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Dexys Midnight Runners
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Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their hits "Come on Eileen" and "Geno".
lass="link1" onMouseover='showByLink("m672651",this)' onMouseout='hide("m672651")'href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Kevin_Rowland">Kevin Rowland (vocals, guitar, at the time going under the pseudonym Carlo Rolan) and Kevin "Al" Archer (vocals, guitar), both previously of The Killjoys, founded the band in 1978 in Birmingham, England, naming the band after Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine popularly used as a recreational drug among Northern Soul fans at the time.
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Encyclopedia
Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their hits "Come on Eileen" and "Geno".
Career
Young Soul Rebels
Kevin Rowland (vocals, guitar, at the time going under the pseudonym Carlo Rolan) and Kevin "Al" Archer (vocals, guitar), both previously of The Killjoys, founded the band in 1978 in Birmingham, England, naming the band after Dexedrine, a brand of dextroamphetamine popularly used as a recreational drug among Northern Soul fans at the time. The midnight runners referred to the energy the Dexedrine gave, enabling one to dance all night. "Big" Jim Paterson (trombone), Geoff "JB" Blythe (saxophone, previously of Geno Washington's Ram Jam Band), Steve "Babyface" Spooner (alto saxophone), Pete Saunders (keyboard), Pete Williams (bass) and Bobby "Jnr" Ward (drums) formed the first line-up of the band to record a single, "Dance Stance" (1979). The song was released on the independent Oddball Records, was named "single of the week" by Sounds, and reached number 40 in the British charts, but the next single, "Geno" – about Geno Washington, and released on EMI – was a British Number One in 1980. It featured the band's newest recruits, Andy Leek (keyboards) and Andy "Stoker" Growcott (drums). Rowland had been taken to see Washington perform live by his brother when he was aged only eleven. The success of the song prompted Washington to make a return to live performance, and also saw the departure of Leek, who himself cited the "Top of the Pops thing...people wanting your autograph and that just because you are in the band", while Rowland claimed that he left because "he wasn't into soul music and didn't think the band would ever amount to anything". The band at this time dressed in donkey jackets and woolly hats, and had a look described as "straight out of DeNiro's Mean Streets". Rowland said of the band's sound and look in January 1980: "we didn't want to become part of anyone else's movement. We'd rather be our own movement". Image was very important to the group, with Rowland commenting "We wanted to be a group that looked like something...a formed group, a project, not just random".
The band members were disappointed with their share of the profits, and soon stole the master tapes of Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, their debut LP, in order to renegotiate the deal. The album was released later in 1980 and became a massive success. The album's sleeve featured a photograph of a Belfast Catholic boy carrying his belongings after being forced from his home in the sectarian clearances of 1969, the half-Irish Rowland explaining "I wanted a picture of unrest. It could have been from anywhere but I was secretly glad that it was from Ireland". Of the album's title, Rowland said "I don't know...I just liked the sound of it, really". After the next single, "There, There, My Dear", was a hit, Rowland insisted on choosing the uncommercial "Keep It Part Two (Inferiority Part One)" for the following single. It was a failure, and most of the band members quit, angered over continual personality problems with Rowland, including Rowland's policy of not speaking to the music press (Rowland imposed a press embargo in July 1980, and would instead take out ads in the music papers explaining the band's position). This was a response to some less than complimentary opinions from some music press writers; The NME's Mark Cordery accused the band of "emotional fascism" and described their music as a perversion of soul music with "no tenderness, no sex, no wit, no laughter". Archer eventually formed The Blue Ox Babes, while Blythe, Spooner, Williams, Stoker and Mick Talbot (ex-The Merton Parkas, who had recently joined on keyboards) left to form The Bureau. Paterson stayed with Rowland, who added Billy Adams (guitar/banjo), Seb Shelton (drums, formerly of Secret Affair), Micky Billingham (keyboard), Brian Maurice (alto saxophone), Paul Speare (tenor saxophone) and Steve Wynne (bass), releasing a handful of singles in 1980 and 1981, and adopting a new image that included hooded tops, boxing boots, and pony tails. Along with the new look, Rowland brought in a fitness regime, which included working out together and running as a group, Rowland commenting "The togetherness of running along together just gets...that fighting spirit going". The group would also take part in group exercise sessions before performances, and drinking before shows was strictly forbidden. By the time "Plan B" was released, the band were in dispute with EMI, claiming that as their contract option had not been picked up by the company, they were no longer under contract, and they asked, without success, that EMI not release the single. In March 1981, an ad appeared in which Rowland claimed that the previous members of the band had "hatched a plot to throw Kevin out and still carry on under the same name". It also cited Rowland's suggestion that "they might learn new instruments" as a reason for their displeasure. The ad announced that Dexys had been working on a new live venture, "The Midnight Runners Projected Passion Revue". "Show Me" was released in summer 1981 and reached #16 in the UK. It was followed by a session for Richard Skinner's BBC Radio 1 show in which the band previewed tracks that would be reworked later on Too-Rye-Ay. "Liars A to E" was released in October 1981, after which Rowland took the band in a new direction.
