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Good Old Boys’ last hurrah
This is highly unconfirmed, borderline on rumour, but we thought it’s worth mentioning on these pages.
The Good Old Boys are having their very last concert tomorrow, August 31, 2023, at the Eel Pie Club in the London suburb of Twickenham. Nick Simper was their bass player for a long time, but left the band a few years ago. According to our long time contributor, Nick will appear at this show as a special guest. This information apparently comes from the Boys’ frontman Alan Barrett. Tickets are available at £13.20, so that’s the grand total you might be laying on the line.
Thanks to Reinhard for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I didn’t know he was no longer with them – I always considered him and Peter Parks (an underrated guitarist if there ever was one) a package, they’ve been playing together in various bands for ages.
Nick Simper has been doing music in the last years with his son Richard,
https://www.nicksimper.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/images/two_generations.jpg ,
I don’t think I have to point you to which one Richard is, his dad’s dominant DNA made sure of that!
Aeon Sophia (no doubt Herr MacGregor will roo-jump at the chance of again drawing premature conclusions from me even knowing the name of that project regarding my allegedly closet-hidden devotion to all things occult and mystic!) play what I would describe as ambient music: a mix of ethno-folk, electronica and soundtrack aural landscapes with perhaps a touch of Oldfield. The kind of stuff you wouldn’t be surprised to hear gently in the background at your local Vegan Café or while you’re standing around not knowing what to do with yourself as your girlfriend/wife is on a buying spree in a ‘cruelty-free-beauty-products-only’ Body Shoppe.
You can hear Richard’s dad’s bass playing well on tracks like this one (incidentally a Fandango one, but Richard does generally his own stuff). Guitar sounds like it could be Peter Parks too, it has that Mark Knopfler touch. (I just checked, it is Peter Parks.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzRYDaqL3jY
Other tracks from the family that plays together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9_rB6WY1-0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k94IA30Ln2U
Now … where have I heard those wolf howls before?
https://youtu.be/3uKxb-xG3T4?si=9Afs6GDko3nz_j3U
August 29th, 2023 at 21:52Indeed Uwe indeed, even I have never heard of Aeon Sophia before. However being under a spell of sorts I did venture to those links & have a listen, such is my devotion & I must say I am impressed by your devotion to the cause. Although I am a little disappointed, you did not mention esoteric new age book shops when mentioning this music. Although these days some of the cafes have the books as well. Thanks for the ‘enlightening’ experience. Cheers.
September 2nd, 2023 at 23:06In my obsessive anally-retentive quest of collecting and curating everything Deep Purple + before + after (I started collecting everything they did as early as 1976, I had James Gang, Artwoods and Trapeze vinyl before even my DP collection was complete), I do not differentiate: All Marks that recorded studio music are created equal and what Nick does interests me as much as what Roger or Glenn do. Nicks influence on the sound of Mk I is largely underrated, what happened (or did not happen) to him at the RRHoF is just the peak of the injustice iceberg obscuring his legacy. Rod, Tommy and him are the only Purple members I have never seen play live, which I very much regret. I would have gone to see the 1980 bogus Deep Purple in a heartbeat just for Rod (shambolic as their gigs were).
September 3rd, 2023 at 21:21Hang your head in shame Uwe while it is still attached to your body. The guillotine is on the way. Supporting a bogus Deep Purple, the heresy is beyond repent. I have heard it all it seems, what next? Oh well, gladly that never happened. A bogus DP? Cheers
September 4th, 2023 at 03:31Your just, yet devastating criticism has made me sufficiently breathless, Herr MacGregor!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ExCwpi59c
(What’s not to like about that wonderful song?)
