Read about Brand X’s Day of dueling open air gigs across the English Channel one fine day in 1977!
SOUNDS Magazine, October 1, 1977 / A report filed by “Joe Journalist” Dave Fudger & Tarka The Otter. as they join Brand X on a little trip.
IT ALL STARTED out as a cheap stunt to get some easy press. Sleazy music biz weirdos in grubby, Soho backstreet offices conspired to sucker unsuspecting Joe Journalist into filling a page of Music Cliché, the world’s leading rock organ, with complimentary though meaningless drivel about the latest quintet of punk rock deviationaries — The Existentialist Sloganeers. Tarka the Otter, the Sloganeer’s publicist, phoned Joe at the Music Cliché office and fed him the bait. Joe would be taken in the band’s private hovertrain to see them play at the 10th Annual Yorkshire Miners Open Air Rock Festival at London’s Crystal Palace Bowl, them immediately after their set, he would be whisked off along with the band in a specially chartered airship to Hobart, Tasmania, where the Sloganeers would be playing another festival gig that same afternoon!
Two open air gigs in one day! on the, same planet! it had never been done before. How could a pioneering journalist/gullible ligging hack like Joe resist the offer to witness such an historic rock ‘n’ roll event? The answer was — easily, for Joe, alias yours truly, had been offered another er . . . lig. This one involved chasing punters at two open air festival gigs (on the same afternoon!) with a quintet of jazz rock deviationaries — Brand X. The open air fests in question being Crystal Palace Garden Party X and the Fête De L’Humanité 1977 near Le Bourget, Paris. France.
The plan was simple: Brand X’s gear had been driven out to the site of the two-day French test and duplicate stuff — keyboards, amplifiers, effects units, percussion, etc, — were hired in England for the Crystal Palace gig. (Brand X drummer and founder member, Phil Collins being an ultramegastar with the Genesis beat group, can lay claim to at least a couple of drum kits and so he had no need to hire.) I was to be limoed to the Crystal Palace bash and immediately following the band’s set we were all to be flown from nearly Biggin Hill aerodrome to Le Bourget on a specially chartered private plane (see fig. a) and thence by road the short distance to the festival site. That was the plan.
Interesting developements in my private life, (that I can’t go into here) meant that I missed the limo for the Palace, but a frantic taxi ride across London” got” me to the gig (miraculously) in time for the opening number of the band’s set (also averting a nervous breakdown on the part of the Brand X publicist — not Tarka the Otter). After all the much publicised toings and froings in the Brand X drumming department it was a surprise to see Phil Collins and not Kenwood, Dennard in the drum seat. The rest of the line-up was the usual — percussionist Morris Pert, bassist Percy Jones, guitarist John Goodsall and keyboardist Robin Lumley.
They opened the set with a track from the ‘Moroccan Roll’ album, ‘Disco Suicide’, lousy onstage monitoring and an out of tune mini-moog led to a few splungy bass and keyboard eruptions but didn’t detract from the overall excellence of the number’s composition. It beats me why certain reviewers continue to compare Brand X to Weather Report. It shows a remarkable amount of ignorance about the different musical approaches of the two groups. Where Weather Report choose very often to build an instrumental theme slowly over a very long period within a number with a few variations, Brand X are wont to establish themes very quickly, moving very quickly to solo passages and changes of tempo and texture giving their music a much more intense and charged feel than the cool stratification of Weather Report.
The two bands each have stunningly original bass players, Pastorius and Jones being the two most important around at the moment, but they are distinctly different. As the two bands’ approaches to soloing and use of keyboards.
Lumley’s work as a record producer has given him a unique ability to place the sound of his keyboards very subtly, and there are times at the end of Goodsall’s solos when you realise with some surprise that a slowly thickening layer of piano or organ chords he has been growing beneath the guitarists alternately dreamy and fierete workouts. The two of them swap roles within this relationship throughout their performance. At the end of ‘Disco Suicide’, following healthy applause, Lumley dumped the offending mini-moog and the band proceeded with ‘Nightmare Patrol’. Following the eeriness of the opening passage it became apparent that the peculiar acoustics of the venue were having a far from happy effect on Collins’s drum sound, a slight natural echo was producing a very boxy flat sound — it was no wonder that on the way to Biggin Hill, after the set Phil was making far from complimentary noises about the Palace site Morris Pert’s percussion didn’t seem to be affected quite as badly and the mad Scot was whirling around in his sheepskin jacket like a yettie on speed, knocking seven shades of rhythmic bliss out of a ‘not quite everything plus the kitchen sink’ set-up. ‘Nightmare Patrol’ was followed by Percy’s ‘Malaga Virgen’ and a recent Pert composition ‘Deadly Nightshade’ closed the set. The sound hassles had spread from Phil’s drums to the p.a. and at one time according to Lumley, he could hear football results through his monitor speakers louder than he could hear the rest of the band.
Brand X quit the stage in a hurry, ignoring calls for more and in a matter of minutes we were in a minibus rushing through the second part of the plan to go wrong.
The British concert-going motorist is probably only exceeded in terms of stupidity and pigheadedness by the French counterpart (more of them later). In an attempt to leave the Crystal Palace grounds by a special exit we encounter two examples of said motorist. Number one fails to understand that his way into the concert is also somebody else’s way out and blocks the entrance for five minutes haranguing a steward who has a query with dummy’s ticket. In the meantime motorist number two has parked his car leaving the handbrake off allowing it to roll gently down a slope into the side of our bus.
No time for a murder, we got a plane to catch.
