The Prime Movers had their being on Lancaster University Campus, 1990-1993. This was recorded by David Blackwell at the Lancaster Musician's Co-Op, July, 1993

Prime Movers - Some Real Good Stuff

Real Good Stuff, by the Prime Movers

Recorded by the Prime Movers, Lancaster Musician's Co-Op, July 1993

I Saw You In Advertisements by the Prime Movers

I met Ian Bishop and Michael Grew my first day as a mature student in 1989, but it was not until 1990/91 that we formed the Prime Movers.
This was recorded at the Lancaster Musician's Co-Op, July 1993.

Your Body's Telling You by the Prime Movers

This was a mainstay of our live set. We played live maybe 20 times, always on the Lancaster University campus, in the years between 1991 and 1993. We finished by spending two days recording in the Lancaster Musicians Co-Op, engineered by Lovely Egg David Blackwell, July 1993. After that, I doubt we were ever in the same room at the same time again. Our aim was only ever to be a great campus band

My Baby's Sick Again by the Prime Movers

At the same time that I was playing in the Prime Movers, I was writing my first (unpublished) novel. One of the characters in the book had a hit single in the late 1960's entitled 'You Never Can Tell.' So I wrote the song. (lyrics, that is - all music by the Prime Movers

You Never Can Tell by the Prime Movers

Pretty much the first thing we wrote, autumn 1990. I had a poster of a 'Dodge boat', ie, an old speedboat, and riffed on that. It could also be taken as an example of cockney rhyming slang - someone with a dodge boat might be said to have an unattractive face.

Dodge Boat by The Prime Movers

Disclaimer: I no longer believe that the world is the way you choose it

The World Is The Way You Choose It by The Prime Movers

Sweet Jane, by Lou Reed
Sugar Sugar by Andy Kim and Jeff Barry
This was the Prime Movers habitual encore.
This arrangement was later used by popular loungecore duo Your Dad in a similar capacity.

1969 Sweet, by the Prime Movers

Epic rock operatics. We ended our sets with this, because where would you go next?

How Could I Be So Stupid? by the Prime Movers

I shall be back to write this stuff up. It's a long and compliacted story, of no interest to those who weren't involved. This will not deter me, however, from having my say.

Sinking In The Sands, by the Airtight Garage Band

Our freind Madelaine Weymouth did the translation.

Ca Na Vas Pas, Toi (You're In A Bad Way), by Your Dad

I arrived in Lampeter in October 1976, determined to fulfil my three great ambitions; to lose my virginity, to take drugs, and to be in a band. 1976 was a big year for Pop/Rock Geeky Boys, and from what I'd been hearing and reading a great sea change was coming. My teenage ZigZag reading had taken me to some esoteric places, often American. In 75/76, they were writing about Patti Smith, the Ramones, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. The NME, meanwhile, had become interested in reggae, and so had I; I had a Peter Tosh Legalise it poster on my bedroom wall, which my old Mum didn't know what it meant, even though Mr Tosh was smoking what we would now call a 'Camberwell Carrot.'
The summer of '76 was the hottest and driest on record. At the end of August, I went with a few chums to the Reading Festival. There were only a few things I actually wanted to see; Eddie and the Hot Rods, Phil Manzanera's new band - and two reggae acts, U-Roy and the Mighty Diamonds; with Sly and Robbie from the Wailers on bass and drums for both acts. When these two acts were due, my friends and I went up the front, together with maybe two or three hundred other reggae curious festival goers. I write more fully about what happened in my book 'A Hero For High Times', but in retrospect, I have come to see it as a race riot. Two hundred of us at the front were bombarded with full beer cans, which were being aimed at the stage from further back in the crowd. People at the back of our little group were getting attacked, and, in memory, the whole of the rest of the crowd were baying their hatred and spite at the stage. There was no doubt, then or now, what the problem was. 
So in that moment, I conceived my dislike of long-haired denim-clad rockists. It had been made clear that peace and love hadn't come off, and that sides needed to be taken.
Not quite the first person I met at Lampeter, but certainly in the first ten was Paul Williams (pictured, on bass). His pals and my pals would eat in the canteen together, and one evening we got to chatting. One of the first things we found out about one another was that we had both been down the front for the reggae at Reading 76, so it was clear from the start that we were on the same side. Also, he was the first real Geeky Boy I'd met. When I talked of Terry Reid etc, he knew of what I spoke; and vice versa, when he chatted Spirit etc. Also he had seen the Ramones and Patti Smith at the Roundhouse. And had a stereo. We repaired to his chambers.
Around this time, November-ish 1976, I achieved the first of my ambitions, which to smoke 'pot', as no-one called it ever. And I liked it, and have ever since.
The hippest of our contemporaries was one Paul Hazel, leather jacket, mirror shades, longhair but MC5 long hair, and a drummer. He and Paul Williams had been talking about forming a band. Mr Hazel played a gig with some lads at Christmas 1976, all of them second years to our first years. Here, Mr Hazel met Bob Machin (pictured, guitar). Bob, Paul W and Mr Hazel did a rehearsal or two WITHOUT ME, but I hoped to worm my way in, because I had a bass guitar, that my parents had given me three years before, and which I couldn't get a note out of. Reclaiming my bass annoyed my brother somewhat, as he'd been using it to play with Peter and the Test Tube Babies, and now had to get his own.
I did an audition in January 77, in that we went to Conti’s Cafe, High Street, Lampeter, put ‘Hard Work’ on the juke box, and I sang along. That, and the bass, were my tickets to greatness. We did one insane gig at the University of Wales Eisteddford in Aberystwth, and then a five song set in the Union Hall. This song was not on the list; nor was it recorded at our first ‘77 gig, but at a party in 1979 – that’s why it begins with me saying ‘let us take you back to the happy summer of 1977…’ but it gives a true flavour; even though, by this stage, Mr Hazel had moved back to London, and we had found ourselves a new drummer...

