The Kid's Still Got It! - Review of Kid Creole and the Coconuts @ Friars Club 27/11/09

Not so very long ago, in a town not all that far away, I rock up outside Aylesbury Station to pick up my photographer. I've already been round the town twice to find the station, and predictably it will take another few laps of Aylesbury's town centre before we ditch the car in a multi-story and head off to find the LegendaryFriars Club.

First port of call is to get our passes and then find drink (long enduring day in the office.....and hell.....it's Friday!) 

We pass under large brick arches and round the side of a really quite impressive Victorian built mega hall to access the entrance to the Civic Centre. Already a throng of people are shuffling outside puffing on cigarettes or making their way through the tiny one person entranceway in-between overly enthusiastic door staff. Already at this vantage point in the queue, we can see a mass of middle-aged men and women, clearly ecstatic to be let out of the house. Dressed up to the nines in their best Matalan attire holding gingerly onto their plastic pint glasses like it was the first time. I predict that once we get our passes, we'll quickly retreat to the backstreets of Aylesbury for a traditional pint in one of those hard see through thingies.

Eventually we are at the front and we get directed over to a hole in the wall to receive our passes. An old couple of Gals are there before us and one is thanking the guy on the other side for such a wonderful invitation for such a special event on such a lovely night. Oh Jesus... They finally start to shuffle away from the window but our hopes are dashed when the particularly dotty one swings back to the window with the wrist band dangling from her frail fingers. "And what exactly is this for?" So after another few minutes of her and the staff fumbling over her decrepit snap-able wrists, she moves along and we get our passes.

We'll skip to our return to the venue as the pub visit wasn't all that. Not all that traditional, too loud, men with work boots eyeing up my entrance pass. (This might have been out of admiration, but I suspect they wanted to test out their footwear over our pretty non local, gig going, non Neanderthal faces.) 

So back inside we start to explore. Yes, we are just about the youngest people here. I see one couple with a spotty, curly haired youth wedged in-between them but apart form that...Nada. The bar and reception areas are nothing to write home about but the stage itself is quite impressive. Sports hall like, with very high ceiling and generous space to move. The balcony above (to which we have access) surrounds the top three sides with DJ and sound desks neatly arranged.

It's not long before the support band is called up on stage. China Crisis. The crowd seem genuinely excited so we mosey on down to the front. I can't say I've heard this band before. A name like that resonates in my head like some kind of Asian Punk Ska outfit! Sadly, this wasn't to be the case. A middle aged assortment of men pick there way on the stage to their chosen instruments, from here they look more like groupies doing sound tests. You couldn't mistake the lead singer however. Suited up and looking remarkably like Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet, he flaunts his way up to the microphone and starts addressing the legion of fans before him. I instantly feel unnerved by this man on stage. The crowd seem to love him but with his constant flicking of the hair, facial quirks and (strangely) the touching of his face meant I almost can't look at him.

As you can probably guess, I won't be writing a hugely favourable review for China Crisis. Not only have I never heard of them or wished too, there style of music is seriously too old 'new wave' for my liking. As a whole, the band is tight and professional with even the creepy singer hitting the notes pitch perfect. It doesn't alter the fact though that I want to run for my life away from the aging rockers and the mums quite literally dancing round their handbags next to me.

For the remainder of their act, we escape to the upstairs balcony to sup beers and play with the camera.

Between acts, we step outside and grab an unsuspecting member of the public for an interview. I felt I needed a little more background of the atrocity which was China Crisis and also of the upcoming Kid Creoleperformance. We strike gold! Not only is this guy Johnny an extremely nice guy but is knowledgeable on both music and of Aylesbury in general. Far too much was said to be put into this meagre review, but least be said we were told about CC's admiring fan base and their rather successful 'support act' role for the last thirty years. Johnny wetted our appetites with his past experience of Kid Creole in Brighton and generally gave us a run down on the life of the Friars club and Aylesbury. Apparently the main reason for the 25 years gap of the Friars club not being open was due mainly to the outburst of violence between local skin head ruffians and their counterparts from Bedford back in the eighties. Hmmm - interesting. We left him to get ready for the Kid Creole crew but not before getting a diamond quote "Aylesbury's a small town, with big fowns and big showdowns...." - Nice!

