Toby Twirl's drummer John Reed's fascinating inside look at the music industry in the Swinging Sixties, both in the UK and Germany, paying particular attention to the music club scene in Hamburg. A4 softback book.
BACK IN TIME John Reed ★★★★ SELF-PUBLISHED For John Reed the ’60s swung in Germany. Or more correctly Germany and the North-East of England. He hardly touches the London scene. The drummer in pop-soul outfit Toby Twirl, he reminds us that you could always tell who’d done the German club scene – with up to 20 gigs a week – because they were so tight, and of the sheer volume of live work that was around then: in Sunderland alone, there were over 100 venues that put on live music five or six nights a week. It really was a completely different economic model, hence the explosion of bands and singers that appeared in the ’60s. In 1966 Germany he ends up backing Casey Jones, one of several “larger than life” figures to emerge in the early years of Merseybeat (see also Freddie Starr) and gets to support The Who. Then, in late ’67, he joins Toby Twirl. Just signed by Decca, and with a new Transit van to prove it, they gigged almost entirely in the northern cabaret circuit. Here Mud (then The Mud, on CBS) caught their act and copied it wholesale – rock ’n’ roll medleys and Elvis impersonations included. Sadly, dogged by low record sales and limited Radio One exposure, fame passed Twirl by. Decca’s idea of a big push was to book them into The Playboy Club for a week to promote ‘Movin’ In’ (their third single, boasting a lush Mike Vickers arrangement) after which they were dropped by the label. They break up in ’70, with Reed only 22 at the time. All eyewitness accounts of the ’60s are fascinating to read and this self-published one is no exception. Simon Matthews
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Mega Dodo UK
Mega Dodo are pioneering the most significant and in terms of progression and originality, forward thinking psychedelic rebirth since the early 80s.
Dave Thompson: Goldmine Magazine
