How my mid-1980s funk band was revived in 2019

Although I have kept playing over the years, I've not worked in a regular gigging band performing our own material for a long time. So one of the unexpected thrills of 2019 for me personally was the re-release of a single I recorded with a band back in the 1980s.

World Series were a jazz-funk band in the period 1982-84, when the so-called 'Britfunk' movement was in full swing. You may have seen us if you were going to gigs in London at that time.

We played at various music clubs such as Dingwalls in Camden, the Cricketers at the Oval, the Rock Garden in Covent Garden and the Production Village in Cricklewood. We also had regular weekly gig at the Bull & Gate pub in Kentish Town, where the photo below was taken. 

The line-up at this time was myself on drums and percussion, Keith Mawson on bass, Mike Frankel on guitar and vocals and Andy Park on keyboards. Pablo Cook joined as percussionist soon after our first recording session.

In 1983, Mike, Keith, Andy and I recorded three tracks at Woodcray Manor, a farmhouse studio in Berkshire. We chose two of the songs from our set, Head Over Heels and Try It Out, for a double A-side single, which was released by a small independent label, Baskerville Records.

Here are the songs:

Try It Out by World Series

Head Over Heels by World Series

Back then, the single was played on Robbie Vincent's soul show on Radio London and a few other local radio stations. We did a few promotional appearances with DJs such as Pete Tong. We continued to play live and drew increasing numbers to our gigs, but no major record companies came knocking.

World Series on stage in 1984

36 Years Later...

Fast forward to 2019 and Mike, now living in Greater Manchester, was contacted by French DJs Clémentine & Saint-James from Parisian label Chuwanaga. They said they had got hold of a copy of Try It Out/Head Over Heels and were interested in re-releasing them both.

At first we were sceptical, but Saint-James assured us he really liked the tracks and was producing a 1980s Britfunk revival festival and accompanying album. He would remaster our songs and release them as a stand-alone single.

Since Mike couldn't immediately lay his hands on the master tape, I sent my test pressing of the original 1983 single to Paris, in the hope that they could use this as the source for the remastering.

Mike's sleeve notes for the back cover of the re-release

Amazingly, through the wonders of 21st century recording technology, a few weeks later Mike and I received an email with a link to the cleaned-up and newly mixed songs. The results were remarkable given the source material.

This was a massive thrill for Mike and I, having never imagined that our music would be revived in this way. But that was just the beginning.

Over the early summer months of 2019, Chuwanaga Records rolled out a pre-launch marketing campaign for World Series on social media.

"We're super excited to finally share with you our next release, an almost forgotten 7" by Britfunk band World Series, bringing together jazz-funk, AOR and a really funky vibe.
 
"Available very soon on July 1st: a perfect fit for summertime

The single was played at their DJ gigs and festivals during the summer. They posted a clip on Facebook of a beach party in the south of France, with everyone dancing to Try It Out. Unbelievable. Mike and I knew what we were doing at the time was good, but to have it appreciated like this so many years later was just surreal.

Clémentine and Saint-James went to London in June for the Britfunk revival festival. One Saturday night they appeared on the Gilles Peterson show on BBC Radio 6. Gilles devoted an hour of his show to Chuwanaga's Britfunk revival and during the show, they played Try It Out in full. That was a proud moment, our first play on national radio.

The single was launched in July and became immediately available on Spotify. My daughter works in advertising and one day she sent me a photo showing they were playing World Series over the sound system in her office.

It was just one bizarre thing after another...

Back in the day...

After these recordings in 1983, World Series continued to gig around London and build a strong and loyal following. Like a lot of bands, we were at our best in a live situation and our act was improved further with the addition of Pablo Cook on percussion. Later on that year, Andy left the band and we recruited Mark Ambler, an excellent jazz pianist and synth player, who had a brief time as a pop star with the Tom Robinson Band.

Although we continued to refine our live act, something of the original chemistry and camaraderie had been lost. World Series broke up in 1984 just after we recorded our next single. And that was it. 

You throw these things away without proper consideration when you're young, thinking you'll just move on to something else. But the reality is it's hard to recapture the momentum of a band that has worked at building a sound and an audience.

