The Reaction - You Have Got a Rare Magic, Don't Compromise

Live at the Marquee 1978

(All photos and documents herein provided by George Page and published/shared with his kind permission.) 

If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, then you might have this inkling that recently, I've been in touch with their guitarist, a legend, so far as I'm concerned and all around gentleman. 

For those not in the know, the Reaction is Mark Hollis' band prior to Talk Talk. They toured (a lot! Their tour itineraries are below) and recorded a few things here and there for an album that never came to pass. What came was a single, the b-side and a contribution to a compilation album. 

George has been digging tirelessly throughout his own files and archives and has been kind enough to share his finds with me and with his kind permission, with you. I've always been firm on my belief that these kind of thing should be accessible to the fans. Among the Talk Talk fans, there sits plenty of us that discovered Mark's first band with George Page, Bruce Douglas and Gino P. Williams and absolutely fell in love with the three tracks (I Can't Resist, I'm a Case and Talk Talk Talk Talk) that we were allowed to hear. 

The Reaction photoshoot @ Electric Avenue

Over the last two years demo tracks and even a live recording surfaced on YouTube. Gold! Pure gold for us. But unfortunately, so far as I can tell, all of these tracks have since been pulled down from YouTube. If new recordings pop up on YouTube (or on a public forum elsewhere) I'll be sure to share them with you. For now, here is a link to a playlist with everything I've been able to find, Reaction related, on YouTube.

I was fortunate enough to have received this from George Page. A letter from reviewer Geoff Baker from the Express & Echo newspaper in Exeter. I don't have the actual review yet (UPDATE: within hours of posting, the most excellent Mr. Page came through and sent me the review. I've transcribed it in next post or you can click on the link here), but I think the last line of Geoff's letter says it all. Clearly Geoff saw in a 23 year old Mark what we all now know.

(For those not in the know, Geoff Baker moved on to become Paul McCartney's PR guy for a while. Special thanks to Alla Webster for providing me with that tidbit.) 

Transcript of the letter is below. 

Letter from Geoff Baker to Mark Hollis and the Reaction

Letter Transcript: 

Dear Mark,

Regarding me and the bird coming to see you blast Sharr Murray* to bits at the Marquee. Well, we can’t make it, cos my editor won’t give me that day off. But, there’s always a but, we can come up to see you at the Roundhouse. Are you playing the Roundhouse? On Sunday July 23? I fucking hope so. If so, could you get my name on the door - plus two (cos I’ll bring the bird and I’ve told my brother what a blast you are on stage (I’ve also told half of the Westcountry) and he wants to come). If you can’t manage it, we’ll pay cos I don’t mind forking out for bands like you, it would just make it all easier if we were “on the door”.

I’ll send the single review up when its published on Saturday. I think they might have cut it cos I wrote a lot - I also wrote a review of your Exeter gig and I think they’ve spiked that as well - I have no control on what appears in the paper. In case it don’t get printed, I’ve included what I wrote about you that night.

Could you phone me some time to say whether you’re playing the Roundhouse? Thank you. Best of luck with future gigs - you have got a rare magic, don’t compromise.

Geoff   

______________

*Note: George explains that Sharr gave them a bad review which is what Geoff is referring to in the letter. From Geoff's enthusiasm in the letter, I assume they definitely blasted Sharr 'to bits'.

Oh... and happy birthday Mark Hollis, man of rare magic and few compromises.

Mark Hollis @ the Marquee, performing with The Reaction, 1978

 

The Reaction Tour itineraries:  

May 1978

July 1978

July 1978 with the Shirts

September - November 1978 with the Radio Stars

Stuff I'm Listening To - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Artist: the Tokens 

Title: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Lyrics: 
A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh

Why?:
I baked today. It seems to be the in-thing lately with SARS-CoV-2 (I recently learned that this is the name of the virus and coronavirus and COVID-19 is the disease caused by said virus) running rampant. 

Baking and posting your successes (and if you're brave or oblivious, your failures) on-line is what you need to do in order to let people know 'Hey! I baked stuff and didn't burn the house down!' I like to bake and I think I'm ok at it... Except for the one time I made singularity banana bread muffins*, everything else has eaten and complimented immediately. 

I discovered that when I bake, there are specific songs that I need to start off on to get me inspired. Today I decided to start off my baking exploits with the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. 

