Like most music fans I fantasise about what 8 records I would choose if the BBC invited me onto R4 Desert Island Discs
Realistically that is never going to happen. So I have written it anyway. At the risk of sounding a bit Nick Hornby it is liable to change on a weekly basis.
1. Lola, The Kinks
This was the first song I can remember listening out for on the radio. I was around 12 and I thought it was weird the way Ray Davies sang “Cherry Cola” – only much later would I discover that the BBC had made him re-record this line. The rest of the lyrics added considerably to my teenage confusion about everything.
2. Virginia Plain, Roxy Music
The second band I ever saw live (the first was the rather less credible Uriah Heap). A gang of us saw their first UK tour in 1972 at Guildford Civic Hall just as Virginia Plain was entering the charts. Somehow we ended up backstage after the gig and were massively impressed by the champagne and glamorous girlfriends.
3. Couldn’t I Just Tell You?, Todd Rundgren
The soundtrack to a lot of teenage and early 20’s angst (see also the first two Big Star LPs). For some reason Todd Rundgren was massive in the suburbs of South West London during these pre-punk days: his Everybody’s Going To Heaven is an all-to-accurate description of our then lifestyle. I even tried to mimic the multi-coloured hair he sported on the cover of Todd (1974) with purloined gold and silver brush-in hairdye.
4. Lovers Of Today, The Only Ones
Punk cut through the London music scene like a knife through butter and I was a convert, having seen the Pistols in 1975. It was a time for great singles, but albums – not so much. Exceptions were the Heartbreakers and The Only Ones. In my 20 years of writing for Bucketfull of Brains magazine the band I liked the most were the Only Ones, and their guitarist John Perry remains a friend to this day.
5. Start Me Up, Rolling Stones
I have not missed a Stones tour since Knebworth 1976 – a gig it took me a week to get home from. Most recently I saw the band in Paris on the No Filter tour and they can still cut it. This is my wife’s favourite song and we paid daft money to be down the front at Wembley Arena in 2003. We were so close we could have counted Keith Richards wrinkles (he calls them laughter lines, but as George Melly pointed out, nothing is that funny)
6. Sunrise, The Who
Really a Pete Townshend solo track from The Who Sell Out and a key song from the cassette I made to accompany our wedding breakfast. Breathtakingly beautiful.
7. Left Of The Dial, The Replacements
With my collection of 7” vinyl singles approaching 1,750 I decided to start working as a DJ. My highest-profile gig to date has been the brace of Replacements gigs at the London Roundhouse in June 2015 where I met Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson and was able to thank them for all the fine music they have given us since 1981 . Left Of the Dial is not just a great song and a brilliant performance: it also functions as a call-to-arms for independent music.
8. Where Did Our Love Go?, The J Geils Band
The best gig I ever saw was J Geils in at Manchester Free Trade Hall, June 2nd 1980. A crowd of less than 200, rattling around in a huge venue – the band could have been forgiven for going through the motions. Instead they played as though it was a sold-out Wembley Stadium. This cover was a highlight, check it out on the Blow Your Face Out double live LP
The One Record I Would Keep
Start Me Up.
Book (excluding The Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare)
The All Music Guide To Rock (3rd Edition, 2002) – nerdy but sometimes you just have to know when Da Capo was released
Luxury
An infinite supply of cheese and pickle sandwiches (has to be cheddar and Branston)
So what are your 8 platters that matter?