September 5th, 2023 at 14:01A nice surreal psychedelic video to go with that song, wonderful first thing in the morning & cheers for that. My response of course was in regards to the woeful bogus Deep Purple 1980 sham. With DP MK-I, I have always liked Evans vocals & I only ever thought on a few live clips with Captain Beyond he was a little out of his depth at times. But he is or was a fine vocalist. One wonders what he & the other parasites were thinking in 1980, other than a cash grab of sorts. Silly silly sods. Evans gets rightfully inducted into the Hall for his initial DP work & Simper gets left out. Me thinks because Nick sued management didn’t he. The ‘unfair dismissal’ & took his royalties lump sum. The old saying springs to mind ‘if he doesn’t want anything to do with DP then so be it’. Not that the Hall committee should have looked at it like that, but so much of corporate business does tend to have those sort of two faced morals. Evans sort of gets rewarded for his 1980 antics, in that sense. Apologies for digressing there. Cheers.
September 5th, 2023 at 22:14I doubt that Nick taking DP to court in 1969 played any role in how his potential induction at the RRHoF was treated. In hindsight, it was an extremely beneficial move for Rod, Ritchie, Ian and Jon as Nick’s waived 1/5 of the future royalties accrued to their shares.
Now the MK I catalog is not under suspicion of being platinum sales-worthy, but over the decades it should have been a steadily trickling allowance. My guess is that Nick has regretted his then choice of a lump sum payment and parts of DP’s PA-system via settlement. He missed out on the sales of Purple Passages for instance, Warner Brother’s clever release of Mk I material at the height of Purple-mania in the US.
My understanding is that Rod’s royalty receipt was only paused in the wake of the bogus Purple aftermath for something like 20 years or so (as damage compensation). As of the new Millennium he – or whoever he has nominated or who is his assignee – has been receiving them again.
September 6th, 2023 at 15:39At the time I understood the legal actions against the “Bogus” Deep Purple.
Being a big fan of MK 1 I really would have loved to see them both on stage though doing other MKs stuff would have been cringy, I think.
Or not, you need the right people to do it justice.
Glenn is doing DP stuff on hus own with ALWAYS non DP related musicians and many leave the building very happy to have witnessed it.
He is doing great versions of both HS and SOTW.
I guess MK style Purple wouldnt draw so many afficionado s, but you ll never know.
Its too late now, we ll never know what a night like that would /could have been.
September 14th, 2023 at 22:11It was cringy, RV, terribly so, Rod sang flat (pitching problems had already raised their ugly head live during Mk I days and led to the disenchantment of other band members with his performance), the band was underrehearsed and not very talented, they even got the SOTW arrangement wrong where the band stays on the riff throughout while Rod valiantly sings the third verse over the mess.
https://youtu.be/yYuLwQMB7h4?si=0SU4O8SF19tPjMtz
I still would have liked to have witnessed it, but out of morbid curiosity mostly. IIRC, the only Mk I songs that were performed were Hush and Kentucky Woman.
I still credit Nick Simper highly that he refused to let himself be drawn into this. There really wasn’t a reason for him to take the DP organisation’s interests into account.
There are parallels to the bogus Fleetwood Mac that toured the US at one time (before the waitress and her friend joined, elevating the band to deserved superstardom). But those guys (who later on became Stretch) could at least play and sing and had been led to believe that Mick Fleetwood would tour with them, yet he bowed out at the last minute. They wrote a song about how they felt about having been lured into a grotesque situation by him, it’s a musical indictment of sorts.
https://youtu.be/smg2S8CssQU?si=GR2zoNgnSzy1sReR
Stretch tie into the Purple history in various ways, singer (Elmer Gantry) and guitarist (Kirby) sang and played on Jon Lord’s Before I Forget album, Ian Paice played on a Kirby solo album I believe, Paul Martinez (predecessor of the bassist in the vid, but you might actually hear Paul) played with PAL of course and the whole band was Rainbow’s opening act on the Rising UK tour.
September 15th, 2023 at 10:22Kirby Gregory the guitarist isn’t on the original Jon Lord album Before I Forget that I own. Elmer Gantry is. Unless Kirby is on an extra track on the re release issue. The only guitarists I am aware of on Lord’s album are Bernie Marsden & Mick Ralphs. Kirby was in Curved Air for an album in the early 1970’s, he then rejoined CA in the later post 2010 years. I am not sure if he is still with them today. Cheers.
September 16th, 2023 at 04:57