My first-ever Real Band was formed in 1977 around the time that punk rock was reaching a critical mass … on the basis that there were a whole heap of bands around who didn’t necessarily play any better than I and my peer group, but who were expressing themselves and having Big Fun anyway. Our brief was to combine the grits’n groceries of rhythm-and-blues with the manic energy of punk, but without doing the obvious thing and simply cloning Dr Feelgood or The Rolling Stones. Our influences were – in no apparent order – the MC5, Muddy Waters, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Robert Johnson, Albert King, Sun-era Elvis and The Ramones.
My principal co-conspirators were Skid ‘Marx’ Stuart (harmonica) and Andy ‘Blitz Krieg’ Eastwood, co-guitarist, co-songwriter and the band’s musical director. Kevin ‘D.Bass’ Allen wasn’t our original bass player, but he was the longest-serving, being on the team for most of our two-year career, though he missed the beginning (shame!) … and the end (lucky bleeder). Nigel ‘Mr Tom Tom’ Elliott was our original drummer, though – much to our chagrin – better-paying employment lured him away from us far too soon.
We actually turned out to be a pretty decent band, and soon got to be extremely semi-popular. We headlined at London’s major club venues (Marquee, Nashville, Dingwalls and the like) as well as opening shows – both in London and on national tours – in bigger venues for the likes of The Boomtown Rats, The Clash, the Damned, Dave Edmunds/Nick Lowe’s Rockpile, Wilko Johnson, The Pirates and Joe Jackson, and recording BBC radio sessions for John Peel and Kid Jensen, as well as releasing a couple of well-received indie records (one of which featured Phil Lynott and Bob Geldof on backing vocals as ‘The Dublinaires’) before eventually breaking up over stuff that seems incredibly trivial now. The mysterious disappearance of our original master tapes meant that we had the dubious distinction of having cut just about the only records released in Britain during the punk era which never got reissued.
And there the matter rested … for over thirty years. Then, mainly due to the energy of Kevin Allen and to Andy Eastwood – now resident in Orstrilia – scheduling a family visit back in Blighty, we found ourselves planning a reunion. It rapidly escalated from ‘let’s meet up and have a few beers’ to ‘let’s have a jam’ to ‘soddit, let’s do a GIG!’
So we did … in Kevin’s Scarborough hometown, on June 27, 2010 – which, weirdly enough, was my birthday. After nine hours of rehearsal, we played a one-hour set … which was fifteen minutes longer than any set we ever played back in Them Punk Days: not so much a reunion a RE-IGNITION. It was filmed, and recorded … and a DVD release, commemorating the event, called BLAST FURNACE AND THE HEATWAVES … REIGNITED is now imminent.
One thing’s for damn sure … we don’t currently know exactly when or how … but we’ll be doing this again.
In the meantime … a few advance clips from the DVD can be found HERE.
The morning after … Review in The Scarborough Evening News
The Blast Furnace MySpace Page
The DVD of the Blast Scarborough Reignition gig is now available here
