Dalek and post-Dalek: Alan Gill

After the Compass Kum-pas album and before Dalek I Love You, the group shrank down to its founding member Alan Gill, who soon would join the Teardrop Explodes (and write for them their major hit Reward). But some traces of Dalek life during that lapse of time still circulate. One of them is the existence (somewhere, God only knows where…) of ‘Notes from the Underground 6 (1981)’ an unofficial fanzine containing two original tracks (‘Conveyor Belt’ – recorded live at Eric's 1978 and ‘You Make Me Feel Like a Fly’ - Alan Gill home demo) together with the original mix of the single ‘Heartbeat’ and of ‘Dad on Fire’ (then to appear on 1983 album Dalek I Love You). Another interesting piece of the Dalek history was in an audio magazine in tape form called SFX. The Issue No 15 (June 12-24 1982) contained a song titled ‘Wild Jim’. The spoken intro, beside name-checking Dalek I Love You and mentioning their link to Teardrop Explodes, introduces the song as the first part of a 'never ending story/saga'…

After the 1983 release a disillusioned Alan Gill almost completely retired from the commercial music world. The few signs of his Gill’s post-Dalek activity are two tracks in Letter to Brezhnev (1985) soundtrack (credited by not sung by Gill).

Letter to Brezhnev Theme (Alan Gill)
Lockets & Stars (Margi Clarke/Alan Gill)

The same year (1985) (allegedly) saw the release of the cassette only release Naïve (containing Prince of Clowns), after which, five yeas of silence followed. In 1990 Dalek I came back to life with one track on the compilation ‘Liverpool: All This And Heaven Too’ (1990): the title of the song is ‘Everything I Do’.

(thanks a lot to Endorphin & Swiftnick)

A Shallow Madness

On May 5th 1977, after a gig by The Clash at the legendary Eric’s Club, Julian Cope (later Teardrop Explodes), Ian McCulloch (later Echo & the Bunnymen) and Pete Wylie (later Wah!) met and decided to form a band, Arthur Hostile & The Crucial Three, immediately shortened in The Crucial Three. The group rehearsed only once, wrote only a single – according to McCulloch, very bad – song (possibly titled Salomine Shuffle or Bloody Sure You're On Dope), and disbanded.
After the Crucial Three, Julian Cope and Pete Wylie formed The Nova Mob, recruiting punk friend Griff and future Banshees's drummer Budgie. A short-lived act (just the time for a disastrous performance at Eric's) that folded when Budgie left to join Big in Japan. Julian Cope briefly formed an experimental group called The Hungry Types, and then formed Uh? with Ian McCulloch and McCulloch's school friend Dave Pickett. McCulloch left after the band's first and only gig. Cope and McCulloch formed their last band together, A Shallow Madness in early 1978, along with Paul Simpson on keyboards, Dave Pickett on drums, and occasionally Mick Finkler on guitar. Of the activity of the band only a couple of original rehearsal recordings survived:

Books (with McCulloch on vocals, then to appear in a different version as a Bunnymen’s and Teardrop’s number)
Straight Rain (without McCulloch)


At this point A Shallow Madness featured the original Teardrop Explodes line-up of Cope (bass), Paul Simpson (keyboards), Mick Finkler (guitar), plus Ian McCulloch. The latter's non-attendance at rehearsals led to Cope taking over vocals and thus The Teardrop Explodes was born. Simpson will leave the Teardrops in 1979 to form his own band The Wild Swans in 1980.

Tontrix, Hambi and the Dance

Tontrix, (see also Street to Street vol. 1, below) formed in 1978 featuring Hambi Haralambous on vocals (later Victims of Romance, Hambi and The Dance), Steve Lovell on guitar (later of Hollycaust, Hambi and The Dance, Blitz Brotherss, Julian Cope), Mike Score on bass (later Flock of Seagulls), Bobby Carr on keyboards (ex Those Naughty Lumps, later Moderates, Surreal Estate), Chris Hughes on drums (later of Hambi and The Dance, Adam and The Ants), who replaced Ian Johnston. The band had only one official release in 1979, the 7" single called Shellshocked, containing the tracks:

Shellshocked
Slipping Into Life

Another track was included in the ‘Street to Street vol. 1’ compilation (see below) namely Screen Love (a.k.a. Clear on Radar). The band played many gigs across North West and by late 1979 Tontrix members went their separate ways: Mike Score formed A Flock of Seagulls.

Hambi Haralambous, Steve Lovell and Chris Hughes joined forces with Wayne Hussey on guitar (ex Walkie Talkies, later Dead or Alive, Sisters of Mercy) and Gazza Johnson on bass and synthesizers (later China Crisis). But, as the name suggests, the band was purely the vehicle for Hambi Haralambous’ creativity. The first line-up in fact went through several changes, concerning especially the drum-stool, with the arrival of The Major (later Windows, The Balcony, Red, Hatework, New Dodos and Logic Of Impossibility) and later Les Hughes (soon to join White Russians), but also the keyboard position, with the ‘provisional’ inclusion in the line-up of Phil Coxon (ex Visual Aids, later OMD). Hussey was soon to leave the band, which, with the collaboration of musicians and friends (Nick Plytas and James Lascelles on piano, Steve Power and Mick Glossop on synthesizers) in 1981 released a couple of singles (Too late to fly the flag [b/w She Doesn’t Talk] and L'image craqué), both of which were included in the 1982 album, an interesting combination of synthesized art-rock and traditional rock'n'roll,:

Hambi and the Dance - Hearthache

Time After Time
Living In A Heartache
Madelaine
L'Image Craqué
Spirits
The World
Dancing Inside You
Major Major
Too Late To Fly The Flag
Standing In The Rain

For the live act, Hambi recruited several players (Guy Chambers, who later worked with Julian Cope – and much later wrote ‘Angel’ for Robby Williams – Roger Askew, who will then play keyboards for a variety of artists including Joe Strummer, Peter Gabriel, Bliss) among whom ex-Spitfire Boy Paul Rutherford, as backing vocalist and… dancer. The group hosted the first live appearance of the newly-formed Frankie Goes to Hollywood (at Pickwicks, in Liverpool, 1982) whose line-up included the female backing-vocalist Sonya Mazunda, Apparently, Rutherford got so caught up in Frankie's performance he joined in with them on stage. After this night Paul replaced Sonya in the group permanently, leaving Hambi to his dance….

