Deaf School remembered

If it were possible to travel back in time to Liverpool just at the point where glam rock gave way to punk rock, the chances are that you would have come across these guys, Deaf School. As I remember, they were, or had been, art students who devised a hugely theatrical ensemble performance which seemed to owe something to Sally Bowles and with jazzy/rocky tunes whose lyrics are spine-tinglingly good even today:

"We made it cocktails at 8
it was a surefire date
and I was over the Moon
but I was mooning too soon

"She was a dame with real class
I thought I'd have one more glass
and then I looked at my watch
it was the hour at last

"But still my date didn't show
I watched the time come and go
and so I drank like a boy
and, oh, the night went so slow"

Cue incidental music for a strip show as cheery optimism gives way to the effects of many, many milligrams of alcohol per millilitre of blood. It must have taken gumption for a bunch of kids in their 20s to perform such an act in the bars and clubs of a city still in the grip of disco and shabbiness and with keyboards, horns and a banjo as well as the more conventional tools of the musical trade.

Deaf School recorded three albums, 2nd Honeymoon, Don't Stop The World and English Boys and Working Girls. There was also, I believe, a recording from a reunion in 1988, 2nd coming. There was a further reunion last year at The Picket in Hardman St. What a Way To End It All, an anthology of the albums, plus sessions recorded for the late John Peel's radio show, has also been produced. I ordered it from Amazon today after finding it by chance and hope to receive it by the weekend. Very excited, not least by being still able to remember many of the words to the songs. I'll spare you, and myself, a rehearsal of the dance routines.

Why did they not make it big - they certainly had the talent. I guess it was because all their artistry - the clothes, the make-up, the personas - was overwhelmed by the roughness of punk and the hedonism of the mosh pit. Who wants cocktails at 8 when you're 16 and can have a bucket of lager, a load of pot and a snog?

Enrico Cadillac, the white-T-shirted heart-throb and singer, went on, with Ian Broudie, to form another band, Original Mirrors, now never heard of. The other singer, Bette Bright, the blonde who famously - and outrageously - donned a red rubber dress for the cover of English Boys, became Mrs Graham "Suggs from Madness" McPherson. She was also the singer of Gruppo Sportivo, Netherlands popsters. Clive Langer, spectacles, seated on the right, wrote, with Elvis Costello, Shipbuilding. I presume they were old mates from Birkenhead.

And now the name-dropping (oh, what pathetic vicariousness). Enrico Cadillac's cousin was a buddy who struck Deaf School-type poses in the playground at our comprehensive school and who's father later kept a pub in Halewood where heroic teenage drinking - pints of sherry topped up with cider - and a certain amount of cannabis cookery was undertaken. Such a misspent youth.

I like being stuck in my teens.