"The Specials’ lead guitarist, Roddy 'Radiation' Byers, quits the band" reports the Coventry Telegraph

One of the original members of The Specials has left the band.

Roddy 'Radiation' Byers, lead guitarist and singer/songwriter for the band has called it a day to concentrate on his outfit The Skabilly Rebels and his own solo projects.

A statement given exclusively to the Coventry Telegraph read: "Roddy 'Radiation' Byers has left the band too concentrate on his solo career.”

"He will be appearing as a special guest on Dave Wakelings’ 'The English Beat' UK tour in March."

The Specials are scheduled to play The Isle Of Wight Festival this summer.

Frontman Neville Staple left last year, leaving original members Terry Hall, Horace Panter, John Bradbury and Lynval Golding to continue the Coventry band’s legacy.

Mousetrap R'n'B Allnighter - 22nd February

Meet the ace faces in Leicester's Oodly Boodly club

In March, 1965, there was a new youth cult in town. Leicester's Illustrated Chronicle wrote about their tastes, their attitudes and their sky-high clothes budget. Here's the original report.

For want of another name, these Leicester youngsters call themselves STYLISTS. They have their own ideas about dress and behaviour. They don’t like the Beatles, or fighting ... some spend 95 per cent of their earnings on clothes. Here’s what they say about themselves:

“You can’t be ‘in’ with us until you’re 18” – Mary Anderton, aged 21.

“Girls are out” – 19-year-old Tony J Gourvish.

“I wouldn’t be seen dead on the back of a motorbike” – 18-year-old hosiery cutter Pamela Johnson.

Leicester’s young group of ‘with-its’ don’t even have a name. If you ask them who they are they’ll probably make up a name on the spot. “We’re sort of moderns, I suppose. Not Mods, mind you.” Or “we’re stylists, that’s all.”

Not for them the vulgarities and violence of the Teds and the rest of the old guard.

They are forward looking... “Oh it was MEDIAEVAL then,” said the girl with false eyelashes and no lipstick, referring to 1964 and the year or two before that.

“All you had to do was buy a tight pair of jeans for a few bob, listen to the Top Twenty and let your hair grow, and that was IT.

“There’s no with-it uniform now, you know. You dress any way you like. But you must stay IN. You must belong to the In Group.”

Previously, every new trend stood – and eventually fell – by the peculiar inflexibility of its own rules. In the dim and distant 1950s you just had to wear great silent-soled suedes and comb your hair back from your padded shoulders with a handful of hair grease. You had to love Elvis.

Then after the jeans and studded leather era when you had to love motorcycles came the Beatles and their uniform, it was all very rigid.

“Fighting is right out,” said 20-year-old bricklayer Mick Colquhoun, who lives at St Leonard’s Road.

“The only people who get their kicks from fighting are the hard cases. They don’t like our kind of music and they wouldn’t spend the money we do on clothes.”

Mick spends “95 per cent” of his income on clothes, wouldn’t dream of paying less than 25 guineas for a suit and has it made in London. He sends to America for shoes – at about £8 a time.

The new group appear to be abstemious and pills– drugs of any kind, even cigarettes – don’t officially “rate”.

We met them at the Monday night Oodly-Boodly club at the Victoria Hotel in Leicester.

The official seal of In Group success is the term Face. If you’re a Face you rate high enough to be imitated, to have your verdicts on fashion handed on.

“One of the top Faces in Leicester” is 19-year-old Tony J Gourvish, who is only known in Group circles by his pseudonym of Gobi. He is an office worker and lives at 621, Welford Road.

“Girls are out too,” said Gobi. “We spend all our money on clothes. And in my spare time I think up new ideas for clothes. This suit was my own idea. Had it made in London for £25.

“We don’t really rate mixed dancing either. All the lads dance together in a circle.”

At the Oodly-Boodly Club there was plenty of fraternisation between the sexes but when it came too dancing they tended to split up.

There was no petting in the dark corners – presumably that, too, was “out”.

“The Beatles the Stones... they’re all rubbish,” said a Face. “We’re a minority. We don’t usually like anything in the Top Fifty, although we might settle on one of the more popular numbers if we rate it enough. We’re individualists.”

For the girls it’s false eye-lashes and the pale, no-make-up look. Again, much store is set by having an original one-off costume. Some girls make their own, just to be sure.

“It’s hard to be “in” before you’re 18,” said Mary Anderton, 21, of 92, Monmouth Drive, Glen Parva.