Gimme Love by the Repeaters

Dead Man's Shoes by The National Game

I Wake Up (Screaming Your Name)by The National Game

Incinerator by The National Game

Duty Calls (live) by the National Game

Monkey Street (live) by the National Game

That summer, home again in Newhaven, I worked in the stores at Concord Lighting, the factory where my brother worked. There were a couple of guys working there who had a ska band called The Sportsmen, (after the pub by Withdean Stadium) and they invited me to do a few gigs with them in Brighton. I was co-lead singer, and it was great. This was the first time I’d sung with a non-rock band, and with a saxophonist; also great. And I realised that there was a circuit in Brighton, where regular gigs might be had.
Back in Lampeter for the third year, all had changed. For one thing, Bob Machin had graduated. Although he came back for a month or so at the beginning of term, signing on in Lampeter wasn’t much fun, and gigs were few and far between, so he went off to London and got a job at Foyles. We would all meet up in Brighton in the summer, we had decided. The plan was that all of us, band and girlfriends and chums and all, move to Brighton after our degrees finished; all except Jim, who had got a job with HMV Records.
By the beginning of November, Rowan had worked through her Tony issues, and I was promoted to boyfriend. She was living in a house called Sarnllys, high in the hills, with two other girls; Helen, the other beauty I had seen emerging from Nik’s room; and Sara. I remember when I first saw Sara, too, a couple of days after. She was walking in front of the Old Building, long flaxen hair, ice cold beauty, double denim. And I thought, ‘I’ll never have the nerve to speak to anyone as lovely as that.’ And, as you may have guessed, she is now my closest and dearest friend in the world. If I could write a letter to my 18 year old self, I’d keep it short – ‘You are a twat.’
I pretty much moved in with the girls. We didn’t pay rent; Rowan and Sara looked after the land-lady’s horses, who lived in stables attached to the house, while Helen and I tended her ponies in a distant field. Rowan was a brilliant horsewoman; she used to horrify me by galloping her thoroughbred charges down the lane, bareback. I walked a lot in the hills, and studied nowt.
The band ticked along. Rowan’s cousin Glen had started as a first year, and didn’t much like it. He was a fine guitarist (and is now an accomplished jazz saxophonist and composer), and he depped in for Bob for a few gigs. He and Julie our other singer became an item, and both of them wanted into the evolving idea of moving to Brighton.
Being the singer in a rock and roll band and living in a remote country cottage in Mid-Wales with the three best-looking girls between Tregaron and Llanybydder was much better than it sounds. Being young, and being in love; everything else is downhill, in some senses. Parties, laughs, gigs, psycho-drama, madness and joy, that was how we spent our days. 
Most of my chums also took a degree, I should add, but I couldn’t be arsed. Why did I need a degree? Life was too good to bother.
We did an end of year gig in a pal’s garden, for which Bob had come back; that’s where the first track ‘Gimme Love’ was recorded. This was a triumphant night, the last gig with Jim.
As the end of term approached, Rowan told me that she was pregnant; and I was delighted. That someone so amazing would want to have a child with me was the biggest compliment possible. We married in Lampeter Registry Office, June 1979, almost on the last day of term. My parents caught wind of it the day before, and they managed to drive down from Newhaven in time, somewhat put out. Our witnesses were Sara, and Ian Willson, who was coming to Brighton too. In Bob’s absence, he had started writing songs; this demo is the first of his I have, but is far from the last on this playlist.
We had one last party before we left Lampeter: our wedding breakfast, on the lawn outside the house where Rowan had lived in her second year. All our friends were there to wave us off on honeymoon in Glasbury. A few days later, we left Lampeter for good, and headed for Brighton.