Too-Rye-Ay
Rowland then recruited fiddle players Helen O'Hara (from Archer's new group, the Blue Ox Babes), Steve Brennan and Roger MacDuff, known collectively as "The Emerald Express". With the addition of new bass player, Giorgio Kilkenny, this line-up recorded Too-Rye-Ay in 1982, a hybrid of soul and Celtic folk, with strong influences from the music of Van Morrison, the new sound accompanied by a new look, with the band attired in dungarees, scarves, leather waistcoats, and what was described as "a generally scruffy right-off-the-farm look", or "a raggle-taggle mixture of gypsy, rural Irish and Steinbeck Okie". Rowland said of the new image: "These are my best clothes. Again it just feels right for the music. Everybody else is dressing up sort of straightlaced and we come in wearing these and it's like, y'know here we are, a bit of hoedowning is even possible". The first single, "The Celtic Soul Brothers", was mildly successful but "Come on Eileen" soon followed, and became a Number One hit in both the UK and the United States (and, in the former, the biggest-selling single of 1982). The follow-up "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)", a cover of a Van Morrison tune, also reached the top 5 in the UK singles chart. The band sang this song on the UK comedy The Young Ones. When the band performed this single on the BBC TV music show Top Of The Pops, which was broadcast live, there was an infamous mix-up (or deliberate prank) by the BBC engineers in charge of the background graphics. Instead of a picture of Jackie Wilson, the American soul singer, the band performed in front of a photo of Jocky Wilson, the Scottish darts player.
Feeling that their role in the group had diminished following the arrival of the fiddles, the brass section of Paterson, Speare and Maurice left to form The TKO Horns and recorded an album in 1985 with Howard Jones, while Kilkenny was replaced by John "Rhino" Edwards on bass and Billingham left to join General Public. The group continued to tour until 1983 with a nucleus of Rowland, Adams, O'Hara and Shelton augmented by other musicians.
Don't Stand Me Down
After a two-year break, Dexys returned in 1985 with the critically panned album, Don't Stand Me Down, featuring Rowland, Adams, O'Hara and Nicky Gatfield together with various seasoned performers including Vincent Crane (ex-Atomic Rooster), Julian Littman and Tim Dancy (who had been Al Green's drummer). The new album brought another image change, with the band pictured on the sleeve wearing ties, pin-striped suits, and with neatly combed hair, what Rowland described as "so clean and simple; it's a much more adult approach now". Rowland at first refused to issue any singles from the defiantly uncommercial album, and by the time "This Is What She's Like" was released, it was too late to save the album from commercial failure. The group disbanded the following year after a brief return to the charts with the single "Because Of You" (which was used as the theme tune to a British sitcom, Brush Strokes), and Rowland became a solo singer with the release of 1988's poorly-received album, The Wanderer. Despite spending much of the 1990s suffering from financial problems and drug addiction, Rowland made plans to reform Dexys together with Big Jim Paterson, although these resulted in no more than a solitary TV performance in 1993. Returning once more as a solo performer, Rowland signed to Creation Records, releasing an album of cover versions called My Beauty in 1999, which sold poorly; some sources quote a figure of fewer than 500 copies sold. This was followed by a disastrous appearance at the Reading festival where Rowland was bottled off by a hostile crowd after introducing two strippers who had accompanied him. The demise of Creation Records meant that the planned follow-up album, which would have featured Dexys, was never made.
Reunion
In April 2003, the group announced that they would be reuniting for a tour. A greatest hits album, Let's Make This Precious, was released in September 2003, and a successful tour took place in October and November. Two newly recorded songs, "Manhood" and "My Life in England," appeared on the album and were touted as new singles. Despite airplay on national radio, neither was officially released as a commercial single. During a June 2005 interview on BBC Radio 2, Kevin Rowland announced that Dexys were "back in the studio" and seeking a record deal for a new album.
Awards
Discography
Singles
- "Dance Stance" (1979) # 40 UK
- "Geno" (1980) # 1 UK
- "There, There, My Dear" (1980) # 7 UK
- "Keep It Part Two (Inferiority Part One)" (1980)
- "Plan B" (1981) # 58 UK
- "Show Me" # 16 UK
- "Liars A To E" (1981)
- "The Celtic Soul Brothers" (1982) #45 UK
- "Come On Eileen" (1982) #1 US #1 UK #1 AUS
- "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" (1982) # 5 UK
- "Let's Get this Straight (From the Start)" (1982) # 17 UK
- "Geno" (1983) #81 UK
- "The Celtic Soul Brothers" (Reissue) (1983) # 20 UK
- "This is What She's Like" (1985) # 78 UK
- "Because of You" (1986) # 13 UK (theme tune to TV show Brush Strokes)
Studio Albums
Compilations
External links
- - recorded on 1 October 2003 (This is a RealAudio file, you will need a compatible media player to play this file)
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