NEXT GIG:
HEADLINE ACT, MARCH 29TH AT
THE SPICE OF LIFE, SOHO.
DOORS OPEN 7PM.
THE FAMOUS MEN AT 10.15PM.
LIVE at The Hope & Anchor, June 2024.
Well, after four years of reunion, covid, more reunion, rehearsals and false dawns we finally took to the stage again. What larks.
The New Cross Dolls did their thing and so the room grew. The Mystery Girls were a joy to behold and played some of their most brilliant numbers. For me, though, its all about ‘How About You? What. A. Song. Very bliss to be alive.
Then the Fames. Probably the best we’ve ever sounded (thank you Stefan at the H&A).
Desi’s debut was something else. Pounding rhythms and backbeats. Jenny looking great in the Famous Dress.
For we three founder members it didn’t seem 45 and a half years since that fateful meeting in a Herne Bay loft. Marvellous.
And o so many of The Famous Army were there for a night we’ll never forget. Here’s to the next 45 rpm. Christmas update follows soon.
Stay famous.
The Famous Men
The Mystery Girls
music
The Famous Men and Bored Teenagers Vol. 12 are both available on Spotify and Amazon music.
LIVE AT THE HOPE & ANCHOR
JUNE 2024
RECORDING SESSION 2020
about
So what’s all this about, then?
An obscure footnote to music history from the late 70’s re-emerging.
Canterbury, 1980: taking a turn off-street, away from chatter and compromising chaos, & into the inner spaces so many faces & sweet deafening sounds of punk rock’n’roll. And outer space … the minds losing bearings. what’s the date? (it’s so obscure in here) 1966? or twenty years on?
Is this a recording session or a party? … off the rocks, please … where’s the ice? … oh! wow! that is … so cool … (there’d been words, nothing for certain, stranger than truth). Because its a lie…
Musicians stand and sit and loll rigid-&-fluid in a canvas of hard-edged charity shop chic, smokey surrounding gloom…
…listening to the re-sounding, cutting the air like it was glass, rock’n’roll was dead but they’d still take your money. Swept away into the disneyland for adults.hifi , wifi or scifi who wants to tell? It’s the grip that won’t let go….you’re addicted. Funk-punk guitars, reverse bass lines and this is what you’re missing.
Vicious’ mum/viscous thrum …blowing away the vapours and the pirates…energised, synthesised, come on, listen to us…top pop blitzkrieg bop. Inhale the steam, taste the sweat, you bet, there’s no escape…
Velvets and Vicious to here … synthesised to whirls and whorls of punk/funk/pop and post-punk drop. … mixed/fixed/sifted/lifted to a driving, low-flying vortex of impure electriic guitar wow – gyrating, parabolic, hyperbolic, tantalizng, fantasizing(oh wrong notes spell out the score).
…famous: shameless: echoes of distilled moments become real presences … dreamworld & unreal world loaded with images: hard facts and artefacts. Anti-art y facts.Monaural and aureate fragments sky-changed & refined to pan, span the limits of impression and expression… leaves of gold, crossing thresholds & hearts. Saturday nite at the Rocksy Garden are they still? & is this the end? (or the beginning?) &, so help me, so many questions - what’s the point? & are the answers naked to the eye – or ear? or are they undercover?
GALLERY
FEBRUARY 22ND AT THE OLD COURT, WINDSOR
JUNE 7TH AT THE HOPE & ANCHOR, ISLINGTON
rehearsal 2024
1978
