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 23/10/1990 Pop Will Eat Itself

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On this day, 23 October 1990, alternative rock band Pop Will Eat Itself played Cardiff University. On the same day the band released their third studio album Cure For Sanity.

Upon its release, the album entered the UK Albums Chart and stayed there for two weeks, peaking at number 33, and re-entered the chart when it was re-released in July 1991, staying there for one week at number 58.

Cure for Sanity is less light-hearted than prior albums, "mixing a couple of more serious efforts with a new slew of catchy, immediate singles and not-bad album cuts".The album features a dancier and more electronica based sound, eschewing the guitars of previous and future albums.

Formed in 1986 in Stourbridge in the West Midlands of England with members from Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. Initially known as a grebo act, they changed style to incorporate sample-driven indie and industrial rock.

Graham Crabb describes their sound as "electronic, punk, alternative hip-hop, hybrid music for fucking, fighting & smoking cigars". Their highest-charting single was the 1993 top-ten hit "Get the Girl! Kill the Baddies!". After initially disbanding in 1996, and having a brief reformation in 2005, they issued their first release in more than five years in 2010.

On This Day 22/10/1988 Roachford

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On this day, 22 October 1988, rock band Roachford played Cardiff University. The band, lead by vocalist Andrew Roachford had just released their debut album Roachford which peaked at #11 in the UK album charts.

Andrew Roachford was born in London, England to parents of West Indian descent. The band of the same name was formed in 1987, the line-up featuring Andrew Roachford (vocals, keyboards, percussion), Chris Taylor (drums), Hawi Gondwe (guitars) and Derrick Taylor (bass guitar).

By 1988, the band were touring, supporting acts such as Terence Trent D'Arby and the Christians. Shortly afterward, a seven-album recording contract with Columbia was signed. They went on to have a string of success throughout the 1990s, becoming Columbia's biggest-selling UK act for ten years.

On This Day 21/10/1988 The Wonder Stuff

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On this day, 21 October 1988, alternative rock band The Wonder Stuff played Cardiff University. The band had just released their debut album The Eight Legged Groove Machine .

The original line-up of Miles Hunt (whose uncle Bill Hunt was keyboard player with ELO and Wizzard) on vocals and guitar; Malcolm Treece on guitar and vocals; bassist Rob "The Bass Thing" Jones (died July 1993); and Martin Gilks (died April 2006) on drums grew from Hunt and Treece's collaboration with future members of Pop Will Eat Itself in a band called From Eden that featured Hunt on drums.

The Wonder Stuff were formed on 19 March 1986 (their name reportedly came from a remark made about a very young Hunt by John Lennon and in September that year recorded a self-financed debut EP, A Wonderful Day.

After finding management with Birmingham promoter Les Johnson and signing with Polydor Records for £80,000 in 1987, the group released a series of singles including "Unbearable", "Give Give Give, Me More More More", "A Wish Away" and "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" (their first Top 40 entry) that featured on their debut album The Eight Legged Groove Machine, which was released in August 1988 (UK No. 18). This preceded a first headlining nineteen-date national tour, 'Groovers on Manoeuvres'.

A non-album single, "Who Wants to Be the Disco King?" was released in March 1989 and was followed by UK, European, and United States tours and appearances at the Reading and Glastonbury festivals.

Melody Maker made The Eight Legged Groove Machine one of their albums of the year for 1988, judging it, "A rollicking debut from the only band with enough wit, energy, charisma and acumen to cross over from loutish grebo into raffish pop."

Setlist

Goodbye Fatman

A Wish Away

Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More

Grin

Like a Merry Go Round

No, for the 13th Time

Ruby Horse

The Animals and Me

Unbearable

(Acoustic)

It's Yer Money I'm After, Baby

Ten Trenches Deep

Poison

Red Berry Joy Town

Astley in the Noose

Unbearable

On This Day 20/10/1976 Deaf School

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On this day, 20 October 1976, art/rock band Deaf School played Cardiff University. The band had just released their debut album 2nd Honeymoon.

Formed in Liverpool, England, in January 1974, between 1976 and 1978, the year in which they split up, Deaf School recorded three albums for the Warner Brothers label.

The first album's art rock style had roots in cabaret, and later releases moved towards a harder punk rock sound. Deaf School have been recognized as an important influence on many British musicians. According to Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson: "They revived Liverpool music for a generation." The journalist, author and founder of Mojo, Paul Du Noyer, went further: "In the whole history of Liverpool music two bands matter most, one is The Beatles and the other is Deaf School."

Nearly all the group's members went on to enjoy successful careers, notably guitarist Clive Langer, who produced Madness and Dexys Midnight Runners, two non-Liverpool acts which cite Deaf School as an influence. Langer also co-wrote (with Elvis Costello) the song "Shipbuilding".

On This Day 19/10/1988 Deacon Blue

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On this day, 19 October 1988, Scottish rock band Deacon Blue played Cardiff University on their Through The Villages And Towns tour.

