Malcolm's Interview - now they were a band! They came from York and around 1982/1983 kicked up a lot of dust on the folk scene. In fact they never were folk in the accepted sense but they took trad songs and sources and tried to make them fit with comtemporary rock. I wrote about them endlessly and shared many a weary mile on the road and many a late night curry with them.
They were a splendid crew, Martin Appleby their original instigator and bassist now works for the BBC and still keeps groove for various Home Counties dance bands, Lead guitra wunderkind Jon Townend emigarted to America and now lives in New England. His solo material is still qurkily English and wonderously catchy, check him out on You Tube. Jo Swiss, their delightful, giggly lead vocalist with whom I once whirled round a dance floor to "Relax," by Frankie Goes To Hollywood was last spotted working ina shop in Yorkshire. All of them were splendid. They made tapes, EPs, albums and then became God's Little Monkeys after " Breakfast In Bedlam," was cut for an offshoot of the Topic organisation.
I have on the shelf in front of me now a live CD, which name checks me and was a gift from Martin "Live At The Lynx 1985," probably just as he was leaving the band,as I recall. I played it the other day and was blown away by the funk, groove and sheer adventure they could conjure. Buy, beg, borrow or steal a copy of their early EP on Eggs Will Walk to hear the most harrowing, gothic version of " Cruel Mother," ever commited to record.
Malcolm's were named after a Calaban cartoon of a talking plant and it's owner if memory serves. They were a fabulous one off, I adored their music and still think they should have been stars. Once walking through Toronto on a hot and sweaty day in a long gone August, feeling over heated and just sweltering, I was revived by a poster that told me as it hung on a back lot wall that Malcom's persons were playing nearby that night as successor band to Malcolm's God's Little Monkeys were gigging that night in the city. They were still brilliant all that way from their north of England base.
What a band. Why isn't there at least a catch all double compilation out to tell their story. If they read this best to them all. They remain as bright as ever.
Simon Jones.