The Grøm of an Idea

In late 2003, Graham "Grøm" Gill (keyboards, 1979-81) had a brilliant idea.  Why not reunite the classic line-up of the 20th Century Rock Band that had recorded the single Stand Up and Be Counted in 1979?  It would be the 25th Anniversary of that group's first gig, on 16th November 2004.  Emails started flying in the early Spring of 2004, with old band members Allchorn, Simons and Matthews eagerly adding their support.  And so began an international search to try and track down the rest of the group.

Where to hold the Anniversary Gig was an interesting question.  Graham's family were now based in the Cotswolds, where he worked on digital maps.  Mark Allchorn (lead vocals, 1978-80) was based near London in Kings Langley, where he taught history.  Simon Matthews (drums, 1979-82) was now an art dealer in central London.  Tony Simons (lead guitar, 1976-80) lectured in Computer Science at the University of Sheffield.  The two most likely venues seemed to be the Cotswolds or Sheffield; and in the end we went with Sheffield, because in addition to a venue and local PA hire options, there was a good support network of friends who could offer to put up families overnight.

Finding our more far-flung members proved to be a bit of a problem.  Various rumours abounded that Mark Hammond (bass guitar, 1978-81) was working for an Automotive Software company in Germany; or that he had embarked on a world tour and was currently in Australia; or that he had moved on from there, but was in India.  John Roe (technical support, 1977-80) was now a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University in the USA.  We could not find Dermot Boyle (blues guitar, 1979-80) anywhere on the Internet since his high-school days. 

By good fortune, John Roe was on sabbatical leave from UPenn State and residing in Edinburgh, with his family.  He was due to give a seminar in Newcastle on the day before the gig, so coming down to Sheffield from there would be easy.  It felt good to have this kind of convergence, which always seemed to happen for us, as if it had been planned... 

Eventually, Mark Hammond got in touch to say that he needed to make up some extra days work in Germany and regretted that he could not take part.  So we invited Dave Hobson (bass guitar, 1976-79), who was delighted to fill the position of bassist.  Oddly, he had been just about to get in touch, as if some force were drawing us back together... 

Song Sheets and Demo Tapes

How do you prepare for a gig?  Well, it used to be a matter of writing down an order of play for the set, and that was it.  Except, could we still even remember the songs, after twenty five years?  Probably not.  So, we each had a trawl of our attics and came up with old bootleg cassette tapes that 20th Century used to record in each of our live concerts.  

Tony Simons had a master cassette, onto which he had dubbed, over the years, the better performances of the band's live repertoire.  This became the master for a series of demo tapes, that were circulated to the band members who had signed up for the reunion.  

The next part was working out all the lyrics for the songs.  These were not written down anywhere, so we had to rely on people's memories for some of the songs and go back to the demo tape for the rest.  There were two difficulties with this approach.  The quality of the original recording on the demo tape was variable, so sometimes a line of words was obscured by the other instruments.  The other problem was Mr Allchorn's variable recall of the said lyrics during live performances.  When listening to the demo tape, you realised that a song would sometimes repeat half a verse in the wrong place.  We put this down to the natural creative process of singing live, when the main thing is to engage with the audience. 

Still, we needed a more secure source of reference.  Fortunately, backup copies of songs were eventually found.  In particular, Sam Gibbs (guitar, 1977-79) and Jonny Griffiths (folk group, 1978-80) had re-recorded some of Sam's songs on an album called How Far? in the early 1990s.  Bit by bit, we pieced the missing lines together.

The last part was working out the structure of each song.  For the gig, we had one fewer guitarists than the classic line-up of the band.  This meant that Tony would either have to grow extra fingers, or Graham would have to double up on the Moog for the harmony lines that used to be played by Dermot.  Eventually, we had a working structure ready, with reminders of the song keys, backing vocal lines and any additional sound effects.

The morning of 27th November had arrived (being the nearest Saturday to the actual anniversary that everyone could make).  Various group members and their families had set off in the early morning by car from all over the UK, some stopping overnight en route.  Dave drove up from Worthing, Mark from Kings Langley, Simon from London, Graham from the Cotswolds, John came by train from Newcastle and Mike Stone from Cambridge.  Tony only had to walk across the road, which was one advantage of organising the reunion. 