Of the other band members, I am still in contact with Mike and Pablo. Mike plays live in and around Manchester, working under the stage name Mickey Van Gelder, performing his own compositions, inspired by blues and jazz standards. He is also a lyricist and occasional singer with the French R&B/jazz group The Swinging Dice.

Pablo Cook went on to great things as a percussionist with artists such as Moby, Pulp and William Orbit. He was a member of Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, worked with Lily Allen on her first recordings and most recently, he played at the farewell concert for Soft Cell at the O2 in London.

Thanks to the folks at Chuwanaga, the music of World Series lives on.  

2022 UPDATE: The World Series music continues its surreal afterlife. Here's French disco-funk band 'Echoes Of' rehearsing for a gig in Paris in March 2022 and playing Head Over Heels.

Try It Out / Head Over Heels by World Series are both available on Spotify.

If you'd like to buy the vinyl version, click on the link below. Enjoy!

https://chuwanaga.bandcamp.com/album/try-it-out-head-over-heels?fbclid=IwAR0FH8IF386eFKmUvJqejUMJtRiwysNcrb_OXTJD9JpOzyEv1YrEzx6sChY

 IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:

Music While You Work - A Lockdown Special

A Tribute To Jazz Giant Chick Corea 

An Appreciation of Joni Mitchell's classic 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns'

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Festival Diary 

'A Wizard, A True Star' - my all-time favourite record

I love this record. For me, it's the greatest album ever made.

I bought Todd Rundgren's 'A Wizard, A True Star' in 1974 - it was the record that awakened my sense of musical wonder. Although it is now 50 years old, it still sounds, as the author Barney Hoskyns put it: "more bravely futuristic than any ostensibly cutting-edge electro-pop being made in the 21st Century." 

A Wizard, A True Star was a single album that had more musical ideas on it than many artists could muster in a whole career. It ranges across a variety of styles, reflecting a precocious talent channelling everything from The Beatles and Laura Nyro to glam rock, classic soul and Jimi Hendrix.

I came to know Todd Rundgren via the single I Saw The Light, which was a radio play hit in the UK, with its catchy piano melody and George Harrison-like guitar solo.

I decided I wanted to investigate further. I remember being in a record shop in the West End of London, looking up at the albums on display. I don't remember what the price difference was (probably only about 50p) but I couldn’t afford Something / Anything, the album that contained I Saw The Light,  because it was a double. Todd's follow-up album was also on sale and I was attracted to its kaleidoscopic cover.

Having gained an audience for his singer/songwriter-style songs
like 'Hello It's Me', Todd got weird on their asses

So I bought that instead. It’s fair to say the record blew my mind.

From the opening fuzz tones of ‘International Feel’, it was clear that 'A Wizard, A True Star' wasn't going to sound anything like 'I Saw The Light'.  This was exciting though; I had something none of my friends had. My musical universe was about to expand.

I was 15 at the time, a suburban kid eager for just this kind of adventure. If a record can be life changing, this was it.

That first side has 12 tracks on it; it's like watching a fast action cartoon. Todd's influences are all over the shop but if you can keep up with the stylistic shifts and the slightly crazed delivery, it's a wild ride.

The mood and style of side two is in marked contrast; Todd takes a more measured approach, with the middle of the side devoted to his soul medley.

Rolling Stone magazine's review considered the soul medley to be "the highlight of the record, in which Todd plays tribute to the Impressions, the Miracles, the Delphonics and the Capitols. 

"The first three selections, 'I'm So Proud', 'Ooh Baby Baby' and 'La La Means I Love You', feature Rundgren's plaintive singing that conveys a feeling of a kid vocalizing along with the originals late at night, fantasising about crooning to his dream girl," said the review. "The lovely synthesizer and harpsichord arrangements reveal Todd's respect for Stevie Wonder's recent recordings."

Unlike side one, where the tracks come thick and fast, on side two each track is a given the chance to soar. The songs still seque into each other, but do so beautifully, particularly towards the end, as the fuzz guitar of ‘Hungry for Love’ tails off to the solo piano of ‘I Don’t Want To Tie You Down’ which in turn echoes away into the guitar frenzy of ‘Is It My Name’.

