Simon's Blogspot: Local Legends Modern English

By pure coincidence last night I had been preparing my Colchester 101 interview with Robbie Grey to post on this blog and today I was walking through Colchester and who should call me and suggest we meet for a coffee but Robbie himself. So we met up in Cafe Nero for a chat about what Modern English are up to at the moment. But enough about that for now.

Here it is as published a year ago in June 2011 as Modern English prepared for their long awaited homecoming gig at the Arts Centre.

If Colchester did music it would probably be the best music in the World. Hang on a minute. We do, and rather well too! There’s Ady Johnson, Cav Ok, Angry Vs the Bear, Greg Blackman, plus a host of upcoming new bands such as Fick as Fieves and The Family Dickens. There was also Blur of course, who we continue to claim as our own, even though they did turn their backs on our town, with Damon Albarn once claiming “Places like Colchester celebrate the mediocre.” Thanks Damon, we’re feeling the love!

But, did Blur make it big in America? No. Even their bitter rivals Oasis couldn’t crack the States in a big way. Modern English did.

Modern who?

English. Modern English. Post-punk Colchester band. Remembered fondly by many of ‘a certain age’ around Colchester, and beyond.

A decade before Damon and co burst onto the scene and informed us that There’s No Other Way, five young guys from Colchester found a way into the hearts of Americans with their single I Melt With You. It had been picked up by college radio stations across the US. The band made a video, and found themselves the darlings of new music television channel MTV. Suddenly they were famous! “It was mad, Robbie tells us. “We weren’t even looking for it over there. It was being played on import and hadn’t even been released. Some DJ picked it up and played it on his radio show,then another, and another, and it just spread like wildfire across the major stations. All of a sudden record companies were sniffing around. We were recording our second album with Hugh Jones at Rockfield Studios in Wales and we got a phone call saying there’s a bidding war in America for I Melt With You!”

The single reached number 7 on Billboard’s Top Tracks chart and 78 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983. It was even voted number 39 in VH1’s Greatest Songs of the 80s. Robbie continues “We’d been playing to a couple of hundred people in some dodgy dark rooms and suddenly we’d got people like Matt Dillon introducing us on stage at the Ritz in New York. We played there a lot. There were 1000 people outsideand he came backstage and said ‘How do you want me to introduce you?’ and we just said ‘You can say whatever you want!’ We did a matinee show and I had my shirt ripped off by screaming kids.”

That one song is almost a part of American popular culture. It was used in the closing credits of the seminal 80s movie Valley Girl, starring a youthful Nicolas Cage playing a young punk in his breakthrough role, and it has subsequently been used in several television shows over the years. It has also been covered many times, most notably by Bowling for Soup and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, and has featured in numerous American television commercials with the roll call including :

Burger King

Ritz Crackers

Vicks

GMC

M&Ms

Taco Bell.

A cover version of it is still featured in Hershey’s ‘Pure Hershey’s’ commercials, which have been running since 2008, and Rob Lowe’s new movie I Melt With You was inspired by the song.

Photo www.andyroshayphotography.co.uk

It all began around 1976/77 when punk rock exploded onto the UK music scene and inspired Colchester teenagers Robbie Grey, Gary McDowell and Mick Conroy to form punk band The Lepers. “We thought, ‘this is brilliant, we can do this’. So we did. It was as simple as that, we just picked up bits and bobs and made a noise. But nobody wanted to be the singer so I got lumbered with that!”

With Robbie on vocals, Gary on guitar and Mick on bass they set about making a name for themselves, and The Lepers first gig was in Red Lion shopping precinct’s underground loading bay. Robbie recalls, “There was a socket in the wall and we plugged all our gear into it. That was our first ever gig, we did posters for it, and people actually turned up! We got booked for everything after that, including a Sham 69 gig at Woods, because nobody else was doing anything like it at that time.”

