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rfmcdonaldI heard Pukka Orchestra's cover of the Tom Robinson song "Listen to the Radio" on a compilation CD, a tie-in to Alan Cross' ongoing radio series The Ongoing History of New Music.
Happily, this song was a radio hit in Canada, ranking in the Top 40. Unhappily, a promising beginning for the band was undone by by bad, as the band's biography at Canadian Bands makes clear.
Graeme Williamson, happily, has survived and is now an author of some note in Scotland, while this 2009 post at Rave and Roll goes into greater detail about the other bandmates. The band itself, though, is defunct.
I love the New Wave music, but what I particularly love is Tom Robinson's strong lyrics, with their powerful narrative drive. YouTube comments suggest Robinson was drawing from his years in Germany, in Hamburg in particular. (Onkel Po was a gay club in that city.) I'm a sucker for narrative, and when it's told well, well!
Leave the bureau in the snow
Catch a tram to Onkel Po
Early evening ring around the moon;
Slip in by the concierge
By the bikes and up the stairs
Snap the latch and creep into the room
You throw off your coat, pick up the post
And put a coffee on
Lie down on the bed, lay back your head
And smoke a cigarette...
And listen to the radio
Listen to the radio
This song speaks to me. Perhaps it's because my own music-listening patterns tend to be marked by solitude of one kind or another, or at least were marked by said. Long hours lying back in bed, listening to whatever was playing on my CD player, were long hours well spent indeed.
Happily, this song was a radio hit in Canada, ranking in the Top 40. Unhappily, a promising beginning for the band was undone by by bad, as the band's biography at Canadian Bands makes clear.
Formed in Toronto in 1980 by Scottish-born singer Graeme Williamson, and guitarists Neil Chapman and Tony Duggan-Smith, The Pukka Orchestra took their name from a Hindu term meaning "first rate" or "genuine," after Duggan-Smith's mother complained he wasn't pursuing a 'real' musical career.
For the next year and a half they made themselves a permanent fixture on the Queen Street West club scene, for which they often borrowed from a revolving door of backup musicians on an as-needed basis. Occasionally, the stage could be packed with a dozen members or more while they mixed new wave with pop and a touch of punk.
In the fall of '81, they released an independent single, the tongue-in-cheek "Rubber Girl" b/w "Do The Slither" on their own Rubber Records. It quickly got decent airplay around the Toronto area and college radio stations. Another year of so and they eventually got the attention of reps at Solid Gold Records (Toronto, Chilliwack, Headpins).
The label shipped them off to four studios around Toronto over the next few months with producer Eugene Martynec (Bruce Cockburn, Rough Trade), and their self-titled debut was released in the spring of 1984. Compared to the likes of Doug & The Slugs, the record was full of wit, as well as tight hooks and slick production with a funky big band feel, spurred on by over 25 musicians and backing vocalists.
The lead single, "Listen To The Radio" was a cover of the Tom Robinson/ Peter Gabriel song that Robinson recorded while with The Atmospherics. Pukka's version shot up the charts and peaked at #20, helped in part by a cleverly amusing video. It was followed soon after by "Cherry Beach Express," about the alleged brutal practices of a Toronto police detachment, and then "Might As Well Be On Mars" (later covered by English folk rock legends Strawbs). Also on the album was a reworked version of the single that gave their career its kick start, "Rubber Girl."
More often than not, the number of people in the supporting cast made any string of shows impracticle, but they assembled a backing band and finished out the year on the road that included opening gigs for Cyndi Lauper, Thomas Dolby, and Marianne Faithful, and in front of 30,000 people at a Halifax festival. But what for all intents and purposes looked like a bright future was cut short when Williamson developed kidney problems while visiting family in Scotland. A benefit concert was organized in Toronto to help aid his family that raised $5,000. He ended up staying in a Glasgow hospital for several months while receiving daily dialysis treatments. While the band's future was left in hiatus, Solid Gold turned out to be pyrite. The label closed its doors and the royalties owed to the struggling band were tied up in complicated bankruptcy proceedings.
Graeme Williamson, happily, has survived and is now an author of some note in Scotland, while this 2009 post at Rave and Roll goes into greater detail about the other bandmates. The band itself, though, is defunct.
I love the New Wave music, but what I particularly love is Tom Robinson's strong lyrics, with their powerful narrative drive. YouTube comments suggest Robinson was drawing from his years in Germany, in Hamburg in particular. (Onkel Po was a gay club in that city.) I'm a sucker for narrative, and when it's told well, well!
Catch a tram to Onkel Po
Early evening ring around the moon;
Slip in by the concierge
By the bikes and up the stairs
Snap the latch and creep into the room
You throw off your coat, pick up the post
And put a coffee on
Lie down on the bed, lay back your head
And smoke a cigarette...
And listen to the radio
Listen to the radio
This song speaks to me. Perhaps it's because my own music-listening patterns tend to be marked by solitude of one kind or another, or at least were marked by said. Long hours lying back in bed, listening to whatever was playing on my CD player, were long hours well spent indeed.