The album ends with the majestic ‘Just One Victory’, the national anthem of Utopia as Todd called it.

It's a trip - in less than an hour you've heard a whole world of music. 

John Siomos, Ralph Shuckett, John Siegler & Moogy Klingman
the core band members, at Secret Sound recording AWATS

Rundgren has always made it clear this album was not a solo performance, like much of Something/Anything, where he played all the instruments on three sides of that album.

'Wizard' was recorded at Secret Sound, a small  studio created in a loft apartment in New York that was rented by Todd's keyboard playing friend Mark 'Moogy' Klingman.

Secret Sound was really Todd's creation, said Moogy. He did all the wiring and the equipment installation himself. "That studio was really put together with band aids and bubble gum. It just barely held together.”

A Wizard, A True Star was one of the very first things they recorded at Secret Sound. In Paul Myers' book about Todd's recording sessions in the 1970s, Moogy recalls, "One day Todd said ‘Okay I’m gonna start recording'. He was in the room by himself and he laid down the bass part to “International Feel” and then he started adding on to it. I said wow he’s making some really weird noisy sounds. 

Todd at Sunset Sound

"Then he was overdubbing and it started to sound like something and he said 'OK Moogy, I want you to bring your band in and we're gonna do the track. One of the first tracks we did was 'Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye' but he’d changed it to 'Da Da Dali'.

"We spent the next month or so recording A Wizard, A True Star with Todd as the sole engineer. We didn’t even have an assistant to just watch the levels and bring things down a bit. But that’s how he liked to work. He was a solo guy, he was a hermit nerd.”

Todd's new girlfriend Bebe Buell is sitting on the sofa at the back

The list of session musicians on AWATS includes the Brecker Brothers, Rick Derringer and David Sanborn. Moogy was responsible for bringing in all the musicians, using second keyboard player Ralph Shuckett, bassist John Siegler and drummer John Siomos as the core band. The contribution of Siomos (who later played on Frampton Comes Alive) is notable as he provides the solid groove and highly distinctive snare and tom-tom fills for much of the album’s more soulful and rocked-out moments.

Because he had crammed so much on the record, Todd urged the listener to crank up their stereo to get the full effect. In fact he suggested people tape the record and then crank it up, to avoid having the stylus jump off the vinyl.

The inside gatefold

First issues of the vinyl LP in the US were die-cut, giving the record sleeve an odd shape, and psychedelic images on both sides of the gatefold cover. I have an early US pressing and I have to say the sound is superior to my UK copy. There's more detail audible and you really get a sense of how amazing the mix is, considering the amount of instrumentation and studio effects.

The original album package also included a ‘band aid’ poem written by Todd’s friend Patti Smith, as well as a postcard encouraging purchasers to send their name to be included on a poster, which was given away with Todd's next album.

Patti Smith's beat prose inspired review of 'A Wizard, A True Star' for Creem Magazine in April 1973, described the album as "Rock and roll for the skull. A very noble concept. Past present and tomorrow in one glance. Understanding through musical sensation. Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."

inner sleeve side one

inner sleeve side two

By the time he came to record 'A Wizard, A True Star', Todd had tasted success with the hit singles Hello It's Me and I Saw The Light. But he set the template for the rest of his career, by not giving the fans or the record company more of the same.  

A Wizard, A True Star was his take on psychedelia, with a dash of rock and soul. And despite all the indulgence, it worked.

That wasn't always the case with Todd; he went on to make some other really good records, but he confounded expectations at every turn, which his fans learned to tolerate, or not.

Glam'd up in '73, playing Clapton's SG

Even in those early days, just before he made AWATS, an appearance on the US music show Midnight Special playing Hello It's Me had his PR advisers tearing their hair out. Todd appeared in full Glam Rock style, with elaborate face make-up and multi-coloured hair. You don't have to camp around, indeed. Commercial suicide, it was the first indication that Todd wouldn't be playing the game the way they wanted. 