“You don’t start getting any real money until then. It’s expensive. We don’t have anything but the best. We never go to the cheap shops.”

As with the boys, it was easier to say what was “Trout” (out) than to try to explain the special ingredient for being “in”.

As far as music goes, they said, none of the “good groups” are in the hit parade. OUTS are: back-combed hair, short tight skirts, pointed toes, high heels, big handbags, red lipstick.

“We’re so much in front of the Trouts that we’ll be in for ever,” said a 19-year-old girl, pale in the darkness, moving her large, nylon eyelashes. “Until we get to 26. That’s the end. That’s when you become respectable.”

BREAKING NEWS – The Strypes to release new EP on 11th February to coincide with UK tour

 

To coincide with the beginning of their UK tour on 11^th February, The Strypes will be releasing a new 4-song EP – ‘4 Track Mind’.

These are 4 new songs and they will be available through iTunes.

“Belgium's 'Popcorn': the last underground music scene in Europe” says The Guardian

Antwerp's answer to northern soul has a drowsy, decadent vibe and its DJs favour eclecticism, jive music and playing records at the wrong speed. Bob Stanley gets into its strange groove.

The scene is a ballroom somewhere in Belgium. Couples are dancing, in a rather formal, old-fashioned way. The record they are dancing to is a Bill Haley single called Chick Safari. But this isn't a rock'n'roll revival night, nor is it a scene from a David Lynch movie. The DJ plays Eartha Kitt, the Skatalites, something that sounds like a northern soul record at the wrong speed. The atmosphere is friendly but exclusive, and the musical mood dark and opulent. This is a Belgian Popcorn club.

Popcorn is possibly the last truly underground music scene in Europe, one that has yet to be ransacked and reduced by adverts for Orange or KFC. Its narrative was formed by Belgians in the 1970s, largely from American records made in the 50s and 60s. It took its name from a club named in honour of James Brown's 1968 hit Mother Popcorn, but it has little to do with funk. The rhythm of a Popcorn floorfiller has to suit the unusual "slow swing" dance favoured by the Belgians; it could be Peggy Lee's sensuous Sweetheart, Hank Levine's filmic Image, Billy Storm's tormented teen ballad Easy Chair, or an early Tamla Motown single such as Little Iva's Continental Strut.

House DJ Eddy de Clercq started going to Popcorn clubs as a teenager in the early 70s, where he saw "couples jiving together in the most complicated steps and whirls. A mid-tempo slow jive, not acrobatic like in rock'n'roll, but very stylishly done, with the men leading the girls, or sometimes leading other men. Club Popcorn was also the first big club where gay people could dance together in public without being hassled. It was a very liberated, open and friendly kind of place."

Club Popcorn had started its life in a converted farmhouse 10 miles west of Antwerp, holding dance contests on Sunday afternoons. By 1971, it had extended into the farm's outbuildings and barns, and close to 3,000 people crammed themselves in every Sunday to hear DJ Gibbe Govaert's sets. "The streets were filled with parked cars and well-dressed punters all heading to this farm in the middle of nowhere," remembers De Clercq. "The main dancefloor was located in the old barn, surrounded by bars and elevated dance stages. It was so packed there was hardly any room to move. People were dancing on the bars, behind the bars and even on the cars parked outside. The atmosphere was so exciting, people started cheering and throwing fountains of beer once a popular tune came on. Sometimes people stage-dived into the crowd or started stripping to the music. The sound was unique, it was instantly recognisable, and very decadent to me."

Popcorn's obscurity in Britain largely stems from our snobbish, long-held mistrust of European music scenes. "People really do have the wrong idea about Belgium," says Bill Brewster, the author of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. "Musically, it's been far more innovative than people give it credit for, possibly due to the push and pull of the Flemish and French split." The writer Harry Pearson has described Belgium as having a "Mediterranean attitude in a northern European country", or "sex in duffel coats" if you will. The world of Popcorn, likewise, is an odd mix of sensuous music and beer-sodden dancefloors.

Popcorn has a very similar timeline to northern soul: it started as a regional phenomenon in the 60s and peaked commercially in the 70s before going back underground in the 80s. The main difference between the scenes was the tempo of the records, with Popcorn crowds needing records with a drowsy feel; DJs even played 45rpm singles at 33rpm to obtain the requisite atmosphere. "It was driven by beer rather than amphetamines," says Brewster. "But culturally Popcorn and northern soul were very similar."