Zoom dangerously through narrow lanes. A terse Phil Collins emits a deadly vibe, seemingly more than a little pissed off at the rush job he feels the whole exercise has become. Ever affable R Lumley defuses the tense situation with his usual off the wall view (he suggested the headline for this piece). Lumley, a long-time aviation nut, knows the Biggin Hill area quite well, giving directions to our driver and pointing out landmarks/places of peculiar interest as we flash past. We pass the Metropolitan Police Dog Training School “where they teach alsations to bark ‘alio, alio, alio” says Lumley.
Organising the jaunt was obviously quite an achievement and limited rehearsal time was probably the reason for Phil’s disgruntlement. The polymorphous nature of Brand X meant that the week preceding the Crystal Palace bash had seen Phil writing songs for Genesis, Percy Jones playing bass with Big Jim Sullivan and Rob Lumley mixing the forthcoming Bill Bruford album — little time for rehearsal.
We arrive at ‘The Famous Battle Of Britain Airfield’ to discover that our continental air traffic controlling cousins are industrial actioning away across the channel, and our take-off will be delayed for an indefinite period. We retire to the airfields modest refreshment facilities for tea and scones. Tarka the Otter looks pale (is this the end?), other members of the party look bored/annoyed/amused (delete where not applicable). Phil talks of parachuting onto the stage with an inflatable drum kit. John Goodsall talks of his ‘punk’ number ‘Complete Garbage’, sample lyric: ‘Now I want to go to the toilet with you . . . .’, Percy and Morris take the air. Rob talks of interesting goings on at his home from home, Trident Studios, where one current work in progress is an album of The Bible. Mr Lumley has apparently been causing some hilarity by interrupting mixing sessions with requests to the engineers to collect certain things from Trident reception — plagues of frogs, fire and brimstone, Joshua and his horn section — that kind of thing.
Phil suggests that the band phone the gig over. Goodsall goes into his rap about straights — a parody of the superstar’s disdain for the ticket-holding punter. Rob informs of his impossibly tight schedule as ‘well-known jazz rock producer’, having recently twiddled the knobs for Jack Lancaster, aforementioned Mr Bruford, Gary Boyle, Rod Argent as well as supervising the assemblage of the forthcoming Brand X live album. Tired of being known only as jazz/rock man he asks if I’ve heard any interesting groups of the punk rock ilk that he might check out with a view to doing some recording. (New wavers take note.)
After a forty-minute bout of time killing we eventually board the waiting De Havilland Heron HS114 (see fig.a) and within minutes are soaring over the tidy little gardens of suburban Kent heading for the channel.
We are met at Le Bourget airport by Jean Claude, from Phonogram, Brand X’s label in France and are quickly en route to the festival site. Quickly, that is until we encounter the French festival going motorist in his thousands. This interesting creature has a unique disregard for the common sense practice of parking off the road. For the two or three miles of our journey to the gig we find the approach roads choked with apparently abandoned cars, the result of a massive outbreak of French free-form parking. What would normally be a five minute trip takes us almost as long as the preceding cross-channel flight.
After removing the paint from the sides of countless Renaults, Citroens and Fiats, we arrive backstage. The stage, may I say, she is magnificent. With commendable frog flair what the bands get to play under is an enormous tent supported by hydraulic arms (see fig. b) that comes on like a giant hang glider. And when you get up on the stage and look out on your 200,000 audience there’s none of that vast expanse of Wally shouting denim, they Frenchies got a fairground ain’t they, and down amongst the sprawling roundabouts and helter skelters there are forty restaurants and cafes, no Fred the burn artist two-quid burger stands, but real food.
Mind you backstage the food ain’t so hot. Minutes prior to taking the stage Brand X cop their refreshments, an imaginative Gallic version of the hot dog featuring a generous chunk of french bread containing what must be the world’s spiciest sausage, after a few bites on one of these little devils you have to put your tongue out in an ashtray. Still the beer’s alright.
The French, not suffering from the currently fashionable scorn for the music of the Brand X ilk that’s prevalent in the UK. when the band take the stage they are greeted like major league gods — 200.000 voice full-throated rapture, the big ‘alio. And, as is customary with any band worth such a greeting, Brand X repaid the audiences enthusiasm with a set about 200 per cent up on the Crystal Palace thrash.
The sun started to set. Lumley introduced the set (in French), the band began to play (it soon became evident that the sound, at least where I was in the Press/photographers/ liggers pit in front of the stage, was immaculate) and all was right with the world. The set was exactly the same structure as the one that Brand X played at Crystal Palace — ‘Disco Suicide’, ‘Nightmare Patrol”, ‘Malaga Virgen’ and ‘Deadly Nightshade’. All played this time with much more humour — particularly on the parts of Lumley and Goodsall, the latter throwing in jokey, stumbling parodies of riffs he had previously been diligently blazing and soaring his way through.
Percy, once again, danced majestic on his fretless Fender, only a little phased by a niggling electronic hum on his solo in ‘Malaga Virgen’. Morris, minus specs, jigged a fine latino rhythm figure through ‘Deadly Nightshade’, looking far from the academic that his off stage persona suggests. Only Phil seemed unhappy, afterwards complaining that he just couldn’t get into it, though you would never have known it from his playing.
At the close of their set the overrunning schedule forced the band to leave the stage promptly, again ignoring the crowd’s calls for an encore. Then it was back to the bus and a long wait while some mate of Phil’s, Peter somebody or other, who we wuz giving a lift back to England did his stuff for the Fête De L’Humanité hordes?
Rapid exit via now less congested roads, to Le Bourget, whisky and wine on the bus. More wine on the plane and eventually, wearied by this high pressure De Havilland Heron set living I sank into the sunset (well moon rise actually). The last thing I recall clearly before pegging out was seeing a harrowed looking publicist on hands and knees searching for Phil’s mate’s contact lenses and Morris and Morris and John Goodsall agreeing that “you should never trust a straight midget.”
Pity you’ll never get any of this on the live album.
