aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser
# 101: Terry & Gerry – ‘Wait Until You’re Older’ (Vindaloo Records ’84)
Dear friends,
today it’s one of these days again when I sit here and think to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, why can’t I just listen to „normal“ music, like The Beatles, for example?!“. Probably you will have the very same thought every week when my nonsense appears here, but that’s a different story.
Without looking it up, I don’t think there is a single Beatles-tune where I would not find thousands of essays about on the internet within a minute: get some facts, some inspiration perhaps, write a little something down, send it to JC, et voilà – back to bed!
Not so with today’s single by the most wonderful Terry & Gerry, a skiffle duo from Birmingham! I have to admit their Wikipedia entry is bigger than I first thought, but apart from this there isn’t anything I can find about them, regardless their brilliance.
They (Terry Lilley and Gerry Colvin) formed in the early 80s and unusually for the time the band was based on a skiffle sound, making use of a washboard for percussion instead of a drum kit. Terry plays double bass, and Gerry sings lead vocals and plays acoustic guitar. Below track is one of five tunes on their wonderful debut EP, ‘Butter’s On The Bread’ (a reference to the miners’ strike apparently), the sleeve of which tells me that the two chaps are backed by The Day-Glo’s, Andy Downer (guitar, singing) and Doreen Devine (washboard, singing).
I wish I had seen them live back then, they took their style from 1950’s pop artists – so much so that they wore black evening suits and ribbon ties at their gigs: great stuff!
You see, I know very well that songs like these don’t gain great applause generally. Therefore, even if there was more I could tell you, I should not take it too far – most of you would not bother anyway, I’m afraid. But hey, that’s my life story when it comes to obscurities like these: Peel liked them, so did I – but no one else did (and consequently isn’t interested) – and I liked them so much that on occasion they ended up in my singles box … end of the story, and no, I’m not complaining.
mp3: Terry & Gerry – Wait Until You’re Older
Another obscurity next week, so be prepared!
Until then, enjoy,
Dirk
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 