Friday 18 May 2012

MICHAEL DES BARRES' CHEQUERED PAST

I have a friend called Nick Redfern (photographed here by me in the Valley of Fire, Nevada) who is a very well known author on the subject of UFOs. He is also a tremendous devotee of the punk music of the class of 1977, and spends much of his time berating me loudly for writing about prog.

He wrote to me the other day, in an email so full of personal insults that I cannot reproduce it here, and for the first time in my memory he was being polite about one of the artists about whom I write.

I had to check out one of Michael Des Barres' bands. It was called Chequered Past and also featured Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison of Blondie, and Tony Sales from Tin Machine. So, much though it goes against the grain to take musical advice from Redfern (the last time I did that, it ended up with me and him and a Puerto Rican camera crew driving the wrong way around a one-way system in Canovenas, singing Sham 69 songs), I did indeed check them out, and boy they were magnificent!

There is a brilliant live video of them on YouTube but for some reason you cannot embed it. So check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS-lbCFFZk4
And here is a vintage TV ad for the band..

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