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| Review by OMMCR [ slightly updated/modified
by the deeply website]
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 Though
Manchester's contribution to the history of British music is
well documented, many of the defining events actually happened
in the outlying towns and cities that make up the urban conurbation
sprawl that is modern Manchester.
Rockin' Rochdale, an exhibition in the excellent new Touchstones
Gallery in Rochdale's centre, highlights the variety of ways
the Dale has itself contributed to Manchester's rich musical
heritage - from the brass and big band eras through Gracie Fields
and Deeply Vale to Tractor and Cargo Studios.
 Several
hundred guests, including members of Tractor and Wilful Damage
,Michelle Mullane from BBC GMR,Pete Farrow,Tony Grant.,Tom Smetham[
legendary Deeply Vale doco assistant producer] an appearance
by local producer / engineer John Brierley and guitar maker
extraordinaire Brian Eastwood, attended the preview (20 October
2005) at which the Lord Mayor of Rochdale formally opened the
exhibition - assisted by Milnrow resident rocker Clint Boon
with a plea that the hallowed ground of nearby Cargo Studios
(vacant for several years) be purchased by Rochdale Council
as a permenant space. Well, somebody should. Click to see more
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Rockin’ Rochdale - a history of popular music Middleton to Milnrow |
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 Which track on Sgt. Pepper’s has a Rochdale connection? Who once made a single with boxer Prince Naseem? Which smash hit single was written by Alan Partridge’s brother and where did Peter Hook meet PJ Proby? Uncover the answers to these and many more questions in an exhibition that features everything from 18th century musical concerts via Gracie Fields to the Deeply Vale rock festival and beyond.
Highlights already lined up for display in Rockin ‘ Rochdale include unseen footage of the Deeply Vale music festival on a big screen,some rare guitars hand built in Rochdale- one especially for Top of The Pops, rare musical posters from the 1790s and memorabilia from the legendary Drake Street recording studios Cargo and Suite 16 that hosted the likes of New Order & Teardrop Explodes.
As well as viewing an extensive range of musical memorabilia there will be the opportunity to listen to music from local bands and hear interviews with important contributors to Rochdale’s musical heritage. For the first time John Brierley speaks about what it was like to work on the recording of the legendary single ‘Atmosphere’ with Joy Division and, from a different era, Heywood’s famous band leader Eddy Hilton takes us back almost half a century to the great days of the dance halls.
To prove that Touchstones is a museum like no other there’ll also be a look in to the future with a section on local bands who might just be 'The Next Big Thing'!
Speaking about the exhibition, David Pugh, Museum Access Officer at Touchstones Rochdale said, "This exhibition brings together some of most memorable musical moments in the borough’s history providing an exciting insight into the cultural life of Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton over the last 200 years."
It is also an exhibition that will continue to grow after its has opened as David explained " The history of popular music wasn’t taken seriously by museums until recently and yet it is something that nearly everyone enjoys. Whilst researching this exhibition we’ve discovered just what a rich musical heritage our borough has. The public are bringing in new stories and donating new objects all the time. We are therefore designing part of the exhibition as a place where people can contribute their own musical memories and help to build up a unique history of the local music scene."
Owner of Ozit Morpheus Records Chris Hewitt, who has been one of the key researchers for the exhibition, added "At 51 and MD of a record and production company I look back on my years in Rochdale with affection. I have crossed paths again with so many people interwined in the Rochdale music scene whilst researching this exhibition. I went to primary school and junior school in Middleton with Bob Fisher and Martin Kay. Bob's dad would become legendary as sandwich supplier for the Bickershaw Festival ; Bob would go on to be manager of Judge Happiness and the Mock Turtles.Martin and Bob ran Parish Bowman studios in Middleton for a while and Martin would go on to design sleeves for The Chameleons who would record in Cargo on Kenion St Rochdale above my music shop and would take Kieran Miskella who started off as a roadie for Tractor on tour as their sound engineer.. In 1972 aged 17, I was promoting my first concerts in Rochdale and would use cut and paste artwork techniques for my concert flyers and then I would go to photocopy each one at 5p each on the only public photocopier back then- in the building where Touchstones is holding the exhibition in 2005/6- coincidence ? it was the reference library back in 1972 and I can recall trying to photocopy on that primitive machine a concert flyer I had put together with a really dark picture of the Pink Fairies on it- I was promoting them at the College Hall across the road on St Marys Gate- don't know how many 5ps I wasted trying to get the picture lighter on the flyer.. That same year 1972 I teamed up with Jim Milne Steve Clayton and John Brierley [Tractor] just before their album was released and got into the Radio Luxembourg rock charts at no 18. I still manage the band now 33 years later and their albums continue to sell and last year their DVD of two 2003 concerts achieved ecstatic reviews all over the world. When John Peel sent the sales royalties for Tractor off to us in the early 70's we used them to buy better tape recorders, a mixing desk, studio and stage microphones and to set up several recording studios and a music shop, rehearsal rooms and a hire PA system. John Peel helped kickstart that whole local industry by financing the release of Jim Milne and Steve Clayton's songs . Other things that contributed towards that creative scene back then were the Art College and the Technical College, the Rochdale Sculptors, Axis Poetry Magazine, Axis bookshop, RAP, Henry and Eddie Kledjys with their Streetlife street theatre, the folk clubs of Rochdale- Jack and Mavis and Terry Christian, Tony Crabtree-and all of that would also explode into Deeply Vale Festivals- the rest as they say is history"
Rockin’ Rochdale will open in the Heritage gallery on the 22nd October and run until 23rd April. For further information on this exhibition please call 01706 864986.