In the summer, the scene would move en masse to Ostend, Belgium's equivalent to Blackpool. DJ Freddy Cousaert played at the Groove, a late night downstairs bar frequented by US marines, tourists and prostitutes – it was Cousaert who later looked after Marvin Gaye during his 80s sojourn in Ostend. The music he played at the Groove included ska, Latin jazz and even Broadway songs such as Stranger in Paradise, or Whatever Lola Wants from Damn Yankees – in the hands of Cousaert or other pioneering DJs such as Gibbe Govaert and Jeff Callebaut, this odd menu made sense. Ostend also had a club called the Versailles, which had direct access to the beach, leading sweaty clubbers to run drunk and naked into the North sea.

As Popcorn's popularity spread from Antwerp and across Belgium, the musical menu became wider. Younger DJs came out of the French side of the country and from the sizeable Italian community; by the mid-70s, early-60s British stars such as Kenny Lynch and Craig Douglas were being played alongside the R&B and ska, as were Italian crooners and milky US teen idols. For hardcore fans such as Eddy de Clercq, this was the same as kids dancing to the Joe 90 theme at Wigan Casino. EMI released a Popcorn Oldies compilation and the scene exploded. Pretty soon, Popcorn even had cash-in bands such as the dreadful Lou and the Hollywood Bananas who had hits in 1979 with Kingston Kingston and Hong Kong Ska. Now it had its equivalent to Showaddywaddy, it was time for Popcorn to go back underground.

The London DJ Niamh Lynch "first heard the term 'Popcorn' at a mod club called Shotgun in south London in the early noughties. Barbara Redd's I'll Be All Alone was played, and I loved it. I already loved rhythm and blues but this had a smoother, less choppy feel to it." Intrigued, she soon made her way to "a dedicated old-fashioned Belgian Popcorn club" in the small town of La Louvière. "They knew we were coming as I'd emailed ahead and they did everything to make us welcome. They actively asked for requests, played everything we wanted to hear, and looked at us like we were nuts when we did our normal-to-us dancing." While there has never been a dedicated Popcorn club in Britain, the sound began to work its way into soul nights in the noughties, at places such as Flipside in Dewsbury which would have a Popcorn special once a year, bringing DJs over from Belgium. Of the UK's current soul nights, the excellent Kingpin in Sheffield, also plays a smattering of stuff at the saltier end of the Belgian palate.

A trip to Belgium, though, shows a scene mostly populated by people over 40. Popcorn's sustainability, as with every musical subgenre, is down to the internet, which has opened the scene up to outsiders – there are now Popcorn nights and weekenders in Italy, Germany and the United States. As the Belgian clubs have no dress code and the music has few hard and fast rules, this has tended to jar with the British trainspotter mentality. Though British mods may favour its gritty R&B spins, these are only a small part of what makes it special; the purity of Belgian Popcorn is its very impurity. R&B, Broadway numbers, tangos, Phil Spector-esque girl groups and loungey instrumentals, they are all constituent parts of a rare, and still largely undiscovered scene. It won't stay that way forever.

Drummer Steve White looks forward to his musical future with super-group Trio Valore

Soul-mod-jazz supergroup Trio Valore has been the exciting next step for two key members of Paul Weller’s live band.

Drummer Steve White (The Style Council, Paul Weller, The Who) and Britpop bassist Damon Minchella (Ocean Colour Scene) are joined by rising keyboard star Justin Shearn for a gig at Shoreham’s Ropetackle on Saturday, February 1, at 8pm.

As Steve explains: “The trio started when me and Damon left Paul’s band. That was seven years ago. People don’t realise just how long ago it was!

“We just wanted to do something a bit instrumental, something a bit back to our roots.

“We got the trio and made a record. It did really well, and we toured for a bit. Then Damon had a bit of a mishap and put a hand through a glass window, which stopped his bass-playing for a year. Fortunately he teaches as well, academically.

“He is doing a doctorate. He is going to become a PhD, so he had that.”

Steve meanwhile found himself working with the late Jon Lord.

But now the trio are back with a vengeance. They played Italy four times last year and will be back there again this year, in among all sorts of other commitments including Croatia.

Since the first incarnation, keyboard player Seamus, also ex-Paul Weller, has stepped back, and Justin has come in.

“We are just finishing up a new EP that should be out in April. We are in Spain in April, and we are also going to Croatia, and we are doing a big mod fest the first May Bank Holiday. I love having the freedom to be a lead instrument rather than backing.”

