To the surprise of the folks at Record Collector, numerous Klubs fans responded to the mention of the band; they were even contacted by one of the original bandmembers, Norris “Noz” Easterbrook. Within months, Tenth Planet Records rushed a vinyl-only album called Midnight Love Cycle to market; the 1,000 discs in the pressing were nearly sold out when Record Collector justly named the record “Album of the Year” for 1999, ahead of releases that year of albums by much better known bands like Fleetwood Mac and Small Faces.
In 2003 and/or 2004, Phantom Import Distribution and then Wooden Hill Records put out a CD also called Midnight Love Cycle that included the tracks from the Midnight Love Cycle LP plus five songs from the 2000 concert by the Klubs at the Cavern Club; two of these live songs – “Train to Nowhere” and “A Simple Song” – were not among the 12 songs on the original LP. Rounding out the bonus tracks are four very nice post-Klubs songs: “Unknown” by Strife from 1972 (featuring John Reid), two songs called “We Will Always be Together” and “One Last Time” by the Lettermen (not the American band called the Lettermen, needless to say) that included Trevor Griffiths (also from 1972), and a 1999 demo of “I Wonder” by John Reid that featured Norris Easterbrook on bass.
The first single by the Klubs was a demo made in March 1967 for Chart Records called “Livin’ Today” that oddly featured the horn section from the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. They appeared the following month on a television show called First Timers with a performance of another original song called “Only John Tring”; an acoustical treatment of the song that was recorded in Paddy Breen’s bedroom survives and appears on the compilation LP (Midnight Love Cycle) and CD (Midnight Love Cycle) shown earlier, Scratchy and muddy though it might be, this recording proves beyond doubt that the Klubs were wild men from the beginning.
(July 2013)
