A belated eulogy for ANDY LEEK who passed at the start of November. Starting his musical career while still at school fronting the Wailing Cocks, releasing two singles (“Rockin' Youth and Listen To The Wailing Cocks) via Birds Nest in 1979 before the tragic death of guitarist Alan Boyle cut things short. That October he joined Dexys Midnight Runners, playing on Geno and four other tracks on their debut album Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, but, uncomfortable with the famous, quit to go and work in a mortuary just before Geno hit No 1. However, this exposure led to Beggars Banquet licensing two songs he’d recorded with the Wailing Cocks as a double A-side, Ruben Decides and cult classic Move On (In Your Maserati).
In 1988 he reunited with fellow former Dexys man Kevin Archer as keyboardist in the Blue Ox Babes but although they recorded an album for Beggars it remained on the shelf until he released it as Midnight Music on his own Undiscovered Classics label in 2009, although one song, Twist in the Dark, was, recommended to her by Kirsty MacColl, covered by Frida from ABBA for her 1984 solo album Shine.
In 1984 he was briefly signed to Fascination Records, releasing two singles, Soul Darling with Specials producer Dave Jordan, and a version of ABBA's Dancing Queen produced by Tony Visconti. Then, in 1988, working with George Martin, he set Dylan Thomas’s Come And Sweep My Chimbley to music, sung by Tom Jones for the EMI album The Music From Under Milk Wood - A Play For Voices. Martin, who was effusive in his praise, also produced his 1988 solo debut album Say Something via Atlantic and featuring Steve Howe, Clem Clempson, Level 42’s Alan Murphy, Peter-John Vettese and a 36-piece orchestra , though, unfortunately, despite Martin predicting at least four No 1s, none of the singles charted. That said, the title track was No 1 in Lebanon during the civil war.
Briefly released on Spanish label Ouver (though the track All Around the World was popular in Germany), Eternity Beckons followed in 1997 while, recorded in 2000 and self-released, Sacrifice And Bliss produced the singles Forgotten People and Waking Up the World, with his last two albums being the remixed Say Something Revisited in 2010 and Waking Up The World in 2013, on which each song had its own counterpoint, giving rise to seven themes telling a story of youth, experience, realisation and return.
On his website, www.andyleek.co.uk, there’s my review of Eternity Beckons:
He's possessed of a beautifully controlled voice that can soar like an angel or, as on Apple On The Bough, enfolds to embrace. itself in the sort of richly deep emotional drama that might grace a Les Miserables.
Although these aren't intended as comparisons, he's in the same sort of vocal league as Chris De Burgh, Paul Simon or Paul McCartney while Twistin' Turnin', a simple image of a bird in flight, evokes the fragile folk beauty of Nick Drake.
His delicate, intricate guitar work flows as effortlessly as his melodies and his songwriting craft is beyond reproach. Listen to the affecting sibling bonded Joined At The Hip or the simple classic choke in the heart voice/guitar love song that is So Blind or, for more buoyant moods, the very credible stab at a singalong world peace togetherness anthem that is Children Of The Sun, a companion piece to his homelessness single Forgotten People that manages to be guileless rather than naive.
The world has enough second rate karaoke turns who can churn out versions of Daydream Believer for the golf club dinner, buy this album, spread the word and make Leek the star he deserves to be.
Quoted alongside MacColl and Martin is one of mine, “The greatest undiscovered talent in pop”. The words still stand.
Another veteran of the scene, ANDY LLOYD has been busy assembling everything he’s recorded, albums, singles, etc., under various guises and musical styles, The Bloomsbury Set (best known for his minor hit Hanging
Around With The Big Boys, the EP now remastered and reissued) , Andy Lloyd & The Wedge (Living In America their best-known, the 12” extended mix with Laurence Juber from Wings on lead guitar reissued now by Sony), Food, Popman & The Raging Bull (his reggae years) and Sanctuary. There’s far too much to go into here but for archivists, collectors and newcomers alike, it’s well worth searching the streaming platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube and the like
More usually drawing on the retro sound of Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and Cream, Birmingham trio BLUE NATION have just released the all acoustic Cold Night EP, a live collection of three tracks in support of The Mental Health Foundation , These line up as the strummed title track, sounding not too far removed from the version of 2018’s The Kaftan Society, the wistfully folksy, punchily building Thieves For Lovers previously only to be found (as far as I can tell) on their 2021 Live From The Front Room and the terrific, soaringly anthemic fingerpicked and chugging, close harmony song of loss and remembrance Echoes, a number that builds with emotional force and ends the year on a monumental high note. With four studio albums already under their belt, the recent Ordinary People a riff-driven blues rock gem, and having already made waves in America, they really should be much better known
Despite consistent sell-out shows and the fact that he’s one of the finest showmen and songwriters of the past 50 odd years, GERRY COLVIN’s not the household name or chart star his talent warrants. So, chances are while The Last Christmas Needle (Crocodile Music) contains re-recordings of past releases, notably off the limited edition Gerry’s Christmas Baubles, for most these are all ostensibly new. Which, for those willing to explore, will reward them with a seasonal album that isn’t another churning out of the familiar carols and cheesy Christmas songs that turn up with dispiriting frequency from an array of country stars, but, rather, mostly originals that range from the delightfully playful to the piercingly poignant.
The album featuring his regular backing musicians of uptight bassist Jerome Davies, accordionist Trish Power and Lyndon Webb on guitar, mandolin and violin with various contributions by Marion Fleetwood, Paul Johnson and Stuart McLeish, it opens with the self-penned One More Sleep, an a capella intro giving way to a bustling capturing of the anticipation and preparations of Christmas Eve.