We enter the venue and make our way to the front. Although the crowd is the same as before, their definitely is a more laid back, jostling, party atmosphere in the room. The band enters the stage to the appreciation of the crowd. Drums, brass section and various others assemble on the stage including the almost infamous Bongo Benny with outrageous turquoise suit and oversized white golfing hat. The stage fills up with yet more musicians and the famous Coconuts - more about them later! Then finally the legendary Kid Creole enters the mix and boy - this man still has it. Dressed in natty long limbed pink suit and matching fedora, a quick address to the crowd and they kick off more or less straight away with Annie, I'm not your daddy! The crowd go nuts; this is what we've been waiting for all evening. Each band member kicked seamlessly into action with a wonderful mix of Caribbean percussion, big brass sounds and jacked up funky piano, guitar and most importantly vocals provided by The Kid and the Coconuts. The girls are just great. They are the perfect accompaniment to The Kid and just watching them leaves me out of breath. (No, not in that way.) They are just so incredibly energetic with perfect dance routines moving in and around the stage. (Mostly cavorting around The Kid) and yes, they are extremely easy on the eye. The songs keep coming and the atmosphere turns into more of a carnival as each minute passes by. The songs Stool Pigeon, Gina Gina (my personal favourite...) and I'm a wonderful thing, baby all went off like a wicked big band tropical fun bomb and I doubt there were any unsatisfied punters in the venue that night. This is definitely a band that is best seen live. None of what I'd listened to before had prepared me for the pure funk genius which The Kid incorporates into this spectacular piece of showmanship. Every musician with solos and as a whole played to perfection including might I add, the lead guitarist who allegedly is the son of the late great Jimi Hendrix, but we are sure this is just a wild rumour.

The band might have a line up utterly changed from their days playing here back 27 years ago, but I can more or less guarantee they sounded as if they'd never left us. It is a great accomplishment for the Kid to have stuck to his groove and maintain a band of such high calibre which still can rock any venue or audience. It's late, and we have a thousand roundabouts before we reach home (Milton Keynes). So we leave with a swing in our step, rhythmic melodies stirring the blood and lyrics still pounding our ears. I might even come back again, the venue's quite good. If the Friars Club can establish itself again as cultural music haven fit for the modern day, who knows?

Then again, I might have to leave it ten years and shave my head!

8/11

Review by Matthew Phillips (AKA Pilchid)

Photography by James Hough (AKA Mintyhit)

Welcome and long overdue anthology featuring a wealth of material from Kid Creole and the Coconuts. We were fans early on...so we were as pleased as punch to receive this double disc overview in the mail. This collection is interesting because it features all new recordings of some of Kid's best known tunes...plus four previously unreleased songs. Quite a package here. You get two CDs featuring 20 tunes...housed in a triple fold cardboard sleeve with some intriguing liner notes. Hopefully this will reignite interest from Kid's original fans...and bring in legions more. This guy has paid his dues and deserves to be more widely recognized for consistently providing quality music for his fans. Killer tracks include "Young, Gifted, and White," "No Fish Today," "Don't Take My Coconuts," and "Yolanda." Top pick.

Read the full review at www.babysue.com

Anybody who saw those two incredible Kid Creole gigs in 1982 will be very excited at the prospect of them coming back in November 2009. They broke big in 1982 and we caught them at exactly the right time. As August says below, the cost of that size band over from the States on the road in Europe wasn't cheap and subsequently the second gig in October 1982 was a record admission price (and stayed that way till 2009). What did the Friars punters think of that? It sold out immediately! As you will read below, the Kid is making sure that the 2009 band are every bit as good as they were in 1982. Kid and the band are based all over, mainly Europe, and we caught up with August in Sweden in November 2009. Over to you Kid!

Friars Aylesbury Website: We're all looking forward to the return of Kid Creole and the Coconuts! Those 1982 gigs were two of the best Friars gigs ever! Lot of people speak very highly of those gigs.

