{"id":1738,"date":"2010-06-01T14:38:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T13:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2025-12-30T13:45:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T13:45:29","slug":"beggar-on-mods-mayday-79-another-blast-from-my-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/beggar-on-mods-mayday-79-another-blast-from-my-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Beggar on Mods Mayday 79 &#8211; another blast from my past [video]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/beggar-mods-mayday.jpg\" alt=\"Beggar on Mods Mayday 79 - another blast from my past \" \/><\/p>\n<p>I was\u00a0 pleased to see that someone had gone to the trouble of posting up a YouTube video of one of our live recordings from the Mods Mayday 79 album.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"735\" height=\"414\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Cnp-Kx49zUU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-GB&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><strong>Beggar &#8211; &#8216;Broadway Show&#8217;<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We were dead chuffed to have John Peel describe this as being &#8220;the best track on the album.&#8221; High praise indeed!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We recorded the tracks at the Bridgehouse pub in Canning Town, east London, and the whole session was a bit of a rush job.<\/p>\n<p>There were six or seven bands being recorded live on the same night, so it was a case of get on stage, knock out five or six songs in one take and that was your lot. No retakes, no overdubs. Bish, bash and bugger off.<\/p>\n<p>We had a gig at the Saxon Club in Walthamstow later that night (our own mod club night), so we had to scarper off quite sharpish at the end.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/beggar-mods-mayday-1.jpg\" alt=\"Beggar on Mods Mayday 79 - another blast from my past \" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ronnie Lane<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The live recording was done on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ronnie_Lane%27s_Mobile_Studio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ronnie Lane&#8217;s mobile studio<\/a>, a 26&#8242; Airstream trailer, which was parked outside. It looked like something from the set of Space Odyssey to me with its streamlined aluminium lines.<\/p>\n<p>I was later humbled to learn that the same studio had been used to record such incredible albums as The Who&#8217;s &#8220;Quadrophenia&#8221; (still one of my favourite albums of all time) and Led Zep&#8217;s &#8220;Physical Graffitti.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Milking it<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Three of the tracks ended up on the album, but a few years later I was a bit surprised to see a &#8216;Mods Mayday 2&#8217; being advertised, with three more of our songs listed.<\/p>\n<p>I was particularly surprised because I can remember one of the songs was our <em>soundcheck<\/em> which we didn&#8217;t even play through to the end after the engineer gestured to us to stop playing. \u00a0 A cunning fade-out papers over that particular crack on the album!<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"735\" height=\"414\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f5D3s_B65Z0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-GB&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><strong>Beggar &#8211; &#8216;All Night&#8217;<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The album lives on!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s great to see that the album has reached some sort of semi-legendary status, enjoying multiple reissues over nearly thirty years &#8211; and it&#8217;s still available now on Amazon: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/B00006GO6P?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=maxhits-21&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=B00006GO6P\">Mods Mayday &#8217;79<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.co.uk\/e\/ir?t=maxhits-21&amp;l=as2&amp;o=2&amp;a=B00006GO6P\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin: 4px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/beggar-mods-mayday-2.jpg\" alt=\"Beggar on Mods Mayday 79 - another blast from my past \" width=\"358\" height=\"236\" \/>Although it did reasonably well at the time &#8211; it even hit the Official Top 75 charts, jostling for position against the likes of Kate Bush, XTC and, err, STYX &#8211; the critical reception was pretty mixed (Sounds loved it, NME were luke-warm and MelodyMaker weren&#8217;t too impressed at all).<\/p>\n<p>Looking at the more recent online reviews, it seems that there&#8217;s a fair few new listeners appreciating the album, generating enough interest to justify regular re-issues.<\/p>\n<p>Shame I never got paid for any of those later releases, mind &#8211; in fact, I think my total payment from the start amounts to the one chicken wing I managed to grab at the launch party at the Bridge House pub back in 1979.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was\u00a0 pleased to see that someone had gone to the trouble of posting up a YouTube video of one of our live recordings from the Mods Mayday 79 album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,43,193],"tags":[284,282,283],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-music","category-places","tag-beggar","tag-mods","tag-mods-mayday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/beggar-mods-mayday.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-s2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57151,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions\/57151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}