First Posted on April 19 2016
Clinton Heylin’s new magnum opus is being published by leading independent publisher Route – more details here https://anarchyyearzero.wordpress.com/
Jane and Simon were both interviewed by Clinton about seeing the Sex Pistols at Weybridge
Here is the press release:
| Anarchy in the Year Zero Collector’s Edition
Posted: 18 Apr 2016 12:59 PM PDT
COLLECTOR’S EDITION: ANARCHY IN THE YEAR ZERO: THE SEX PISTOLS, THE CLASH AND THE CLASS OF ‘76 ‘For those who weren’t there, but swear they were, now you are.’ Be amongst the first to read Clinton Heylin’s account of the birth of Punk. A special signed and numbered collector’s edition is available to order now and will be despatched one month prior to general release. At standard cover price, the collector’s edition comes with a set of original postcards. First come first served. Click here to order. Anarchy in the Year Zero: Sex Pistols, The Clash and the Class of ’76 by Clinton Heylin is an account of a movement that not only changed the face of British music, but had a profound and lasting effect on the course of British culture as a whole. This is a forensic, passionate and breathtaking chronicle by one of the world’s leading rock historians, who was there in 1976 at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester, when the course of popular music changed forever. Published to coincide with Year Zero’s 40th anniversary, the book reconstructs the narrative of ‘Punk ’76’ – the real Year Zero – authoritatively, if not dispassionately; to connect the dots not only literally (providing, for the first time, an accurate chronology), but laterally – by showing how many of the characters that circle the Sex Pistols spin off into new vistas of music, fashion and pop culture. Heylin’s distinctive approach of using multiple eye-witness accounts of all the key players in the story skillfully combines the objective rigor of a biography with the personal immediacy of a memoir. The result is that the reader feels as though they are there, on the inside, as the drama of this truly transformative year for British culture unfolds before us. Clinton Heylin is one of the leading rock historians in the world, with over two dozen books to his name. These include biographies of Bob Dylan (Behind The Shades), Van Morrison (Can You Feel The Silence?), Bruce Springsteen (E Street Shuffle) and Sandy Denny (No More Sad Refrains), as well as his acclaimed pre-punk history, From The Velvets To The Voidoids, the one and only history of rock bootlegs, Bootleg, and, most recently, the highly acclaimed It’s One For The Money: The Song Snatchers Who Carved Up A Century of Pop, nominated for the 2016 Penderyn Book Award. He lives in Somerset. ‘Heylin has done a masterful job of mapping the when, where and who’s who in the Pistols pied piper saga.’ >>Click here to order Anarchy in the Year Zero Collector’s Edition |
…and here is what Clinton’s new book actually says
First posted on April 20 2016
Here is what Clinton Heylin has written about the night that the Sex Pistols played St. George’s Hill, Weybridge!
First Posted on November 24 2014
Last Saturday (November 15) Simon was interviewed for an article about seeing the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club at the Punk Rock Festival of 1976. The article also mentions legendary Trash co-vocalist Jane Wimble (as was) and is illustrated with a fine Barry Plummer photograph
See it here
Don’t bother with the comments that follow the article. Online commentators might not be so unpleasant if they had to post under their real names….
Detour Records – Trash webpage
First posted on March 12 2012
http://detour-records.co.uk/trashinfopage.htm
Trash pages on Bored Teenagers website
First posted on March 12 2012
http://www.boredteenagers.co.uk/TRASH.htm
Punky Gibbon: Another punk website featuring Trash!
First posted on April 21 2014
Jane @ Punky Gibbon has completely updated her entry on Trash, for which many thanks. It’s here:
http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/t/trash.html
We have also done a brand new Q + A which you can find here:
http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/t/trash_simon_interview.html
Trash in “Punk Britannia”
First posted on June 19 21012
Thanks to eagle-eyed David Key for pointing out that Trash appear in the third instalment of this excellent BBC4 documentary. There’s a shot of the Priorities sleeve on the wall of Rough Trade Records! It comes about halfway through, blink and you’ll miss it.
Vive Le Rock CD Review
First posted on March 12th 2012
Trash – This Is Complete Trash! (8/10) Spasms – Return of the Spud Gun Kids (7/10)
Only Fit For The Bin Records
A fan of obscure late 70s lost punk rock oddities? Two previously unacknowledged discoveries here via Bin Liner Records, each accompanied by arch sleevenotes that demonstrate the participants weren’t entirely blinded by ambition, nor have their memories been too cruelly scalded by regret. Naturally then, it’s going to be low-grade, clueless bedroom thrashing that was never released for a very good reason. Well, no. The Spasms disc, despite the graffiti’d brick wall cover, is far more expansive than you might imagine. There are evident post-punk influences (especially on ‘The Guilty Go Free’ and the excellent ‘The Stranger’), and some unexpected playfulness in terms of both lyrics and rhythm that place them, occasionally, somewhere between Squeeze and the Members. Trash are slightly rockier, absolutely in the best traditions of the New York Dolls, and more than competent at it. Their Polydor singles ‘Priorities’ and the Shel Talmy-produced ‘N-N-ervous’ are included, alongside an unreleased third; the genuinely enthralling ‘In On All The Secrets’.
Alex Ogg, written for Vive Le Rock magazine
First posted May 27th 2011
Record Collector CD Review
http://www.recordcollectormag.com/reviews/this-is-complete-trash
Trash – This Is Complete Trash!
Take no notice, they’re just being modest
Trash formed in October 1976 by students at the Food Technology College in St George’s Hill, Weybridge. As singer Simon Wright says in his sleevenotes, “The Food Technologists would have been a great name for a band,” but they went for Trash “partly because of the New York Dolls song, but possibly because we thought it would put us beyond further criticism.” How wrong they were.
