Now I've wanted to say this for years, and I’m sorry if this really does offend you...but this has to be the most criminal waste of four sides of plastic that anybody ever issued and called a record.  It's just about a "record", of what went on at Walthamstow Town Hall on Saturday 15 December 2005 under the banner of the Mod-Aid Alldayer to raise money for the Band Aid Trust.

 

To be honest, I'm prepared say that maybe it's badly recorded or something, but truth be told, the Gents songs included on the album, At the Dance and Act Now, an event specific song that Mark Johnson got Martin to write especially for the day, actually come out sounding not in fact that bad, easily (and please don't think I'm just saying that for the sake of proving that the Gents were the best of the bands, even though they might arguably have been...), so maybe that says that really most of the bands were either crap, or played crap or it was a combination of all that and crap recording as well (as I remember, it was a small tape recorder in the balcony), so make of all that what you will.

 

The compering of the proceedings was done by no less than Rick Buckler of the Jam, who came down with his mate Jimmy Edwards with whom he was in Time UK for a while and you can see them pictured in the Mod-Aid photographs section of this site, and I can tell you that I can recall just as we were leaving the venue an hour or two after the Gents’ set, and this one band struck up their first number on stage and the guitar was so horrendously out of tune that we all had to put our fingers in our ears and get out of the door as fast as possible!  I’m not going to name them here but I think I’m right in saying that it does sound pretty much the same on the record, so work it out for yourself.  The event was climaxed by the reunion of the Purple Hearts.

 

One of the criminal things about it all was that Makin’ Time didn’t even make it onto the record, but they were probably glad in the end considering, just being mentioned as “also having played on the day”.  After all the bands on Sides 1 to 3, Side 4 of the record is just the most complete load of ibbling and wibbling and shambolic singing and playing for a whole side of vinyl that you could imagine.  You know that thing about using CDs as coffee mats etc, well you should have cooked your breakfast on this one.  We hightailed it out of there and me, Steve Chambers and Paul Burton went to see the Alarm at the Hammersmith Odeon that night and then almost ran out of petrol on the way home.

 

There was one saving grace though, which is that the Gents’ section features Martin uttering the immortal line “Thanks for the Mars Bar…that’ll go for my snap that will”.

 

The criminal waste of effort that this double album represents is probably summative of the whole Mark Johnson setup at that time.  At least it was for a good and worthy cause and raised some money for Band Aid.  But no wonder the four real stars of the Mod-Aid record steered well clear of Walthamstow on this particular day...

 

Tell you what though, that Eleanor Rigby bird was worth one…