On This Day 22/06/1987 Go West

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On this day, 22 June 1987 rock/pop band Go West played St David’s Hall, Cardiff.

In 1982, Cox and Drummie formed the band Go West, with Peter Cox as lead singer and Richard Drummie on guitar and backing vocals.

Go West had a publishing deal and possessed a portastudio, but lacked a band or recording company. Cox and Drummie decided, with support from John Glover, their manager, to find a musical producer, and record just two of their songs.

The tracks "We Close Our Eyes" and "Call Me" found Go West landing a recording contract with Chrysalis Records.

The duo's eponymous debut album was released in 1985 and included "We Close Our Eyes" and "Call Me" as well as "Don't Look Down", which served as the prequel to what would be their first top 40 hit in the US. The album peaked at no. 8 in the United Kingdom.

Go West were voted "Best Newcomer" at the 1986 Brit Awards.

In 1987, Go West released the follow-up to their debut album, Dancing on the Couch, which made the UK top 20.

Although several singles were released, the album was not as commercially successful as their first, particularly in the United States.

However, it yielded the band's first American top 40 hit single: "Don't Look Down – The Sequel".

On This Day 21/06/1987 David Bowie

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On this day, 21 June 1987, rock legend David Bowie played Cardiff Arms Park on his Glass Spider tour.

Support was provided by Big Country and The Screaming Blue Messiahs.

David Bowie embarked on the The Glass Spider Tour in support of the album Never Let Me Down. The concert tour was the most ambitious by David Bowie surpassing the previous Serious Moonlight Tour in terms of audience figures and number of performances.

It has been estimated by the conclusion of the tour a total of three million people had attended beating his previous record set on the 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour.

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Setlist

Purple Haze

(The Jimi Hendrix Experience song)

Up the Hill Backwards

Glass Spider

Up the Hill Backwards

(Reprise)

Day-In Day-Out

Bang Bang

(Iggy Pop cover)

Absolute Beginners

Loving the Alien

China Girl

(Iggy Pop cover)

Fashion

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

All the Madmen

Never Let Me Down

Big Brother

Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

'87 and Cry

"Heroes"

Time Will Crawl

Beat of Your Drum

Sons of the Silent Age

Dancing With the Big Boys

Zeroes

Let's Dance

Fame

The review
It was simply the biggest and best rock concert Wales has seen. A total of 50,000 people paid £750,000 to see a legend and it was worth every penny.

David Bowie, 40, fit and fantastic, sent the National Stadium in Cardiff wild with excitement with a set of hits, ancient and modern.
A taste of everything from Heroes from 1977 to Zeroes from his latest album, Never Let Me Down, echoed around a stadium more used to the hymns and arias of the rugby multitudes and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The goal posts at the East Terrace end were replaced with a vast stage enveloped by a giant spider which incorporated a series of looping and stretching antennae.
On either side masking the whole of the daunting 260- speaker cabinet sound system were huge scaffolding towers painted gold.
Suddenly the strains of the Hendrix classic Purple Haze, played incongruously on strings, broke the silence of expectation which had hushed the stadium.
Enter guitarist Carlos Alomar to evoke the huge spider to free its brood and a host of spider -dancers descend followed by the main man himself suspended in a silver throne, speaking on a telephone.
Clad in blood red Teddy-boy style suit he threw himself into new material – Glass Spider , Day In – Day Out – surrounded and almost submerged by superb dancers and video crew.
For Bang Bang, Bowie was joined by a Latin dancer, whose seemingly endless leg draped over his shoulder.
And all the while the spiders – now not of Mars – wound around the web of scaffolding, followed by the roving video cameras, which relayed the action to two giant screens either side of the stage.

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Tour band 1987 – The Glass Spider Tour

• David Bowie – vocals, guitar

• Peter Frampton – guitar, vocals

• Carlos Alomar – guitar, backing vocals, music director

• Carmine Rojas – bass guitar

• Alan Childs – drums

• Erdal Kızılçay – keyboards, trumpet, congas, violin, backing vocals

• Richard Cottle – keyboards, saxophone, tambourine, backing vocals

Tour dancers

• Melissa Hurley

• Constance Marie

• Spazz Attack (Craig Allen Rothwell)

• Viktor Manoel

• Stephen Nichols

• Toni Basil (choreography)

On This Day 19/06/1974 Brinsley Schwarz/Dr Feelgood/Dave Edmunds

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On this day 19 June 1974, A trio of bands, Brinsley Schwarz/Dr Feelgood and local favourite Dave Edmunds, played Cardiff’s Top Rank.

Brinsley Schwarz were a 1970s English pub rock band, named after their guitarist Brinsley Schwarz. With Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, keyboardist Bob Andrews and drummer Billy Rankin, the band evolved from the 1960s pop band Kippington Lodge. They were later augmented by Ian Gomm on guitar and vocals.

In 1974, they arranged for Dave Edmunds to produce their sixth album The New Favourites of... Brinsley Schwarz, which was more polished, and again received good reviews.

Dave Edmunds

This association also led to their touring as Dave Edmunds' backing band, appearing on the live tracks of his Subtle as a Flying Mallet album. In addition to the albums, Brinsley Schwarz also issued a series of singles under their own name, and various pseudonyms, such as "The Hitters", "The Knees", "Limelight" and "The Brinsleys" but these all failed. They recorded a final album, It's All Over Now, in 1974 but this was not released at the time. They finally disbanded in March 1975.

