One of those bands who's records you had to hide from your mates in 1977....alongside The Drones, Stranglers, and secret Prog records you liked.
Mainly because Nick Garvey looked like someones Dad desperately clinging on to his yoof; and they sounded like a new wave Status Quo.
Despite that, "Dancing The Night Away" topped John Peel's Festive Fifty that year, narrowly beating Althea and Donna's "Uptown top Ranking" into second place. I think the Pistols scrapped in at number 11 with Holidays In The Sun"????. In fact The Motors had four entries compared to the Pistols pitiful three.
Like prime period Quo, this album is packed with powerful euphoric anthems topped by terrace chant vocals, that beg to be sang along to with yer hands in the air......too much fun for 1977.
How "Dancing the Night Away" wasn't a hit, i'll never know.This is most likely the reason they watered down their sound for the second album,which worked,and produced the 'hit'.
Tracklist:
1 Dancing The Night Away 6:33
2 Freeze 4:27
3 Cold Love 4:49
4 Phoney Heaven 4:06
5 Bring In The Morning Light 3:30
6 Emergency 6:13
7 Whiskey And Wine 3:03
8 Summertime (Is Calling) 5:05
9 Be What You Gotta Be 3:54
Bonus Tracks:
10 Dancing The Night Away (Single Version)
11 You Beat The Hell Outta Me (Single Version)
12 Cold Love (Remix)
4 comments:
Oh yes, The Motors :)
But that was a funny thing though, back then, '76, '77 you often just didn't know, are they a punk band? And loads of bands were happy to ride the wave, same in Holland....
One of the very first albums I bought was an album called Geef Voor New Wave (Give For New Wave) an album with various bands that were supposed to be punk bands and The Motors were also on it, among Johnny Moped, The Adverts, Jonathan Richman, Motorhead and yes, that old rock band Earth Quake:
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Geef-Voor-New-Wave/release/524313
I actually still have that album...
And in Holland there were quiet a few pretty good bands that rode that wave, Gruppo Sportivo comes to mind.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bgeN6_S0YA&index=8&list=PLvwp8v7bIwhG4zu0kcLOyJ9nmtpnJFDsO
(still have a few of their albums too)
Are you a bit familiar with Dutch punk?
When one looks back at the 'Punk' era, what is remarkable is the actual lack of Punk Bands...so naturally we had to cast our nets wide and bands like The motors and Motorhead got roped in.
With the advent of Punk Revisionism, it is now apparent that there were actually No Punk bands during the punk years. The Ramones etc were Proto-Punk, Buzzcocks Power Pop, Stranglers Pub Rock, Television retro proto-post punk, the Jam proto Mod revival, 999/Vibrators Bandwagon Punk, Siouxsie and the Banshees Post Punk/proto Goth,Subway Sect proto-indie, Clash/Damned Pub Rock refugees, and even The Sex Pistols were made up of Prog/Glam/Pub rockers molded into an art object by art school svengali Maclaren......who always referred to it all as 'New Wave'. So Punk didn't actually exist outside the minds of the sensationalist media.....discuss.
I remember Gruppo Sportivo, and The Ex.... i have a few dutch squatland cassettes, but mainly the Benelux zone came into their own when the synth duo was the flavour of the month in around 1981...got loads of that stuff...Korm Palstics is a dutch label that i remember later Stahlplat....and got some Dutch Industrial too.
Not a patch on Prutsers though.
That's beautifully written :)
And it's true too, it was just a name given by journalists(s) and it went from there...
For me, like many other Dutch punks at the time it all started with a tv show called Ferry Maat's Disco Circus, and yes, it was a show just like the name implies, and in 1976 he had The Sex Pistols on and it made an impact on me that can't be described.... Then Iggy Pop came to Ad Visser's Top Pop show, in '77, and he (kinda) trashed the studio, scared of the female dancers, made love to a plant and that was.... well... the whole country was in uproar, questions were asked in parliament, seriously, the only thing on tv that made a bigger impact on me back then were those incredible Neon and Groeten Uit Rotterdam tv shows that showed us the Rondos and The Tandstickorshocks....
When you look that Iggy Pop clip now it's quiet laugable that there was so much commotion about it... I was 12 at the time....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtW8hLa7N6g
I also remember something about a British punk band on a kid show, BBC I think and the singer fucking a blow up animal which was quiet the scandal then... How easy it was to shock people back then... I remember walking around with my little mohawk, this was '78, '79 maybe and people on the streets would just faint or would start screaming, or turn completely white in shock.....
Still have the Tandstickorshocks EP and the Rondos album :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__K46WYI3rc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGmziHeTn8
October last year I jammed with Rondos guitar player (and later the frontman of the incredible Nieuw Hip Stielen) Maarten and with Marja from Bunker Oeso, first time in 20 years or so that I played drums, and it went great :)
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