Passionate Friend?
Ah! the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd! (or should it be the other way round?🎭). We recently had a trip to 'Theatreland' to catch a comedy called 'The Unfriend' starring Reece Shearsmith (League Of Gentlemen and Inside No.9). The play is written by Stephen Moffat (BBC's Sherlock) and directed by Mark Gatiss also of the same teams as those shows already mentioned.
A Friend In Need?
I guess many of us may have experienced it, you know, you go on holiday and meet new people who suddenly latch on to you and become a 'friend for life' and seem to want to 'meet up again' once the holiday is over, you then dread the e-mails informing you that they are 'near your neck of the woods' and if you are about they would like to 'pop in' and see you. This pretty much summarises the comedy except that the new holiday 'friend' also happens to be a serial killer!
Cue the dark humour that Messrs Shearsmith and Gatiss are best known for. Frances Barber plays the killer whilst Reece Shearsmith and Amanda Abbington play the 'ordinary and ever so polite' English couple who live in suburbia with their 2.4 teen children from hell. I can't reveal all of the play but it was most amusing Barber certainly steals the show with her brash American old lady serial killer act and Reece Shearsmith's unspoken facial expressions and slapstick actions are a winner! Details of the play and other upcoming shows on The Criterion Theatre website at the link. Anyway enough of Theatreland and cue the music...
All this pre-amble leads me into the music content of this post featuring that band of 'loveable scallies' The Teardrop Explodes and a track by them that I love from way back when.
Is A Friend Indeed
*Warning video containing some seriously 'dodgy' haircuts, 'iffy' movements and some seriously 'dubious' fashion. Still, it is what it is, life, fashion and styles move on...and then all come back to haunt us ten or twenty years later👻.
For this post one of my favourites by the band called 'Passionate Friend' from all the way back in 1981, evidently written about Julian Cope's relationship with Ian McCulloch's sister (don't think it went down well with Big Mac!).
The Teardrop Explodes started out on the Independent Zoo Records label back in 1978 with one of their first release 'Sleeping Gas' followed swiftly by 'Bouncing Babies' both tracks were 'punted' out in 1979, both verging slightly on the 'psychedelic' post punk/new wave, perhaps a style similarly used by Echo & The Bunnymen.
But A Friend With Weed Is Better
They Were:
- Gary Dwyer - Drums
- Julian Cope - Vocals/Bass
- Michael Finkler - Guitar
- Paul Simpson - Keyboards
Finkler would eventually leave to be replaced by Alan Gill, who evidently introduced the world of cannabis and LSD to Cope which would cause them as a band no end of problems as Cope's behaviour began to become more erratic.
Their early tracks were engineered by Dave Balfe a bass player himself, former member of band Big In Japan and founder (along with Bill Drummond of the Zoo Record label). The Teardrop Explodes managed to score a bit higher in the main UK Charts of the Day with 'Treason' before eventually being signed by the major Mercury Records with a re-release of the aforementioned track, plus hitting higher with the tracks 'Reward'. They released their debut album 'Kilimanjaro' in 1980 which featured some of the above tracks which had been previously released as singles.
Picture Sources
Photo by Chang Duong on Unsplash