TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

hi everyone,
at the weekend, whilst perusing cds at talking elephant, i noticed a cd by a band called 'The GPs', who consist of ralph mctell, dave pegg, dave mattacks and richard thompson.
now i'm no expert on folk music or fairport or indeed ralph related things, but i was amazed that i'd never heard of this before, especially on a site such as this.
does anyone know anything about it?  was it any good?

abby.

Yes.  And yes....absolutely.  You need it..... They only played (something like) 4 gigs....  1980 or 1981 if I remember correctly.

It is one of their finest {:-)

The name stands for Grazed Pontiffs...  someone had tried to assassinate the Pope at the time!

i din't know if you two are being sarky or not.
how come no-one talks about it/them?

They do, they do.... do a google search - they are normally mentioned as an appendix to Ralph/Thomo/Fairport biogs....

Buy it Groove.. it's fab!

thanks everyone, i may just invest then!

It is a class set of musicians just letting rip at some old Rock N' Roll and I may be mistaken, but they appear to be loving it, to me it is a bit like "The Bunch" with a bit more omph!

Definitely! I saw them at Broughton Castle and they were having great fun. Several 50´s rock standards and more anonymous songs were played and enjoyed by everyone.RT & the others certainly have some weak spots for that music.
A record well worth having. To my mind, apart from the Sandy vocals, "The Bunch" cannot compete!

I have definitely heard of it - in fact I had a vinyl copy once upon a time.

But I categorise it in the same pile as John Lennon's 'Rock and Roll' - glad you enjoyed it chaps, but I'd rather hear the originals thanks.

I too was at Broughton Castle, and also saw them a short time after on their 'tour', such as it was.
Brilliant live, but the album's sound quality isn't up to much.
Still worth having though.

It was promoted heavily at FC gigs during early 90's. I bought the cassette and T shirt!

They appear on the Cropredy Box Set.
There's also a recording of a live concert I got from Dime I think. Supposedly their final gig ...

I have the CD and it is one of my favorites...but fair warning: the recording quality is abysmal.  Bootleg level at best, but still great fun.

the bootleg is better quality than the official release
and its twice as long and has a better cover

I saw them live but didn't buy the album.  :-[

It was old friends playing rock'n'roll and having fun.  Watching Mr McTell thrashing away on a Telecaster was worth the price of admission in itself.  But it was definitely all about the live experience.

Well worth having the cd though if you weren't around for the live performances  ;D

Definitely.

The original CD is very strongly recommended actually. The sound quality's not that fab - it was recorded off the desk on a Revox (Peggy's I think) but the tape sat under the bed for some years and no doubt got some Scotch-mites in it!

Worth it for RT's sarky comments alone - Ralph does an erudite introduction to one of the songs & Richard remarks "Is it time for the bad acid announcement yet?" Collapse of McTell.

Pretty Boy Floyd is cosmic, with a couple of the best lines Woody Guthrie ever wrote:

Well it's through this world I've travelled, Met lots of funny men
Some rob you with a six-gun, Some with a fountain pen

Certain bank chief executives might like to take that one to heart eh?

PS Weird, we were at Broughton Castle on Sun - we were in the MSA Classic Car rally and arrived in a Jaguar MKII. I stopped looking for the Fairport reunion location in order to enjoy the sight of my mate jump starting a Ferrari from the MKII, ho ho.

The Woolwich Tramshed... 1981... what a gig that was!!!

It is a good companion piece to Moat On The Ledge from the same festival. Sound quality is not polished but it is OK.

The version of Cut Across Shorty is probably my favourite of that song other than one by The Faces.

Great fun - just ENJOY ;D ;D

How right you are!!  ;D ;D ;D 8)

Wasnyitit on a Rod solo "Gasolene Alley" - unless there was a live release.

Yes, the version I am thinking of is live. It is on the box set.

I remember finding a copy of the cd in a store in Moscow in 2003, which the same place I found the "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" box-set in 1995 when it was out of print during the mid-'90's (at least in the US).  Russians apparently have a love for rare-ish Fairport related material.  It's a good CD, I don't pull it out that often, but it's good.  I think there's one picture in the booklet with Peggy in his Tull "A" baseball hat.  

There is a 'new' GPs album coming out on Feb 7th - apparently a mixture of remastered recordings from Broughton Castle and another concert in Horsham.  Not everything included on the original CD is there, but there are some songs which weren't on the original: https://propermusic.com/collections/talking-elephant/products/thegps-in1981therewasthegpsliveinconcert.  Yet another challenge to the wallet...

Thanks for that Will! I’m definitely in for this one based on those ‘new’ tracks

Good news.  To be honest  i cant remember when i last played the first CD, but maybe this will encourage me.

I saw this earlier today and it will be an automatic buy for me as Horsham was my home town for the first 20 years of my life. What staggers me though is that I was a regular at the Capitol theatre through my teens, even performing there myself in 1981 (& 1982) but I have no memory of this concert taking place at all. I certainly didn't attend. I am most intrigued.

It was a lovely theatre, a listed building but was nevertheless criminally demolished in controversial circumstances a couple of years later to make way for a branch of Marks & Spencer.

NB the theatre currently calling itself the Capitol is not the same venue. That building was in fact the ABC cinema during that period, another of my regular adolescent hang outs.

Oooops, pre-ordered. The one I have is such fun to listen to.

Does anyone know the identity of the 'surprise-guest fifth GP' at the Horsham gig...?

No...  Linda?  Swarb?  Simon?

What happened to the Videotech footage recorded at Broughton Castle, I wonder?  ::)

Swarb joins them for the encore of High School Confidential on the 2006 reissue of the Broughton Castle album (which also features on Moat on The Ledge).

From where? I don't see it on the Talking Elephant site yet.

Amazon……

Now up on Talking Elephant, and cheaper than on Amazon: https://www.talkingelephant.co.uk/product/in-1981-there-was-the-gps-live-in-concert/

Well, the release date is listed as Feb 7th, but I ordered it from Talking Elephant, and it has turned up this morning!  Haven't listened to it yet (though I will soon).  But I can reveal that there are only 5 tracks repeated from the original Saturday Rolling Around album, together with Cut Across Shorty from the 1997 reunion which was previously released on The Cropredy Box.

And unlike TE's usual reputation this actually has a very informative booklet including Nigel Schofield's notes about how he has chosen which performance to include, and what he did to clean up the Broughton Castle tracks.

I've had a listen now, and it is a good companion to the original album.  Sound quality is variable, but given the quality of the source material, that's hardly surprising.

No sign of mine from TE today but that may be hardly surprising as I only seem to get one postal delivery per week these days. Hopefully soon though.

I don't know if mine arriving early might have been because I also ordered a couple of other albums at the same time - Two's Up Two by Simon Care and Gareth Turner, which I'm enjoying as I write, and Dorie Jackson's Stupid Says Run, which is lined up for next. I'm a big fan of Kaprekar's Constant, with whom she sings, and this was written and recorded with most of KC, so should be good too.

Mine's arrived today!

Still waiting...
And I actually did receive some mail today which is a miracle in itself.

Mine arrived yesterday.

Still no sign. I am getting irked.

The Eagle Has Landed!!!  Now to go and see if the neighbours enjoy it!

The eagle is presumably trapped in my local sorting office. Talking Elephant told me it should have landed today but nope.

I hope you feel it is worth it when it finally arrives!

Well this has turned into a saga of frustration and incompetence, though it probably would not be diplomatic for me to go into details here, save to say that I still do not have a copy of the CD and Royal Mail are amongst the guilty parties.

 :'( :'( :'(