Dr Feelgood

Brinsley Schwarz Setlist

Country Girl

Hooked on Love

Trying to Live My Life Without You

Small Town, Big City

Honky Tonk

(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding

It's Been So Long

Private Number

Happy Doing What We're Doing

Surrender to the Rhythm

You're So Fine

Hip City

Ju Ju Man

On This Day 18/06/1999 All Saints

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On this day, 18 June 1999 All Saints played Cardiff International Arena on the group’s The U Tour after playing the previous night at Port Talbot’s Afan Lido.

They were founded as All Saints 1.9.7.5 by music manager Ron Tom, who later also founded Sugababes, with members Melanie Blatt, Shaznay Lewis, and Simone Rainford.

The group struggled to find commercial success upon being signed to ZTT Records and were dropped by the label shortly after Rainford left the group. In 1996, the group were joined by Canadian-born sisters Nicole and Natalie Appleton and signed to London Records under their shortened name.

Part of the 1990s wave of British girl groups, their debut album, All Saints (1997), peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and went on to become the UK's third-best-selling girl group album of all time.

The album contained three UK number one singles: "Never Ever", "Under the Bridge"/"Lady Marmalade" and "Bootie Call". "Never Ever" is the third-best-selling girl group single of all-time in the UK, behind the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" and "Shout Out to My Ex" by Little Mix.

It also won two Brit Awards: Best British Single and Best British Video, and the group were nominated for Best British Breakthrough Act.

Their second album, Saints & Sinners (2000), became their first UK number-one album and achieved multi-platinum success. It included the UK number-one singles "Pure Shores" and "Black Coffee". Amid in-fighting among the group members, All Saints split the following year.

On This Day 17/06/1977 Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

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On this day, 17 June 1977, American rock legend Tom Petty and his band The Heartbreakers played Cardiff University with support from the little-known punk band, The Boomtown Rats.

It was a quick returm for Petty having supported Nils Lofgren at the Capitol Theatre the month before.

Comment left on a Rats website described the evening -

Anonymous said...

I live in Cardiff - and saw the Cardiff gig at the students union - actually it was the UWIST building which formed part of the university. Good as the rats were, I can catagorically assure you that they did "ANYTHING BUT" blow Petty off stage. In fact, there were a number of duff notes played and for some reason that night, Geldoff couldn't hold a tune in a bucket.... sorry, but thats the truth....

EmJay said...

I was there too. Anon is right. If you watch the Tom Petty doc they say Cardiff was the gig where they first realised they were going to make it. I was part of the Ents crowd and went and saw Petty support Nils Lofgren at the Capitol a month before (didn't stay for Nils). I pushed the legendary Dave Scott who ran Ents to book Petty as a main band - he got them to play the Great Hall of the Union (it was joint UC and Uwist union) for a crate of beer and a couple of hundred quid cos no-one had heard of them and they hadn't headlined before. Petty played Top of the Pops on the Thursday night for the first time and sold out Cardiff on the Friday. We'd never heard of the Rats and they were arrogant, obnoxious and rough but full of energy and fired up crowd for amazing Petty gig. After helping hump out Petty and the Rats kit, the next morning I stuck out my thumb and still singing "American Girl" hitched down to the last Stonehenge Free Festival...

On This Day 16/06/1972 Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come

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On this day, 16 June 1972, eccentic rocker Arthur Brown and his band Kingdom Come played Cardiff University.

After the collapse of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown in 1969, when keyboardist Vincent Crane and drummer Carl Palmer left to eventually form Atomic Rooster, Brown worked with a varied group of musicians on projects called Strangelands, Puddletown Express, and (briefly) the Captain Beefheart-influenced Rustic Hinge, before finding the musicians who would make up Kingdom Come.

Chief among these was guitarist Andy Dalby, who was the only consistent member after Brown himself.

Kingdom Come played experimental psychedelic/progressive rock music.

Fronted by Arthur Brown, who gave them his theatrical style and operatic voice. The combination ensured that the band was a hit on Britain's festival circuit, but lack of record sales, indifference from music critics, and poor record label promotion (especially in the US) led to its eventual demise in 1974.

On This Day 15/06/1980 Thin Lizzy

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On this day, 15 June 1980, Irish rockers Thin Lizzy played Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens.

It introduced guitarist Snowy White who would also perform on the next album as well as tour with Thin Lizzy between 1980 and 1982; he replaced Gary Moore as permanent guitarist.

White had previously worked with Cliff Richard, Peter Green and Pink Floyd.

Midge Ure was still acting as a temporary keyboard player at gigs during early 1980, but was replaced by Darren Wharton in April, shortly after White joined the band.

Wharton was only 18 at the time and was initially hired on a temporary basis.

This new line-up completed the Chinatown album between short tours, and two singles were released from it. The first, "Chinatown", reached No. 21 in the UK, but the second, "Killer on the Loose", reached the top 10 amid much adverse publicity due to the ongoing activities of serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, known as "The Yorkshire Ripper".

On This Day 14/06/2001 Reel Big Fish

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On this day, 13 June 2001, American Ska/Punk band Reel Big Fish played Cardiff University on their European Vacation Tour 2001.

The band formed in 1991 while the members were in high school. The group started as a cover band until they released a demo in 1992, titled In The Good Old Days.

With the departure of Ben Guzman soon after, then backup vocalist Aaron Barrett took his place as lead singer. The band then changed its genre to ska.

Soon after, the band lost mainstream recognition but gained an underground cult following. As of 2006, the band was no longer signed to a major record label and has since been independent.

After numerous line-up changes, frontman Aaron Barrett is the last remaining founding member still performing in the band.