The Sound and Lightshow Set-Up

 We held the gig in Christ Church, Fulwood, on the western edge of Sheffield.  We hired a PA rig from a local Sheffield company, called Avid AV, which provided a turnkey solution, rather than dig around in people's attics and garages to try to find the remains of the original 1980s PA system that Mark had built.  We were impressed by the professionalism of Robert Beck and the installation team from Avid, who gave us a 3.5kW rig for around 300 quid.  Mike Stone (technical support, 1979-82) offered to provide a full lighting rig, which he brought with him, in his car, from Cambridge.  This included four 600W spotlights with zoom and barn doors, three 2.5m high stands (one a T-bar holding two spots) and four 13-15amp tail lights.

From about 10am in the morning, members started showing up. It seemed like an unbelievably early hour to get to Sheffield, but such was the commitment of the group, and everyone wanted to get started as early as possible.  Before lunchtime, John was working with the Avid team on the use of the sound desk, and Mike was nearly set up with his lights. From about 11am, it was possible to start rehearsing.

A Late Brunch and Billets

On the morning of the 27th November, 2004, carloads of people started turning up outside the venue, and folk shuttled between Tony's house and the church complex.  Dave and Bee Hobson turned up first with two of their children, Andrew and Claire; but Claire had to leave that afternoon to catch a train to Wakefield!  Mark Allchorn turned up shortly afterwards.  Thereafter, it was a bit of a rush.  Graham and Fiona Gill came with their children Emma and Tom; while Simon Matthews brought all three of his children: Nick, Jamie and Izzy.  At some point, John Roe and Michael Stone made it to the venue and started setting up.

The idea had been to feed people on a rotating basis, as they came in, for which a kind of brunch had been foreseen; but folk had arrived so early that the main crew went off to the church to set up and start practising before lunch.  At around 1pm, we knocked off for soup and rolls.  Tony's wife Penny had laid on a delicious combination of spicy lentil soup and a celery and stilton soup, with warm crusty bread.  Early conversations over the meal focused on: "Well, you don't look that old, really" and suchlike.

About six local church families volunteered to put up our visitors in their homes.  If you were one of those families, thank you!

How Does That Bit Go Again?

Songs selected for the gig included Stand Up and Be Counted, He is the One, and a barnstormer written by an early incarnation of the group, called Help Me.  Although we couldn't remember who had written this, it had the advantage of offering a solo break for just about every musician in the band.  So, this was a good warm-up piece; except that we couldn't make up our minds about the order of the solos.  Fortunately, the song structure chart solved this argument.

We prepared a few of our favourite covers from After the Fire, such as One Rule for You, Listen to Me and the instrumental number we always used as an opener, Joy, which featured the mini-Moog.  The problem posed by the double guitar solo in The King Will Come, in the absence of Dermot, was solved by having Graham play the harmony line on the Moog.  

As the day wore on, the cold church building finally began to warm up.  Daylight was fading, so Mike could experiment a bit with the lights.

When we got to another popular self-penned number, Masquerade, there was the issue of a tricky bass guitar link at the end of each chorus, which deliberately played against the key of the chord, which eventually resolved to match the bass note.  Dave was doing a sterling job filling in for Mark Hammond in songs he had never played before in the 1970s, but somehow could not quite get this link right.  "How does that bit go again?" he would say.  We would repeat the section and the line still would not settle.  Eventually, Tony helpfully pointed out: "Dave, you wrote this song, remember?" and this seemed to jog the memory sufficiently.

Finally, we had gone through each number enough to feel that we might actually make it through the gig.  We were tired, and it was approaching 6pm, so we clocked off to have supper at Tony and Penny's again.  This was a buffet of ham and salad, with pizza for the kids, of which we had amassed a considerable number.  We made sure there was lots to go round, as Mark had earlier replied to a message about possible dietary requirements with:  "Food arrangements sound great; plenty of it as I still eat like a horse...", no doubt referring to an historic hot dog contest.

Peak District Dinner and a Toast

The 25th Anniversary Gig took place that night (see the next page).  Afterwards, the C20th crew crashed out in their billets.  Everyone attended the Christ Church service on the following Sunday morning.

For lunch, the whole crew set off for a delightful spot in the Peak District. There is a lovely walk from Grindleford station towards Hathersage, where, if you turn left, you can find the Plough Inn, a pub which serves hearty restaurant-quality food and always has a wide selection of dishes, including venison and wild boar.  We had booked a large table and managed to have a sit-down meal for the whole of the crew, plus one or two of the hosts.

At this event, Dave Hobson proposed a toast to 20th Century and the organisers of the event, Tony and Penny Simons.  The gang had decided to treat them to this meal, which was a nice surprise.  By the mid-afternoon, everyone was well-fed, feeling rather dreamily exhausted and starting to think about getting back to the different parts of the world from which we had come.