When time is short, I have certain fallback places to go to on this feature. This week, we're a couple of miles from the centre of Manchester, in a suburb where, way back in 1982, a young band were formed called Venereal and the Diseases. Catchy, eh?
After a while they changed their name to Volume Distortion, then Model Team International, eventually shortened to Model Team, under which name they supported The Fall. Then they found themselves a lead singer and changed their name to Tribal Outlook before settling on a name that would eventually propel them to fame.
Any ideas what that name was?
(Answer right at the bottom of this post.)
Sometime later, the band in question would support another young Manchester band, whose lyricist once wrote a song that went a little like this...
What do we get for our trouble and pain?
Just a rented room in Whalley Range
What do we get for our trouble and pain?
...Whalley Range!
The first time I drove past a sign for Whalley Range in Manchester, I was on my way to visit a friend who lived not far from there. A little shudder of excitement went down my spine and this song popped into my head...
Surprisingly, Morrissey wasn't the first person to immortalise Whalley Range in song. Peter Noone beat him to it by about 20 years...
Herman's Hermits - It's Nice To Be Out In The Morning
And many years later, this Fellow(s) from Sheffield gave it a mention...
John Shuttleworth - You're Like Manchester
But... who was that famous band from Whalley Range?
Answer here, if you really want to know.
I would never have guessed that the Whalley Range band in question could have emerged from one called Venereal & the Diseases! Certainly a more palatable name now but not quite as, erm, 'memorable?'...
ReplyDeleteSimple Minds were originally Johny and the Self Abusers!
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