Johnny moped

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Johnny moped
General information
origin London (United Kingdom)
Genre (s) Punk rock
founding 1974, 1983, 1990, 2015
resolution 1978
Founding members
singing
 Paul "Johnny Moped" Halford
singing
 Xerxes
guitar
 Raymond "Captain Sensible" Burns
bass
 Colin "Fred Berk" Mills
Keyboard
 Phil Burns
Drums
 Dave "Dave Berk" Batchelor
Current occupation
singing
 Paul Halford
guitar
 Simon "Slimey Toad" Fitzgerald
guitar
 Robert Brook
bass
 Jacko Pistorious
Drums
 Dave Batchelor
former members
guitar
 Chrissie Hynde

Johnny Moped are a proto-punk band from London that were mainly active between 1974 and 1978 and are an important link between British pub rock of the early 1970s and the first wave of punk rock in the late 1970s.

history

The band was founded in May 1974 in the London borough of Croydon as "Johnny Moped and the 5 Arrogant Superstars". After renaming in "Assault and Buggery" and "Commercial Band", the final name "Johnny Moped" was chosen in January 1975, which corresponded to the nickname of singer Halford. At this point, the band shrunk to a quartet. They were among the first bands to play at the newly opened Roxy , Britain's first club on the then-nascent punk scene. The sampler The Roxy London WC2 represents a summary of the music of this time , on which Johnny Moped as well as Buzzcocks , The Adverts , Wire and X-Ray Spex are represented. In 1976 Raymond Burns left the band to form The Damned , but took care of a successor in the form of Simon Fitzgerald. Also in 1976 the band expanded to a quintet with the addition of second guitarist Chrissie Hynde , who had previously played with Dave Batchelor and Colin Mills for the Unusuals. Hynde was removed from the band a little later. Johnny Moped continued as a quartet and released the LP Cycledelic on Chiswick Records in 1978 . The band broke up after bandleader Halford withdrew more and more into private life after his wedding.

The former band members remained connected, for example Batchelor and Burns played together with King after The Damned broke up at short notice, Batchelor still occasionally helps out as a live drummer with The Damned. Hynde later founded the Pretenders , with whom she is still active today. In 1983 there was a short-term Johnny moped reunion when Batchelor and Fitzgerald composed a song ( Save the Baby Seals ) for an Artists for Animals sampler and recorded it together with Halford and Mills. In 1990 the band came together again and recorded the album The Search for Xerxes , whose songs Batchelor, Mills, Raymond Burns and Halford had written. Burns played the keyboard on the album, and Batchelor also took over the bass, as Mills had committed suicide in the meantime. After the album was released, the band broke up, but since then has occasionally reunited for live concerts. A fixed line-up has existed again since 2015.

style

Johnny Moped's roots are in pub rock, but the band's compositions were significantly faster and more guitar-heavy, and Halford's vocals were melodious and aggressive. The Guardian described the result as "good-natured chaos" and "strange, compact, sometimes surreal songs". Andy Markowitz found in his band portrait on MusicFilmWeb.com that Johnny mopeds “looked strange, sounded insane and, in their total intangibility and anti-commercialism, were made for the punk movement”. The Quietus defines Johnny Moped's music as “staccato pub rock power chords interspersed with solos; High-speed twelve-bar blues, supplemented by an excessive amount of beer ”. Musically, the album The Search for Xerxes no longer has much in common with the band's first album, but contains keyboard-heavy rock music with echoes of pub rock.

reception

In 1977 John Peel listed the Johnny moped song Incendiary Device at number 15 on his “Festive 50” list. 1994 named "The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music" Cycledelic as one of the 50 best punk albums of all time. In 2013 the documentary filmmaker Fred Burns released the documentary Basically, Johnny Moped with video recordings from the 1970s and current interviews with former band members.

Discography

  • 1978: Cycledelic ( Chiswick Records )
  • 1991: The Search for Xerxes (Deltic Records)
  • 2016: It's a Real Cool Baby (Damaged Goods)
  • 2019: Lurrigate Your Mind (Damaged Goods)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview with Dave Batchelor in the Repeat Fanzine. Retrieved June 21, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b c d The Guardian of October 2, 2013, available online
  3. ↑ Band portrait on Itunes. Retrieved June 21, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Interview in Spiral Scratch Fanzine, August 1991. Retrieved June 22, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Band portrait on MusicFilmWeb.com. Retrieved June 22, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Band portrait on The Quietus. Retrieved June 25, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Festive 50 1977 on RockListMusic. Retrieved June 14, 2015 .
  8. ↑ The Guinness All Time Top 1000 Albums 1994. Retrieved June 13, 2015 .