On This Day 24/10/1978 Dr Feelgood

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On this day, 24 October 1978, rock band Dr Feelgood played Cardiff Top Rank with support provided by Squeeze.

The band were formed on Canvey Island in 1971 by Johnson, Brilleaux and Sparks, who had all been members of existing R&B bands, and soon added drummer John Martin.

They took their name from a 1962 record by the American blues pianist and singer Willie Perryman (also known as "Piano Red") called "Dr. Feel-Good", which Perryman recorded under the name of Dr. Feelgood & the Interns.

The song was covered by several British beat groups in the 1960s, including Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. The term is also a slang term for heroin or for a physician who is willing to over-prescribe drugs.

Dr Feelgood are best known for early singles such as "She Does It Right", "Roxette", "Back in the Night" and "Milk and Alcohol", Feelgood’s Guitarist Wilko Johnson left the group because of conflicts with Lee Brilleaux the previous year. He was replaced by John 'Gypie' Mayo.

With Mayo, the band was never as popular as with Johnson but still enjoyed their only Top Ten hit single in 1979, with "Milk and Alcohol".

Squeeze had just released their first EP and their self-titled debut album (March 1978) the album was the source of two singles ("Take Me I'm Yours" and "Bang Bang") produced by the band themselves.

On This Day 11/10/1977 Mink DeVille

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On this day, 11 October 1977, American rock band Mink DeVille played Cardiff’s Top Rank as support to Dr Feelgood. The band just had a UK hit with Spanish Stroll taken from their debut album Cabretta.

Mink DeVille was formed in 1974 when singer Willy DeVille (then called Billy Borsay) met drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen Jr. and bassist Rubén Sigüenza in San Francisco. Said DeVille, "I met Manfred at a party; he'd been playing with John Lee Hooker and a lot of blues people around San Francisco. ... I met Rubén at a basement jam in San Francisco, and he liked everything I liked from The Drifters to, uh, Fritz Lang."

Willy DeVille occasionally sat in with the band Lazy Ace, which included Allen on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen, Colbert, Rubén Sigüenza, and guitarist Robert McKenzie (a.k.a. Fast Floyd, later of Fast Floyd and the Famous Firebirds) formed a band called Billy de Sade and the Marquis.

In 1975, the band changed its name to Mink DeVille; lead singer Billy Borsay took the name Willy DeVille. Said DeVille, "We were sitting around talking of names, and some of them were really rude, and I was saying, guys we can't do that. Then one of the guys said how about Mink DeVille? There can't be anything cooler than a fur-lined Cadillac can there?" DeVille also remarked about the name, "What could be more pimp than a mink Cadillac? In an impressionistic sort of way."

From 1975 to 1977, Mink DeVille was one of the original house bands at CBGB, the New York City nightclub where punk rock music was born in the mid-1970s. "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on.

On This Day 10/10/1979 Penetration

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On this day, 10 October 1979, punk band Penetration played Cardiff’s Top Rank.

Formed in Ferryhill as The Points, under which name they played their first gig, at the Rock Garden pub in Middlesbrough in October 1976, they changed the band's name after a 1973 song by Iggy & The Stooges. Their second gig was supporting The Stranglers at Newcastle City Hall.

Significantly, the band also played at the club The Roxy during its first 100 days. On 9 April 1977, the band appeared on the same bill as Generation X. They were also supported by Joy Division (then named "Warsaw") in May 1977, who were performing their very first gig.Early in their career, the band also supported The Vibrators and toured with Buzzcocks.

After the release of their second single, Penetration recorded the first of two sessions for John Peel at BBC Radio 1 in July 1978. Later that year, the band released their debut album. Moving Targets was number 6 in the Sounds Critics' albums of the year; and it made number 13 in the NME critics' chart.

In 1979, they toured Europe, the US and Britain but the grueling schedule began to take its toll. A disappointing reaction to Coming Up For Air, the second album, was the final nail in the coffin of the original band. After the band split in October an official bootleg album called Race Against Time was released, which was a collection of early demos and live tracks.

