{"id":87361,"date":"2024-07-29T21:11:52","date_gmt":"2024-07-29T19:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/?p=87361"},"modified":"2024-07-30T21:21:03","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:21:03","slug":"post-punks-the-very-things-release-first-album-in-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/2024\/07\/post-punks-the-very-things-release-first-album-in-30-years\/","title":{"rendered":"THE SECOND COMING – Dada-ist Post-Punks The Very Things Release First Album in 30 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s the mid-’80s and Channel 4’s frequently shambolic and occasionally brilliant The TUBE<\/em><\/strong> is about to air, what for this viewer, is one of its finest moments.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Glitchy, electronically created VJ Max Headroom – a spin-off from an edgy futuristic drama on the same channel – is introducing, not so much a music video, but a fully realised short film.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It stars, what to me and my spiky-bonced, pointy-shoed, charity shop-overcoated teenage school mates is, a hitherto unknown entity called The Very Things.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

An affectionate parody of shows like The Twilight Zone<\/em> and The Prisoner<\/em><\/strong>, The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes<\/em><\/strong> is hilarious, bonkers and audaciously cool in equal measure.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The music – a blend of big beat, rockabilly and b-movie sountracks, with a Vincent Price<\/strong> meets Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett vocal delivery on top – makes instant fans of us all.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Very Things would go on to deliver two LPs, a clutch of singles and Peel Sessions and then, barring reissues, nothing…..until now!<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Thirty years on from their last release, The Very Things are back with a brand new album Mr<\/em>. Arc Eye<\/em><\/strong> (Under A Cellophane Sky)<\/em>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I was lucky enough to catch up with founder member and songwriter Robin (RR) Dallaway<\/strong> to discuss the resurrection of arguably Redditch’s finest musical export.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The singer-guitarist-songwriter talks the new album, the punk rock revolution, that TUBE<\/em> shoot and the part The Fall<\/strong> potentially played in their downfall.<\/h4>\n\n\n
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BROAD SPECTRUM – Cover art for TVT’s Mr. Arc-Eye Under A Cellophane Sky<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Punk’s Year Zero<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Very Things rose of the ashes of The Cravats <\/strong>– a punk band formed by Robin and his friend The Shend <\/strong>(aka Chris Shendo<\/strong>, born Chris Harz) in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Punk was like year zero for me. It changed my life, abruptly and forever,” Robin remembers. “It was pivotal for me, life changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The single most important thing it gave to me was empowerment and self-determination. All the edifices of pop culture at the time seemed to fall, including progressive rock and its obsession with technical ability. Graphic design and art, used to sell stuff and to produce collectibles, could now be vehicles for a wider variety of voices, \u2018alternative\u2019 values and ideas. There was a kind of democratising effect. You no longer had to study music to make it. You could just do it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lightbulb moment was hearing the first punk single, The Damned<\/strong>‘s New Rose<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em><\/strong>on Radio 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I can pinpoint the time and place when my \u2018road to Damascus\u2019 event occurred, except that it was the \u2018road to Moseley\u2019 in Birmingham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Driving home to Redditch in late October ’76, I was listening to an old transistor radio in the car. It wasn\u2019t very loud, so when I heard this stunning track, crackling with energy, I had to pull over to make sure I could hear who it was by. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was the Dave Lee Travis drive-time show and he said: “‘Well, that was The Damned<\/strong> with New Rose<\/em> <\/strong>and we certainly won\u2019t be playing that again.’ I was genuinely stunned. It was the best thing I\u2019d heard for years and it wasn\u2019t going to get played again. I couldn\u2019t believe it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That weekend Robin bought the single from Virgin Records. “I played it over and over again. It was a miracle. I was a convert.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later he picked up The Buzzcocks<\/strong>‘ Spiral Scratch <\/em><\/strong>EP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I played them both to a few mates in a kind of evangelistic way and we all felt that it made everything that had gone before sound irrelevant.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thngs solidified a few months later when Robin and a few mates went to see The Stranglers <\/strong>at Barbarella<\/strong>\u2019s night club in Birmingham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A remarkable night,” he recalls. “I wanted to be Hugh Cornwell<\/strong>. I think Shend wanted to be Jean-Jacques Burnel<\/strong>. So on the way home, we decided to be a band. We started meeting on Saturday afternoons to drink and make a noise and it didn\u2019t take long before we were attempting to play gigs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our first gig was at our school\u2019s Summer Concert, which was madness. The main concert finished and the headmaster suggested that parents who didn\u2019t want to hear \u2018pop music\u2019 might wish to leave. Outside, loads of kids from the town had heard about it and turned up, hoping to get in. The PA we borrowed from a DJ friend of a friend turned up almost at the last minute. It was chaos. We only had four songs, but at least they were loud!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many acts from punk’s first wave The Cravats were not always welcomed with open arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Early on, gigs were like going to war. There was a lot of violence in the air, local backlashes against punk,” says Robin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“An example that sticks in my mind was a gig we played in Taunton, Somerset, in a pub full of bikers who didn\u2019t like these punk upstarts. One of them tripped up Shend\u2019s girlfriend while she was dancing, so he abandoned the bass, stepped off the stage, punched this bloke, then stepped back up to resume bass playing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fearing things could descend into a “wild west saloon brawl” Robin was relieved to get through the rest of a highly charged gig unscathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Then a shower of bricks and bottles hit the van as we drove away.