Thank you! That's good to hear - they were some of the first gigs we ever did in the UK.

It was your first proper UK tour wasn't it?

Yes, we played Leeds and then London and (finished in) Aylesbury. It was the start of our UK conquest! I have a personal assistant now and she was at that Friars show in June 1982! She became a friend as she was dating one of the band members and she has been reminding me of that gig! Then I got some great emails from David Stopps who has a great memory - he was telling me what the Coconuts were wearing, that one of them went sick and so on.

Did you see those photos of you on the Friars website from that June 1982 gig?

Yes, they were classic photos. They are brilliant! Unbelievable stuff.

The man who took those pictures will be back at Friars on November 27th along with so many others who saw you the first time round!

That first UK tour in 1982....by then Off The Coast of Me and Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places had already been released....

Yes, but the record sales of those has been truly pitiful. But we struck gold with the third album, Tropical Gangsters.

That went top ten in the UK

That's the one that did it for us. You wonder....life is amazing....would the band have survived if that hadn't have been a hit? I don't hear anything different between that and the first album. Maybe it was fate...the planets were aligned or something in 1982 (laughs)

Something worked! It was a breath of fresh air. Everybody will always remember I'm a Wonderful Thing....

It's incredible...as there are only about seven or eight songs on that album. It was a short album but it lived and lived on the chart and the UK success spilled over to Europe and we had hits in Germany and France and beyond. But the UK was the start. So Wonderful Thing, Stool Pigeon and Annie was a great home run for us.

Everything was smiling on you! But if Tropical Gangsters hadn't been the success it was, do you think the record company would have continued to be supportive?

I sincerely doubt it. But we had two record companies. Warner Brothers in America and Island elsewhere. Chris Blackwell was a real believer in the music. I don't think Chris Blackwell (Island head) would have given up on us but he would probably have started making some demands on what direction we should go. We had been allowed free rein up to Tropical Gangsters, no-one had told us what to do. Our angel in those days was a British guy, Michael Zilkha, son of the Mothercare Foundation who was putting up all the money for touring in America before we even did the UK. It was through Zilkha's connections in the UK, that we got involved with Chris Blackwell. But to be specific about the question, in hindsight it may have been the end, but the album was so successful that Blackwell wanted to carry on.

I appreciate that but there was also the consideration that the band was physically big....

It was huge! It was a fourteen piece band. It was a very expensive endeavour with flights, hotels etc...

And touring, especially for a large American band coming over was not a cheap thing!

Absolutely!  David Stopps reminded me of what we got paid for those Friars gigs in 1982, it was quite shocking! (laughs). But when the tour took off and we got that hit record, we were touring 360 days a year and the band so was so tight and effective and such a powerful tool for me. Those were the days I loved touring so much and I realised that touring was the way forward. To this day, if I hadn't respected that aspect of the music industry, I'd be dead! Even after the hit records dried up, we still had such an incredible live band, we could continue playing.

Yes, that line up that played Aylesbury in 1982 stayed together for quite some time didn't it? 

We put a good twelve years into it. We started out in America in 1980 playing all the clubs and we had a twelve year run with that band. The only original member from that band still with me is Bongo Eddie the percussionist. Everybody else has gone off to pursue other interests, some even out of the music industry. The guitarist is now a wine taster and a couple have passed away. Winston the drummer passed away and two of my road managers have passed away over the last five years. Having Bongo Eddie alongside excites me as I can say to him "do you remember that gig in Paris" etc. We moved out of New York to Europe and the band now is European based. So that was probably the beginning of the end of an American band and has been European based since 1993.

The current line up of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, you're in Sweden, some live in England...

Some are in Scandinavia...Denmark and Sweden. Bongo Eddie is still a New Yorker. An international band!

It must make rehearsals a nightmare!

It's like a war campaign to be honest with you! It's OK when you are working six months straight as everyone is in the same place. Everyone gets paid a salary for the six months. But when you don't have the gigs everyone goes home, so getting everyone together is a pain in the ass! We don't tour much any more, we just do the gigs that make sense. It is difficult bringing everyone together.

