I just happened to be searching for this video when I noticed the tragic news of Lynsey De Paul’s death just two days ago, Oct 1st. Glad we’ve got this sweet bubblegum confection to remember her by.
And here’s a nice little downloadable re-edit to take with you
The Numbers Band put out one recording, “Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town”, in 1976, that has since garnered classic status. Recorded the year before, as they opened for Bob Marley and The Wailers at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, this album was referred to by Pere Ubu frontman David Thomas as, “”the only good record ever recorded by anyone”. Quite the praise coming from an iconoclast at the forefront of American punk. The album displays not only massive chops honed by constant performing but a warped sensibility that allows it to rise above the bar band label in which it could otherwise be mired.
This set, from two years before the LP, is a much more straight forward and bluesy affair than “Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town”, but still shows the band’s ability to, again, rise above it’s apparent trappings. That being said, the set is a cooker, and as someone who’s into the 70’s Ohio scene, an important historical recording. Oh, Gerald Casale, of Devo fame, played in the band for a bit but was gone before this show, I believe.
The Numbers Band are still performing and have a handful of recordings that have been released throughout the years, so if your interest is piqued, dig further. Also, “Jimmy Bell’s Still In Town” just received a deluxe vinyl reissue with three bonus cuts!
Okay, legends might be pushing it, but The Mud Hutters are definitely one of my favorite groups of that era. With a discography consisting of two 7″‘s, an LP and three tracks on the four band split LP, “Four Ways Out”, their recorded history is woefully tiny. The good news is that everything that did get released was top drawer stuff. This track is from 1984, four years after the last Mud Hutters release, and comes courtesy of The Diagram Brothers (an excellent post-punk band in their own right), Andy Diagram, who was kind enough to put it on his soundcloud page. Diagram joined the band in 1984 and together they recorded a set of songs, that has gone criminally unreleased. “Pint of Lager” is the first anyone has ever heard of those sessions and it is unmistakably The Mud Hutters. Someone, do the world a service and put this record out!
Chicano punks riffing on The Troggs in the style of Lou Reed, or something like that. From their self-released 1980 LP, The Promised Airwaves.
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