#fridayflashback #teeside #postpunk: Halcyon Days ... and other musical mishaps!

‘I can remember the halcyon days/ We leapt on stage though we couldn’t play/ And furthermore, we had nothing to say.’

The above lyrics are from the song Satellite City, by the splendid ‘80s band Orange Juice, but they do have some relevance to this post since I was once in a band called Halcyon Days who couldn’t play and had nothing to say. None of that leaping onstage nonsense. mind you.

And so it came to pass … as per usual it all pretty much revolved around Richard Sanderson. In 77/78 Richard was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Drop who were bloody good- and were even touted by Julian Cope before he became a cartoon character. Richard had been in experimental bands for many years – starting with Solaris in 1975, I think, and he was also partial to doing ‘projects.’ One such project was with the marvellous local band Tick Tick. Another was with me, which was far from marvellous. The name of this project as ‘The Frozen Wastelands of The North.’ And it involved Richard making weird noises with found instruments and objects, and me talking cobblers over it. It wasn’t as good as it sounds. No, really.

And on … Richard became, and still remains, a very good friend but we didn’t get involved in music together for a while. Which was a very good thing indeed.

Of course, I ?had other chums who were partial to getting some sort of band together – this was the early ‘80s and that sort of thing happened - and, as usual, our reach exceeded our grasp in ways that would have had Robert Browning spinning in this grave. The band were Coronet Blue- named after a TV series about a PI with amnesia.? Coronet Blue consisted of Ronnie Burke on drums, David Theasby on an acoustic guitar that was covered in Elvis stickers, and me on a three string bass that I borrowed from my mate Peter Ord. And yes, we were shite. We even played a gig upstairs at Middlesbrough Empire. David Theasby made weird noises on a synthesizer borrowed from Tick Tick’s Jeff Spence and Richard Sanderson sang on one, ahem, song.

In the meantime, Richard had disbanded Drop and was no longer playing with Tick Tick. So, one night at The Empire, fuelled by halves of lager and lime, Ronnie and I asked him if he’d like to form a band with us. And very politely, he said yes. I remember visiting his house and hearing the 2 song repertoire- French Windows, an old Drop song later covered by Freight Train, Julian Cope’s brothers band, and a new song, I Talk. And we rehearsed and played gigs and wrote new songs and even the multi-talented Peter Ord joined.

Indeed, thing seemed to be moving forward- with the support of Billy Oblivion and Basczax- until some dickhead- ME!- decided that we should replace the drummer with a drum machine and add two young girls to sing backing vocals. We also changed our name to Oceans 11 and played a handful of gigs before mercifully fizzling out. Around that time,Julian Cope did contact Richard about signing to his proposed DanceMong Records but nothing came from that …

My only venture into music since then is being on Lester Square’s recent TAPS LP. But the days of being part of the Teesside Music Scene were some of the best times of my life and I met some of the best people I ever met. So, Sic Transit Gloria Bloody Estefan!

? Paul D. Brazill.