Blyth Power - My Lady's Games & Chevy Chase & God Has Gone Wrong Again - ROUGH MIXES - February 1985

Three songs recorded at Street Level studios, west London in February 1985 at the sessions for the 'Chevy Chase' EP, engineered and produced by 'Sweetness and Light', which is written on the cassette tape box! The moniker 'Sweetness and Light' would be Grant Showbiz and Justin Adams.

These three tracks are the ROUGH recordings recorded on the day at Street Level studios, and were yet to be overdubbed and mixed for the 'Chevy Chase' EP which was released in August 1985 on the All The Madmen record label. The fourth track on this EP 'Song of the Third Cause' was not on this cassette tape which is a shame, just the other three tracks 'My Lady's Games', 'Chevy Chase' and 'God Has Gone Wrong Again'.

Also it is a shame that although my cassette tape is a first gen copy straight from source, at the very end of both 'Chevy Chase' and 'God Has Gone Wrong Again' the audio drops out for a second or two rather noticeably, which is pretty annoying. The three tracks on this cassette tape, the rough recordings from the 'Chevy Chase' sessions, are of course unreleased into the inter-web world.

All promo stuff, photograph and the flyers are from my collection.

An interview snippet with Grant Showbiz below.

Showbiz started as a soundman for anarcho-hippy punks Here and Now in 1976.

Showbiz ran the sound and stage at many free festivals such as Windsor and Stonehenge. Stamping his personality on proceedings, using a microphone plugged into the soundboard, he would often amiably harangue those onstage to get on with it, or off, as circumstances might merit.

He quickly forged links with the punk scene, producing albums for Alternative TV and The Fall.

In 1979 he set up the Ladbroke Grove-based Street-Level Studio with Kif Kif (ex-drummer of Here And Now) and José Gross (ex-keyboard player from Here And Now, guitarist from Blank Space and The Real Imitations). The studio hosted and recorded a swathe of bands including The Fall, Alternative TV, Mark Perrys' Good Missionaries, The Door And The Window, 012, World Domination Enterprises, The Mob, Impossible Dreamers, The Astronauts, Blyth Power, Brian Brain, The Petticoats, Androids Of Mu, The Instant Automatons and many others.

Many of the recordings were released on the associated pioneering D.I.Y record label Fuck Off Records. Around this time Showbiz also began making music himself, playing bass in Blue Midnight.

Q/ Can you tell us a little about your early life...was anyone in your family musical and what sort of music did you listen to as a teenager?

I loved music from an early age although the only musician in my family was my grandmother - I can remember the piano she had, but not really hearing her play. I was entranced by lyrics from an early age and could recite The Beatles’ songs verbatim (and at great volume). I had my own band at nine: called The Wonders, and I wrote and recorded two songs on my dad's Elizabethan reel to reel tape machine. I also developed a method of recording from the TV by taping the mic onto the speaker on the front of the set - I would hover by the record button throughout The Monkees show and tape the songs, but not the dialogue. Later on I can remember a brilliant solo Neil Young show.

Once a teenager I consumed masses of pop - first single The Animals 'Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood' first album Nilsson 'Aerial Ballet' and worshipped at the dual shrines of John Peel and Kenny Everett (before he became a twat).

Bowie / Reed / Beefheart /Rundgren and Gong became my joy. Got to Bowie just before ‘Hunky Dory’ so was around for the whole explosion of success. I marvelled at the fact that Todd Rundgren played all the instruments himself on ‘Something / Anything’ and even printed track sheets which showed each instrument went down individually - I imagined him playing the bass drum all the way through the track then going back and adding the snare, then high hat and so on!

At fifteen Gong invited me back to their farm in Oxford and suddenly I was initiated in to the whole running of a band - Steve Hillage took me under his wing when I was seventeen and taught me basic sound control skills. My first professional gig was guitar roadie for Steve when he supported Queen in Hyde Park. That was where I saw my first proper mixing desk, love at first sight.

Q/ Are you still in contact with any of the old Here and Now crowd and do you know if any of them are still involved in the music business?

Kif Kif (the Drummer) and I still chat once a year or so - we both left the band in 1979 and built a studio called Street Level where "Pay Your Rates" an "Container Drivers" were recorded. He had a brilliant band called World Domination Enterprises, but then got really ill and dropped out of music biz.

Steffy does spacey dub reggae stuff and made an album with Gilli from Gong called "Glo". Gavin who played keyboards went back to office work. Keith the Missile Bass and Steffy occasionally put together a Here and Now band to tour.

Martin Peters