On This Day 05/10/1980 Joe Jackson

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On this day, 5 October 1980, singer/songwriter Joe Jackson played Cardiff’s Top Rank on the opening date of his Beat Crazy tour.

Beat Crazy was Joe Jackson’s third studio album released on the 10th October . It was a relative disappointment commercially, peaking outside the Top 40 in both the UK and the United States, with its singles failing to chart.

Nevertheless, the Joe Jackson Band was successful and toured extensively. This would be the last studio album released by the Joe Jackson Band's original line-up until 2003's Volume 4.

Beat Crazy was intended to be a stylistic departure from Jackson's first two albums. However, as he recalled, the band lacked a clear direction during the recording. Jackson later stated that he felt the record "didn't really work". He explained,

“The stereotypical difficult third album, in which we tried to change the formula a bit without quite knowing how. It's darker than the first two and the reggae influence is more pronounced. There's some good stuff on it (I especially like the title track and 'Biology') but it’s not quite the triumphant swan song of this band.”

Line-up:

Joe Jackson (voc, p, organ)

Graham Maby (b, voc)

Gary Sanford (g, voc)

Dave Houghton (dr, voc)

Setlist

One To One

I'm The Man

Biology

Beat Crazy

Look Sharp!

Mad At You

Pretty Boys

On Your Radio

The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff cover)

Friday

Fit

Is She Really Going Out With Him?

Don't Wanna Be Like That

Got The Time

One More Time

It's Different For Girls

On This Day 21/09/1983 Level 42

On this day, 21 September 1983, jazz funk band Level 42 played Cardiff’s Top Rank. The band had just released their fourth studio album Standing in the Light.

The album peaked at No. 9, being the group's first top 10 showing in the UK Pop Albums Chart. Standing in the Light has also been certified Gold in the UK by the British Phonographic Industry.

Standing in the Light was produced by Larry Dunn and Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire. On the final track "The Machine Stops", the lyrics are inspired by E. M. Forster's 1909 science fiction story of the same name.

The first single, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", peaked at No. 41 on the UK Singles charts. The second single, "The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)", gave the group its first top-ten hit in the United Kingdom. The third single, "Micro-Kid", peaked at No. 37 on the UK Singles Chart.

After they were seen jamming together, Level 42 were invited to sign to Elite Records (a small independent label) in 1980. They were also encouraged to branch out into vocal music. Having considered recruiting a singer, the band eventually settled on giving King and Lindup the vocal role. The two men developed a complementary style, with Lindup's falsetto frequently used for harmonies and choruses while King's deep tenor led the verses (although Lindup would also sing entire songs on his own). Lyrics were generally written by the Gould brothers while King, Wally Badarou and Lindup concentrated on Level 42's music.

The Elite Records single "Love Meeting Love" brought the band to the attention of Polydor Records, with whom they signed their second recording contract. In 1981, they released their first Polydor single, "Love Games", which became a Top 40 hit. They then cut their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, which was an immediate success throughout Europe.

On This Day 17/09/1978 The Stranglers

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On this day, 17 September 1978, punk/rock band The Stranglers played Cardiff’s Top Rank. The support band that evening were The Skids.

Formed as the Guildford Stranglers in Guildford, Surrey, in early 1974, they originally built a following within the mid-1970s pub rock scene. While their aggressive, no-compromise attitude had them identified by the media with the emerging UK punk rock scene that followed, their idiosyncratic approach rarely followed any single musical genre, and the group went on to explore a variety of musical styles, from new wave, art rock and gothic rock through the sophisti-pop of some of their 1980s output.

The band had recently released their third studio album Black and White. As with the Stranglers' first two albums, Black and White was produced by Martin Rushent. The album sees the Stranglers adopting a more experimental approach to song structures and time signatures (for example, "Curfew" features 7/4 time).

