In fact I think Jimmy had missed out on some stage craft as with his long beard (& I do wish I had the patience to grow one like that) & shaven head, he looked like the Mr Magnetic Face I used to play with in the early 70’s.. I am sure when he trims that beard there are cuttings.. With those cuttings between songs he could move them around his head like Mr Magnetic Face’s iron filing hirsuteness.
In fact I think Jimmy had missed out on some stage craft as with his long beard (& I do wish I had the patience to grow one like that) & shaven head, he looked like the Mr Magnetic Face I used to play with in the early 70’s.. I am sure when he trims that beard there are cuttings.. With those cuttings between songs he could move them around his head like Mr Magnetic Face’s iron filing hirsuteness.
I’m a lover of the ukulele. They always remind of Viv Stanshall, & I always like being reminded of Viv Stanshall. They are the perfect foil for THE BOBBY McGEES songs of love, unrequited love, or in one case, unrequited, unrequited love. At one point Jimmy announces “This is called L.O.V.E. LOVE”… I thought .. Nah! They daren’t. Didn’t they know the problems that Uncle Edwyn had? It wasn’t. It was an exercise in (Bearsuitesque) shouted questions & answers whilst Jimmy engaged in indiepop semaphore.. At one point as the song speeded up I thought he may achieve flight..
“I got ney friends.. Not one..” Not quite true, but if they played more than 25 minutes the fun & enjoyment natured in those 25 minutes may have returned Jimmy to dancing to THE SMITHS on his own…. FUN!

Helen McCookerybook once described THE CHEFS as the worst punk band in Brighton… But with the best songs. There is a nice little insight to the early CHEFS in this 







Then again there something about that “decand class redurn to dottingham, please” vocals, a refusal to employ the services of a guitar tuner (which I always was in favour of … Frankly, I considered it cheating) & a determination to keep it simple, direct & catchy, drew me in. I always felt it a bit unfair that they have always appeared to struggle with the tag of “awkward & wilfully twee.” I just felt that they just “did what they did.” I could never quite understand why they were held in such high reverence, could do no wrong when certainly live, on occassion be a right crock of bollocks. Then again, I quite like that, because on occasion they could be REALLY good. In fanzine land there appeared to be a pre-occupation of owing a PASTELS badge, akin to Blue Peter patronage, I never could quite work that one out either. I quite like the fact that Stephen appears to have a small attention span as it would appear it created the inspiration for diversity.; I loved a lot of the 53rd & 3rd” records back in the day but today still sees THE PASTELS playing, albeit sporadically, Stephen is involved with 








Intoxicating? From the cocksure moment they strode across the ICA stage (“You’d better come out of the bar…” wasn’t really required, the body language said it all) to the crash, crash thud intro of “Debra” I was on board. How could I not be? Vocals that was a manic hybrid of Dave Jackson’s (THE ROOM) crooning & PAUL HAIG’s emotive drawl. JOSEF K guitar, tremble “to eleven” played at 100mph. Burping wandering bass, that filled the high ceiling of the ICA, intertwined with drums that sounded like a bag of spanners being kicked around a playground. I remember having a conversation with an American chap (who admittedly was only there for SPK) who thought they were “making it up as they go along” … My reply was “You have just witnessed the future of music”…. Sadly the future of music left us just five great 7” singles & didn’t usurp FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD from the charts (apart from the world that I inhabit). I read somewhere that they gave themselves a “sell-by date” when they felt that the length of the existence would be considered more than decent, & that they would split up on that date. I believe it was towards the end of 1986 & they kept to it. If I knew that at the time, I suspect that I would have loved them EVEN more….. 



I was listening to Allan Kingdom (
I have concerns about
Kevin made the point that they could be viewed as quite intimidating live, but I can’t say I ever felt intimidate. If you can remember that feeling you get when you lean backwards on a chair, nearly toppling over but managing to stop yourself just in time… In my world, that was MO-DETTES live. I liked that they sounded like they were fighting with their instruments & HAD to win. Kevin does make a good point regarding the name. I do remember standing next to smart dressed kids & you could see on their face “Well they’re not the female version of THE QUADS or THE STA-PRESSED, but what the heck?”







I had heard of (but not really heard) the 


I really started to listen when they started to move to the more scratch funk of ACR. Live they were quite different from ACR. I remember that the 23 SKIDOO events by early 1981 had turned into a visual overload, with multiple slideshows enveloping he band, which no doubt (if it had existed in 1981), would have resulted in rampant photosensitive epileptic break dancing. The funk was far more trebly in the guitar & repetitive than that of ACR & would drop into bouts of reverb laden farts in a wind tunnel experimentation. This PEEL session sees that period of 23 SKIDOO. Early next year they brought out the “Seven Songs” LP which I openly admit played to death. Post “Seven Songs” when everything seemed to be going POP at the time. 23 SKIDOO went the other way & started to work with loop taped ‘wall of noise’, incorporating rhythms provided by the Drummers of Burundi & the Balinese Gamelan Ensemble. I remember liking the fact that they went off at a tangent from their previous incarnation but I do remember many I knew who loved the scratch funk 23 SKIDOO didn’t “go a bundle” on the new world music experimental 23 SKIDOO. Some years later I witnessed them play a bad tempered (the audience, not the band) set at the Bloomsbury Theatre. I think people were expecting sparkling funk. They got something very dark indeed. It still makes me snigger thinking of it now, I remember from that Bloomsbury Theatre gig in early 1983, a chap on the other side of the hall, shouting out… “But.. But the king is not wearing any clothes! He is naked as the day as he was born!” … Punters, eh? Such fickle buggers.






First 