The exhibition has been supported by Ozit Morpheus Records.
Touchstones Rochdale is located on the Esplanade in Rochdale town Centre. The award winning Arts and Heritage Centre is open seven days a week, Monday to Friday 10am-5.30pm and Saturday and Sunday 11am-4.30pm. Entry is free. The Centre offers a museum, four art galleries, a heritage gallery, Tourist Information Centre, Local Studies Library, Café and shop with regular events and workshops. For further information ring 01706 864986 or visit www.rochdale.gov.uk/touchstones.
Ends
For further Information please contact:
David Pugh, Museum Access Officer
Email: david.pugh@rochdale.gov.uk. Tel: 01706 864938.
Mashuda Begum , Marketing Officer
Email: mashuda.begum@rochdale.gov.uk. Tel: 01706 864942.
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Exhibition at Touchstones Centre, The Esplanade, Rochdale, 22nd October, 2005 onwards. For six months, the admission is totally free! |
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 Exhibition to be opened by Clint Boon of The Inspiral Carpets (Clint went to Art College in Rochdale)
Encompassing all of the following and more
Deeply Vale Festivals of the 1970's
Cargo Recording Studios,Suite Sixteen Recording Studios, John Peel's Dandelion Recording studios, Vic's Place Recording Studios, Tractor Music music shop and PA Hire.
Brian Eastwood's guitars - legendary custom guitars built in Rochdale [for Showaddywaddy, Motorhead, etc.]
Bands that came from Rochdale: Tractor, Gracie Fields, Localeroes/Victor Mature, Wilful Damage, Mock Turtles, The Chameleons, Untermensch, The Pranksters; bands that came to Rochdale to Record including The Fall, Joy Division,Dead or Alive, Julian Cope/Teardrop Explodes, Durutti Column, Section 25, the Membranes, New Order and hundreds of others displayed in record sleeves, photos, anecdotes etc.
Watch this space for more details!
THE ADMISSION IS FREE
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| Deeply Vale pay their respect
to Tony Crabtree - 3rd July |
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 Very sad to hear of Tony's death. I met him many times in folk sessions but I recall one session where I introduced him to a set of uillean pipes. He was fascinated by them and within a few minutes was sufficiently co-ordinated to be able to play up and down the scales. Not an easy thing to achieve in such a short time as any piper will tell you! A really talented and original musician who will be sadly missed.
Les Hall, Huddersfield
17/07/2005 at 15:23
We were blessed when Tony joined Tractor - his musicianship and vocal ability were, and remained, awesome. Although he wasn't with us long, he brought so much to us as a band member and a person - warm, hilariously funny and a sharp wit. I last saw him a few years ago at the Bamford Bowling Club with his trio and introduced myself to him. He 'got me' straight away and began berating me in a wicked copy of my 'Sudden-Scouse' accent. I was lucky to call him a friend.
jim milne, liverpool
10/07/2005 at 09:04
It
is with great sadness that we must report the death of blind
Rochdale guitarist TONY CRABTREE on Sunday 3rd July 2005.
Tony who was blind from birth went to a piano tuning college
in Shropshire as a child owing to his incredible hearing
faculties, In the early seventies he started playing guitar
in rock bands and had a fairly legendary band called Nirvana
by the mid seventies.
