Cult Bands - The Violet Hour

The history of rock, it seems, is littered with so-called ‘cult’ albums. In order to qualify for cult status, an album needs to have been made by a little known band which forms, creates and then disbands in a flash after which the album is promptly deleted from the catalogue. This then allows a sort of underground swell of fandom to carry the word so that rare copies are treated like gold dust thereafter.


On this basis, an album that qualifies for cult status is ‘The Fire Sermon’ by Leeds-based band, The Violet Hour, released in 1991 and smartly withdrawn in 1992, soon after their break-up. The Violet Hour began life in 1988 when keyboardist Markus Waite met guitarist Martyn Wilson. Andrew Fox then joined on bass and Sean Holborn became the eventual drummer. But they needed a singer and one soon arrived in the form of Leeds University student, Doris Brendel and thus The Violet Hour was born.

Fast forward to 2010 and my link is formed when an email from Doris arrives in my inbox. It turns out that she is acquainted with my muso brother, Dave who has pointed her in my direction on the basis that I might like her music. To cut to the chase, she has sent me a copy of ‘The Fire Sermon’, which was finally re-released by Sky-Rocket records in September last year, and I am beginning to understand what cults are all about because this is one beautiful album.

Back in 1991, its sound was compared to that of contemporaries, All About Eve and there is definitely a degree of similarity but whereas AAE was Julianne Regan’s velvet claw in the iron glove of a macho band, The Violet Hour is almost the reverse – a sort of iron claw in a velvet glove. Doris’s vocals are much earthier and bluesier than Julianne’s and give an emotional centre around which the band’s complex arrangements swirl and glide. If anything, I would say that this album was released 20 years too late. It belongs to the era of blues and classically influenced progressive rock where bands like Jefferson Airplane, Caravan and early Renaissance stalked the earth. There are reminders of early Genesis in the use of flute and piano as well as injections of Celtic folk via violin and pipes. More importantly, it belongs to an era when bands comprised real musicians who wrote melodic, yet challenging music and then arranged and played it with genuine competence.

It is easy to see why the Velvet Hour was compared with their forebears from the 60s and 70s but they were also a band of their own time. In the late 80s and early 90s the music world was split between Grunge and Pop, yet there was a third genre underlying the main battle and it was the so-called ‘shoegazers’. My own favourites, Lush, were amongst their number which also included The Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and Ride. These bands were the aural architects, the dream-poppers and The Violet Hour has real overtones of this type of music. Personally, I liked this period in musical history and that is probably why I like this album, but then I Iike music that is well written and performed with soul – who doesn’t?

If you’d like to know more about The Velvet Hour and Doris Brendel, visit her site at http://www.dorisbrendel.com/ where you can hear excerpts of this album and all her solo work to date. Well worth a visit.  She also has a page at www.myspace.com/dbdriving where you can find more details about her solo stuff and up-coming album, 'The Last Adventure'.


Also, don’t forget that my brother’s band, The Yarmouth Honeys, are still operational and you can learn about them and hear tracks at Dave Warminger’s MySpace site.

Oh yeah, and if you'd like to read more about my views on music don't forget my book, 'Memoirs of a Music Obsessive'.

Enjoy The Silence

What makes a song one which everyone and his dog wants to cover? Why are some songs covered to death and others not? Presumably the quality of the song writer has something to do with it so that the covering artist can attempt some form of vicarious notoriety otherwise nobody would put out Beatles’ covers. I dare say that a universally successful song generates its own inertia and thus virtually puts itself up for adoption but these are not always the right choice. Comparisons with the original version can send most covers to the ‘seemed like a good idea’ graveyard unless it’s right on the money.


But there are other songs that generate a life of their own and artists fall over themselves to do a cover. One such song is ‘Enjoy The Silence’ written by Martin Gore and performed originally by Depeche Mode on their masterpiece ‘Violator’. It is one of those songs that people who like Depeche Mode know about as it was a reasonable hit, but is not a generally recognised song in the same league as ‘Yesterday’. However, it has a certain cache amongst artists in the industry and is more of a musicians’ favourite rather than a public choice.

The general consensus amongst those who comment on YouTube is that the best version is by Italian goth-rockers, Lacuna Coil and I would go along with this to a large degree. The style of the song lends itself to their rather noir performance and the interaction of male and female vocals works very well. But, it is pretty much a re-run of the original that has been put together well with great vocals.

Others who have attempted ‘Silence’ include Kim Wilde (as part of her live set only) and Keane and each has its merits but they are, again, largely recreations of the Depeche Mode style but with different instruments. In my book a good cover is one that makes you think about a song in a different way.

