On This Day 15/03/1971 Genesis

On this day, 15 March 1971, prog rock giants Genesis played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens on the bands Trespass tour.

Recording for Trespass began in June 1970 at Trident Studios in London, with John Anthony as producer and David Hentschel hired as assistant engineer. The album included longer and more complex songs than their first, blending folk and progressive rock elements with various time signature changes, as in the nine-minute song "The Knife". Trespass is the first in a series of three Genesis album cover designs by Paul Whitehead. He had completed the design before the band decided to include "The Knife" on the album. Feeling the cover no longer reflected the album's overall mood, the band persuaded Whitehead to slash a knife across the canvas and have the result photographed. Released in October 1970, Trespass reached No. 1 in Belgium in 1971 and No. 98 in the UK in 1984. "The Knife" was released as a single in May 1971. Rolling Stone briefly mentioned the album unfavourably following its 1974 reissue: "It's spotty, poorly defined, at times innately boring". "Genesis seemed to be dying a death around our second album", Gabriel told Mark Blake. "We couldn't get arrested. So I got a place at the London School of Film Technique."

Mike Rutherford said that Trespass was the only Genesis album where each track was contributed to by each band member equally; every other album contained songs that were written by one or two individuals, with only minor contributions from the remaining members.

Setlist

Happy the Man

The Fountain of Salmacis

Seven Stones

Twilight Alehouse

The Light

White Mountain

The Musical Box

Harlequin

The Knife

Going Out to Get You

The Return of the Giant Hogweed

On This Day The Clash 11/02/1980

On this day, 11 February 1980, punk legends The Clash played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens on their 16 Tons Tour with support provided by The Xcerts and Mikey Dread.

The band had recently released their classic album London Calling.

London Calling was released in December 1979; it peaked at number 9 on the British album chart and at number 27 in the United States, where it was issued in January 1980. The album's cover photograph by Pennie Smith became one of the most-recognisable images and Q magazine later cited it as the "best rock 'n roll photograph of all time".

During this period, The Clash began to be regularly billed as "The Only Band That Matters". Musician Gary Lucas, who was employed by CBS Records' creative services department, has said he coined the tagline. Fans and journalists soon widely adopted the epithet.

The Clash had planned to record and release a single every month in 1980. CBS dismissed this idea and the band released only one single—an original reggae song called "Bankrobber", in August. It featured Mikey Dread and reached number 12 in the UK Singles Chart. In October, the band's US record company released a B-side compilation EP called Black Market Clash, which was later re-released in expanded form as a full-length album.

Setlist

Clash City Rockers

Brand New Cadillac

London Calling

(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais

I Fought the Law

Police and Thieves

Complete Control

Armigedeon Time

White Riot

On This Day 12/10/1977 Dr Hook

On this day, 12 October 1977, American band Dr Hook played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens. Support was provided by Alfalpha.

The founding core of the band consisted of George Cummings, Ray Sawyer and Billy Francis, who had first worked together circa 1966 in Mobile, Alabama, in a band called Chocolate Papers. Cummings, Sawyer and Francis started a new band up in Union City, New Jersey, in 1968 and included primary vocalist Dennis Locorriere, who initially joined as a bass player.

By 1969, the new band was named Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Tonic for the Soul. The name, thought up by Cummings, was inspired by Sawyer's eyepatch and a reference to Captain Hook of the Peter Pan fairytale. Sawyer lost his right eye in a near-fatal car crash in Oregon in 1967 and, after that, wore an eyepatch, leading some people to believe that he was Dr. Hook; when asked by fans which band member was Dr. Hook, they would all point to the bus driver.

The band shortened its name to Dr. Hook in 1975. They signed with Capitol Records in 1975, releasing the aptly titled Bankrupt. Unlike previous projects, this album included original material written by the group. The hit from the project was a reworked version of Sam Cooke's "Only Sixteen" (US number 6), revitalizing their career and charted in the top ten in 1976.

Haffkine discovered a song titled "A Little Bit More" written and originally performed by Bobby Gosh and released on his 1973 album Sitting in the Quiet, on a record he purchased for 35 cents at a flea market in San Francisco. The band recorded and released the song, which reached number 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and spent two weeks at number nine on the Cash Box Top 100. It also reached number two on the UK Singles Chart, matching "Sylvia's Mother".

The band followed Bankrupt with 1976's A Little Bit More (named after the hit), which was certified double gold in Australia in November 1976.[4] It was quickly followed in turn by the 1977 album Making Love And Music which gave them a number 1 hit single in Australia with "Walk Right In"

On This Day 07/10/1980 UFO

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On this day, 7 October 1980, hard rock band UFO played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens on their The Wild, the willing and the innocent tour. Support was provided by Fist.

The Wild, the willing and the innocent was the title of the band’s ninth studio album released the following January.

The album was their first album to be entirely self-produced. Its song "Lonely Heart" was a minor UK hit.

Former Wild Horses' keyboard player Neil Carter replaced Paul Raymond, who had left to join the Michael Schenker Group after a disagreement with singer Phil Mogg. However, according to guitarist Paul Chapman, Carter – though credited on the sleeve – did not play keyboards on the album (see below).

"We produced it ourselves with nobody breathing over our shoulders. The only problem was it cost twice as much because we kept changing studios and re-recording stuff…. [After Paul Raymond's departure] I tried to get John Sloman involved because he could sing, play keyboards and guitar, and was just out of Lone Star like me. He did play on the Wild album, but most of the keyboards are by the brother of the engineer Gary Edwards – until Phil sacked him. We finished that album without a keyboard player, then got Neil Carter in later." – Paul Chapman

Setlist

Alpha Centauri

Lettin' Go

Long Gone

Cherry

Only You Can Rock Me

No Place to Run

Makin' Moves

Love to Love

Hot 'n' Ready

Mystery Train

(Little Junior’s Blue Flames cover)

Too Hot to Handle

Lights Out

Rock Bottom

Doctor Doctor

On This Day 19/07/1968 Tim Hardin

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On this day, 19 July 1968, American folk music and blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Tim Hardin played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens.