I Love The Weekend by the Repeaters

For all of my first year, I had worked for the Ents committee; doing doors at events, bit of DJ-ing etc. There was a Scottish mature student guy doing the same, (22 to my 19) called Jim McMahon, and we both stood for Ents chair at the end of first year. Jim was clear favourite, a hail-fellow-well-met guy (for a Glaswegian), who was popular and well liked. I was an avowed weirdo, standing to establish my place as Jim’s deputy, on a platform of ‘let’s get some punk bands’. Jim should have been a shoo-in, except for some odd reason, he decided to play politics. He withdrew his candidacy, and, at the annual Student Union meeting, to my great horror, I became Ents committee chairman by default, a reign which lasted some fifteen minutes, as the student body made known my unsuitability for the post – one young lady, for example, bringing up the time when, rather than organise a coach trip to see Ralph McTell in Aberystwyth, I had in fact, together with a few chums, appropriated the funds of the ‘Jazz Club’ and fucked off to Aylesbury to see Iggy Pop. She had a point; Jim was made Ents Chair by acclamation, and I was sacked in the same meeting where I had just been elected.
I was annoyed by Jim, because he didn’t need shenanigans to win. Nonetheless, I became his deputy, incompetence and corruption notwithstanding.
Mr Hazel had left after First Year because, at that same meeting he had been elected editor of the student newspaper, 1822, and had blown the whole annual budget on producing a rather beautiful fold-out cross between OZ and an alternative comic. He put a picture of all his chums lolling about at the door of Conti’s cafe on the front cover, so that we could deal with the fall-out the next year after he’d gone to London having annoyed the whole student body. I had my first published piece in that production, a kind of faux ‘Diary’ column, called ‘One Freak’s Week’, much like the Diary pieces I now write for the Church Times, except with hyper-violence towards rabbits.
As second year started, it was just me, Paul Williams and Bob Machin left in the band. Paul and I shared a remote farmhouse in Llanddewi Brefi with four chums, one of whom was Ian Willson, to whom we will return in due course. Because we didn’t have any neighbours, we could rehearse in what was supposed to be our dining room. But we didn’t have a drummer. We took a stall at the Freshers Fair; I think we may still have been posing as the ‘Jazz Club’, of which Ian Willson was supposed to be in charge. We had a big sign up, ‘Drummer Wanted’. We were approached by a young man called Tony; one rehearsal was enough to show that, whatever else his talents, drumming wasn’t one. Then we tried a bloke called Chris Bendon, a bit older than us. He could almost play the drums, and we stuck with him for two or three rehearsals, before telling him no. He went on to have a fairly distinguished career as a poet, so all’s well etc.
But maybe six weeks into term, we still didn’t have a drummer, Bob had already turned 20, and Paul Williams and I were due to go over in 1978. If we didn’t hurry, our teenage punk years would pass us by.
One night, after an Ents meeting, Jim McMahon came up to me, and asked if we were still looking for a drummer, because if so, he was a drummer himself. We took him up to the house, and started him with the Modern Lovers ‘Roadrunner’, a staple of starting out ‘new wave’ bands like ourselves. And he played it straight through, including the bit that goes ‘Roadrunner once, roadrunner twice.’ We fell on his neck with kisses. And so it’s Jim playing on these Repeaters tracks, and very much holding his own. Years later, he told me that he’d never touched a drum-kit until that first rehearsal, the twisty wee rascal.
This song, ‘I am a Mole’ was written by Bob Machin, who also wrote ‘Gimme Love’ and the next track, ‘Bully Boys.’ It was recorded, along with the next two tracks at a studio in Catford, in the Summer of ‘78. And it is there that we must go next.

