Tiny Dancing - Arts For Conecers

Those of you based in the UK will know that Liverpool is European Culture Capital this year and to celebrate this (whatever it actually is) I thought I’d stick up a quick little post in honour of our friends up North. I considered basing it around the city’s most famous sons, but you can probably get all The Coral songs you like elsewhere.

For some reason the late 70s and early 80s saw a Merseyside music scene born that, whilst not as commercially successful as the Merseybeat bands of the 60s, spawned many great bands in its own right. The rock family tree is pretty tortuous so I suggest the interested amongst you visit here to start with. This will give you a short article about the now legendary Crucial Three – a band famous for not actually recording anything (they were only together for about six weeks), but rather for their members who all went on to form astonishing bands. These were Julian Cope (The Teardrop Explodes), Ian McCulloch (Echo And The Bunnymen) and Pete Wylie (Wah!).

Click on the links and you’ll soon be lead all over the shop of this bizarrely productive period – for instance, if you click on The Teardrop Explodes you’ll then find that the band originally featured David Balfe (who later set up Food records of Blur etc fame), who also co-owned the Zoo record label with Bill Drummond, later of The KLF – who at that time played in Big In Japan, which also featured Holly Johnson (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and Ian Broudie (The Lightning Seeds)… and so on. Give it a go - it’s great fun and almost certainly better than listening to Ringo Starr’s latest tune Liverpool 8, which rather heartbreakingly is absolute shite.

And now for three monumentally classic hits from the bands that came out of that Crucial Three.