After years of silence, Hambi and the Dance made their come back with the 7” 25 Tears A Day in 1984, and I Don’t Want to Lose You in 1985.

The Spitfire Boys

From the outskirts of Liverpool (St. Helens) the Spitfire Boys first got together under that name on 14th May 1977. They formed some 6 weeks earlier, after meeting The Heartbreakers and finding they needed a support band for an upcoming gig.
Originally called The Blackmailers their new name came courtesy of Wayne County. At a Punk night at "Eric's", the guitarist Dave spoke to 'Wayne County' of the 'Electric Chairs and he suggested the name 'The Spitfire Boys'. The original singer, Mike Rigby, was sacked after 2 or 3 gigs, and afetr that the band featured Paul Rutherford aka Maggot on vocals (later Opium Eaters and Frankie Goes to Hollywood), Dave Littler aka Jones on guitar (later Photons), Peter Griffiths aka Zero on bass (later of Nova Mob) & Budgie (Peter Clarke aka Blister) on drums (later Nova Mob, Big in Japan, Opium Eaters, Secrets, Planets, Slits, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Creatures). Their first proper gig was supporting Johnny & The Heartbreakers at "Parr Hall", Palmyra Square, Warrington, WA1 1BL.
The Spitfire Boys were the first Liverpool punk band to release a single. This was 'British Refugee' backed with the controversial 'Mein Kampf' on the 'R.K.O' label, 7th October 1977.
The band were stars in their home town but never really broke into the London scene after playing a few gigs down there (at The Vortex, supporting their friends The Slits). Early December 'Pete Wylie' joined the band for two or three rehearsals, but due to the lack of strong management the band folded. From being one of the first Punk bands to form in Liverpool, they were also one of the first to disband. This happened on Thursday 22nd December 1977.

British Refugee
Mein Kampf

(http://www.detour-records.co.uk/spitfireboys.htm)
(http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/spitfireboys.htm)

Information about Street to Street Vol. 2 bands

This is a page of the ultra-rare book by Klaus Schwartze (1987)

“The Scrapbook of the New Liverpool Rock Scene Part 1, From Deaf School to Frankie goes to Hollywood” (unfortunately not inmy possession).

Enlarge the picture and there you'll find useful information about the groups featured on the "Street to Street. Vol 2" compilation (see below)

Dalek I Love You - Part 2

After more than one year after their last vinyl release Dalek I Love Your reappeared with another single(18 September 1983).

Ambition

b/w (I Am) Hot Person / Would You Still Love Me (on the 12”)

The A-side was to be included (even if in a slightly different version) on the forthcoming self-titled album, released on 4 November 1983.

Dalek I Love You
1. Holiday in Disneyland [album version]

2. Horrorscope [album version]
3. Health and Happiness
4. The Mouse That Roared

5. Dad On Fire

6. Ambition [album version]

7. Lust

8. 12 Hours of Blues

9. Sons of Sahara

10. Africa Express

The Credits read like this: Chuka Russo: backing vocals (6, 8); Chris Hughes: drums (2, 10); Drummie Zeb: drums (8); Gary Barnacle: electric sax (7), sax (8); Randy Taylor: bass (1, 6).
What is most interesting is that for this album Alan Gill (left in the blue picture) decided to share the vocal duties with the other ‘stable’ members of the band: Gordon Hon (on tracks 1, 3 and 5, center in the blue picture), Keith Hartley (on tracks 2 and 6) and Kenny Peers (on tracks 4, 6, right in the blue picture). Gill only sang on three tracks (7, 8 and10)
By the time the lp was released Hartley quit (in the b/w with David Hughes, ex- member of Dalek I, taken from the back sleeve of the Godot single).

Later the same year the band released their final vinyl release, the single

Horrorscope b/w These Walls We Build Pic Sleeve (7” version) – Heap Big Pow Wow / Horrorscope (instrumental) / The Angel and the Clown (on the 12” version)

Talking about the last days with the band, Gill remembers: “It was a more pressured time than the first album, though. To a large extent, the fun had gone out of it. We were a bigger group at that point, there were more people in the band, and it was our attempt to achieve pop success, even if ultimately we never did well financially.”
“Afterwards, I didn't want to be involved in commercial music again. There was a lot of stress and unhappiness with the business side of things. Put it this way: there was more pressure to be successful than to make a good record. Problem was, we were artists whereas it had become about selling records. We were a bunch of recluses who didn't really want to deal with the world.”
In 1985 Gill contributed two tracks to the soundtrack of Letter to Brezhnev (1985, among which the main theme), and in the same year he established his own label, Bopadub, to release cassette compilations.One of these releases (BOP 04) was (or was supposed to be) a new DILY record, but pieces of information about this are scare and fuzzy. Yet, on the official site of the band (http://www.dalekiloveyou.com/ ) you can find a song taken from that album King of Clowns.

See also:
http://robinparmar.com/dalek-i-love-you.html
http://osamdesete.blogspot.com/
http://burningflame.wordpress.com/
http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Dalek_I_Love_You