On This Day 15/11/1977 Frankie Miller

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On this day, 15 November 1977, Scottish rock singer-songwriter and actor. Frankie Miller played Cardiff’s Top Rank. He had recently released his fourth studio album Full House.

It features a mix of Miller originals and covers, including a version of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy". The Andy Fraser composition "Be Good to Yourself" was issued as a single, and reached No. 27 the UK singles chart, becoming Miller's first chart hit.

Miller began singing professionally as a teenager with a Glasgow band called The Stoics. In mid 1970, he moved to London to further his career.

Later in 1972, Miller signed a solo recording contract with Chrysalis Records, and recorded his first LP Once in a Blue Moon, with record producer Dave Robinson. The album was an early example of pub rock, and featured backing by the pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz.

Miller received consistently good reviews, although his singles and albums were not chart hits, Chrysalis continued to invest in his talent. In 1974 Miller sang "Still in Love with You", as a duet with Phil Lynott; the song appeared on the Thin Lizzy album, Nightlife.

Miller's second album High Life, was produced and partly written by Allen Toussaint and recorded in Atlanta, Georgia during 1974. Although two album tracks, "Shoorah Shoorah" and "Play Something Sweet", subsequently provided hits for Betty Wright and Three Dog Night respectively, the album was not a commercial success.

Miller's next album The Rock (1975) was recorded in San Francisco using the producer Elliot Mazer, who had co-produced Harvest for Neil Young. The next album Full House (1977).

On This Day 04/11/1981 Bauhaus

On this day, 4 November 1981, gothic rock band Bahaus played Cardiff’s Top Rank on their Mask tour. The band had just released their second studio album Mask.

Bauhaus expanded their style a bit on Mask, particularly by incorporating keyboards and acoustic guitar on songs such as "The Passion of Lovers", and funk rhythms and saxophone on tracks like "Kick in the Eye", "Dancing" and "In Fear of Fear".

The album cover is a drawing by guitarist Daniel Ash.The original artwork for the album was a gatefold sleeve with blue text on the inside and a stark black-and-white image of the band. On later editions this inside was replaced with white text and a montage from the promotional video for the song "Mask".

Setlist

The Passion of Lovers

In the Flat Field

Silent Hedges

Terror Couple Kill Colonel

The Man With the X-Ray Eyes

(Slow version)

In Fear of Fear

Hair of the Dog

Mask

Rosegarden Funeral of Sores

(John Cale cover)

Dancing

Hollow Hills

Spy in the Cab

On This Day 24/10/1978 Dr Feelgood

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On this day, 24 October 1978, rock band Dr Feelgood played Cardiff Top Rank with support provided by Squeeze.

The band were formed on Canvey Island in 1971 by Johnson, Brilleaux and Sparks, who had all been members of existing R&B bands, and soon added drummer John Martin.

They took their name from a 1962 record by the American blues pianist and singer Willie Perryman (also known as "Piano Red") called "Dr. Feel-Good", which Perryman recorded under the name of Dr. Feelgood & the Interns.

The song was covered by several British beat groups in the 1960s, including Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. The term is also a slang term for heroin or for a physician who is willing to over-prescribe drugs.

Dr Feelgood are best known for early singles such as "She Does It Right", "Roxette", "Back in the Night" and "Milk and Alcohol", Feelgood’s Guitarist Wilko Johnson left the group because of conflicts with Lee Brilleaux the previous year. He was replaced by John 'Gypie' Mayo.

With Mayo, the band was never as popular as with Johnson but still enjoyed their only Top Ten hit single in 1979, with "Milk and Alcohol".

Squeeze had just released their first EP and their self-titled debut album (March 1978) the album was the source of two singles ("Take Me I'm Yours" and "Bang Bang") produced by the band themselves.

On This Day 11/10/1977 Mink DeVille

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On this day, 11 October 1977, American rock band Mink DeVille played Cardiff’s Top Rank as support to Dr Feelgood. The band just had a UK hit with Spanish Stroll taken from their debut album Cabretta.

Mink DeVille was formed in 1974 when singer Willy DeVille (then called Billy Borsay) met drummer Thomas R. "Manfred" Allen Jr. and bassist Rubén Sigüenza in San Francisco. Said DeVille, "I met Manfred at a party; he'd been playing with John Lee Hooker and a lot of blues people around San Francisco. ... I met Rubén at a basement jam in San Francisco, and he liked everything I liked from The Drifters to, uh, Fritz Lang."

Willy DeVille occasionally sat in with the band Lazy Ace, which included Allen on drums and Ritch Colbert on piano. When Lazy Ace broke up, DeVille, Allen, Colbert, Rubén Sigüenza, and guitarist Robert McKenzie (a.k.a. Fast Floyd, later of Fast Floyd and the Famous Firebirds) formed a band called Billy de Sade and the Marquis.

In 1975, the band changed its name to Mink DeVille; lead singer Billy Borsay took the name Willy DeVille. Said DeVille, "We were sitting around talking of names, and some of them were really rude, and I was saying, guys we can't do that. Then one of the guys said how about Mink DeVille? There can't be anything cooler than a fur-lined Cadillac can there?" DeVille also remarked about the name, "What could be more pimp than a mink Cadillac? In an impressionistic sort of way."

From 1975 to 1977, Mink DeVille was one of the original house bands at CBGB, the New York City nightclub where punk rock music was born in the mid-1970s. "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on.

On This Day 10/10/1979 Penetration

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On this day, 10 October 1979, punk band Penetration played Cardiff’s Top Rank.