Though, Steve is quick to point out that Weller similarly valued Steve’s playing. Steve’s drum solos were always a feature of Paul Weller gigs.

However, after a quarter of a century working with Paul, Steve knew it was time to move on.

“If you are really honest and look at Glastonbury 2007 footage, you can see it was time.

“After 25 years, I just think that we had run out of ideas. One thing I didn’t want to happen – and does happen – is that people tend to fall out. I just came off from that gig and thought ‘That’s that’. Paul didn’t really have to say anything.

“We shook hands, and that was that.

“He had already told me that he wanted a different band. People tend to get upset, but I had always conducted my career with Paul on the basis that tonight’s gig could be the last, and that attitude worked for 25 years. It was a mutual thing. We had had some amazing music, and we had had some great times, but Paul was clear. He just wanted to do something different.

“I was 17 when I joined The Style Council. It was an amazing time, great albums. That whole time from 83 to 87-88 was a really, really golden time for the band. I absolutely loved it.”

Call the box office on 01273 464440 or visit www.ropetacklecentre.co.uk

The Strypes: "Probably the greatest moment of it all was actually, officially leaving school." by Ella Walker of the Cambridge News

These boys combine sharp suits and seriously awesome rock & roll. Ella Walker talks to The Strypes drummer Evan Walsh ahead of their Cambridge Junction gig

The two things everyone’s saying about The Strypes are a) they play rock & roll, and b) they look about 12.

Both are true, but the first doesn’t quite do them justice, and the second? Well, they’re getting pretty sick of people going on about it.

“We think it’s quite strange that people make such a big deal out of a young rock band,” says drummer Evan Walsh, his soft Irish accent lilting with quiet bemusement. “It’s the kind of thing young people do: young lads form bands. It just happens that our band has got quite a good bit of attention.”

To be fair “a good bit of attention” is something of an understatement, and the suited, booted and brilliantly fringed four-some (don’t go calling them a ‘boyband’, they really don’t like it), are clean shaven and aged 16-18, but why is everyone so surprised by that?

“Rock & roll is for young people, it was invented in the 50s,” says Evan. “When it became popular, it was teenager music, it was all about the youthful energy and the same goes for punk rock. When it came about it was all about teenagers having their own thing. That’s what it’s all about. We think it’s just normal that a band of people our age should be wanting to play guitars and make a lot of noise.”

Hailing from Cavan, Ireland, Evan’s band mates are frontman Ross Farrelly (who pairs raw, angsty vocals with a worrying penchant for wearing sunglasses indoors), guitarist Josh McClorey and bassist Pete O’Hanlon.

Josh, Pete and Evan have been friends since they were toddlers and grew up surrounded by parents with musical backgrounds of their own (“There was always instruments around,”). Together they stumbled across Ross singing at a local gig four years ago, “quite liked his voice,” and invited him to jam with them: “It went from there, from gigging around our hometown and beyond.”

‘Beyond’ entailed a self-produced EP of covers, Young, Gifted & Blues, getting signed to Elton John’s label, Rocket Music Management, making a switch to Mercury Records in 2012 and now their first headline UK tour, including a stop at Cambridge Junction. Not only that, their stunning debut album, Snapshot, reached Number 5 in the UK charts and Number 2 in Ireland in September (“It went a lot better than any of us even thought about. We would have been happy with anything.”)

Thrashing out confident, revved up, ballsy rock & roll music, roughly hatched in with old school rhythm and blues – “It’s totally unpretentious,” says Evan. “It is what it is,” – singles Blue Collar Jane and Hometown Girls shudder jitteringly through your limbs with pent up teenage patter while album tracks I Can Tell and What A Shame skittishly yell, yelp and punch right through you.

Cored by blazing guitar chords that rip the record jauntily and brilliantly apart, there’s a base layer provided by the early American and English R&B the group are inspired by – and can reverentially reel off. From Dr Feelgood, The Yardbirds, Rockpile and fledgling Rolling Stones, to Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf and punk bands The Ramones and The Overtones, it’s all in there; a blueprint overlaid by their own electric ‘noise’.

But that, and the fact they’re kitted out oh-so-smartly in sharp skinny ties and trousers that smack of their 50s and 60s icons, also means they often get chucked on the ‘retro’ pile. Does that bother them? “We can’t be nostalgic for an era we weren’t born in,” says Evan thoughtfully. “I think it shouldn’t matter.”