He played at deeply Vale in 1977 and 1978 and he was idolised
for the closeness he could get to Jimi Hendrix's guitar
and vocal sound. In 1978 he was signed by Virgin Records
for an advance of £37,000 but only ever got to release
one single under the band name Cry it was a cover of the
Rare Bird song "Sympathy".The B side was a number
written by Tony and his friend Mac entitled "Policeman's
Blues" . Tony on signing to Virgin was asked to sack
the other two members of Nirvana and one of these was his
step brother bass player Carl Conwell and the other was
drummer Geoff. Tony was never happy about this and then
having signed a dodgy 20 year management contract with a
used car salesmam called Austin Williams Tony was dropped
by Virgin in late 1978 and they asked fo all his £37,000
advance back. Devastated by this he sold off all his equipment
and stopped gigging.
Chis Hewitt took Tony Crabtree under his wing in 1979 and
started getting him solo acoustic concerts - he supported
Atomic Rooster at Middleton Civic Hall and did a fantastic
acoustic version of Be bop A Lula with just acoustic guitar
and vocals and Tony could do a vocal impersonation of long
tape loop echo.. In 1980 and 1981 he played keyboards and
guitar in a much expanded version of Tractor along with
Jim Milne and Steve Clayton and is featured on keyboards
and guitar on Tractor's 1981 single "Average Man's
Hero". Tony also recorded several songs in the mid
1980's along with Jim Milne in Suite Sixteen studios Rochdale.
One of these songs Word Games appears on the Tractor CD
Worst Enemies. In 1985 Tony played Heaton Park on Yamaha
grand piano and vocals along with jim Milne on vocals and
bass guitar and chris Hewitt captued this superb set to
a crowd of 10,000 on video..
Tony also got a piano bar residency arranged by Chris Hewitt
where six nights a week he would play a Yamaha electric
grand piano in Dukes Nightclub in Drake Street Rochdale
around 1985. After that finished this led to piano bar work
in Spain and after giving up music again for a while , in
1996 Chris Hewitt and Dave Edwards bought Tony a new set
of his string for his acoustic that had been unstrung for
a couple of years and asked him to play at the Carlton Ballroom
Rochdale at the deeply vale anniversary night- this was
captured on DAT and Video and was superb and tony started
gigging again and didn't stop again for many years until
he became quite ill recently. Jim Milne Chris Hewitt and
Steve Clayton of Tractor have all said in the last couple
of days what a great loss it is to Rochdale's musical talent.
He was as good as jimi Henrix there is no doubt.!!!
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| Mick Middles article in Warrington
Guardian series and Cheshire Newspapers - June 2005 |
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| I was sitting at a table at the Rover's Return
last Wednesday, thinking exotic thoughts about Minnie Caldwell
(and Bobby) while chatting to an unholy collection of sullen
luminaries from the fringes of Manchester music.
My god, what a motley selection of middle aged weirdos,
pot-bellied punks, silvered wrinklies and people who, frankly,
should be counting the domino dots by now.
I felt immediately at home and, slurping on a foaming pint
of 'Newton and Ridley', started to enjoy the wash of unashamed
nostalgia.
They had assembled to chat in earnest about the looming
possibility of a major pop festival to be held in the north
west during the non-Glastonbury year of 2006. More specifically,
the festival is to be held at Deeply Vale, the picturesque
setting on the moors above Rochdale for a series of four
legendary events from the mid-70s. Such is the enduring
fondness for Deeply Vale that a number of big names have
volunteered their services, should this become a reality.
Among them are Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, The Fall, Elbow,
Steve Hillage, OMD and many ... many more.
Although time is tight, it looks a distinct possibility,
with original Deeply Vale organiser Chris Hewitt pushing
hard in every direction and, what looked rather fanciful
at one stage, is now beginning to seem like a distinct possibility.
Hope so. The north west has remained largely bereft of pop
festivals for many years with, perhaps, just a few legendary
events dotted about. It seems implausible to think of The
Grateful Dead performing amid the defunct mines of Bickershaw
in 1971, supported by the greatest assemblage of eclectic
talent ever to cower beneath Britain's leaden skies. An
unparalleled event, promoted by a straggly hippie freak-come
entrepreneur known as Jeremy Beadle. Beyond that, as previously
stated here, came the ill-fated Factory Zoo festival at
Leigh and just one controversial V Festival in Warrington.