With you being European based, the Conquest of You album (1997) appeared to be very German?

(laughs). A German producer who had the idea that he thought he could break Kid Creole into the German market. I've had a lot of calls like that over the years of people saying they know what Kid Creole needs! This guy was Austrian, working in Germany and we put together a lot of German musicians for that working with his formula. Since I have been in Europe I have been all over the world working with people who want to get on the bandwagon. I worked in Italy with a group called the Cappadei Family who have been around for fifty years, a generational thing and I worked in Spain and all over the place with different musicians. Once I lost the core band (the American one), we struggled to get a band as good as they were.

I've seen you over the last few years with different musicians....including the Here and Now tour earlier this year.

That was a pick up band (house band). When I got the call, I didn't want to do it initially as I wasn't sure what sort of a band they would give me as they couldn't afford to bring my band over, all they could really afford was me, they didn't even want the Coconuts. I refused to work without the girls as it is Kid Creole and The Coconuts after all. I couldn't afford to bring Bongo Eddie to many of those shows as they weren't paying enough dough to warrant it. But we worked and worked with those guys.....the Kid Creole music, you need to be a musician to appreciate all kinds of music, so many these days are only into one thing. The Kid Creole music has always been eclectic, you have to know your jive, R&B, swing, calypso and reggae. It was difficult at first with the Here and Now band as while they got the funk of Stool Pigeon, but I wasn't comfortable with the calypso of Annie. We worked and worked and worked on it and by the end I was quite satisfied with the band, it was tight at the end. I missed the fact there were no horns as we are horn based so had synthetic horns but it's not the same! I have different feelings about it as people will feel you are retro, but I also need to expose the band to a younger audience too and it worked in my favour as they realised we were still out there.

On the show I did see, you had Marc Anthony playing with you (who has been with you a while now)...

You caught one of the ones he played. He's fantastic. He 's the son of Jimi Hendrix. I love that guy! He is so talented (as a player and songwriter) but hasn't had that break yet. He's worked with the band for over eight years and is working on new material here with me in Sweden.

When will that new album be out?

That comes out in the Spring and will be called Hercules Unchained. I am working with another guy who has a band called Hercules and the Love Affair. His record company wanted to hear a combination of his band and mine. He's a huge Kid Creole fan.

Bongo Eddie and Marc are both on that album?.

Absolutely!

Let's go back quite a way here to before Kid Creole and the Coconuts. Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band which predated the band.

That was a learning curve. It was my brother's band primarily. He was the leader and I was his right hand man. He wrote the music, I wrote the lyrics and played bass, keyboard and guitar. I was a very attentive pupil of (my brother), Stony. I would go to the recording studios and watch with wonderness even when I wasn't needed. I learned a lot about production and song writing and got introduced to Cory Daye the lead vocalist. It was a great learning period. And we got lucky, the first album went gold in America. It's a huge place (America) and we also had a number one with Cherchez La Femme.

So how did that all end? Was it just that you wanted to branch out and do your own thing?

Yes, it was sibling rivalry and he (my brother) was very dictatorial in his ways and only his ways. I wasn't allowed to be involved and it was a case of "I write the music and you write the lyrics....forever" I was growing up and wanted to be more than a lyricist and I couldn't do that in the Savannah Band. So it built up and I said if you're not going to allow me to build up my skills....so I jumped ship and took Sugar Coated Andy Hernandez (later Coati Mundi) with me and we formed Kid Creole and The Coconuts. We were partners and outcasts in the Savannah Band as we weren't into drug culture so we bonded that way. We were free of drugs and the others were into drugs to aid their creativity. I'm not knocking that, to each his own, but Mundi and I formed a friendship through being sober as we didn't do drugs or alcohol. My wife came on board to bring in the Coconuts. The Savannah Band was a great learning experience, it was fantastic. 1976, we had our first hit.

You've also kept yourself busy with musicals, notably Oh What A Night....

