SouthCoastCityRockers

                    From my favourite album of 2012 this is Night Of Treason and "My Town.

 The album "Gentlemen and Hooligans"  was hardly ever off my player for months..Thats why this song is the first track on the forthcoming  GROOVYBLACKSHADES  cloudcast "SouthCoastCityRockers" featuring some of my all time favourite Portsmouth/Gosport bands...The Media,Red Letter Day,The Psylons and more.....

Sleeve-notes for “The Paul Groovy Birthday Bootleg” ..

(a collection of one-off, one-take and rare recordings).

WARNING:THERE IS A CLUE TO THE SOUND QUALITY OF THIS RELEASE IN THE TITLE!

The Secret Groovys-“Hold Her Tight” (Groovy/Clarke/Hatch)                                             

 Stephen Clarke on guitar & backing vocals, Johnny Hatch on bass & backing vocals, Kieron on drums, with me singing lead. May 1995. A week before we had all got together to come up with some song ideas ,and we knocked 6 of them into some sort of shape during one 3 hour session at the Sanderson Centre in Gosport. There was a vague plan to do a gig or two but it never happened, so these songs remained unheard.

The Night The Goldfish Died-“30 Seconds Over Somers Town” (Groovy/Knight)

My early 80’s DIY cassette band-all but forgotten but for a mention in “Rip It Up”. Alan Knight and I knocked out  half-a-dozen cassette albums and singles-in fact we would give it away...This was a malfunction one afternoon at Alan’s flat in Somers Town...

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Sister Ray”(Reed)

We used to do a little bit of Sister Ray in On The Run, but never as a song on its own..apart from here! Recorded at the rehearsal for the Against The Tide gig at Portsmouth Guildhall 1987.

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Walk Through The Stones”(Groovy/Clarke/Herlihy)

Steve Herlihy had bought a synth and wanted to try it out was the reason for this track. This was at The Sanderson Centre again. It was Steve Herlihy on synth and drum machine, Stephen Clarke on guitar, me on vocals, and a friend of Steve’s, called Keith, on bass. Keith later did a gig with us on bass so Steve could play drums....

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Caroline Bay”(Groovy/Clarke”)

This is just Stephen Clarke and myself from Jan 1986. Sometimes we would write songs that weren’t right for the band. This was one of them. Don’t think we even played it to Jo and Steve

Sequin Junkies-“Feels Like Heaven”(Groovy/Clarke).

From the early days of Sequin Junkies, this recording would have been maybe the second time we played it, and also the last time.

Sequin Junkies-“I’m On Fire”(Springsteen)

Recorded at Stephen Clarke’s place in Alresford. The only time we played it just happened to be when the tape machine was running. I rather like it.

Sequin Junkies-“Wish You Were Here”(Waters)

We had played a few Syd covers in our time-Terrapin  ,Bike, Effervessing Elephant and wanted to do a song about Syd instead. I think we were going to do an e.p or some thing but never follow it up...

The Night The Goldfish Died-”Germany Calling”(Groovy/Knight)

Alan and I had been listening to Can a lot-this was done on a baking hot afternoon with the sun pouring through the windows in Wilmcote House. Radios, waste-bins, knitting needles ,bass guitar all appear on this track.

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Not Fade Away”(Holly)

Another one from the Guildhall rehearsal, Why did we do it? No idea and we never did it again. The Guildhall was going to be Steve Herlihy’s last gig with us so the rehearsal was rather relaxed.

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Fever”(Blackwell/Coonley)

The Guildhall Portsmouth! The biggest place we played-held 1500- Introduced onstage by Annie Nightingale, a totally improvised version of Fever....Steve and I had played it for about 30 seconds at the rehearsal so hey let’s play it right now .On the stage where I saw some of my HEROES perform-Strummer, Jones ,Weller ,Costello,  Dury, Mael (and Mael )... I sung the whole song to the balcony where Alison from Cranes was sitting. They had just played live for the very first time and I just thought it would be nice....

Paul Groovy & The Pop Art Experience-“Just Call Me Jack”(Treacy)

We had supported the TV Personalities the week before and this was my then favourite TVP song so at the end of On The Run I told Stephen, Steve and Jo to keep playing and this is what happened. The echo was courtesy of Tim & Andy who did our sound from time to time. They were always welcome to mix how they wanted......

The Secret Groovys-“World So Straight”(Groovy/Clarke/Hatch)

Another from that almost mythical meeting of the Pop Art Experience and Secret Corners in The Secret  Groovys!

 Sequin Junkies-“English Rose”(Weller)

It’s my bootleg and I’ll sing Weller if I want to, Weller if I want to....

Paul Groovy 18.11.12(the day before my birthday)

Story-book Beginnings

• First posted on MySpace Mar 27, 2006

Story-book Beginnings

Somewhere in the archives of the Portsmouth News there is a photo of a queue of people waiting to get tickets to see an up and coming group called The Beatles.....

