Bash Out The Odd v.2

The second version of Bash Out The Odd took on a more powerful, harder sound. The classical horns remained and continued to sound brilliant but Julian Amos simply vanished one day without warning (he moved to live in Oswestry to work as a private investigator without telling ANYONE!!).

He was replaced by a loud-mouthed and opinionated guitarist from Solihull called Pete Woodward whose presence in the band often led to a lot of friction which sometimes even boiled over into violent confrontation!! Nevertheless, he was a strong, powerful, rockin' guitarist and this led the group into a much tougher-sound.

Alan Hodgetts quit the group and moved to Coventry where he worked on BBC Radio and Mark (Brindley) roped in his old mucker John Bates on keyboards. We were keen for him to use his sampler and this meant, from my own point of view, we could bring in more exotic and 60s-influenced ideas like sitars and Middle Eastern string sounds etc!! Fun! During one period of time Stuart Pickett sadly quit the group and we struggled on without him with Mark Brindley's uncle (whose name I have forgotten now!) stepping in to help out - he hadn't played drums since his youth in the swinging 60s and this made it a challenging time really.

During this period we recorded another demo - "Laughing House" and we used programmed drums to get the effect we wanted. We also had a bearded, older drummer from Birmingham for a couple of months whose name I have now forgotten who reminded me of Jet Black of The Stranglers!!

Thankfully, Stuart returned to the band after a while and we continued to play quite a large number of gigs, travelling down to London on a couple of occasions to play infamous indie rock venue The Bull & Gate in Kentish Town and also the Greyhound in Fulham which - of course - was an important venue in the pub rock-dominated mid 70s and was also one of the early venues a lot of the punk bands played. Mark Mortimer

Memories:
It was ironic that we started to play Julian Amos' song "Miles High" again even though he had left the band! We also dug out the old Great Express tune "Change My World" and gave it a fresh lick of paint - with the horns it sounded superb. Mark Brindley's first attempt at one of his own self-penned numbers was "Don't Expect Anything From Me". Mark Mortimer

The Fulham Greyhound, London 1990, The Rathole, Tamworth, The Bull & Gate, Kentish Town, London.

Memories:
As was the stupid and outrageous tradition in those days we had to take at least one 55-seater coach full of "fans" down to the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town if we were allowed to play there (!!!) and so we did just that but on the way back from the gig Pete Woodward's acidic personality spilled out into violence and he ended up attacking John Bates on the coach over some minor disagreement. Mark Mortimer

Title: Laughing House
Track List: Laughing House (Mark Mortimer / Mark Brindley), September Honey (Mark Mortimer)
Format: Demo

Other Recordings:
There was one other demo recording made with Bash Out The Odd but that came with the third line up of the band (see other entry). There is also a live recording of the band that was taken from the gig at the Fulham Greyhound which is good fun!

Memories:
The Laughing House demo was recorded mostly at The Expresso Bongo Studios. But for some reason or another we couldn't complete it there as I think Paul Speare's place was so heavily booked at the time so I remember us having to book a studio close to where Musical Exchanges was sited in Birmingham so we could go in and record the horns and keyboards.

The tracks were eventually mixed and produced back at the Expresso Bongo with Paul Speare at the helm. These two songs showcased the more aggressive, higher tempo and "rockier" sound we had developed with Pete Woodward on guitar. "Laughing House" was a frantic but catchy powerhouse of a tune driven by this pounding heavy drum track and the thrashy guitars. The horns were pristine and powerful. Mark (Brindley) wrote the odd lyrics that included references to "eskimo rolls" over the music that I had written.

On "September Honey" I got John Bates to sample some of the Indian sitar/strings sounds used by George Martin on the "Yellow Submarine" film score and that started the track before it went into this manic in-yer-face garage band track that was a real storm-trooper. Full-on heavy double bass drum sounds and crash! bang! wallop! guitars and feedback collided in what was a real punked-up number that included the superbly silly (and screamed) lyric "I'm gonna wear a black, green, pink, blue, red shirt!" - the real surprise in the song was a lovely brass solo which had a nice Latin-soul feel to it and was entirely out of context with the rest of this thrashy number. Great fun! I loved the way Mark (Brindley) screamed his way thru the song like some demented loon only to then croon "September Honey" Scott Walker style on the outro - we were a band always full of contradiction and that was partly an in joke and partly a pleasant accident. Mark Mortimer