Festivals present many problems, of course. Do you really
want the edgy youth of Britain to converge so messily in
a field at the bottom of your garden? I am not sure I would
like that although Deeply Vale is neatly contained in its
own little fairy dell world. The bewildering and rolling
guidelines of health and safety are now stringent to the
point of fascism. A fact which renders the original Deeply
site all but impossible, although adjoining land does seem
to reach the levels of accessibility required today. On
a more personal level, I have to insist on a number of requirements
before attending such a 'do'. I demand my own Travelodge
to be situated within walking distance. (None of this 'camping'
malarkey. One has to have television, kettle, mini bar and
en suite facilities readily available, should the stress
of sitting in a field peopled by deadbeats of the unfeasibly
noisy variety become too much to bear. I jest ... I think.
Deeply Vale should, if it happens, also provide an outlet
for Lancashire's colourful legacy of folk art and culture.
It should also be great fun even if my suggestion, that
it should be held in the comparatively civilised Cheshire
plain, was met with hoots of derision. (I was only thinking
how handy it would be to be able to nip out for a rocket
salad and Chardonnay in Wilmslow...
It was curious to see this press conference taking place
on Wednesday, May 18, ... which itself was a day of nostalgia
and reflection on the streets of Manchester. Mainly because
it marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Joy Division's
Ian Curtis and fans from across Europe poured into the city
to assemble beneath the shadows of The Triangle - once The
Corn Exchange -to watch the image of old Ian flickering
to evocative effect from a giant screen on the building.
Like many people there, I spent most of the evening examining
the older faces in the crowd, checking if I had known them
a quarter of a century ago.
It was in this situation that I met Ian Curtis's sister
... and his auntie and enjoyed a brief drink with them outside
The Shambles. They seemed to be lovely people; pure and
unaffected by the feint swirl of celebrity. A pity that
the same could not be said of the odd lank haired and latterly
bulbous popstar, who would stand posing at the front of
Selfridges, soaking in a glory for himself. I shall ignore
him. He wasn't important. It was a day for the spirit of
the people and the way in which Joy Division still manages
to 'touch' from a distance of 25 years. Ian Curtis would
have understood that.
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| Advanced
review from the Fall website, May 16, 2005 |
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"A Terrific Document of early Fall"
is what the Fall website have said about this forthcoming
"Fall Live at Deeply Vale CD" out early to mid
June 2005.
Ozit Records kindly sent me a preview CDR of the July 22,
1978 Deeply Vale festival gig they're releasing later this
month. I'd not heard this gig before and I was delighted
to hear that a tape had surfaced, since decent-sounding
recordings of pre-Dragnet Fall gigs are not particularly
common.
The set: Repetition (6:19) / Psycho Mafia (2:27) / Rebellious
Jukebox (3:17) / Frightened (4:54) / Stepping Out (2:46)
/ Like to Blow (1:46) / Mess of My (2:54) / Mother-Sister
(3:22) / Industrial Estate (1:51) / It's the New Thing (3:28)
/ Futures and Pasts (3:00) / Music Scene (fades out at 4:58).
Although the sound is not perfect (there's tape hiss, a
murky rumbling sound during the first couple of tracks,
and on the whole the sound's a bit "thin"; you
might want to play around with your EQ settings on playback),
this is a terrific document of the early Fall. I'd guess
the CD was sourced from a master or first-generation audience
tape made on a handheld recorder. Mark is on fine, belligerent
form, and fortunately the vocals are clear and upfront throughout.
There's plenty of Mark's sarky between-song banter (e.g.
"We like to be in tune, this being our first experience
of open air festivals" and "A song of contrasts,
for my mother and my sister." He also adopts a pisstaking
American accent for three of the song intros.) I wouldn't
describe the Fall as a particularly tight outfit on this
afternoon performance (Yvonne's keyboards in particular
are not always in time) but it hardly matters since this
show is all about Mark's vocals and Martin's scratchy guitar
(Karl's drums and Riley's bass are somewhat buried). The
highlight for me is a haunting, sinister Frightened. The
tape sounds to me a little too fast during Music Scene and
finally runs out at the end, so we're missing the second
half of this song.
There's a little bonus track tacked onto the end -- a medley
of snippets of studio or rehearsal versions of Psycho Mafia,
Dresden Dolls, and Industrial Estate. These might have been
extracted from the Dresden Dolls bootleg single (have to
check), although I don't *think* I've heard this version
of Dresden Dolls with un-Fall-like funky keyboards before.
Anyway, it's short (2:16), sweet, and has very good sound.
thanks To Stefan for this advanced review from the Fall
website.
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JIMI
GOODWIN, LEAD SINGER, DOVES