On this swing to the left, Todd said: "I threw out all the rules of record making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record without trying to clean it up for everyone else's benefit. The result was a complete loss of about half of my audience. This became the model for my life after that."

If he'd stuck to releasing just the pretty love songs, he would have been a superstar, no doubt about it. But after AWATS, for every A Dream Goes On Forever, there was a piece of self-indulgent primitive synth bollocks. I still enjoy listening to his 70s albums, skipping the odd track that, even then, was annoyingly indulgent on his part. There have been times when he has unfuriated me in a live situation - ignoring his considerable body of work to play an extended version of Peter Gunn on the 'Liars' tour, for example. It's never been easy being a TR fan, and he is unapologetic about that.  

A Wizard, A True Star, though, is the high point of a prolific musical journey.

The following links include some rare footage from the 1970s and some more recent clips, including some good quality film of the performance of AWATS 10 years ago.

1974 low-fi film of Todd and the AWATS band, playing material from the album including Just One Victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8gpABtL7sk&fbclid=IwAR26QUOjPxSzryBZTl8vp2-UWuWySGey7aOIljBDUmSSSRVyCNZpCs2-DbY

Here's video of Todd appearing on the Daryl's House show, singing Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel

And here, as part of the 2009 AWATS shows, he performs I Don't Want To Tie You Down

IF YOU LIKE MY BLOG, PLEASE HIT THE FOLLOW BUTTON ON THE SIDE PANEL THANKS

Also on this blog:

2-Tone and possibly my best gig ever

Queen's 1976 Free Concert in Hyde Park

Memories of the Reading Festival, 1975

Five Days of High Drama at the Isle of Wight, 1970

From Pinner to LA - Elton's Big Breakthrough, 1970

My Woodstock 50th Anniversary Diary

Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan's Artistic Peak in the 1960s

 Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

A Marvin Gaye bargain from the early days of CD

File under: Before the record companies knew how to market their back catalogue in CD format.

Again, no idea how much this one is worth, but what a twofer? Arguably Marvin Gaye's finest albums on one CD!

Bought in the mid/late 80s for £5, this is a classic example of the early days of CD, when there really wasn't much choice in terms of available back catalogue to buy. The record companies were trying to figure out this new format and were unsure whether people would go out and buy music on CD they already owned on vinyl. So the back catalogue stuff was chucked out at discount prices and in packages like this.

Soon enough, they realised people were embracing CD as a format; packages like this one were swiftly withdrawn and the individual albums were marked up to £15.

'A Wizard, A True Star' - my all-time favourite album

I love this record. For me, it's the greatest album ever made.

I bought Todd Rundgren's 'A Wizard, A True Star' in 1974 - it was the record that awakened my sense of musical wonder. Although it is over 45 years old, it still sounds, as the author Barney Hoskyns puts it: "more bravely futuristic than any ostensibly cutting-edge electro-pop being made in the 21st Century." 

A Wizard, A True Star was a single album that had more musical ideas on it than many artists could muster in a whole career. It ranges across a variety of styles, reflecting a precocious talent channelling everything from The Beatles and Laura Nyro to glam rock, classic soul and Jimi Hendrix.

I came to know Todd Rundgren via the single I Saw The Light, which was a radio play hit in the UK, with its catchy piano melody and George Harrison-like guitar solo.

I decided I wanted to investigate further. I can remember standing looking up at the albums on display in the record shop. I don't remember what the price difference was, but I couldn’t afford Something / Anything, the album that contained 'I Saw The Light',  because it was a double. His follow-up album was also on sale and I was attracted to its kaleidoscopic cover.

Having broken through in the singer songwriter style with 'Hello It's Me'
and 'I Saw The Light', Todd confounded his new audience with his next record

So I bought that instead. It’s fair to say the record blew my mind.

From the opening fuzz tones of ‘International Feel’, it was clear that 'A Wizard, A True Star' wasn't going to sound anything like 'I Saw The Light'.  This was exciting though; I had something none of my friends had. My musical universe was about to expand.

That first side has 12 tracks on it; it's like watching a fast action cartoon. Todd's influences are all over the shop but if you can keep up with the stylistic shifts and the slightly crazed delivery, it's a wild ride. I was 15 at the time, a suburban kid eager for just this kind of adventure. If a record can be life changing, this was it.

