In from the cold: Moscow return after 40 years with compilation album
MOSCOW TODAY: From left, Bill McKeown (bass), Jonathan ‘Twig’ Leafe (guitar), Jeremy ‘Jez’ Ross (drums), Mark Elvidge (synths), Keiran Moses (vocals)
Chewing the Fat, a column by Phil Ascough
They say if you remember Woodstock you weren’t really there.
I thought I saw Moscow at the Adelphi, but they called it a day the year before Paul Jackson opened the doors. It must have been the Welly, Hull’s other iconic Indie venue, but it’s fair to say memories of the music and the mood are somewhat hazy!
Now there’s a second chance – or maybe the third or fourth. More than 40 years after the split, a retrospective album of all their recorded works has been released on vinyl and a few formats that weren’t around for the original recordings – CD, download, streaming services. There’s also the possibility of some gigs.
I mean no disrespect whatsoever to Moscow, or their predecessors The Odds, in noting some household names which adorned the same stages as them in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There’s no obvious reason why some bands were catapulted to stardom and others weren’t. Often it’s just the right place at the right time.
An online search of gigs at Retford Porterhouse, for example, shows the 200-capacity venue helped to launch U2, The Waterboys, AC/DC, Talk Talk and many more iconic bands. At The Outlook Club in Doncaster, touring bands including head-splittingly loud heavy metal rockers Stray, classy one-hit-wonders Marshall Hain, and the no-need-for-introductions Sex Pistols showed the variety of the music scene, and the standard of competition.
Moscow survivors Jonathan Leafe and Keiran Moses reflected on the changing times, trends and technology.
Jonathan recalls: “The internet wasn’t there, social media didn’t exist and promotion was very hard compared to now – reaching a larger audience and getting some traction.”
MOSCOW IN THE EARLY 1980s: From left: Jez, Keiran, Bill, Twig and Mark
As someone who made the career decision to write about music rather than persevere clumsily with the riffs of Paranoid and Smoke on the Water, I remember the stuff that came across my desk or was pressed into my hands at gigs.
The big record companies – and some of the more resourceful bands – would send records in cardboard sleeves accompanied by photographs, nicely printed biographies and tour schedules that made sense.
Local bands would stuff demo tapes into padded envelopes with a sheet of A4 bearing scribbled names, phone numbers and maybe a message saying not to call during shop or office hours because they’d be at work.
Jonathan remembers it as just one example of the financial pressures facing young musicians – they couldn’t claim dole because the state considered them to be working, yet the returns from gigging and recording were meagre, if they existed at all.
He recalls a search for a new manager being triggered by the previous incumbent’s ignorance of UK geography. An example might be Sheffield on Monday, Glasgow Tuesday, London Wednesday, Newcastle Thursday. The fact that sat nav was yet to be invented is no defence.
The CVs show that The Odds were formed in 1978 with Sam Leyland on vocals, Bill McKeown playing bass, Colin Brockwell drumming and future member of Sade’s band Stuart Matthewman on sax.
They looked and sounded much more than a punk band and the sleeve notes hit the mark with references to rock and pop, and memories of European gigs, university tours and sharing the stage with big names including The Damned, The Skids, The Selecter and future Eurythmics The Tourists. Nobody should ever underestimate the sheer thrill for a band from a place like Hull of getting the chance to play at The Marquee Club, and The Odds did it twice.
LONG SHOT: The Odds: Bill, Stuart Matthewman, Keiran, Twig, Colin Brockwell
The first single, Saturday Night, opens the album Foolish Men, pressed now on striking blue vinyl and also featuring the second 45, a cover of the 1965 hit Yesterday Man by Chris Andrews. Keiran was one of “several” guitarists to join the band and stuck around, moving to vocals when Jonathan arrived with the nickname “Twig” and told his parents that yes, at 17 he was heading off for a few weeks on a European tour.
Other changes led to The Odds morphing into Moscow during 1981, with McKeown, Moses, and Leafe joined by Jez Ross on drums and Mark Elvidge on keyboards and the set re-written speedily to meet the demands of a pressing existing tour schedule.
Almost all of the tracks from their 1980s recordings are now repackaged by Bin Liner Records into Too Light to be Late, an impressive double album for which engineers Roy Neave (Fairview), Dan Foster (The Chocolate Studio) and Ken Giles at his acclaimed studio in Bridlington deserve immense credit.
Identified by the press as New Wave / Synth-Pop / 80s Alternative, Moscow racked up Radio One airplay as well as live TV performances on the BBC’s Bubbling Under and even a BBC 1 appearance in the final of the Battle of the Bands at Hammersmith Odeon. But hard work and extensive gigging is never enough and the band which played its first gig at the old Beverley Hills venue on September 2, 1981, signed off two years later to the day with a show at Burton Constable Hall.
They made a comeback in 2010 to open the Party in the Park gig starring Rick Astley and Bananarama. My Decision, the final song on the new record, is taken from that performance as the only recording in existence.
The song gets a new, bright and bouncy treatment on Overnight Sensation, a 2013 collection of old material and new songs under the name Moscow for Pleasure – a nod to the old Music for Pleasure budget compilations label and recognition that online searches for “Moscow” can generate all sorts of unwanted responses!
Keiran is now retired after a business career which included spells with then Kingston Communications, Smith & Nephew and Siemens. Jonathan is perhaps best known for leading Strawberry for more than 27 years as it became one of the foremost creative marketing agencies in Yorkshire.
Kerian recalled how it all started: “My cousin had an acoustic guitar and he could play Heart of Gold by Neil Young – but not much else! My sister had bought a guitar from him and gave it to me as a present.
COMEBACK: Moscow at Party in the Park in 2010. Keiran, Bill, Mark and Twig
“I had friends at Wolfreton School, including Stuart, who were really good musicians and I wrote a musical for the drama department. Shortly after leaving school, Stuart said they needed a guitarist for The Odds, who had a record contract with Red Rhino. My audition wasn’t the best but I had a cool white Vox Phantom guitar that I think got me through!”
Jonathan picked up a guitar after his brother and sister had lessons but gave up.
He said: “I started playing without lessons and we formed a band of four people who couldn’t play any instruments! But I always wanted to play music and be in a band and I was incredibly fortunate when I got in a very good one with very competent players who turned up, knew their stuff, performed to the best of their ability, left nothing behind and tidied up after themselves.”
The conversation pinned down some of the parallels between chasing your big break as an up-and-coming band and building a successful career in business.
You need drive, determination and passion to travel through the night between tour stops, and patience to get the best rates in recording studios by working through the small hours in pursuit of that perfect take. You need polish to pitch your products in a fiercely competitive sector. You need confidence when you take to the stage, whether in front of half a dozen people, hundreds, or thousands.
“It was self-reliance and resilience,” said Jonathan.
“These were life lessons which enabled me to progress in business.”
The more recent releases show an abundance of the band’s original energy and creativity, now with the depth and control which comes from greater experience and maturity. Not to mention an eagerness to embrace techniques and technology which weren’t at your fingertips 40-odd years ago. They’re rightly proud of the new record.
Jonathan said: “Bin Liner Records asked us if we had any recordings other than the single we released in the 1980s so we pulled all our stuff together and we were incredibly happy with the results. We have had the opportunity to remix and remaster the songs and the result is way better than I ever imagined.”