They can’t deny they do nod – stylistically and musically – to their idols though. “That’s what’s happened throughout the decades; of music, of bands, of generations of bands. Everyone’s just nicking stuff from each other,” he says with a rueful laugh. “Everyone’s basically borrowing everyone else’s ideas.

“[But] because it’s being made now, today, it sounds like it’s made today.”

It explains why live, the crowd they pull in merges students and teenagers at the front with your original rock & roll kids towards the back. On any given night, Elton, Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher or Miles Kane might turn up too, and then of course, they did just tour with Arctic Monkeys.

“It was great, it was our first experience of that sort of proper tour – tour in inverted commas. Before that we’d just been doing this big rambling series of gigs,” he says. “They’re all incredibly normal, down to earth lads – and it couldn’t have been a more sedate, monotonous tour at the same time.”

They take it seriously, this life in a band lark. Sincere, measured and articulate, Evan comes across more laid-back than anything. Except, that is, when I tell him the NME tipped them as the number one band to watch this year, but also said in their album review “occasionally, they sound a little bit like McFly.”

“I think that’s just f*****g b*******s to be honest,” he spits with a laugh. “I don’t think it sounds anything like McFly. I think that’s a pretty pathetic observation to make because, I mean, it’s purely inaccurate if anything.”

But generally, they seem like a grounded bunch of lads, which should come in handy considering the attention they’re grabbing and the fact it hasn’t quite crashed down on them how big they could be (Elton is a fan people).

They’re just taking it in their slickly booted stride: “It hasn’t been too much of a shock really just because it’s all been quite gradual in terms of the level it’s been to now. It’s still pretty small in the grand scheme of things,” Evan argues. “People have asked us before, do you have that moment where you look at each other and go, ‘God, is this all happening?’ And you don’t. It just doesn’t happen like that.”

He adds wryly: “Probably the greatest moment of it all was actually, officially leaving school. We’ve quickly got used to the notion of okay, we’re doing it full time now.”

The most drastic change in their lives, other than the distinct lack of homework, has been travelling and being away from home (“We all get kinda quite homesick after a while,”). Hence why a homecoming gig packed with friends and family at a local bar over the summer – not having a pub lunch with Elton, playing Glastonbury or hanging out with Arctic Monkeys mind – has been the highlight so far. “The place was just mental, it was really amazing fun,” Evan buzzes. “Because of the sheer energy of that, the hometown energy, it just felt great.”

Has he got a favourite track to perform live? “It was one of the first British New Wave singles and it was a song I heard a lot growing up,” he says, citing Heart of the City, a 70s Nick Lowe song. “We started covering it in the set and do it towards the end to the point that the audience are all really sweaty and heaving. It’s a great moment; it’s a real kind of fists in the air type song.”

When we speak the band is at home, gearing up for their first ever trip to America, followed by the tour and then, after that? “It all gets a bit hazy,” Evan admits. So what would they be doing if things hadn’t taken off like this?

“The band would still be going, we’d all still be playing,” he says matter-of-factly. “The only reason we really do it is for the enjoyment. We don’t do it for the sake of attention or success or anything like that, that was never really the ambition.

“I think sheer enjoyment is all.”

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Universal Music Publishing renews deal with Paul Weller

Universal Music Publishing has renewed its worldwide publishing deals with Paul Weller.

The renewal of UMPG's longstanding worldwide music publishing agreement with Paul Weller covers his work as part of The Jam and The Style Council, as well as his extensive solo material and future output.

Paul Connolly, President of Europe and UK, Universal Music Publishing said, “To continue to represent such a distinguished and influential songwriter as Paul Weller is both an honour and a delight. It takes an extraordinary talent to consistently produce such exceptional songwriting over the course of a career spanning almost 40 years, but that’s exactly what Paul continues to do – and we’re as excited as ever to hear what he will deliver next.”

Paul Weller added, "I’m happy to be renewing my publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing. It’s a great team and a great home for me."

Gary Crowley to DJ at 'Away From The Numbers' at The 100 Club on Saturday 15th March with 'live' sets from Stone Foundation, The Spitfires and Manor Place

John’s Children gig tomorrow night – special promo offer for the next 30 people who buy tickets

 

Andy Ellison of John’s Children says there are special reduced prices, on a first come first served basis, for the next 30 people to book via AGMP using the special promo code to get in at half-price.

The promo code is JC229 and the URL you need for this £7.50 per ticket saving is: -

https://agmp.ticketabc.com/events/johns-children/

Paul Weller and daughter Leah for Daks London’s 120th Anniversary. Images by Greg Williams.