Krakatoa: Friday 23rd July 1976, The Penthouse, Scarborough

Perm any 4 or 5 from this list!
Roger Adams (guitars) / Maggie Ryder (keyboards, vocals) / Terry “Beefy” Bennett (vocals, percussion) / Hans Zimmer (keyboards) / Graeme Lamb (drums?) / Dave Poxon (bass) / Nigel Glockler (drums, percussion) / Neil Whittaker (drums)/ Andy Anderson (??)

NB This is a complete re-write of the original post in the light of a whole raft of stuff that I found recently on t’interweb.

Another gig that the passage of time has shrouded in mystery. I was there; I remember the name, but that’s as good as it gets. A search of the internet throws up one possible band with this name from around the right time, a Brighton-based band that had just one single released on Polydor, ‘Treat Ya Momma Good’ b/w ‘Save Yourself’. The sound/feel to this single is soul/funk although, bizarrely, Vinyl Tap classify it as heavy metal rock, which it most certainly isn’t.

In an effort to divine the band’s line-up I tried an internet search using the terms “Lamb Ryder Adams Krakatoa” the credited names of the writers of that single, which revealed that Maggie Ryder was the original keyboards player and singer in this soul/funk (there it is again!) band, along with her partner Graeme Lamb. It looks like Lamb went early and when Ryder herself quit the band she was replaced by none other than Hans Zimmer – yes, THAT Hans Zimmer!! Ryder went on to sing backing vocals for Marvin Gaye (1971), The Eurythmics (1973), Go West (1987), and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (1987-96). She also co-composed the worldwide smash-hit ‘You’re the Voice’ for John Farnham. A later incarnation of the band would include ex-Sassafras singer Terry “Beefy” Bennett and by this time (1976-79) the band was definitely a prog rock band with tracks out there on YouTube. Glockler would ultimately go on to join Saxon.

The first publicity photograph below yields a local connection; the chap on the right is Neil Whittaker who would eventually quit Krakatoa to become the drummer in Scarborough band The Jags (fronted by Mick Watkinson, brother of Penthouse resident DJ Mat) and would score a Top 20 hit in 1978 with ‘Back Of My Hand’.

With all of that said, I still can’t be sure who was in the band when I saw them; the single is Ⓟ 1976 but I know that there were changes afoot that year and I don’t know at what point during the year the original members departed. So we’re really no further forward than when we started, are we? If pressed I would go with Ryder, Adams, Poxon and Whittaker, but who knows for sure?

Setlist: unknown

The band’s one and only single…I’m not really sure if this Polydor publicity photograph (below) is the line-up of the band that I saw but it shows (l-r) Poxon, Ryder, Adams and WhittakerAnd here’s another from the same era, showing (l-r) Poxon, Ryder, Adams with Whittaker reclining at the front.This line-up seems to be 1976-1978, but I don’t know at what point in 1976…Dave Poxon on Rickenbacker bass…And another photo. This is the last incarnation of the band (1979), featuring (l-r) Glockler, Poxon, Bennett, Adams and Zimmer….

And here is the single ‘Treat Ya Momma Good’ on YouTube!

Roger Adams has a MySpace site with photos but they don’t seem to want to play; this was also where I found many of the names used in the line-up list above.