Hardin was admired for his singing voice, described by a Los Angeles Times reviewer as "a voice which quavers between the tugs of the blues and the tender side of joy. He can sing nasty, but his forte is gentle songs whose case allows him to slip and slide through a rainbow of emotions." However, Hardin said in another interview: "I think of myself more as a singer than a songwriter and always did. It happened to be that I wrote songs. I’m a jazz singer, really, writing in a different vocabulary mode but still with a jazz feel. I don’t ever sing one song the same way. I’m an improvisational singer and player.”

He recorded "Black Sheep Boy" in 1966, a song about his drug use and the alienation from his family. Bobby Darin, Ronnie Hawkins, Bill Staines, Joel Grey, Scott Walker, and Don McLean recorded cover versions of the song.

In 1967, Verve released Tim Hardin 2, which contained one of Hardin's most famous songs, "If I Were a Carpenter". That same year, Atco, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, released an album of earlier material called This Is Tim Hardin, featuring covers of "The House of the Rising Sun", Fred Neil's "Blues on the Ceiling" and Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" as well as the original songs "Fast Freight" and "Can't Slow Down". The album's liner notes state that Hardin recorded the songs in 1963–1964, well before the release of Tim Hardin 1.

By 1967, after critical acclaim for Hardin's first album and the release of This Is Tim Hardin, a wide variety of artists were covering his songs and he was in demand to tour Europe and the United States. However, the quality of his work was in decline partly because of "his own combativeness in the studio, his addiction to heroin, his drinking problems and his frustration with his lack of commercial success". He began performing poorly and missing shows, reputedly falling asleep on stage at London's Royal Albert Hall in 1968. At the time, he was viewed as enigmatic, with one journalist stating that while "his position as one of the best songwriters of his generation is unquestioned ... [he] ... courted the scene in the most fumbling manner imaginable". The same writer noted Hardin's "uninspired stage presence" and seemingly ambivalent relationship with his audience, as he often ignored them, just singing "at times badly, at times beautifully ... somehow always fascinating". The tour was cut short after Hardin contracted pleurisy.

On This Day 17/07/1968 The Easybeats

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On this day, 17 July 1968, Australian rock band The Easybeats, played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens.

Formd in Sydney in late 1964, they are best known for their 1966 hit single "Friday on My Mind", which is regarded as the first Australian rock song to achieve international success; Rolling Stone described it as "the first international victory for Oz rock".

One of the most popular and successful bands in the country, they were one of the few Australian bands of their time to foreground their original material; their first album Easy (1965) was one of the earliest Australian rock albums featuring all original songs.

The five founding members, all migrants from Europe, met at the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney in 1964. They rose to national prominence in 1965 with the song "She's So Fine", which reached number three in Australia.

Their concerts and public appearances were marked by an intense fanaticism frequently compared to Beatlemania; this phenomenon was subsequently dubbed "Easyfever". They relocated to the UK in 1966, where they recorded "Friday on My Mind".

Following its success, the band struggled to maintain international recognition. Compounded by financial and contractual issues, drug use and the increasing independence of guitarists and songwriters Harry Vanda and George Young, they returned to Australia in 1969 amid declining popularity back home and subsequently disbanded.

On This Day 02/05/1962 Jerry Lee Lewis

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On this day, 2 May 1962, rock ‘n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens supported by his backing band The Echoes. Also on the bill were, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, The Viscounts, The Bachelors, Vince Eager, Mark Eden, Danny Storm, Buddy Britten and Dave Reid (compere).

Often known by his nickname the Killer. He has been described as "rock n' roll's first great wild man and one of the most influential pianists of the twentieth century." A pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music, Lewis made his first recordings in 1956 at Sun Records in Memphis.

Review South Wales Argus

"Crazy Arms" sold 300,000 copies in the South, but it was his 1957 hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" that shot Lewis to fame worldwide. He followed this with "Great Balls of Fire", "Breathless" and "High School Confidential". However, his rock and roll career faltered in the wake of his marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13-year-old cousin.

On This Day 25/09/1979 The Cure

On this day, 25 September 1979 rock band The Cure played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens, supporting Siouxie and the Banshees on their Join Hands tour. The band had earlier in the year released their debut album Three Imaginary Boys on Friction Records.

The record company decided which songs were put on the album and running order, as well as the cover artwork, without Robert Smith's consent. For all Cure albums since, Smith has ensured that he is given complete creative control over the final product before it goes on sale.

The "Foxy Lady" soundcheck, with vocals sung by Michael Dempsey, was not supposed to be on the album, and was removed for the American release. Smith has stated that "songs like 'Object' and 'World War' and our cover of 'Foxy Lady' were [producer] Chris Parry's choice".

Despite Smith's displeasure with the record, Three Imaginary Boys was well received critically at the time of its release. Sounds' Dave McCullough praised it in a 5-star review and noted: "The Cure are going somewhere different on each track, the ideas are startling and disarming." McCullough noted the variety of the material and qualified "Grinding Halt" as a "pop song that reminds you of the Isley Brothers or the Buzzcocks." Red Starr, writing in Smash Hits, described the album as a "brilliant, compelling debut."

Setlist

10.15 Saturday Night

Accuracy

Jumping Someone Else's Train

Play For Today

Plastic Passion

Subway Song

Three Imaginary Boys

Boys Don't Cry

Fire In Cairo

Killing An Arab

Encore

Grinding Halt