So I’m going to champion a version created by that ace song re-interpreter Tori Amos. Amos excels at this sort of thing as anyone who has her covers album ‘Strange Little Girls’ will know. By carefully re-phrasing the vocal lines and subtly changing the musical harmony, she has moved this song into a different sphere. It has real passion and strangeness about it that even the original version lacks. Check out the video and see if you agree.

The Avengers

It seems to me that the older a photograph becomes, the more it is the background that interests rather than the subject. I have an album of old photos of me as a child and it is the settings and the objects lurking in the background that are so fascinating. Room interiors of houses long forgotten and gardens with small trees and vegetable patches (unheard of these days) tug the memory banks like nothing on earth. Common place things like wallpaper and furniture, long since thrown away toys and once living pets suddenly take on monumental importance.


And so it seems to be with old TV programmes as well. Watching some old clips of Dusty Springfield, you can’t help noticing the weird and wonderful sets she was given to sing amongst. There are what look like stacks of toilet roll tubes, giant spotty boxes and all manner of strange pieces of furniture but nothing can beat the set where she is singing ‘I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten’. This one comprises a mesmerising geometric floor pattern interspersed with towering Grandfather Clocks all stopped at Ten o’Clock (Geddit?).

The whole effect reminded me strongly of the sort of sets used in the 1960s spy spoof series, ‘The Avengers’. I am a huge fan of the original Avengers series from the early Cathy Gale days right up to the Linda Thorsen exploits but, of course, nothing beats the two seasons which starred Diana Rigg as the incomparable Emma Peel, especially season 4 produced in black and white in 1965. There is something about this monochrome season that emphasises the tongue-in-cheek, yet slightly dark eccentricity of it all which didn’t quite recover when the following season 5 was made in colour for the first time.

It goes without saying that the plots are ridiculous, the characters bizarre and the list of guest stars reads like a catalogue of British character actors from that era, John Le Mesurier, Terence Alexander, Gordon Jackson, Patrick Cargill, Patrick Mower, John Barron, Nigel Davenport, Patrick Wyngarde, Liz Fraser, Bernard Cribbins, Peter Bowles, Warren Mitchell, Geoffrey Palmer, Penelope Keith, Bill Fraser…the list goes on and virtually every episode has a familiar (and very fresh) face.

The trick to a conceit such as The Avengers is to never let it touch reality. Steed and Mrs Peel live in a parallel world populated entirely by potty scientists, ex-army majors, power-mad politicians and upper class twits who live in landed estates and isolated villages or who work in futuristic office blocks. You never see a policeman, a normal member of the public or a terrace house at any time. None of your kitchen sink grittiness here - but for sheer escapism, it has never really been bettered.

A Mind of Their Own

What makes a genuine artist? What is it that makes me feel that someone is worth following? I think at least part of the answer lies in the following examples.

Example 1 – The recent BRIT award ceremony contained several live performances by artists either nominated for, or winners of, some gong or other. Amongst the chosen ones this year was Cheryl Cole, TV personality, member of Girls Aloud, WAG and now solo artist. She presented us with a highly choreographed routine backed by a pre-recorded tape over which she attempted to lip-synch. Admittedly this was a TV performance, not a live gig but you get the feeling that the two would not differ significantly.

Example 2 – In the late 1960s, ‘Shout’ merchant and diminutive singer, Lulu, was given her own prime time TV show. In a show that was broadcast in 1969 her guest was a certain Jimi Hendrix with his Experience. The Jimi Hendrix Experience played live in the studio and caused the TV producer to have the proverbial kittens by stopping the scheduled run-through of ‘Hey Joe’ in mid-flow and starting up an improvised version of The Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ which then over-ran its allotted time slot.

I’m very much afraid that in this day and age, the ‘show’ is very much the be-all and end-all of music and that means cutting out all the things that do not fit a highly regulated, physically demanding performance, like…ooh…real singing and improvisation. Those lucky artists that have been chosen by their backers to be heavily promoted are completely in the palms of their paymasters and have no real say in the matter.

Or do they? Example 2 shows what can happen when the artist takes control. Admittedly, Jimi’s act of mischievous defiance took place over 40 years ago when the control of artists was much looser than today, but it can happen. In the same BRIT ceremony as example 1, Lady Gaga ditched her originally planned ‘hits’ act at the last minute and instead, played a low key, one-woman performance of two lesser known songs, one of which was completely reworked for piano and voice. The audience was a bit stunned to say the least. But it was unexpected and fascinating. Unlike Cheryl Cole.

And I think this is what draws me to certain acts. It is the ones that say, ‘This is what I do. If you like it, fine. If not, tough!’ There is nothing worse than an artist that panders to their audience. Actually there is; it is an artist that panders to their audience because their management tells them to.

Pink Floyd: The Dinosaur That Lived

Sometimes you can just never tell how people will react. People whom you have known for yonks turn out to have the most unexpected responses in certain situations. Personality surprises can often be shocking.

