MAX_321.rmMAX321.wmv
Max_321.avi
Exclusively to my blog , here thanks to Mr Mark Alleyne, is a video of Kevin Mooney's band Max rehearsing a song called 3,2,1, with Marco on guitar.
Over to Mark:
(This is) Kevin Mooney's very wonderful band 'Max' rehearsing a song from the unreleased album '1001 Nights' - '3,2,1'. It features a short-lived but brilliant line-up of the group.
They rehearsed but never played live or recorded in this configuration. The bass player is Paul Deg - a brilliant player who fronted his own difficult, experimental but at times beautiful band 'Bluff', at the time. Here playing Marco's Fender Precision, instead of the weird and wonderful five-string he usually played. Drummer - John Reynolds. Here's an interesting bit - the guitarist playing alongside Marco here is Ian Casimir [formally of 'Pocket
Rockets'], who played all of the guitars on 1992's 'Silence Running' album. Guitar on the album is usually credited to Matthew Ashman, but this isn't true as he hadn't even joined the group at that time.
In fact Matthew only played on two recordings released by Max: 'Overdrive' and 'Outsiders' - on the B-side of the 'Hold On' single. The video was shot by independent videographer
Baillie Walsh at John Henry's Studios, London, winter 1989/90.
There are 3 different formats of the video- realplayer, wmv and avi. The realplayer is the smallest (9166 kb) the avi is the biggest (21,649kb!).
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6 comments:
The stuff on Silence Running was recorded under the name Lomax, who released one single (Waiting In Vain) with Trevor Horn on ZTT. They were dropped soon after. I saw them at the Underworld in Camden - probably their only London gig.... although som e time before this they did support Sinead O'Connor at the Hammersmith Odeon as Max with pretty much the same line-up.
The line-up with Marco was when they put out Little Ghost in about '87-ish. He played on that track and on the stuff they recorded as 1001 Nights. I'd love to hear the rest of this stuff...
The line-up changed when they finally got the SR album out on Red Dot and went back to the name Max - this is when Tex from Transvision Vamp joined, and of course Matthew. They did two gigs at Subterrania and one supporting The Fall - and was the best line-up.
John, Kevin and Matthew at the front just looking so fucking cool in their seditionaries gear. I even got Kevin to do an accapella Come Back Friday!
The atmosphere was intense - so much so that Kevin let fly at the audience for "standing like statues" with their arms folded, and rumour had it that this was the reason Red Dot dropped them soon after (though I can guess there was other chemical reasons too) and the only tracks released by this line-up were indeed the two B-side tracks on Hold On single.
Overdrive was great live, but the best was this dynamite track Underground, or Friends In The Underground which never saw the light of day, except a hint of it in the Beautiful Dream rap on Wonderful.
I would kill to hear Underground and the rest of the stuff they demo'd at that time.
El Buccanero
In addition to my last post, I think this video was done around the time of Sinead's 1st album which Marco played on and produced. Kevin also wrote Just Call Me Joe on that album - but I heard a rumour he swiped the song off a former Max member, Tommy.
Wasn't one of Under Two Flags in Max at some point? I think his name was Soapy... I thought he played guitar but I thought maybe the bassist in the video here was him?
Oh yeah, I forgot to say that the Pocket Rockets only single Video Kid KO is my favourite single of all time - get it if you can!
(12" and the 7" - different mixes on both)
my name is soapy ,maff was and is my friend ,though departed this mortal coil some time ago, as for me playing in the video...nah ! not me ,i did meet up with kevin and john on various occaisions, but never got it together to attend a rehearsal, i did join maffs band the chiefs of relief for a day and decided i am not a bass player and quit same day, i agree though max were a formidable force whatever the chemical weather,which incidentially was never a problem,getting money was ,
i always remember a card kevin gave me with "his left handed highness" on it,and no contact number...says it all, anyway, i'm out ,soapy
Brilliant. Can't believe a video exists of this. The three tracks that were recorded at this session were genius. Thank you Mr Mark Alleyne - has Ian seen this? Fiona x
Hi Fiona, there's alot more video than this lying around. This footage wasn't from the recording session you're talking about, though. This was a rehearsal at John Henry's up in Islington. The recording session you're talking about is the '24-7' session - not quite this line-up, Dave Wilson on drums, not John Reynolds. You're right about the session being genius - 'Hold On', 'Sundown' and 'Drive'. 'Sundown' has got to be my all-time favourite Max recording. Kevin - and the rest of the guys - at an all-time peak. A crying shame that only a handful of people have ever heard it.
C'est la guerre.
Mark
Apparently what I said in my last post is utter bollocks: Listened to the '24/7' session with Marco this afternoon (he produced it at Madness' studio), John Reynolds on drums on this session, as you stated, Fiona (only session Dave played on was the 3,2,1/ White Pages one). Thought I'd better own up. Mark ;-)
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