I admit it, at times my listening preferences tended towards jazz-rock. While I was weaned on Deep Purple and I loved prog and west coast psychedelic, from the early days I loved the Mahavishnu Orchestra when most kids found it all too impenetrable. In fact, my love of jazz-rock got to be a running joke at school, being labelled ‘the professor’ by some because it was deemed ‘difficult’.
And to be honest, it wasn’t the sort of music you could take to a party or make out to but even so, by the time I was 17, I was into things like Stomu Yamashta’s Go and Jeff Beck’s Wired. In a situation that sounds funny now, one of the school’s hard kids stopped me in the corridor, grabbing a Larry Coryell and the Eleventh House album out of my hands. I thought he was going to ruin it.
‘What’s this shite?’ he asked, unusually curious but not threatening. Such kids rarely spoke to me or any of my mates. Our reputation for cynically scrutinizing anyone’s taste went before us and it put a lot of them off us. The playing of music was our domain and you had to pass our quality test! And Showaddywaddy didn’t.
It didn’t seem to be the moment to launch into an appreciation of the genre, so I said it was fast guitar, which wasn’t exactly untrue. That’s when he asked a totally unexpected question.
‘Anything like Showaddywaddy? I like them me,’
I didn’t know what to say and was taken aback by the absurd juxtaposition between the two.
‘Showaddywaddy?’ I said, probably too incredulously.
‘What’s wrong with them, like?’ he said defensively, a quick reflex for all hard kids.
Not wanting a kicking, I demurred, ‘Nowt like, but no, Larry Coryell is nothing like Showaddywaddy.’ I never thought I’d have to say such a thing.
He thrust the album back to me.
‘You lot like weird shite, eh.’ I’m not sure but I think he almost said it affectionately.
It’s stayed with me because it was an atypical encounter and nothing like it ever happened again because we stayed clear of their usual haunts behind the gym. The fella is in Durham Jail now, I think, which doesn't surprise me really. I wonder if he still likes Showaddywaddy