Take my sister, for example. I’ve known her for, well, all her life and musically, we couldn’t be more different. I still haven’t recovered from being forced to listen to all her vast collection of interminable 12-inch disco singles from the 1970s blaring through the wall into my bedroom when we all lived at home. My sister was a clubber and a dancer, whereas I was a stay-at-home-with-the-lava-lamp type of listener. And never the twain.

So you will probably be as amazed as me when you learn that her all time favourite album is not ‘Saturday Night Fever’ nor anything by Chic or KC and the Sunshine Band…but ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Just what is it about this album that seems to cross all known boundaries? You can’t dance to it (well, not until the Scissor Sisters get hold of it), yet my sister loves it. In fact, when you come to think about it, Pink Floyd is a mass of contradictions. Underground, yet mainstream. Experimental yet accessible. Dinosaur, yet loved. Let’s face it; anyone who can make a hit album out of something like ‘Umma Gumma’ deserves some respect but then bands were indulged and encouraged to develop once upon a time.

I watched some of the ‘Live at Pompeii’ extracts on YouTube the other day and hearing the live versions of ‘Echoes’ and ‘Saucerful of Secrets’ offers a few hints to the answer and it is quite simply this: they are (or were) a damnned good band. They managed to do exactly all those things I mentioned above. They were weird yet wonderful, edgy yet musical and above all, talented and committed. I think the real reason DSOTM succeeds is that it is genuinely tuneful whilst being a bit quirky and it deals with timeless themes of the human condition, which affect us all whether you’re a wallflower or exhibitionist.

Not all art appeals to everyone yet Pink Floyd seemed to have managed it with DSOTM whilst thinking they were being wilfully experimental. This must be true otherwise there’s no way that my sister would have it as her number one, it would be ‘Spirits Having Flown’ by the Bee Gees and then where would we be?

Lesley Duncan, Singer Songwriter (1943 - 2010)

The musical dynamic that exists between Britain and the USA is one that has propelled music throughout the last 50 years but never more so than in the early years when rock/pop was a blank sheet stretching away to the horizon.

First there was the initial blast from the States in the 1950s to be answered by the British Beat Boom of the 1960s and so on back and forth throughout the 70s and 80s, a rivalry which has seen the emergence of some of the best music this century. But whereas the Brits had the upper hand in the 1960s when it came to floppy haired beat combos, they sadly lacked in the field of singer-songwriters and especially female singer-songwriters.

In the early 60s when A&R was God, performers and writers were kept firmly at a distance from one another but by the end of the decade, the writer inmates of the Brill Building had formed an escape committee and had tunnelled their way from under the piano to freedom. Thus we had a whole host of new performers who actually wrote their own stuff and on the distaff side the USA led with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Laura Nyro, Joan Baez and many others. Here in the UK we had…er…well, no one really.

On this side of the pond, the 60s was a hard time for women in rock. Whilst we had some great performers – Dusty Springfield leading the way, and one or two that wrote a bit but generally performed within a band context like the mercurial Sandy Denny, there were no true singer-songwriters who wrote and performed solo. Whilst there were a few false starts (Lyndsey De Paul, anyone?) it would not be until a teenaged Kate Bush crashed onto the scene in the late 1970s that Britain had a truly talented female SS in its ranks. Or did it?

Back in the early 70s there was a candidate that may lay claim to being the first British female SS and her name was Lesley Duncan. By the seventies, Lesley was not exactly a newcomer as she had spent much of the sixties in a backing singers' co-operative with fellow would-be pop stars Madeline Bell, Kiki Dee and even Dusty herself, singing on each other’s albums. But by 1971 she had written, recorded and released her debut album, entitled ‘Sing Children Sing’. It contained one true hit, ‘Love Song’, covered by Elton John on his ‘Tumbleweed Connection’ effort but her nervousness over live performance rather stymied any commercial success that was her due and her star never rose despite further LPs in the mid seventies. It seems she preferred the anonymity of session work and can be found in the chorus of many well-known albums including ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.

As far as I know, her first two CBS (and best albums) were not released on CD until the early 2000s and even now you’d be lucky to find copies of them and that’s a shame. It seems pioneers never benefit.  Worse, the shocking news has just reached me that Lesley died on 12th March, aged just 66.  As a tribute, here's a video of Lesley singing 'Earth Mother', the title track from her second LP and below that, a glimpse of the 'Backing Singers Co-operative' in action supporting Dusty Springfield at the NME Pollwinners concert in 1966.  From L-R Madeline Bell, Lesley Duncan and Kiki Dee.

Rest in peace, Lesley.





And if you'd like to read more about my views on music, don't forget my book, 'Memoirs of a Music Obsessive'.