Grandpa's Whistling TWIST

It's time again for a contribution from our regular visitor, Richard, with his focus on some obscure (but cool) punky tracks from 1970's - 1980's:

These are the first of four collections of music I would call Music From The Old Box, Whistle Along Songs, Grandpa’s Choice. I just named them all in one, Grandpa’s Whistling Things.

Late eighties, I was in a band and we had a lot of fun playing gigs, quite often together with other great bands from The Lowlands. Apparently, in all those bands, there was a music geek. A nerd just like me, someone who had a vast collection of wonderful music.

In this case, the bass player of Buy Off The Bar. Bass players are often funny people. We didn’t have a bass player in our band until I suggested they were weird, promptly the drummer switched to bass, and the drums became a Yamaha.  Look it up: Eton Crop’s Corné was/is an illustrious bloke, Bartje from the Four One and Only’s quit when he learned he’d be seen as weird, Hans took over, and he sealed his fate. Bass players are a weird bunch.

Back to the bass player ‘Cil of said Buy Off The Bar. He had/has an enormous collection of 7’’s and 12’’s filled with punk and reggae. He started to give me, on request, some tapes full of songs that were called as stated above. Wonderful bands I never knew about, and some classic tracks I knew for sure.

In this first collection you will find only happy songs from amateurs. Some would say that they could not even hold a guitar, sing in tune, keep rhythm, etc. In short, they are perfect good-fun examples of D.I.Y.  Some even made it into a career in music, touring the States as if they were real artists. Admittedly, they were. And good for them too.

All four CD’s will contain music from 1977-1989. An era of Innocence and Independence.  First up is Grandpa’s Whistling Twist. 

The Tights were the first band on Cherry Red. Together with TV Personalities, That Man by The Fall and Terry & Gerry’s Clothes Shop, they are the foundation of this series. Groups like Buzzcocks and Undertones do not need much introduction. Others might well have only one single or sometimes even one song on a compilation to their credit.

Apart from the song here Jenny Nowhere, The Clouds only had one other release.  The Tights had two singles, only since 2017 more of them have been released.  Cud and Dog Faced Hermans have made quite a few albums. The Hamsters only made it onto a compilation album. 

The Groove Farm, This Poison!, Protex, Girls At Our Best, Death By Milkfloat, The Great Leap Forward, Rote Kapelle are more examples of forgotten bands, who sometimes only had a flexi disc to their name and whose members have been lost in obscurity.  Which is not all bad, my band also dropped off the radar and we turned out ok. 

And to come back to the bass player of Buy Off The Bar...... A successful deejay and writer of Ajax (Football) club books.  To finish it off, one of my all-time favorite songs, from their Peel Session: Electro Hippies – Sheep.