That’s followed by a new, slightly longer version of the title track, quite frankly one of the best and most emotional seasonal songs this side of White Christmas and Fairytale Of New York as, backed by Power in the final stretch, he sings “when the last Christmas needle falls from the last Christmas tree, you will still be holding hands with me”. Pausing to wipe away a tear, Joni Mitchell gets a co-credit as he borrows the opening lines from River for the gently circling fingerpicked wry Coming Up Christmas, that transforms it from a lament for a lost love to one for a lost Christmas spirit, wishing to return to “where before it all began before Christmas became the Christmas that it’s become” with its emphasis on commerciality where the only river is Amazon.
There are a few evergreen covers given the Colvin touch, the first being a dreamy, bass-led shuffle through Jerome Kern’s I’ll Be Home For Christmas, famously recorded by Bing Crosby and equally famously banned by the BBC who though it would be demoralising for the troops. Elsewhere, backed by accordion, he gives David Essex a run for his money on a sadness soaked A Winter’s Tale and delivers an inspired slowed down, fingerpicked reworking of Mike Batt’s slightly retitled Wombling Gerry Christmas.
Naturally, there’s a carol, not one from the well-thumbed songbook but his own The Shakespeare Carol which, featuring his late musical partner Nick Quarmby, is supposedly based around the bard’s own words as it calls on the men of Arden’s Grafton, Wexford, Marston, Bedford and elsewhere to come together in St Andrew's Church in Temple Grafton, reputed to be where Bill and Anne tied the knot, to celebrate, be they Jew, Muslim or Christian. In similar traditional vein, The Parting Pint On Saint Nicholas Night is the Scottish parting song with two final lines to pin it to the December 6 celebration, while Saint Stephen’s Day is his own fingerpicked waltzing ode to the Feast of St Stephen complete with accordion and tinkling chimes and an invitation to break bread and take wine in the woodlands and dance with the dryads as it breaks out into a Celtic military marching beat and the strains of Auld Lang Syne.
If you want melancholy, then there’s the accordion-backed Winter In My Heart about a lost relationship, or by contrast he can be exceeding playful, rewriting his own ‘ohnny Cash Shirt with a festive twist as he jingles all the way through the country clopping Santa Claus Hat (“I got this merry festive suit when Santa Claus fell off my roof/Been eating venison since that day”). It ends with one final cover, looking to put the grey skies of winter behind with a breezy, bass twanging, guitar strummed shuffle through the Morecambe & Wise immortalised Bring Me Sunshine. He most certainly will.
Putting the Chris into Christmas, named after the iconic Manhattan Cathedral, and his first new music in two years, In The Shadow of St John The Divine (Opiate Records) has CHRIS CLEVERLEY again weaving his characteristic experimental style with a trademark sweet voiced intimacy and inviting melodies as the songs put a personal spin on the usual festive fare that blends joy and wistfulness in the seasonal cocktail of often contradictory emotions, love and grief.
It opens with Kelly Oliver duet The Ringing Of Bells, a retitling fuller production reworking of his Christmas 2016 release Ring O Bells, a reflective fingerpicked swayer about being apart but with the lyrics serving a prophetic foreshadowing on the lockdowns to come (“In a year's time this could all be fine…The silence in the room will be over soon… So there's this Christmas card rhyme and the scent of the pine needles lying around, that will always remind me/Of those years past, when we were raising a glass/Toasting/Hoping for better times”), that now also has Kathy Pilkinton on vocals and Katie Steven playing clarinet.
Pilkinton’s also to be heard on For A Winter Angel where she’s joined by her Awake Mother partner Minnie Birch, a song, which has swaying melodic echoes of The First Noel and chiming bells, about supporting a loved one through a period of declining mental health (“It’s the first year in a while/As Christmas approaches you’ve been able to smile…in that glorious way/I remember you used to before life went astray”) with the prayer “I hope that someday things will shift in your mind/And you find it within you to leave the worst of this behind/And I really don’t need anything more from you/But just to keep on here fighting until the winter is through/And I will put my arms around you, I will love you in ways/That I’m pretty sure aren’t even possible to say”.
They both also feature on the pulsating Vespers, which gives the EP’s title as two former lovers meet on Christmas Eve in the cathedral’s shadow to say their goodbyes in the candlelight to the strains of the Midnight Mass (“It’s an odd time of year for saying goodbyes/For starting all over, drawing a line/Sip at the coffee, stare at the walls/Trying to make some kind of sense of it all”) as the arrangement swells to a finale and the lines “You say “let’s light a candle for peace on Earth/It might not make a difference, things may/never change/But just think where we’d be/Without the faint light of that flickering flame”.
There’s a definite Simon & Garfunkel undercurrent to the synth-rippling folk of Snowfall, My Evergreen, a story of a snowman that offers a bittersweet allegory for the ambiguities and often transitory nature of love (“You built me out of ice/Kept me around for a while/Gave my face an expression…Thank you my love/For bringing me to life…Today was the best day ever/But I’d rather melt away, than be here when it’s over/Today was the best day ever/Cause for a moment there I knew I was alive”).
It ends with a five minute plus rearrangement of Sufjan Stevens’ Sister Winter and its mingling of melancholy and whimsy, Tim Heymerdinger on drums with harmonies from Pilkinton and Graham Coe who also provides cello solo, ending with the apt words “I've
returned to wish you a happy Christmas”. This is definitely one you want to find in your Christmas stocking.