I did it for ten years! I started in 1997 in Blackpool on what was a three month run. I remember leaving saying I will never come back to this city as long as I live! I also remember saying I wouldn't do this show again as it turned out to be harder than I thought it would be as it required a very different discipline from when I had been the boss in the band to being very regimented in when I turned up and what I did although I was still the star of the show. It was more tiring on stage. In Kid Creole we did the the choreography (originally through Adriana and now with Eva) so I did on stage whatever I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it. With Oh What A Night, there was a choreographer telling me what to do and when. It was tough, but I enjoyed it because it celebrated the disco era because I am a child of the disco era and the only one in the cast who lived that period.

The show was very successful and so the producers then asked me if I would carry on and that went on for 10 years. It wasn't continuous, maybe three or four month stints and in between I was still doing the band so I had the best of both worlds.

OK, here's the big question......have you been back to Blackpool?!

(laughs)....no, I have not been back to Blackpool! I know loads of people love it!

From the old band, I believe you are working again with Peter Schott?

Yes, we're working on an opera and musical called I.V. League. We've worked on this for three years and finished two months ago. So now we are looking for producers. Peter and I got back after a ten years absence and decided to write a musical. He co-wrote Wonderful Thing and is a wonderful musician. We came up with a story about a young lady who doesn't know her parents but who does meet them in an auspicious and strange way and finds out that her childhood was a complete lie. It's not as heavy as it sounds as there are light moments in there. There's no old songs, all the music is brand new and I am quite proud of it.

Apart from the new album in the Spring, when is this musical likely to debut?

Right now, it's looking like it will debut off Broadway in New York. We have some strong connections in that direction, I don't want to say too much and jinx it but it's looking very good to open in Summer 2010 to open for previews and to get people involved.

To open on Broadway would be pretty good going!

It would be good if we get that successful with it. The Broadway musical route is even harder than the music business, especially right now with the economic climate. And this show is expensive to mount with a cast of hundreds...obviously! (laughs)

You don't do things by halves do you!

No (laughs) because I was brought up on those Cecil B DeMille movies like The Ten Commandments with casts of thousands!

I'm sure it's going to be brilliant!

I'm really happy with the libretto and the music, so we're hoping we can get it mounted and past the first base and we'll have a home run with it.

2010 sounds like it's going to be a busy year!

It's exciting as the new album is coming out and also we have a 2 CD anthology of some of the old songs re-done with new musicians. The album is half new and half re-visited songs from the Creolian golden era. That's at the Rainman Records site (link below) - my manager has created this to get this album out. Then the Hercules album and then the casting for the musical. It looks like an exciting year. But every year has been exciting, I'm so lucky as so many of my fellow musicians have given up and fallen on the wayside but I am still in there. I did a show in Copenhagen last night. The audience, although we did only two songs, and didn't know us wanted to know more afterwards.

YouTube......people not familiar with the band have sent emails and fan mail having discovered us on YouTube. We have got new fans that way. YouTube...it's a great tool, I love it!

You're probably one of the few musicians that does!

I know a lot of people have issues with it because they aren't being paid, but you ARE being paid! You are being paid by reaching people you would never have reached otherwise.

That is some people's argument with illegal downloading....

I love illegal downloading! (laughs). It's the future. Why invent something and then say oops I made a mistake - you shouldn't have invented it!

Well, the people who invented it would have done it on the basis that there were rules you were supposed to play by...

You just put your finger on it! Shakespeare had a great line...."as a woodcock to mine old springe" - I love that line as you are making your own tracks in life - accept what you have created. Same with the atom bomb. Give us the tools to destroy ourselves! I love that hat quote as it says we are masters of our own destiny as we have created the tools to destroy ourselves. And downloading is a clever thing but the internet is the internet and it is growing day by day. You can't stop illegal downloading, you gave them the means to do it, it's impossible. The people who download without paying for it, good luck to them. I don't even know how to download! My kids do it and I used to scold them telling them it was taking money from their father's coffers and they would say "hey Dad, this is the future, we can't stop the future!" I know people are furious on both sides.

Just to finish....when you come back to Friars on November 27th, what can we expect?