I Am A Mole by the Repeaters

We didn’t have a name. People called us what they liked; or so we suggested to the audience at the University of Wales Eisteddfod, who responding by booing throughout our woeful, but enormously funny and enjoyable set.
Before our first proper gig in the Union Hall, someone suggested Weekend Superstars, which might have worked had we not abbreviated it to Weekend SS. On the night, we were called Archie and the UK’s, and I think you’ll go a long way to find a shitter punk band name.
So now we had a drummer, we needed to find a proper name; Paul Williams it was who suggested The Repeaters, motion carried unanimously. We thought of ourselves as young gunslingers after all; middle age has shown that the epithet could just as well be applied to one who eats too much cucumber.
We picked up another guitarist, a first year, called Chris Williams. He had a remarkable ability to play guitar just exactly like Wilko Johnson, so Wilko he became. He also played in a band in Portsmouth called, if you’ll believe me, the Beatles. They had three gigs booked at New Year 77/78, and their singer couldn’t make it, so I depped for him. It is from this I derive my claim that I sang onstage with the Beatles.
The sound changed a bit with Wilco on board, and we started doing a few Dr Feelgood numbers, and some Eddie and the Hot Rods too. We got gigs all over north-east Dyfed, and I think we even got into Powys. We were the first punk band in Mid-Wales, where all around us were drinking mushroom tea and channeling Steve Hillage. This contrast between various cultures was brought home to us on the night we played a gig at TeePee Valley. It started badly when, as we got out of the van, a wee tot, no more than five, approached Jim with a bike pump, and offered to inject him with heroin. We set up in a large barn, with the heaviest seventies hippies of your nightmares seated around the walls, on cushions, skinning up, several of them suckling children. Each number in our set was greeted with nods, and even the odd affirmative grunt, but no one moved, except to reach for skins. After 35 mins, I go ‘ThangUverymuchg’night’, and they are surprised. The ‘organiser’ said to me, ‘we thought you’d play all night, man.’ ‘We’re a punk band. 35 mins is all we know.’
So we clearly needed our own songs. I wrote one, which is the next track, ‘If You See Kay’, a punk ballad to stand alongside Johnny Moped’s heart-rending ‘Darling, Let’s Have Another Baby.’ But it was Bob Machin who rose to the challenge, and wrote the words and music to these first three tracks, ‘Gimme Love’, ‘Mole in a Hole’ and this, ‘Bully Boys.’ Bob gets better and better as a guitarist with the years, one who gigs a couple of nights a week, but I’m not sure he writes anymore; a shame, I’d say, on this evidence. Listening to this stuff for the first time in a long time, I reckon these are proper. Mole In A Hole is proto-Blur, and this song really does describe what it felt like to be out in Newhaven on a Saturday night. We were evolving a sound. We should have encouraged Bob to write more; this was our first mistake.
Wilco doesn’t play on these recordings, because he left at the end of the first year to concentrate on the Beatles, the legal ramifications of which never seemed to bother him. The line up on these recordings, therefore, is me, Bob, Paul W, and Jim; with, as astute listeners will have noticed, our two newest members on BV’s, Rowan Manby  and Julie Bannister. They brought fun and glamour and a dash of kitsch.
At the end of our second year, in the summer of 1978, we all went to stay in Rowan’s Dad’s house in Battersea, to spend a couple of days at a studio in Catford. The World Cup was on telly, and Mr Machin and Jim are Scots, so we had someone to support. It was fun, proper fun; the whole experience of being in a band was fun. In 1978, we had a right laugh, entertained our peers, and were starting to do some good stuff.
And I got to meet the man who would become my father in law...

