P Uke

P Uke

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  But once they were young, and that’s another story, for when they were a bit older than young they made themselves into the phenomenon called Nimbus Grit.
  It all began millions of years after the beginning of everything, (when it really all began), in the winter of 1969-1970 when snow lay thickly on the kind of ground upon which legends are made. Gene Robinson, an aimless chemist, was wandering round Glaxo’s factory in Barnard Castle looking for an aim, when all at once he met an imported employee from the deep south who thought “putty” was pronounced “patty”. This was none other than Chris Siggers of rescue fame, which refers to earlier snows, and who subsequently had a plant named after him, Autocoleus Siginsii Rescuii, which requires explanation, but not here.
  Siggers had a big piano and to go with it an ability to play and a share in a “band”. Like all true bands it was really a ban, i.e. it was incomplete due to absence of permanent drummer, so that a lot of the time there was no drumming, but this did not deter the drummerless, who numbered two more. There was Brian Sidaway, who had a clarionet and a soprano sax, both of which he could play, but not at the same time, and Steve Fairchild, who owned a mobile double bass and later terrorised the Pharmaceutical Industry by becoming an inspector. Fairchild’s skill was his ability to get said double bass in, or on, (mostly atop), any vehicle, which was just as well because in order to gather they had to visit the immobile piano.
  Enter Robinson with an off-the-cuff, “Do you want a guitarist?” and Siggers shot off to factory parts unknown, returning with all knowing Sidaway and some questions. “Can you play C sharp diminished? Can you…..etc…..?” and the answers led to a dark, snowy journey over Folly Top, on the other side of which lived the piano in Eggleston. What followed is as mythic as it was music. They honed their pre-rock dance stuff and, some say, once inflicted it on an audience, while Robinson told of R&R, possibly hastening the disappearance of the double bass on the roof of an inspector’s car. The piano evaporated soon afterwards leaving Robinson and Sidaway on the threshold of redundancy, but the woodwind knew a village lad who lived in a village that was the very village of his clarionet’s dwelling place. And so came this lad who was big, (handy), strong, (handy), a carpenter, (handy) and had guitars that he could play like wringing a neck, which is one of the things guitars have, (very handy)! Besides that he knew not only Rock but Roll as well, because his name was Gordon Taylor, which was fine, for that’s what they tended to call him.
  All they needed now was the inevitable drummer and one came in inevitable due course and his name was Bobby. Bobby’s surname was the kind of Kitchen they never learned how to spell because he offered it up as the group’s name, The Bobby K Four, and so they adopted this “blame the drummer” style and rode the road to fame and unfortunately, no fortune, getting their first meagrely paid work in April 1971. That was an embryonic year that saw amplifiers arrive and grow, along with vocalism, from Robinson and Taylor, and a tenor sax, from which it was intended should emerge green smoke in lieu of song. Sidaway doubled on bass of the electric kind, which he learned by not blowing his horns for a while, and in any case his clarionet had now become clarinet as the group approached up-to-date. Up-to-date was finally reached by means of a cowardly trick to vanish out-of-date K. The group was disbanded and then three quarters rebanded moments later in another part of the Universe.
  This band could play anything from any to thing; old-time dance to new-time rock and that was a strength. A weakness was that they could play nothing because they were again deficient in the drumming department, to the extent of being totally devoid of drummer. Absence of drummer did not last long however, and neither did absence of absence, for Nelson Maddox quickly came, percussed once and then dematerialised into a hole for filling. The filling turned out to be none other than Paul Bloomfield, of whom they had never heard, but once they did hear Nimbus Grit was complete.

it tended to convey was that this intention had to be explained before it could be conveyed, because what it otherwise conveyed was the raw nerve of a poorly eye! They were supposed to be deafening, not blinding, but either way, or perhaps because of the need for explanation, the band’s name became known well enough for the band to become well known, although Nimbus Grit was never completely abandoned.