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While not as vital as emerging punk movements in London and Manchester, the Midlands punk scene coalesced around The Fighting Cocks <\/strong>pub in Moseley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Some of our best gigs were there,” Robin explains. “There didn\u2019t seem to be much of an early punk scene in Birmingham. The Killjoys<\/strong> (Kevin Rowland<\/strong>\u2019s band prior to Dexy\u2019s) was around. We played Rebecca\u2019s<\/strong> in Brum and Tracy\u2019s<\/strong> in Redditch a couple of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Rebecca\u2019s was weird. We didn\u2019t know what was going on. We played to an empty room, other than half a dozen scary looking older guys in a booth. It turned out that they were some local gangster types with aspirations in music management and had set it up with a view to auditioning us to work for them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TIES THAT BIND – The Cravats circa 1982 from the Rub Me Out<\/strong><\/em> photo session – L to R: Svor Naan, The Shend, RR Dallaway, Dave Bennett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Music With Genuine A-Peel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As The Cravats began to develop their sound, they took the opportunity to, quite literally, get their music into the hands of John Peel<\/strong>, who would go on to be an enthusiastic supporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We went to see him at a gig in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was DJ-ing and gave him a copy of our self-produced Cravats’ single, Gordon<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Shend wrote to him a little while after, to apologise for bothering him and said something like: \u2018Sorry if we came across as goats\u2019.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To their suprise and considerable delight, Peel took to the band and played their single on his show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was an absolutely amazing feeling. Hearing the single we\u2019d made on Radio 1!,” Robin remembers. “As a result of that, Pete Stennett<\/strong> signed us to the legendary Small Wonder<\/strong> label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Peel was amazing, I couldn\u2019t quite believe that this bloke who helped launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix<\/strong>, T-Rex<\/strong> and Roxy Music<\/strong> among countless others, had taken a shine to us. At his invitation, Shend and I visited him at home. He was kind and generous with a brilliant ear and a profound love of music.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cravats would go on to make two albums and record four Peel Sessions, before dissolving in 1982, when Robin and Shend went on to form The Very Things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The duo had become frustrated by the strictures of punk and were looking to expand their musical horizons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Shend and I decided that we actually wanted a bit more freedom to draw on different styles and personnel as the project demanded, so we devised The Very Things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I had the idea of it being like an arty version of \u2018The Monkees\u2019 (well before Gorillaz<\/strong>). But it didn\u2019t progress in quite the way we had intended,” he admits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robin played drums on the band’s first single The Gong Man \/ The Colours Are Speaking To Me<\/em><\/strong>, but with an album to record and Peel Sessions pending – they went looking for a drummer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We pinched Disney Time<\/strong> (Robin Holland<\/strong>) from a mod\/’60s sounding band, when he was 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He clearly had some ’60s influences already and his own (since described by others as a \u2018back-to-front\u2019) style of drumming, but we threw lots of The Who<\/strong> and Tamla Motown<\/strong> at him and said that a synthesis of those was what we were aiming for.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his youth, the new sticks man was a success and he quickly became a fixture with Shend taking lead vocals and Robin concentrating on guitar and keyboards.<\/p>\n\n\n

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SHEAR GENIUS – TVT Mark 1 in 1984 on The Bushes Scream<\/em> While My Daddy Prunes <\/em> shoot. Robin (centre) with Disney Time (left) and The Shend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Taking inspiration from the absurdism of the Dada<\/strong> avant garde movement, The Very Things were very much at the arty end of the New Wave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We very much saw ourselves as part of the broad church of Post-punk \u2013 along with Pere Ubu<\/strong>, B52s<\/strong>, Devo<\/strong>, The Cramps<\/strong>, The Birthday Party <\/strong>etc,” Robin remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We were our own thing, apart from the fashion movements at the time. Nevertheless, we did have a very strong Goth and Psychobilly following, which we really appreciated.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debut album’s title track and single would receive a major boost when The TUBE came calling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the show’s producers, fellow Midlander Chris Phipps<\/strong>, got in touch after becoming inspited by hearing The Bushes Scream While my Daddy Prunes <\/em>while driving across the Yorkshire Moors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phipps enlisted director Gavin Taylor<\/strong>, who’d go on to helm major concert films like U2 At Red Rocks<\/em><\/strong> and Queen At Wembley<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film was to be shot on 16mm and, with all the arrangements in place, the band boarded Shend’s battered Ford Consul and headed up to Northumberland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Those few days felt like the strangest Alice in Wonderland<\/em> type dream,” Robin remembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the shoot features the band “larking about at Hulne Priory in Alnwick”, but the opening sequence made the band feel like genuine film stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The sections with Shend and I in a Ford Prefect van were filmed in a ’30s suburban street in Newcastle, which had been closed to the public. Like a proper film set!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Billy Benson<\/strong>, an appropriately strange man, played the doomed father character. He\u2019d turned up to the audition with a plastic bag full of jam sandwiches and proceeded to eat them during the actual shoot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We had such a great laugh. It was brilliant fun. Just a wonderful few days.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The TUBE team came up with the script, but were open to the band throwing in their own ideas and “the cherry on the cake” for Robin was being asked to script the intro by Max Headroom – played by Matt Frewer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that everything went quite to plan, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I remember getting to the last shots of the day at Hulne and the camera man saying that he only had enough film stock for just one take of the final shot,” Robin says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It\u2019s the last bit of the performance where Shend is walking backwards away from the camera and he trips on the cape he\u2019s wearing. He disguises it brilliantly, but at the time we wanted to do it again. I don\u2019t think anyone else would even spot it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At the time it was the most expensive film The TUBE had ever made. God knows why they chose us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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