Then I remembered that Tim Friese-Greene had something to do with the song and in the time between plunking the tin in the oven to the time it was going to be done, maybe (given I'm like this raging Talk Talk fan) I should look up what it was that he'd done. It obviously wasn't the version that kicked off my baking. But here are three more versions of this song (that's been covered a billion times it seems). I'll let you guess which one inspired me to bake my banana bread today.

*Singularity Banana Bread Muffins: when you toss caution and the recipe instructions to the wind, and triple on the number of bananas and have a little less flour than you were supposed to add. And forget baking soda. You get these dense pucks of banana goodness with it's own gravity and event horizon. 

Also special thanks to threadpennyvinyl on Instagram for bringing the documentary ’ReMastered: The Lion’s Share’ about the origin of this song originally called ‘Mbabe’ composed by Solomon Linda and the where all the royalties went. It was super informative for me. I strongly suggest if you are interested to give it a watch. It is currently available on Netflix. 



Artist: After Hours



Artist: the Scallwags



Artist: Tight Fit
 

Stuff I'm Listening To - Splogenessabounds

Artist: Splogenessabounds

Title: Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please

Lyrics:

Oi! Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please.
Ay! Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please.
Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please.
I've been here half hour
And I'm getting very thirsty!

 

Why?: Ahh... I bet you're all dreaming about when this will all be over and you can go back to your local crowded pub and continue to be ignored by the bartender who's too busy trying to get the girl down the bar's phone number or the barmaid who's been busy flirting with the drunk old guy at the other end of the bar for extra tips. 

Yes, yes. I know not all bartenders/barmaids are like this. But I've been to my fair share of pubs, clubs and bars. I know good service which is why when my favourite pub did close I pretty much never found another local hang out exactly for the reasons above. 

For the record, I wasn't much of a drinker back in the day. I was usually the designated driver. I didn't like soda/pop/whatever moniker Cola/Ginger Ale has in your part of the world. Our favourite watering hole, Cassidy's, had the best bartenders. One of them suggested hot chocolate. Then the next time, the barmaid added whipped cream. Then the bartender, who had heard about the whipped cream, added peppermint sprinkles. The next bartender decided to up the ante by adding shaved chocolate. I heard rumours that there were plans drawn up by the fourth bartender on how to make sparklers stand upright in the mug to serve it to me with a giant bendy straw to keep me safe. Unfortunately it never made it to the pyrotechnics part.

Have hope. We'll soon be packed in all the great bars/pubs/watering holes soon enough. 

Cheers.

Stuff I'm Listening To #101 - Guilty Pleasures #7 - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies

Artist: Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies

Title: Over the Rainbow

Why?: I noticed when it came to new punk bands (and some old ones) a cover meant you're playing the song twice as fast, with pumping guitars. I remember working my second job, in publishing, and a co-worker (Thanks Jeremy!) had introduced me and my best friend to them, along with a couple of compilations called Punk Chartbusters, which were exactly what I described above. Songs you know, played faster and louder. The result, this glorious cacophonous mess of delightful punkified karaoke. 

My days in publishing are long gone, the company I worked for got rid of their print department in favour of pushing their online product. 

But I met some really great people during my time there and whenever I hear a punk cover I'm brought back to those super late nights, during my earlier days there when they were located up near Yorkdale Mall. Late night server crashes, moody plate machines. Our downtime was like school. Rolled up pieces of film became baseball bats, hockey sticks or lightsabres. We smoked in the courtyard and had snowball fights. I once decided to see how many paperclips fit in someone's legendary hair. Someone allegedly moved around artwork late one night to see if anyone would notice. Super marathon shifts (72 hours for my supervisor, 19 hours was my record).

Trader peeps? You were the best. I have fond memories of those days because of you guys.

Stuff I'm Listening To - The Christmas Advent Edition - December 20th

Artist: Dropkick Murphys

Title: The Season's Upon Us

Lyrics:

The season's upon us, it's that time of year
Brandy and eggnog, there's plenty of cheer
There's lights on the trees and there's wreaths to be hung
There's mischief and mayhem and songs to be sung

Why?:
Christmas crunch time approaches! Finished all your shopping? (me: Hell nope!) Ready to face the family? (Me: Actually, sure. I like my family. But feels for anyone who doesn't. I've heard horror stories. Take heart. It's only one day!) Why the short post? Because it's crunch time. How much do you want to bet I'm not last minute gas station shopping for gifts?



In the meantime, enjoy this great tune.