This predominantly Glaswegian act became one of the top-selling UK bands of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The group's members were Ricky Ross, Lorraine McIntosh, James Prime, Dougie Vipond, Ewan Vernal and Graeme Kelling.

Ross, a former school teacher originally from Dundee, was the group's frontman, penning the vast majority of Deacon Blue's songs. He married female vocalist Lorraine McIntosh in the later years of the band's career. McIntosh, born May 1964 in Glasgow joined the band in 1987 as a vocalist.

The band's first album, Raintown, produced by Jon Kelly and released in 1987, is regarded by many as the band's finest effort, spawning the singles "Dignity", "Chocolate Girl" and "Loaded". Many consider Raintown to be a concept album, since nearly all the songs contribute to the overall theme of being stuck in a dead-end life in a deprived city longing for something better. The city that the album's title refers to is Glasgow, and the memorable cover art of the album is a shot of the River Clyde's docks taken on a miserable day from Kelvingrove Park.

The second album, 1988's When The World Knows Your Name, was the band's most commercially successful, with the mega-selling singles "Real Gone Kid", "Wages Day" and "Fergus Sings The Blues". However, music critics began deriding the band at this stage for pursuing commercial success over artistic quality, citing the earlier achievements of Raintown.

Setlist

Fergus Sings the Blues

The Very Thing

Love's Great Fears

Born Again

This Changing Light

One Hundred Things

Raintown

Circus Lights

Chocolate Girl

Loaded / A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now

Real Gone Kid

Wages Day

Dignity

Long Distance Love / When Will You Make My Telephone Ring?

Ragman

Town to Be Blamed / Tinseltown in the Rain

Suffering

Not Fade Away / Ain't That Good News

On This Day 18/10/1990 The Heart Throbs

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On this day, 18 October 1990, indie rock band The Heart Throbs played Cardiff University.

Formed in 1986, initially by Rose Carlotti and Stephen Ward, both college students, who recruited Rose's sister Rachel DeFreitas and Mark Side.

Rose and Rachel are sisters of the late Echo & the Bunnymen drummer Pete DeFreitas. The band released their first single in mid-1987 on Marc Riley's In-Tape label. They were then signed by Rough Trade, for whom they released two singles, both hits on the UK Independent Chart.

After two further singles on their own label, Profumo (a reference to John Profumo), the Heart Throbs were signed by the UK label One Little Indian Records. Guitarist Alan Barclay a.k.a. Alan Borgia joined at this time, allowing original guitarist Ward to move to keyboards.

Their first album, Cleopatra Grip, was distributed in the US by Elektra Records, after which they were signed by A&M Records, who released Jubilee Twist in the US. After disappointing sales, however, A&M elected not to distribute their third and final album, Vertical Smile. The first and third albums were named after euphemisms for female genitalia, while the jubilee twist is a martial combat technique for attacking the male genitalia.

The Heart Throbs' single "Dreamtime" reached a peak position of number 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1990, and their single "She's in a Trance" reached number 21 in the same year.

Following the Cleopatra Grip tour, the rhythm section left the band, and were replaced by Noko (ex-Luxuria) on bass and Steve Monti (ex-Blockheads) on drums. By the third album, the band had switched to a third rhythm section of Colleen Browne on bass (formerly of the Parachute Men, who later joined Pale Saints) and Steve Beswick on drums.

After the Heart Throbs split up in 1993, Rose Carlotti and Steve Beswick formed the group Angora, who then changed their name to Tom Patrol before eventually disbanding.

On This Day 17/10/1975 Canned Heat

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On this day, 17 October 1975, American blues and rock band Canned Heat played Cardiff University.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1965, the group has been noted for its efforts to promote interest in blues music and its original artists. It was launched by two blues enthusiasts Alan Wilson and Bob Hite, who took the name from Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Canned Heat Blues", a song about an alcoholic who had desperately turned to drinking Sterno, generically called "canned heat".

After appearances at the Monterey and Woodstock festivals at the end of the 1960s, the band acquired worldwide fame with a lineup of Hite (vocals), Wilson (guitar, harmonica and vocals), Henry Vestine and later Harvey Mandel (lead guitar), Larry Taylor (bass), and Adolfo de la Parra (drums).

The music and attitude of Canned Heat attracted a large following and established the band as one of the popular acts of the hippie era. Canned Heat appeared at most major musical events at the end of the 1960s, performing blues standards along with their own material and occasionally indulging in lengthy "psychedelic" solos. Three of their songs—"Going Up the Country", "On the Road Again", and "Let's Work Together"—became international hits.

Since the early 1970s, following the early death of Wilson, numerous personnel changes have occurred. For much of the 1990s and 2000s and following Taylor's death in 2019, de la Parra has been the only member from the band's 1960s lineup. Walter Trout and Junior Watson are among the guitarists who played in later editions of the band.