Bully Boys by the Repeaters

Rowan was a beauty. She was just about the first girl I saw on campus. I remember the moment well. I lived in a student residence called Lloyd Thomas Hall for my first term at Lampeter. The guy who lived opposite me was called Nik; he was good-looking, energetic, worldly, curly-haired and impressively cool. I hated him not just because of the above, but because on our third afternoon, two girls of immense beauty emerged from his room, laughing with him, rather than at him, which hitherto had been my lot. I will never have girls as good-looking as that in my room, I sulked, like a before-my-time incel.
She spoke to me once in first year, after the Union Hall gig, when she told me I was wearing cool shades.
A year later, two years older than me beautiful glamourous black haired black eyed Rowan, a Chelsea girl to the core of her being, a super-cool society chick who drove a Mini, and who was expelled from public school for smoking pot (as reported in The News of the World), was singing in our band. One day, towards the end of second year, she announced to me that I would be her next boyfriend, if that was OK. I agreed it would be. The problem, from her point-of-view, was that she was in a relationship with a guy called Tony; the very same Tony who had failed the audition as our drummer. This had to be dealt with first. Tony, bless him, was a sphinx without a secret, and Rowan needed to work it through, as people often do with this type. In the meantime, I was ‘there for her’.
I can’t remember how Rowan and Julie came to join the band, though. Probably they just asked and I went ‘Yeah.’ Perhaps I thought my fantasy band from school was coming to be. Also, I like girls doing BV’s, and there are four such on this playlist.
We had a pal called Paul Rothwell who lived with Bob Machin in a house on a hill overlooking Lampeter called Coed-Mor, and he was good at finding us gigs. He suggested that we go to London at the end of our second year (his and Bob’s third) to record some songs, so that he could maybe find some better gigs. Rowan offered her Father’s house in Battersea as a place we could all stay. So the jaunt was on. Rowan and I arrived first, having driven down together. She opened the front door, and called ‘Hello Dad!’ A figure was slumped over the end of a distant table, with an empty wine bottle by his side. He came to, and looked up. He looked like Leo McKern after a lost weekend. Rowan clearly got her olive skin from him.
He glared at me, and managed to speak.
‘Do you see those fucking armchairs?’
‘Yes Mr. Manby.’
‘If you ruin those fucking armchairs,’ he said, ‘I’ll fucking kill you.’
‘Yes, of course, Mr Manby.’
He grunted, and managed to stand up.
‘Do you like jazz?’
‘Very much Mr Manby.’
He grunted again, and put on a record by Joe Venuti, the great jazz violinist, which I hated.
Then he said, ‘Do you like cannabis’?
‘Yes Mr Manby, I certainly do.’
And he handed over a large stash of grass, which was ours for the weekend.
This inevitably coloured the experience somewhat. Everyone turned up to find the air already blue. Mr Rothwell had brought his pal Johnny Dodd, Jim brought a pal called Alan, and we had a ball. We watched the World Cup; can’t remember what games. We went up west and visited the Hard Rock, where Mr Rothwell had arranged an announcement, say hi to hot new band from Wales sort of thing. We went to the first McDonalds in the UK in the first week of its opening, and had Big Macs. Bob bought a pair of cuban heeled boots on Kensington Market. We also went to the studio. As the best musician, Paul Williams was effectively our musical director, concerned to get the recording right, which may have caused him some anxiety, but he too joined in the bachanalia.
You never imagine that one day you will be old, and some times need to be cherished so that they live long in the memory, as does this trip for me. 
A year later, Rowan and I were married, and the mad old sot was Robert, favourite of all my in-laws.

If You See Kay by the Repeaters

Incinerator (live) by the National Game

Don't Look Back by the 2010 Airtight Garage Company

My Camera Looks at the World by the National Game

This is The National Game, at last! Recoded live at the reunion gig at Ye Olde Nightclubbe in Newhaven, December 2000. We'd written it in rehearsal so that we had something new to play; this is the first time we'd played it live.  I'd really REALLY like this to come out as a record one day.

Hard Road Home by The National Game

'Our Lips Are Sealed' by Terry Hall and Jane Weidlin, from the forthcoming EP, 'By', by The Same Tokens

Our Lips Are Sealed by The Same Tokens

Yet another track from the lost second album.

Indian Summer Blue, by the Mood Index

Recorded in Park Royal Studio, June 1985. Lyrics co-written by Ian 'Yammerman' Willson

It's Too Late, by the Mood Index Continuum

Recorded live in the studio for BBC Sussex,  spring 1985.

Do I Speak Your Language? by the Mood Index Continuum

Quiet Life, Live at The Richmond, by the Mood Index Continuum

You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth

A Month of Sundays, by The Mood Index

Coast To Coast, by the Mood Index

Anarchists in Love, by the Mood Index

A Place in Your Heart, by the Mood Index

Lino Women And Song: The Many Moods Of The Mood Index

Kissing Gate by the Mood Index

The Orchid Girl, by the Mood Index

When She Comes, by the Mood Index

A 300 year old song, collected in 1906 at the Plough in Rusper, Sussex, by Ralph Vaughan Williams. All instruments by Stuart Anthony. Produced in Lancaster by Paul Walmsley.

The Turtle Dove - Ian Marchant with Stuart Anthony

All the Mood Index songs are written by Ian Marchant and Pete French, unless otherwise stated.
Tracks by the Mood Index, and The Mood Index Continuum, were all recorded in Newhaven, Brighton, Lancaster and Sheepwash between 1984 and 2004.

Ian Marchant

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