Category: Glass Torpedoes

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#031– Glass Torpedoes – ‘Morning, Noon and Night’ (Teen Beat Records ’79)

Dear friends,

you know what they say: ‘all good things come in threes’. And this has never been more true than today, because – again – the next single in the box, after Flophouse and Friends Of The Family, is by a band virtually unknown to most of you, at least that’s my assumption.

But I won’t get tired of pointing out that this doesn’t mean anything: just because you never heard this tune before, it doesn’t mean it’s no good, right?

So, here’s the little bit I know about today’s band, Liverpool’s Glass Torpedoes: they formed in late ’78, and their debut single, the one below, was released half a year later. It was halfway successful back then, it was given a bit of airplay, and it ended up being #5 in the alternative charts. Not too shabby, I would have thought, but apparently it wasn’t good enough for Paul Cunningham, the bass player, who left the band in order to form China Crisis. In hindsight, of course, he took the wiser decision, but we all know better in retrospect, don’t we?

Either way, again half a year later, in early ‘80, the band got the chance to do a Peel Session and in October of that year they opened on a tour with Gary Glitter, the old pervert: again, of course, in retrospect ….. you know what I want to say …

A second single was released (with John Milton) and a final third one in 1981. One or two compilation tracks followed, but by the end of 1982 The Glass Torpedoes were no more, because their (new) bassist and their drummer joined Ex-Post-Facto and the guitarist got hired by Nightmares On Wax.

So their legacy, basically, consists of three singles, the first of which contained three songs. This one has always been my favourite, by quite some distance, with the wonderful Barbra Donovan on vocals:

mp3: Glass Torpedoes – Morning, Noon and Night

Perhaps this song is even new to you, who knows? If so, I hope you like it as much now as I have done for nearly 40 years! Just let me know in case this is the case …

Take good care,

Dirk

PS: and next time, you’ll be relieved to hear, for a change we’ll have a band with a huge level of familiarity! No, not bloody Guns ‘n Roses, you weirdos!!

JC adds……

Many years ago, Dirk and myself were occasional contributors to The Contrast Podcast, which was the brainchild of Tim Young.

It ran from around 2009 – 2019, and the idea was that a particular theme would be selected a week in advance of publication, and bloggers from all over the world were asked to record their own introduction to a song on said theme.  It was a great little community and I have no idea how Tim, who lived and worked in Geneva, found the time to pull it altogether. 

There were a few spin-off ideas, including all the contributors making a CD compilation but with the songs being on a randomly selected letter and that the CD should then be posted to a randomly chosen member of the collective.

It turned out that Dirk got the letter ‘G’ and his CD had to be sent over to me.   Morning, Noon and Night by Glass Torpedoes was Track 3 out of 22, and proved to be the first time I’d heard the song.  I’m now very curious to see if any of the other songs from that CD will feature in future weeks….