at 1.30
ReplyDeleteThat's the best tune I've heard today. Well, apart from all the ones I listened to over at Swiss Adam's place. (OK, I haven't listened to anything else yet, but I still enjoyed your demo very much.)
ReplyDeleteYou realise that I've downloaded this now and when either Jane or Christopher (who now lives just down the road from me) pops their clogs, it will feature on Celebrity Jukebox... by which time I will have completely forgotten where it came from.
I can think of no greater honour than to be featured on Celebrity Jukebox.
DeleteI've just played side 4 of Santana's Moonflower, it would greatly benefit from the addition of some frantic penny whistling. (I did play your tune all the way through, but it will not be featuring on vol 206 of my download series)
ReplyDeleteFrantic penny whistling can be used to cover up a multitude of musical sins.
DeleteI can't disagree with your judgement that "Do The Torvill And Dean" is not download-worthy. I was surprised that the tastemakers at Dead Hedgehog were interested in it, as I felt the other track we sent them was stronger - "Bedwetter Blues", a sensitive look at the 'secret shame' of adult bedwetting.
And now we need to hear that too...
DeleteSuperb. And I do love a penny whistle.
ReplyDeleteShould've been played on John Peel's show, surely?
Ditto Rol's request above - and can we have the recipe for the home-made Jaffa Cakes please, too?
We did send a cassette to John Peel, and somewhere I have a photo of him in front of large piles of packages containing other submissions that he sent in return with a message to the effect that he would do his best but no promises.
DeleteI don't think I can help with the recipe and Simon's Mum is sadly no longer with us. I'll see if I can track down 'Bedwetter', but you can have too much of a not very good thing.