Sprouts are for Christmas

cullercoats_bayhotel
In 1977, Paddy and his friend Tony Coyle were fairly briefly in a local NE band called Avalon, which had been formed by Roy McCalvey with his friend John on drums. There’s a lot of story in that, which I won’t pre-empt because it will be in John Birch’s book when it finally appears, but for the sake of this post Christmas Dinner treat, all you need to know is that the band played a residency at the Bay Hotel in Cullercoats, where the two songs in this post were recorded.

The first song is Paddy and Tony doing Hall and Oates, “Just a Kid”. And the second is rather wonderful and uncirculated: Avalon playing Paddy’s “Silhouettes” (also known as “Strange Silhouettes”). This was later recorded as a B side with different lyrics and Wendy singing, but this is the original, which was also a staple of the early Prefab Sprout at the Brewer’s Arms.

You can hear more of Roy’s music and a little more Avalon at his myspace page, and by following the links there to Youtube or searching at Soundcloud. There’ll certainly be a bit more here in due course too.

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