Obscure Gems

The First Lame Bunny Album (1973)

Gambler "Tommy" This is a cover vinyl album of The Who's Tommy by Gambler [all titles P.Townsend] Released on Spaceward records in 1972 cat no.SRS 24 The sleeve is plain on reverse Overture It's A Boy You Didn't Hear It Sparks Christmas Acid Queen Pinball wizard Go To The Mirror Tommy Can You Hear Me? SmashThe Mirror I'm Free Miracle Cure We're Not Going To Make It See Me, Feel Me Listening To You
Mick Stevens "The River" This LP was recorded in 1977 at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge and issued on the Spaceward label. (SRS 20) the same year. All of the tracks are self composed and the LP was/is an excellent UK electric fok/rock private pressing. Thr musicians are Mick Stevens - Lead and Backing Vocals, Guitars and Percussion, Warne Livesey - Bass, Congas, String Synthesizer, Backing Vocals, Percussion, Stewart Booth - Electric Piano, Organ, Synthesizers, Backing Vocals, Colin Woolway - Drums, Jim Livesey - Sax, Della Thompson - Flutes. Track Listing, Side 1 - No Survivors Now, The Girl Came To Our Town, Book Eight, 77, Crazy For Your Love. Side 2 - Suite (To A Seagull), The River. Click here to read a personal recollection of Mick Stevens by friend and musical collaborator, John Theedom The images below are from the first River session - many thanks to Andrew Stevens and Thomas Hartlage for these. Mick Stevens "The Englishman"   Click the thumbnails to view enlargements Click here to read a personal recollection of Mick Stevens by friend and musical collaborator, John Theedom
Snakehips "snakehips arnold & the king of boogie"
Gigymen

The excerpts below are from an interview with John Phillips, vocalist and guitarist with Johnny Curious & The Strangers, from November 2000.

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"I was idly searching around on the net the other day when I came across your entertaining site. I was particularly taken by a paragraph from the Lee Wood interview as he pretty much sums up the very small history of a combo I was once a member of, and which has all but disappeared from history. Lee remembers: ""The one regret I have. I visited Spaceward studios one day and they played me a tape of a band called ""(sorry, I've had a mental block on their name. I'll let you know)"". The recordings were STUNNING. Especially ""Back In Pissheadsville Again. I approached them but they had a manager called Sue Black who only wanted them signed to a big label. In the end they re-recorded the four songs and released in on Miles Copelands label. The re-recordings are total shit compared to the originals."" The name that Lee has justifiably forgotten is ""Johnny Curious and the Strangers."" By the spring of 1977 we had saved up enough money--two of us worked in an MFI furniture warehouse--to book a couple of day's recording. I cannot remember why we chose spaceward but the four tracks we recorded sounded pretty good to us too. Sue Black worked for Click Records (who at the time had distribution rights for the great Tappa Zukie amongst others) and we signed with them and took her on as manager. We never found out how Miles Copeland got hold of the re-recorded tracks we made at Spaceward (again) at Click's expense (or rather Spaceward's as I don't think the billsgot paid--Click went bankrupt and disappeared soon afterwards as did we). We played a lot in London, memorably for me at the Roxy and the Vortex, and did two gigs with the Stranglers--Dunstable and somewhere else. When we played in the provinces things tended towards violence. The regrets I have (though I don't really regret anything):

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We became Johnny Curious and the Strangers sometime in 1976 after we had got together (with several name changes) in the horrendous new town Welwyn Garden City. Alan was still at school at the time, the youngest of us but by far the most musically advanced thanks to hours of playing along to Phil Manzanera, Mick Ronson and (he was young!) Jimmy Page. We were supposed to play a gig with the Sex Pistols early in 1976 when they came to WGC but I was away in New York at the time so we couldn't do it. We sat out that long hot boring summer playing stupid gigs, double bookings with cabaret artists and pubs a million miles away with two punters in the audience and the classic request, ""can you turn it down a bit--we can't hear ourselves talk"". We turned it up, of course--a horrible noise probably. Proper gigs were out of our reach, a ceiling that only ""chart"" or ""established"" acts could touch. When punk began to hit the headlines people started booing and throwing glasses at us, very nasty. We knew we were a part of it without ever having talked to anyone else associated with it. I think that's how it was all over the country. Three of us sang and wrote songs and we got quite a good set together. We were probably at our peak when we recorded a 4 song demo at Spaceward in Cambridge with ""Back in Pissheadsville,"" ""Stainless Steel Rat,"" and two others (the titles of which I cannot remember for now--one was definitely inspired by our discovery of the Television album). It was all downhill from there for lots of reasons but summer 1977 was the moment for us. Chas de Whalley from Sounds gave us two very good write ups and some guy from the Melody Maker fell in love with Alan's guitar playing after hearing the second lot of Spaceward tapes. We were featured in Sounds, their ""On the Crest of the Wave"" double-feature, the other act being XTC, who we supported later on at the Red Cow.

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Klick had planned on putting the EP out in 1977 but never got to the release stage (because of bankruptcy). They had, however, hired a photographer (I bet he never got paid either) to capture our punky image. He took us down under the Westway and got us drunk but when that didn't produce the required effect he took us out to a canal somewhere and photographed us looking delinquent and snotty in front of some old warehouses. The EP contained four tracks from the horrible Spaceward ""album"" tapes but for some reason was cut at 33rpm--which shook John Peel only a little when he played it on his show. Total disaster. In addition to ""Pissheadsville"" there was ""Jennifer,"" a two minute chainsaw massacre, and on the other side Bob's ""In Tune,"" which perhaps rather pointlessly had a go at the hippy generation (his ""out Tune"" on the demo a much dirtier punk manifesto) but had great guitar (as usual) at the end, and my ""Road to Cheltenham,"" which was all echoing jangly guitars and a pastiche of borrowed (stolen?) pop tunes with lyrics moaning about those 1976 gigs. That's the one John Peel played, bless 'im.

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I can't remember who else played at the Roxy when we were there--I remember someone playing Smoke on the Water in the dressing room--we sprayed our name on the dressing room wall (we did that everywhere, of course, the marquee, the Nashville, the Red Cow, the Vortex, Hope and Wanker, Roundhouse, streets all over England--we got hauled in by police for it one night in Cambridge when we were recording at Spaceward) and when the Roxy live album came out with the picture of the dressing room wall on the back, there was ""Johnny Curious and the Strangers"" written across it. The name made it but the music didn't.

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Pretty Paedophihiles - "Raped"
Cat No: PAROLE RECORDS KNIT
23/09/77