Record Collector is the United Kingdom’s longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979. (More from Wikipedia)
I don’t normally get caught up in the hype about someone or other; but then again, when I am ordering something from Bomp! through one of their thrice-weekly or so emailings, there are normally no pictures. So when the Klubs were mentioned as the number one choice by Record Collector magazine, I decided to see what the fuss was all about.
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When the people at Record Collector magazine – another bunch that presumably knows what they are doing – embarked upon a major investigation of British psychedelia, they scoured music papers that were being circulated in the late 1960’s. One intrepid soul, John Reed stumbled upon an intriguing ad in the December 1968 edition of New Musical Express that had a photograph of a five-piece band called the Klubs that had just put out a single on Cam Records. (Ironically, one of the bandmembers turned out to be a man named John Reid). But the band and the record label were equally unknown; absolutely nothing else could be found about the band except this one advertisement.
In March 1999, Record Collector published the results of their investigation, which included an alphabetical listing of the psychedelic rock bands that had been uncovered in their search. The NME ad about the Klubs – which included a photo of the band in face paint like the Crazy World of Arthur Brown was using (their hit single “Fire” had come out earlier in 1968) – was deemed worthy of inclusion in the magazine edition.
Here is all that could be included in the Record Collector issue in their listing next to the ad: “No one we contacted had ever heard of the Klubs or the label they apparently recorded for. Any information would be warmly appreciated.” It is probably a good thing that the band was listed with the K’s; had they been buried in the A’s or C’s, they might still have escaped notice.
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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.
(July 2013)
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The reissue of the album by the Klubs was named Album of the Year by Record Collector magazine. Their penchant for dressing up in their girlfriends’ and sisters’ clothes during concerts inspired several members of the cross-dressing, proto-punk band New York Dolls, whose members included future punk legend Johnny Thunders and David Johansen, who later became known as Buster Poindexter. Their story well illustrates how a relatively prominent rock band from a legendary musical center like Liverpool, England could nevertheless drop almost completely out of sight.
(July 2015)
