The Cavern Club had been revived (again), and the Klubs put in an appearance in their old stomping grounds on May 27, 2000; even though singer Paddy Breen had a bad head cold, and guitarist Trevor Griffiths couldn’t be there because of a broken leg.
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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.
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The Klubs formed at the Birkenhead Institute for Boys, located in a borough called Wirral, which is across the Mersey River from Liverpool. Originally a band by the name of the Klubs was put together in just two days so that they could enter an R&B contest on the Isle of Man in September 1965 – and they actually won the contest.
By the end of the year, the line-up had settled into a sextet: Paddy Breen (vocals), Alan Walker (vocals, harmonica), Trevor Griffiths (lead guitar), John Reid (rhythm guitar), Norris Easterbrook (bass) and Kenny Marshall (drums). In the early years, they were a hard-driving rhythm and blues band that performed a lot of covers of Rolling Stones and Pretty Things songs.
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(left to right: Trevor Griffiths, Pete Tidy, John Reid, Paddy Breen, Norris Easterbrook)
Anyway, word’s out now about the Klubs, even if no one has gotten around to putting anything in Wikipedia or Allmusic about them. The band has a website – www.theklubs.com/ – and they also have a listing on the online British Music Archive: www.britishmusicarchive.com/K/339-the-klubs .
(July 2013)