In those days your musical taste, and the fashion style that accompanied it, defined you to your peers, and to the world around you, creating a kind of tribalism that was very often violent. This was exacerbated in Colchester by the tension that existed at the time between soldiers from the garrison, and civilians. “It was brilliant in Colchester then but it was dodgy too” Robbie recalls. “Soldiers had their own pubs, so you couldn’t go in certain pubs, and punks were hated anyway. But we were having a great time, and the music was so exciting. That’s why the poster for the Arts Centre gig is black and white, because that’s how I remember Colchester at the time.


Colchester 101 photoshoot on the roof of the Arts Centre

In spite of these warring factions, punk, soul and funk were often strange bedfellows and managed to blur the tribal edges. “The Lacy Lady in Ilford, which was a really happening club at the time, used to play punk and soul, and you’d go to the Embassy Suite in Colchester and they’d play funk all night followed by half an hour of the Sex Pistols and the Damned and all that.”

Homecoming gig at the Arts Centre

But by 1979 punk was past its prime and a new direction would be needed if the band were to stay together. A change of name, and direction ensued, along with a new sound, and Modern English was born, with new band members Richard Brown on drums and Stephen Walker on keyboards. They got themselves their first gig at the Colchester Institute on the same bill as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam and the Ants, followed by other local venues including Woods Leisure Centre and the Labour Club. “The whole Modern English thing happened because we started to play our instruments properly, so we decided to change our name and get more into the music, using guitars and keyboards with an edgier sound inspired by Wire and Joy Division. We became more arty and started to take it a bit more seriously really.”

“Our first demo, which we recorded at The Hillside Studio in Ipswich, was just a collection of ideas. We sent them out to about twenty labels and 4AD straight away said they were interested.”

DJ Gilly, Robbie and myself at the Brightlingsea Festival 2011

Now signed to a label, they recorded their first album Mesh and Lace, and also released four singles which weren’t on the album: Drowning Man; Swans on Glass; Gathering Dust; and Smiles and Laughter. Then it all took off in America with the release of I Melt With You from their second album After The Snow, and long tours of the USA were soon to follow. Robbie remembers those days fondly. “We’d go over there and I’d be walking down the street and people would go “Hey! Robbie from Modern English!” then we’d come back here and go to the Oliver Twist (now The Twist) and nobody would know who you were. I loved it. You could have a few pints in the pub and nobody would know what you’d been up to over there.”

Busking in Colchester before the Free Festival

Modern English eventually split up after releasing the album Stop Start in 1986, but Robbie never really called it a day and reformed the band a couple of times with different line-ups, touring and recording. Now the 80s line-up is back together and gigging again “I blame Mick Conroy,” Robbie jokes. “Mick wanted to get the band back together. I agreed to it, the American manager got involved, and that’s why it’s all coming around again.”

The week before the forthcoming Arts Centre gig sees them playing in Paris, then back to the UK for dates in London and Kent. After that they are heading across the pond to tour America “The connection with America is still massive. We toured there last summer and it was amazing.”

Headlining the Free Festival

Their short American tour last year included playing festivals in front of crowds of up to 25,000 people. “We enjoyed being back together so much It was so funny looking around the stage and seeing all these old boys who were my friends. It was brilliant! So we thought we would give it another year then see what happens after that.”

The line-up for the tour consists of Robbie Grey (main vocals), Gary McDowell (guitars, vocals), Mick Conroy (bass guitars, vocals), Stephen Walker (keyboards), the other Steven Walker (guitars), and Ric Chandler (drums).

Robbie doesn’t rule out going into the studio to record some new tracks. “We haven’t really discussed it much yet as we’re still all too amazed at being back in the same room together after all these years! I’ve got a whole album’s worth of material written though, and Mick Conroy’s got a whole load of stuff he wants to bring to the table. So we’ll see what happens.”

For now though the focus is on the forthcoming tour, and Robbie is looking forward to be playing back in Colchester for the first time in many years, and seeing plenty of familiar faces in the crowd.