The band recorded a version of "Sweden" sung in Swedish, called "Sverige", and released it in Sweden. The song was partly inspired by Cornwell's PhD placement at Lund University in the early-1970s. In an anecdote related in the Swedish online magazine Blaskan, it is stated that the song was inspired by a disastrous visit to Sweden during a European tour, when a gig was violently interrupted by a gang of "raggare" (greasers).[4]

The song title "Death and Night and Blood" is taken from a line from Yukio Mishima's novel Confessions of a Mask.

The song "In the Shadows" had previously been released as the B-side to the band's 1977 single "No More Heroes".

On This Day 01/09/1978 The Pop Group

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On this day, 1 September 1978, rock band The Pop Group played Cardiff Top Rank supporting American singer Patti Smith.

The Pop Group was formed in 1977 in Bristol when teenager Mark Stewart set out to start a funk group with schoolmates John Waddington and Simon Underwood.

Inspired by the energy of punk rock but feeling the style to be too conservative, the group drew influence from the avant-garde, black music styles such as free jazz and dub, and radical political traditions.

Guitarist Gareth Sager and drummer Bruce Smith were eventually added to the group. Soon after forming, they began to gain notoriety for their live performances and were signed to Radar Records. They appeared on the cover of the NME.

The band donated the proceeds from their first high-profile tour to Amnesty International. They issued their debut single "She Is Beyond Good and Evil" in March 1979 and their debut album Y in April of that year, both to acclaim. Regardless, their moderate success was sufficient to convince Rough Trade to sign the band. During this period, Dan Catsis replaced Underwood on bass.

The band's career with Rough Trade began with the release of the single "We Are All Prostitutes." This was followed by the release of their second album For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? (1980). Shortly afterwards the Pop Group released a split single, "Where There's a Will...", with the Slits, a band with whom they shared a drummer (Bruce Smith) and manager Dick O'Dell.

The band's last live performance was in 1980 to a crowd of 500,000 people at Trafalgar Square as part of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protest. They split in 1981 after legal wranglings and internal disagreements.

Members of the group collaborated and joined bands such as Pigbag, Maximum Joy, Head, the Slits and Rip Rig + Panic, the latter notable for the involvement of Neneh Cherry. Stewart subsequently embarked on a solo career and went on to collaborate with Adrian Sherwood and On-U Sound, prior to a series of albums on Mute Records.

On This Day 14/08/1970 The Kinks

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On this day, 14 Aug 1970, legendary pop band The Kinks played Cardiff’s Top Rank.

The band had released their seventh studio album in October 1969 Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) and were currently recording what would be Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One.

The album featured their hit Lola, released in June, a number 1 hit worldwide but peaking at number 2 in the UK charts. It proved to be a very important song for the band as in a 1970 interview, Dave Davies stated that, if "Lola" had been a failure, the band would have "gone on making records for another year or so and then drifted apart"

Written in April 1970, "Lola" was cited by Ray Davies as the first song he wrote following a break he took to act in the 1970 Play for Today film The Long Distance Piano Player. Davies said that he had initially struggled with writing an opening that would sell the song, but the rest of the song "came naturally". He noted that he knew the song would be successful when he heard his one-year-old daughter singing the chorus, stating, "She was crawling around singing 'la la, la la Lola.' I thought, 'If she can join in and sing, Kinks fans can do it.'"

Originally, "Lola" saw controversy for its lyrics. In a Record Mirror article entitled "Sex Change Record: Kink Speaks", Ray Davies addressed the matter, saying, "It really doesn't matter what sex Lola is, I think she's all right". Some radio stations faded the track out before implications of Lola's biological sex were revealed.

On 18 November 1970, "Lola" was banned from being played by several radio stations in Australia because of its "controversial subject matter", though some began playing "Lola" again after having made a crude edit, which sounded like the record had jumped a groove, to remove the line "I'm glad I'm a man and so's Lola".

The BBC banned the track for a different reason: the original stereo recording had the words "Coca-Cola" in the lyrics, but because of BBC Radio's policy against product placement, Ray Davies was forced to make a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) round-trip flight from New York to London and back on June 3, 1970, interrupting the band's American tour, to change those words to the generic "cherry cola" for the single release, which is included on various compilation albums as well.