Formed in Ferryhill as The Points, under which name they played their first gig, at the Rock Garden pub in Middlesbrough in October 1976, they changed the band's name after a 1973 song by Iggy & The Stooges. Their second gig was supporting The Stranglers at Newcastle City Hall.

Significantly, the band also played at the club The Roxy during its first 100 days. On 9 April 1977, the band appeared on the same bill as Generation X. They were also supported by Joy Division (then named "Warsaw") in May 1977, who were performing their very first gig.Early in their career, the band also supported The Vibrators and toured with Buzzcocks.

After the release of their second single, Penetration recorded the first of two sessions for John Peel at BBC Radio 1 in July 1978. Later that year, the band released their debut album. Moving Targets was number 6 in the Sounds Critics' albums of the year; and it made number 13 in the NME critics' chart.

In 1979, they toured Europe, the US and Britain but the grueling schedule began to take its toll. A disappointing reaction to Coming Up For Air, the second album, was the final nail in the coffin of the original band. After the band split in October an official bootleg album called Race Against Time was released, which was a collection of early demos and live tracks.

On This Day 05/10/1980 Joe Jackson

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On this day, 5 October 1980, singer/songwriter Joe Jackson played Cardiff’s Top Rank on the opening date of his Beat Crazy tour.

Beat Crazy was Joe Jackson’s third studio album released on the 10th October . It was a relative disappointment commercially, peaking outside the Top 40 in both the UK and the United States, with its singles failing to chart.

Nevertheless, the Joe Jackson Band was successful and toured extensively. This would be the last studio album released by the Joe Jackson Band's original line-up until 2003's Volume 4.

Beat Crazy was intended to be a stylistic departure from Jackson's first two albums. However, as he recalled, the band lacked a clear direction during the recording. Jackson later stated that he felt the record "didn't really work". He explained,

“The stereotypical difficult third album, in which we tried to change the formula a bit without quite knowing how. It's darker than the first two and the reggae influence is more pronounced. There's some good stuff on it (I especially like the title track and 'Biology') but it’s not quite the triumphant swan song of this band.”

Line-up:

Joe Jackson (voc, p, organ)

Graham Maby (b, voc)

Gary Sanford (g, voc)

Dave Houghton (dr, voc)

Setlist

One To One

I'm The Man

Biology

Beat Crazy

Look Sharp!

Mad At You

Pretty Boys

On Your Radio

The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff cover)

Friday

Fit

Is She Really Going Out With Him?

Don't Wanna Be Like That

Got The Time

One More Time

It's Different For Girls

On This Day 21/09/1983 Level 42

On this day, 21 September 1983, jazz funk band Level 42 played Cardiff’s Top Rank. The band had just released their fourth studio album Standing in the Light.

The album peaked at No. 9, being the group's first top 10 showing in the UK Pop Albums Chart. Standing in the Light has also been certified Gold in the UK by the British Phonographic Industry.

Standing in the Light was produced by Larry Dunn and Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire. On the final track "The Machine Stops", the lyrics are inspired by E. M. Forster's 1909 science fiction story of the same name.

The first single, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", peaked at No. 41 on the UK Singles charts. The second single, "The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)", gave the group its first top-ten hit in the United Kingdom. The third single, "Micro-Kid", peaked at No. 37 on the UK Singles Chart.

After they were seen jamming together, Level 42 were invited to sign to Elite Records (a small independent label) in 1980. They were also encouraged to branch out into vocal music. Having considered recruiting a singer, the band eventually settled on giving King and Lindup the vocal role. The two men developed a complementary style, with Lindup's falsetto frequently used for harmonies and choruses while King's deep tenor led the verses (although Lindup would also sing entire songs on his own). Lyrics were generally written by the Gould brothers while King, Wally Badarou and Lindup concentrated on Level 42's music.

The Elite Records single "Love Meeting Love" brought the band to the attention of Polydor Records, with whom they signed their second recording contract. In 1981, they released their first Polydor single, "Love Games", which became a Top 40 hit. They then cut their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, which was an immediate success throughout Europe.

On This Day 17/09/1978 The Stranglers

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On this day, 17 September 1978, punk/rock band The Stranglers played Cardiff’s Top Rank. The support band that evening were The Skids.

Formed as the Guildford Stranglers in Guildford, Surrey, in early 1974, they originally built a following within the mid-1970s pub rock scene. While their aggressive, no-compromise attitude had them identified by the media with the emerging UK punk rock scene that followed, their idiosyncratic approach rarely followed any single musical genre, and the group went on to explore a variety of musical styles, from new wave, art rock and gothic rock through the sophisti-pop of some of their 1980s output.

The band had recently released their third studio album Black and White. As with the Stranglers' first two albums, Black and White was produced by Martin Rushent. The album sees the Stranglers adopting a more experimental approach to song structures and time signatures (for example, "Curfew" features 7/4 time).

The band recorded a version of "Sweden" sung in Swedish, called "Sverige", and released it in Sweden. The song was partly inspired by Cornwell's PhD placement at Lund University in the early-1970s. In an anecdote related in the Swedish online magazine Blaskan, it is stated that the song was inspired by a disastrous visit to Sweden during a European tour, when a gig was violently interrupted by a gang of "raggare" (greasers).[4]

The song title "Death and Night and Blood" is taken from a line from Yukio Mishima's novel Confessions of a Mask.

The song "In the Shadows" had previously been released as the B-side to the band's 1977 single "No More Heroes".