The ‘Dizrythmia’ tour
Tim Finn (guitar, vocals) / Neil Finn (guitars, vocals) / Eddie Rayner (keyboards) / Noel Crombie (percussion) / Robert Gillies (saxophone, trumpet) / Nigel Griggs (bass) / Malcolm Green (drums)
New Zealand’s finest – and I say that in full knowledge of Crowded House‘s contribution to the world of music and, yes, I do know that Split Enz morphed into CH. I first heard this band on the Alan Freeman Saturday Rock Show where he played two consecutive tracks from the ‘Mental Notes‘ album – ‘Stranger Than Fiction‘ and ‘Time For A Change‘ – and I was instantly hooked. Bizarre doesn’t cover it especially with their outlandish pierrot style clothing and make-up, but the music was really new variant prog and I thought – and still do think – it was fabulous.
I finally got to see them during their ‘Dizrythmia’ tour, one of only a couple of visits that I made to the Doncaster club (I was at college at High Melton between 1976 and 1979). I’m pretty sure that I remember a few of the people who were there too, namely Anne Smith, John Jenner, Andy Woodman, Andy Peacock, and Martin Newman.
I used to have some black and white photographs of the band taken on the night of the gig. This was at a time when punters were banned from taking cameras – in pre-mobile phone camera days – and I had an old ‘point and click’ instant camera stuffed down my sock! I remember that JJ printed the images in the college dark-room, but I’m afraid they were lost when I chucked out my old ‘Bands Book’.
As regards what they played, I can only remember for sure ‘Charlie’ and ‘Crosswords’, but looking at the setlist from just five days later on 4th February (below) it would have almost certainly been identical. It’s interesting that many of the songs from that setlist weren’t currently available, namely ‘I’m So Up’, ‘Best Friend’, ‘So This Is Love’, ‘Home Comforts’, ‘Betty’ and ‘Frenzy’. In July the band would record demos for an unreleased album which would include all of those, but it was ditched. Some of the songs surfaced on February 1979’s ‘Frenzy’, the remainder vanished until the 2007 fan club only release of ‘The Rootin Tootin Luton Tapes’. The song ‘Bergen Aan Zee’ never actually made it onto a record, but instead morphed into ‘History Never Repeats’ which appeared on the ‘Waiata/Corroboree’ album.
This was most definitely a terrific night from an ace band! 👍
Likely setlist: I’m So Up; Nice to Know; My Mistake; Betty; Best Friend; Play It Strange; So This Is Love; Home Comforts; Charlie; Bergen Aan Zee; True Colours (Let’s Rock); Encore: Frenzy; Bold as Brass; Crosswords (as performed 4th February at Aylesbury Maxwell Hall)
And a rare photograph of the Outlook club…
Gigs'n'Stuff 