The mood and style of side two is in marked contrast; Todd takes a more measured approach, with the middle of the side devoted to his soul medley.

Rolling Stone magazine's review considered the soul medley to be "the highlight of the record, in which Todd plays tribute to the Impressions, the Miracles, the Delphonics and the Capitols. 

"The first three selections, 'I'm So Proud', 'Ooh Baby Baby' and 'La La Means I Love You', feature Rundgren's plaintive singing that conveys a feeling of a kid vocalizing along with the originals late at night, fantasising about crooning to his dream girl," said the review. "The lovely synthesizer and harpsichord arrangements reveal Todd's respect for Stevie Wonder's recent recordings."

Unlike side one, where the tracks come thick and fast, on side two each track is a given the chance to soar. The songs still seque into each other, but do so beautifully, particularly towards the end, as the fuzz guitar of ‘Hungry for Love’ tails off to the solo piano of ‘I Don’t Want To Tie You Down’ which in turn echoes away into the guitar frenzy of ‘Is It My Name’.

The album ends with the majestic ‘Just One Victory’, the national anthem of Utopia as Todd called it.

It's a trip - in less than an hour you've heard a whole world of music. Because he had crammed so much on the record, Todd urged the listener to crank up their stereo to get the full effect. In fact he suggested people tape the record and then crank it up, to avoid having the stylus jump off the vinyl. 

The inside gatefold

First issues of the vinyl LP in the US were dye-cut, giving the record sleeve an odd shape, and psychedelic images on both sides of the gatefold cover. I have an early US pressing and I have to say the sound is superior to my UK copy. There's a lot more detail audible and you really get a sense of how amazing the mix is considering the amount of instrumentation and studio effects there are on a lot of the tracks.

The original album package also included a ‘band aid’ poem written by Todd’s friend Patti Smith, as well as a postcard encouraging purchasers to send their name to be included on a poster, which was given away with Todd's next album.

John Siomos, Ralph Shuckett, John Siegler and Moogy Klingman
the core band members, at Secret Sound recording AWATS

Rundgren has always made it clear this album was not a solo performance, like much of Something/Anything where he played all the instruments on three sides of the album. 'Wizard' was recorded at Secret Sound, a small  studio created in a loft apartment in New York that was rented by keyboard player Mark 'Moogy' Klingman.

Secret Sound was really Todd's creation, said Moogy. He did all the wiring and the equipment installation himself. "That studio was really put together with band aids and bubble gum. It just barely held together.”

A Wizard, A True Star was one of the very first things they recorded at Secret Sound. In Paul Myers' book about Todd's recording sessions in the 1970s, Moogy recalls, "One day Todd said ‘Okay I’m gonna start recording'. He was in the room by himself and he laid down the bass part to “International Feel” and then he started adding on to it. I said wow he’s making some really weird noisy sounds. 

"Then he was overdubbing and it started to sound like something and he said 'OK Moogy, I want you to bring your band in and we're gonna do the track. One of the first tracks we did was 'Toot Toot Tootsie Goodbye' but he’d changed it to 'Da Da Dali'.

"We spent the next month or so recording A Wizard, A True Star with Todd as the sole engineer. We didn’t even have an assistant to just watch the levels and bring things down a bit. But that’s how he liked to work. He was a solo guy, he was a hermit nerd.”

The list of session musicians on AWATS includes the Brecker Brothers, Rick Derringer and David Sanborn. Moogy was responsible for bringing in all the musicians. The contribution of drummer John Siomos (who later played on Frampton Comes Alive) is also important, providing the solid groove and highly distinctive snare and tom-tom fills for much of the album’s more soulful and rocked-out moments.

Patti Smith's beat prose inspired review of 'A Wizard, A True Star' for Creem Magazine in April 1973, described the album as "Rock and roll for the skull. A very noble concept. Past present and tomorrow in one glance. Understanding through musical sensation. Todd Rundgren is preparing us for a generation of frenzied children who will dream in animation."

inner sleeve side one

inner sleeve side two

By the time he came to record 'A Wizard, A True Star', Todd had tasted success with the hit singles 'Hello It’s Me' and 'I Saw The Light'. But he set the template for the rest of his career, by not giving the fans or the record company more of the same. 