For Friars we have a fourteen piece band, a great cast. Bongo Eddie and Marc Anthony will be there. I have told the band that because this is Aylesbury and the historical connection, they have got to kick ass and prove they have the fire and they all agree. Everyone of those guys has seen footage from the 1982 gigs and they want to be at that level. Friars is in for a treat as we are revved up. There are new younger Coconuts and have stepped into the footsteps of the incredible original girls and that is not easy. I am so proud of them. One of them, Eva,  I met with Oh What A Night and has been with me 12 years, even longer that Adriana Kaegi who was there when the band started. We call her Mama Coconut as she has been there the longest and is responsible for getting the right Coconuts. The youngest, Amy Bramall is Baby Coconut!

We will be doing stuff like Stool Pigeon, Annie and Wonderful Thing, the things that people remember and other favourites like Gina Gina and Casual Sex. It's going to be a great show!

I was hoping you would say that.....stuff like Gina Gina. I really love You Had No Intention (which you did back in 1982)

Gina Gina is one of my favourites. You Had No Intention, you can do that! We don't do that anymore. I don't know people who remember that song although I like it.

And Table Manners of course!

Table Manners? Oh yeahhhhh! Oh yeahhhhh! All I will say is that there will be some surprises on the night!

The fact you are ramping the band up for Aylesbury is brilliant! Finally, say something in a nutshell for the good Friars people coming along on November 27th.

The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but I am damn sure proud to be returning to a place I played so long ago!

August, thank you so much for your time!

I can't wait!

Read the full interview and get more information on the show here!

To celebrate the release of Kid Creole and the Coconuts new album, “Anthology Volumes 1&2,” grab the ANTHOLOGY PACKAGE just in time for the holidays! Buy the new Kid Creole album “Anthology Volumes 1&2,” and the 2001 hit “Too Cool To Conga” for only $29, a savings of $11, and get a FREE Too Cool To Conga t-shirt (size M, L, & X-L). Sale runs through December 15th, 2009.

You can only get this great deal on the Kid Creole and the Coconuts website!

Finally the first anthology from one of the premier and innovative dance/rock/pop artists of our time, Kid Creole and the Coconuts. This 20 track bonanza includes some of his biggest hits and four previously unreleased gems. All new recordings, these are Kid’s favorite songs including his take on his hit as alter ego Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, “Cherchez La Femme.” There is even a new version of his song, “There But For the Grace of God, Go I” that embraces Machine’s massive soul/funk/disco hit from the ‘80s. This double CD is a must have for any Kid Creole and the Coconuts fan.

Pick it up here!!!

Check out Kid and the Coconuts in Rome!

OH WHAT A DAY ........ my day off, that is. My lady and I took my daughters (Savanna and Ilanaluna and Ilselena) to see the stage production of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL at London's Hammersmith Apollo theatre. What a fabulous show. Accolades for you, Disney and co. You did it - gave the musical genre a new lease on life for the young and the young at heart. Single-handedly made the musical genre hip again. Bless you.
Thanks to my girls I was familiar with the plot and the music and the sensational dance routines - they made me watch the movie at least 6 times!!! Hats off to the writers - memorable songs that willl be around for a long time. Every songwriter's dream - longevity!
After this high ............................... we (actually it was my lady's suggestion ...... thanks Gemsi) made the big mistake of taking the girls to the LONDON DUNGEONS!!!!! If you take into account the fact that Ilselena is only 6 years old and Ilanaluna is only 7, you can imagine the result of this blunder! They were frightened to death ...... clinging desperately to us (adults) at every twist and turn in that dark, dismal, ill-ventilated hell-hole! Even my 12 year old (Savanna) was filled with trepidation at times!!! OH WHAT A DAY indeed. But we managed to survive, thank the gods. And the girls, bless them, emerged from the abyss and had the audacity to say "that was great - when can we do it again?" .............................. When you're my age, my lovely ones ............. or maybe just a little bit older.
It's back to work tomorrow - a gig in Sardinia at the world famous Forte Village resort. Can't wait - because at least the sun will be shining there; the way it's supposed to shine in the middle of the summer!!
Stay tuned ............................
 
KC