Flash!    Its late 62/early 63 and there is a queue of about 50 girls stretching down Osbourne Road from the front door of a local dance hall. It's bitingly cold and the girls are all wrapped up in their winter coats, their Helen Shapiro haircuts covered with head scarves. In the middle of the queue is a 14 year old girl .She's badgered her mum and dad into letting her go and see a new group called the Beatles ,and has arranged to meet up with her friends to get tickets.

There's just one slight complication for her....she has to take her baby brother down there as well! So there she stands, a 14 year old girl with a baby in a pram, facing down the disproving looks from passers-by-its bad enough they say that you are going to pop concert but to bring a baby along as well......

The baby didn't seem to care though, all wrapped up against the wind howling in from the Solent, with loads of girls making a fuss, and a bottle of milk.....

Flash!      Its 1965  and that babys other sister, is grooving in her bedroom to the Stones, and the Small Faces and the sounds coming out of America on a label called Motown. In the post one morning comes a letter from Stones guitarist Brian Jones (this was the days when pop stars answered their own mail!).The baby is now 4 and fascinated by how sounds come out of a shiny piece of black plastic.

Flash!      Its 1972 and as this sister gets married she leaves behind her record player and a bunch of lps  and singles for her 10 year old brother He can’t believe his luck as he flips through records by the Stones, Beatles, Who, Small Faces, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Issac Hayes and a whole lot more. He's already the smartest-dressed kid in the street thanks to his cool sis  buying him clothes from grown-up clothes shops like Fagins and Lord John, with shoes by Ravel .Now he's got the soundtrack to match the clothes.....

Living Room Memories

First posted on MySpace Sep 7, 2008

more "Living Room" memories

Recently Edward Ball & Farfisa Dave have both posted some memories of Alan McGee’s Living Room club. Here are extracts from my rough notes for what might be a book one day called "From the Kings Road to the Room At The Top" or "How 3 schoolboys created Indie Music" or " Not another telling of the Ed Ball, Dan Treacy,Joe Foster Story" or...

Ah such sweet memories of youth. The way the early evening sun dappled the ground beneath the trees in the private gardens that made up the centre of the Georgian squares that filled the route between Goodge Street tube and Conway Street. Perfect for dreaming away an hour or two waiting for the doors of The Adams Arms to open at 6 of the clock.(For you youngsters out there, we haven't always had 24 hour drinking you know!).

An almost hidden London just yards from the stack-em high sell-em cheap electrical stores of the Tottenham Court Road-if you told me that David Hemmings had been filmed here for Blow Up I would've believed you. The setting made more perfect by the location just yards from the pub door of that faded picture postcard symbol of Swinging London-Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Post Office Tower-a look to the future that was even then part of a receding past.

The Adams Arms itself-a back-street pub that always seemed slightly out of place with the squares nearby-what the neighbours thought of the sounds that flew from the upstairs windows God only knows. The Living Room might have only been there for 8 months before starting its journey around whatever pubs Alan could persuade to house it, but what a 8 months-from the opening night salvo of The Nightingales to the TV Personalities "Police Raid" (caught on Alive In The Living Room) via performances from The Times, Biff Bang Pow, Jasmine Minks,Nikki Sudden, The Pastels, Doctor & The Medics, The Loft, and more-and what about the support acts-usually some accapella combo fronted by The Legend, or 12 Cubic Feet, or the June Brides, or Revolving Paint Dream, or The Jowe Head Experience.

As the club took off there would be fanzine sellers with their carrier bags hoping to sell enough to buy a pint or two, new bands hoping to get a gig demo tape in hand, and journos from the weekly press all trying to squeeze into that tiny upstairs room that has since taken on a myth that seems to make it Indies answer to the Roxy Club.

Some "moments" that spring to mind: Doctor & The Medics getting the whole room to do The Fly, the night of the power cut when the club moved downstairs into the bar and did acoustic sets by candle-light-Jowe, Nikki ,the Minks, and the TVPs sitting around a table passing guitars around, while the rest beat out rhythms on their beer glasses(another note for younger readers-beer came in GLASSES not PLASTIC!), or the Creation Records Christmas Party-Biff Bang Pow and the Jasmine Minks followed by the ensemble Joe Foster christened "The Creation Records House Orchestra" featuring various members of the TVPs, Biff Bang Pow ,Jasmines ,and on vocals( Well it certainly wasn't singing!) The Legend and yours truly destroying Sister Ray, Painter Man, Roadrunner and an improvised work called I'm Waiting For A Homosexual.!

When darkness had fallen and the bar was shut it would be time for all the hipsters to go -in my case either to a sofa at Joe Fosters place in Hendon,Alans in Tottenham ,whichever flat Nikki was staying at that week or if I had work the next day to a quiet corner of Waterloo Station to wait for the Paper Train to depart from Platform 7 at 2.45am.If I was lucky then it would go direct to Portsmouth, but a detour via Winchester and an hour or in sidings at Basingstoke wasn't uncommon-but very cold as the train wasn't heated! After the Creation Christmas Party, which was on a Thursday night, I spent 5 freezing hours walking around Waterloo and the South Bank waiting for the first train out of London (the paper train was running late) arriving back in Portsmouth at 7.00 am, just enough time to get home, washed and shaved ready to be at work for 8.30