On this swing to the left, Todd said: "I threw out all the rules of record making and decided I would try to imprint the chaos in my head onto a record without trying to clean it up for everyone else's benefit. The result was a complete loss of about half of my audience. This became the model for my life after that."

 

He went on to make other classic records, confounding expectations at every turn, which his fans learned to tolerate, or not. For me personally, I still listen to his other albums, skipping the odd jarring, self-indulgent  track. There have been times when he has unfuriated me in a live situation - ignoring his considerable body of work to play an extended version of 'Peter Gunn' on the 'Liars' tour, for example. It's never been easy being a TR fan, and he is unapologetic about that. A Wizard, A True Star, though, is the high point of a prolific musical journey.

The following links include some rare footage from the 1970s and some more recent clips, including some good quality film of the performance of AWATS 10 years ago.

1974 low-fi film of Todd and the AWATS band, playing material from the album including Just One Victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8gpABtL7sk&fbclid=IwAR26QUOjPxSzryBZTl8vp2-UWuWySGey7aOIljBDUmSSSRVyCNZpCs2-DbY

Here's video of Todd appearing on the Daryl's House show, singing Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel

And here, as part of the 2009 AWATS shows, he performs I Don't Want To Tie You Down

 

Headlines and charts from Melody Maker, May 1971

It's May 1971, Andy Williams is top of the album charts and the front page of the MM announces that the legendary Fillmore rock venues in San Francisco and New York are to close.

Promoter Bill Graham says he refuses to pay the increasingly high prices being charged by the top groups for what he sees as a decline in the quality of the music.

The front page on May 8 1971 also has details of a European tour by Rod Stewart & The Faces, including an appearance at the Crystal Palace Garden Party in August.

In the 'Pop 30', Double Barrel by Dave and Ansil Collins retains the top spot but Tony Orlando and Dawn are knocking at the door (or is it the ceiling?).

The Stones are at 3 with Brown Sugar, while T. Rex's first big hit has peaked. There's some classic singles in there, and this being the singles chart, some odd ones too. The album chart is quite impressive for the sheer number of classic rock albums in the list.

American soul artists did very well in the singles charts throughout the late 60s and early 70s, including these gems from this week in 1971. The Delfonics - Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time) Diana Ross - Remember Me The Fantastics – SomethingOld, Something New
What's interesting at this time is how different the British albums charts are from the US charts. Bands like Three Dog Night, Grand Funk, Chicago, Brewer & Shipley didn't make any impression in the UK.

Good to see The Yes Album, my favourite of theirs, riding high in the UK album charts, alongside Jethro Tull's Aqualung.  

Elton John was making his first breakthrough in the UK at this time (on the back of Your Song) with three albums in the British charts.

Interesting, then, that on page 8 (below) in MM's news from America, it says that Elton is struggling to sell tickets. "Elton is dead in New York," says an unnamed observer.

Page 8 of Melody Maker starts by noting the popularity of the all-girl band Fanny and the news that a film about Jimi Hendrix, called Rainbow Bridge is about to be released. Further down the page , there's a report about The Doors having abandoned all future plans to tour. The report says, "Jim Morrison can be reached right now somewhere in France."  And sadly for Jim, he died there two months later.

Here's a couple of gig reviews from this week

In the letters page, the jury is still out on whether Led Zeppelin's new acoustic direction (on LZ III) is going down well with the fans. "Please leave the gentle songs to people like The Strawbs," says one. Further down, Stevie Wonder is referred to as an "abominable popcorn merchant". On the left of the page, John Peel gets a kicking for his criticism of Deep Purple. The letter says, "By dismissing groups like Deep Purple, ELP and more recently CSN&Y and at the same time applauding musical dullards like Medicine Head, Bridget St. John, Ron Geesin, Brinsley Schwartz etc, John Peel is influencing the hard-core of his non-musical followers with his worthless opinions."