Monday Long Song

The 'Live at the Marquee EP' by Eddie and the Hot Rods marked a fundamental turning point in my listening habits back in 1976. You could quite legitimately call it my gateway record to Punk and beyond. "...yes, your Patrick Moraz LPs started gathering dust about then..." noted a friend this week, with an uncanny level of accuracy. To dismiss Eddie and the Hot Rods as mere Pub Rockers is to do the band a massive disservice. While each of their three Island albums and attendant singles do indeed contain their fair share of splendidly flat out, four to the floor r&b bangers, dig a little deeper and you'll unearth a handful of off-kilter, envelope-pushing oddities, the like of which you'd struggle to find on any Dr Feelgood LP (and that isn't a criticism). Check out 'Distortion May Be Expected', 'We Sing...The Cross', 'On the Run' or 'Horror Through Straightness' if you don't believe me.

Last week we bade farewell to Barrie Masters, singer and sole ever-present member of Eddie and the Hot Rods, at the criminally young age of 63. I had an intense relationship with the band for a three or four year period at the end of the 1970s, yet only saw them in concert once. This was the stand-out tune that night.

Eddie and the Hot Rods - Beginning of the End

55 From 55 - 1976

55 songs in 55 days - one for every year of my life...so far. 

I mentioned in the last post that at the time of our move to Ipswich in 1975, Dad had no job to go to and I had to get stuck in at my new school pretty quickly to stand a chance of having any success in my forthcoming O-Level exams. In the event Dad was quickly taken on by Debenhams as their new warehouse manager, while in 1976 I unfortunately flunked most of my O-Levels, eventually staying on for an extra year in an attempt to salvage something from the wreckage of my education.

 An ill-advised early attempt at a moustache. 1976

In London, Punk was starting to happen. Meanwhile, in Ipswich I was busy catching every band that came to town, regardless of musical genre. So while the Pistols & co were causing chaos in the capitol, I was grooving to Brand X and Isotope, headbanging to Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Uriah Heep and Widowmaker, stroking my chin to Barclay James Harvest and Fruupp and tapping my foot politely to Andy Fairweather-Low and Kiki Dee.

 Concert ephemera from the period. (Click to enlarge)

The changing musical times were making their mark on my record buying habits though. The fantastic 'Live at the Marquee' EP by Eddie and the Hot Rods, for instance, was rarely far from my turntable in the Summer of '76. Today you get two tunes for the price of one.