Trash discovered punk when Wright and Jane Wimble, who shared lead vocals in the early days, caught the Pistols playing one of their infamous “unannounced” support slots at one of their college dances – and the die was cast. John Peel’s manager, Weybridge resident Clive Selwood, secured the band a deal with Polydor, and the label released Priorities in November 1977. N-N-E-R-V-O-U-S, produced by Shel Talmy, followed in June 1978, but when neither single sold (despite airplay from a “gerrymandered” John Peel), Polydor dropped them.
It was a shame, as Trash’s combination of punk, pub-rock and NY sleaze deserved a better crack of the whip. Rescued from the bin, this collects both singles, previously unreleased studio and live tracks, and a 1977 interview on Radio 210.
Only Fit For The Bin | OFFTB 013
Hyped2Death CD Review
http://hyped2death.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=208
TRASH -This Is Complete Trash! CD (OFFTB 013)
H2D: Their classic first 45 (‘Priorities’), a less-impressive second, a fine, melodic, neverbeforereleased ’79 session, and some good-to-generic live tracks. None of it’s terrifically original, but who cares when the touchstones are the Heartbreakers, Saints, Birdmen, and various punky 60s sounds… 12 tracks and an informative 12-page booklet.
Amazon User Reviews
http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Complete-Trash/dp/B004JXMSLI
Bucketfull Of Brains review
First posted on April 21 2014
I popped into Record & Tape Exchange in Notting Hill Gate on Saturday afternoon (Record Store Day) and found a hardback book entitled ’77 – The Year of Punk & New Wave’ by Henrik Bech Poulsen (Helter Skelter, 2005). It is a ludicrously detailed look at the music of 1977 and devotes half a page to Trash, and here it is:
First posted on May 25 2017
Ahead of the new Shel Talmy retrospective Record Collector magazine ran a retrospective on his productions through the years. Bizarrely whilst including Talmy’s work with the Who, the Kinks and David Bowie they missed out his work with Trash! A letter has now been published in the June edition of Record Collector to redress the balance. Here it is:
The Rolling Stones, U Arena, Paris
Wednesday 25th October
View: Down the front in the Pit on Ronnie’s side (but close enough to see the flamingo pattern on Keith’s shirt…)
This brand new 40,000 capacity arena in central Paris made a fitting setting for the three final gigs of the Stones No Filter European tour. Sympathy For The Devil was an innovative opener and the two blues songs Just Your Fool and Ride’ Em On Down provided an early opportunity for Mick Jagger to demonstrate his harmonica prowess. A faultless She’s A Rainbow – tonight’s web choice – belied its 50 years. Encore Gimme Shelter was a showcase for Sasha Allen, her duet with Jagger featuring less vocal histrionics than was the case with latter-day Lisa Fischer.
The powerhouse at the centre of tonight’s rousing performance was the ever-crisp Charlie Watts on drums and effervescent Ronnie Wood on guitars. Jagger was in a mischievous mood, telling jokes about Theresa May and ending a stunning Street Fighting Man by playing Charlie’s cymbals. Guitarist Keith Richards nonchalantly smoked a joint before a moving Slipping Away featured the evocative line “Oh it’s just another show…” Not for tonight’s highly enthused and very multinational crowd. So until next year…
Review written for Record Collector Magazine
Thanks to Laura Alberti for the photographs
From Mick Brophy
Hi Simon,
You’ve done a great job on the MySpace site!
I think Keith’s wrong and John the Finn did not commit suicide, rather he was pushed under a train at Birmingham New Street.
When The Cheaters were about to do our first tour of Scandinavia, we though John, with all his languages, and being a seasoned crew member for all sorts of 70’s bands behind the iron curtain, would be perfect. I contacted Brian Devoile, who then tried to contact John for me. He was put through to the Police and given the 3rd degree, John having just died. Brian was seriously shaken about this – not just John’s death but the manner in which he was quizzed.
OK, maybe suicide. However John had friends in Turku, Finland, a band call The Fabrics who we tried to help out. The Cheaters did our first gig of the Finnish tour at Turku and the Fabrics came to say thanks. They told us his body had been returned to Turku for burial and expressed utter astonishment that we did not know of his clandestine political activities. Quote “Didn’t you know (impleid: he was a spy)”?
As soon as they said this you re-run what you know about the guy. Trash backdrop – revolutionary art – picked by John. The guy had no material needs whatsoever (he lived in our cellar for God’s sake). Brilliant linguist – fluent in many East Bloc languages. Went from East to West at random in vans full of difficult to search band and PA gear. And not forgetting Finland was THE cross-roads for spys of both sides during the cold war – the government ran a tightrope of pleasing both Russia and the West.
My guess – he was a courier. But for who?
Can anyone offer any further information ?
Cheers
Mick
Only Rock 'n' Roll 