For your copy
email:
dj @ threesacloud.com (lose the spaces)
The impetus for this compilation came to me, as many
of my best ideas do, whilst massaging my scalp with shampoo in the shower one
morning. There has of course been a
plethora of compilation albums over recent years trying to capture eras, moods
etc. and many of these are now given away free with the Daily Mail. The difference with this one is I suppose
that this is derived directly from the play-list used by Three’s a Cloud (TAC)
in late 1968. These then were the songs
that benchmarked our lives and certainly in my case formulated my musical
tastes for years to come. When we chose
a song to include in the list there seemed to be five main criteria. Could we play it? Was it tuneful? Could you
dance to it? Could we emulate even passingly the
original sound or God forbid, improve upon it? Could our army of supporters
(well about three actually) copy the words accurately enough to avoid us either
having to buy the music or try to remember the lyric from stolen glimpses in
Potters in
It must be said that had financial gain been the
objective of TAC then we would never have existed. Our personal investment in money and time was
extensive and doubtless wreaked its effect upon our A level grades. Was fame the driver then? Certainly to the adolescent mind there was a
certain attraction in not forming part of the cattle market on the dance floor
and believing instead that there was a mystique about an artiste that
transcended Brut and cheap cider. The
greatest driver though that I still recall today was the sheer thrill of
performing and a passion for playing that music.
Group practice was a weekend must. I recall many happy hours spent either at St Swithins in
Some of our equipment was bought, some borrowed and
some home-made. We even made our own lighting cabinets and backdrops. Sadly I dismembered our trusty ‘Fuzz Box’
many years ago so its design by an electronics genius called Carrick-Smith in
the year above will forever remain a mystery.
It was however, this piece of equipment liberally occupying an old
biscuit tin that helped Mick Battisson to reach
unheard of strangulation tones on his guitars when played serially through the
treble boost and sometimes the reverb unit.
Modern equivalents are much too precise for my liking and the way in
which a turn of less than a millimetre could affect
the sound endeared me to that box for life.
Genuine anorak that I have become, part of my
make-up is an inability to throw away memorabilia and to preserve for all time
the genuinely useless. Strictly in
accordance with that maxim the enclosed items have been culled from a
disturbingly large pack that I judiciously salted away in 1971 and only really
reviewed as part of my divorce in 1995. It does however include a copy of the
original Robert Heinlein science fiction story that spawned the name Three’s a
Cloud.
Due credit should also be given to the Friends
Reunited Web-site which enabled us to meet again in the ether and now at last
in the flesh. We even gained a mention in
The Observer newspaper after I had enthused to Friends Reunited over the
efficacy of their site. Lastly, the Internet has also enabled me to discover
that Nigel Bagge who joined us in 1969 to fill out
our sound and forced the name change to TAC is still playing in a
What of the future?
Well we’re in it now so I suppose a toast is
appropriate to those who have survived some 30 odd years but still remember
their teens as a time of joy not angst.
What I can tell you is that a reunion gig is very unlikely. Although Mick has used his musical skills
gainfully for the last 30 years and is an accomplished composer and performer
and Nigel is still very much hard at it, Mike now prefers a cello and a guitar.
My own efforts have moved on very little since those days so I suppose a
potential reunion might at least capture the sheer inability I exhibited all
those years ago. However, whilst it
might be supposed that playing a number is like riding a bicycle, I doubt that
my fingers will track the right chords anymore though admittedly my equipment
now is rather better (read louder) than in the 60’s. My suspicion is that this is the last of the
memorabilia you will see from Three’s a Cloud so may I wish you all a Happy
Christmas 2004 and as Mike so eloquently signed off to me recently: Throb in
‘E’ !
JSB
And Mike Battisson adds:
If anyone should remember TAC it would be the neighbours who put up with the racket we made at band
practices. The earth would literally tremor and window reflections would
distort like a hall of mirrors. Boy, were we loud and probably responsible for
a fair bit of structural damage in various parts of
Of course, we weren’t the only boys with noisy
toys. Bands were springing up everywhere in the mid-to-late sixties. When two
or more shared the bill at ‘dances’ (doesn’t that sound quaint) the rivalry
between them was measured in decibels more than anything else. If a band had
volume in reserve it had power over its adversaries. For a guitarist, a
supercharged amplifier said more about his testosterone levels than a 250 Lambretta with a straight-through exhaust.
What dancegoers probably didn’t realise
was that all this volume concealed a lot of cock-ups, which was just as well in
my case. Turn an amp up full chat and a guitar starts playing itself. Add to
this John’s trusty fuzz-box and hey …who needed talent?
Drummers on the other hand couldn’t get off so lightly
– but ours was a real star. As a three-piece band any weakness would have left
a huge hole in our ‘sound’ but Mike always kept it together despite suffering
some pretty horrendous migraine attacks at a lot of gigs. The skin on his
eyelids would light up like a Christmas tree but he never complained – just got
on with it.
As for John, what a mentor. When we first formed-up I was hopeless.
I didn’t even know the names of the chords I was playing – and there were
precious few of those. But John and Mike persevered by putting little fret
diagrams above the lyrics of songs they’d deciphered to give me clues. As we
progressed and the music got a little more complicated, John spent countless
hours squeezing my reluctant fingers into uncomfortable shapes that had names
like bits of algebra, Bb to the power of 7 – what the hell was that?
Without John TAC wouldn’t have happened. He organised everything – venues, promotion, playlists, the lot. And what other
band has had a player/roadie who was prepared to transport gear to and from a
venue on his moped – come rain or shine? You think you’re hard - try that Noel
and Liam!
They were happy days and this compilation not only
brings them back but also reminds me of the very special bond John, Mike and I
shared. I loved them then and still do.
God knows what we were really like as a band -
pretty awful I suspect. When we met up again recently none of us had anything
audible to show for the noisy boys years. It was
actually very convenient as it meant we could convince ourselves that we
weren’t that bad.
Parents, neighbours and
pets that went AWOL during band practices would probably beg to differ. To them
I can only apologise on the band’s behalf. This
apology also extends to those of you who shuffled your feet and pretended to
enjoy yourselves at a ‘Three’s A Cloud’ frontal lobotomy fest. And to poor
Nigel who joined us in the final year to cover for our musical inadaquacies. I guess we should all be grateful that this
compilation comprises of nothing but the originals.
But maybe you’re not safe yet! Mike’s always been
an accomplished muso/composer and now plays a mean
cello. I know a few more chords and John’s got a new keyboard. Nah, it
shouldn’t happen and if you knew what John means by ‘throb in E’, you wouldn’t
want it to.
MB