Stuff I'm Listening To - Christmas Advent Edition - December 13th

Artist: the Ramones

Title: Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)

Lyrics:

I love you and you love me
And that's the way it's got to be
I knew it from the start
'Cause Christmas ain't the time for breaking each other's heart

Why?:
I would be a liar to tell you Christmas is all sparkles and joy. It isn't, as most of you should know. The holiday has some downright depressing facts attached to it. Depressing things that happen around the holidays seem so much more painful. I won't get into it here.

I like contrast because it provides much needed perspective for me. It's easy to get caught up in the commercialism of the holiday. I watch people get stressed and being the way I am, I tend to absorb all that negativity and I'll have anxiety for most of December and now you know why a lot of songs on my Advent are comedic ones. After a while though, the fake plastic snow, fake smiles, fake holiday sentiment gets under your skin. Yup. That's me, yelling "Bah! Humbug!" from my car, or grumbling it in the extra long liquor store line.

This is around the time I'll toss in some of the more poignant and real songs between the funnier or sentimental ones that I usually play. This is one of the songs and videos that transitions between being able to laugh about the holiday, a little bit of sentiment and some real commentary about couples fighting around Christmas, but ultimately, you get over it. Plus, as I've said before, Christmas needs more punk music.

Stuff I'm Listening to #67 - Three kinds of "Candy" - Talk Talk and The Reaction

For the past couple of days my vinyl sensei @Threadpennyvinyl's been posting about Talk Talk's song 'Candy'. Officially, the song hails from their debut album, 'The Party's Over'. She noted an interesting counter-factual that reminded me 'Candy' had been planned as their debut single. Perhaps things would have gone differently for the band. But without bending the laws of time and space, and lacking the time circuits and flux capacitors to properly construct a TARDIS or Delorean Time Machine, we'll never know.

Last night she subtly pointed out the differences between The Reaction's version (lyrically speaking) versus Talk Talk's release. My mind geared up and decided, I'm going to write a blog post! It's NaNoWriMo after all. And while I just don't do well with things like that, getting off my butt to write anything which I'm willing to post publicly is always a challenge, fun, and exciting. Any writing exercise I get done for myself is good exercise. 

The original intention of this post was to prattle on about the how valuable demos are for fans of any band. They're usually made as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible (because what real struggling band do you know actually has money?) and meant to get them in the record company's door and signed. Years ago, I heard one of U2's demos where Bono must have been barely 15, a voice not quite cracked yet, on Alan Cross' Ongoing History of New Music (It's a wonderful show and I highly encourage anyone with an interest in learning about the backstories of new alternative music to have a listen). It was an eye (ear?) opening moment and a really good glimpse of what we all knew was to come for U2. Surprising for me because I had no idea Bono and the Edge had known each other for that long!

Personally, I adore demos. They're going to be the band at their very amateurish best, unrefined and full of energy. You're hearing conception in these demos. It's quite amazing, especially when you look at the scope of what the band will eventually become. The Reaction, Mark Hollis, Talk Talk. Their demos leave me speechless. To hear Mark Hollis so young and untouched by the music business is definitely a feast for the ears.

Speaking about demos being cheap, I need to relate the tale of my hometown band, the Barenaked Ladies. They made their demo for $1. We had a thing called Speaker's Corner, where, for $1, you could record a two minute video in a booth and once a week, they'd pick the highlights into a half hour show. It felt like Public Access Television deconstructed (think Wayne's World, Mike Myers being another Scarborough alumnus), but in Vine video length. Barenaked Ladies piled into this slightly larger than a phone booth thing and recorded their song 'You Can Be My Yoko Ono'. They waited until the weekend for the show to air. They recorded their piece and went off to the record company to show off their demo. The rest is clearly history.
  
As usual, I have digressed. 

So... Because of Threadpenny and a blog post by Dervswerve about the song (which I fully admit, I read last year back when Talk Talk was shiny and new for me, then decided maybe I should give this track a listen as I only had downloaded the singles from this album at that point), I had gone in to listen to the song again, all three versions that I have with an open ear.

Going chronologically backwards, let's start with the album version first. 

Quick note: All YouTube links are audio only. Please... please, let me know if the links go dead and I'll do my very best to find new ones. 

Talk Talk's official relase of the song from their debut album 'The Party's Over'

Here is producer Colin Thurston's cleaned and polished version of this song. At this point, the song had gone through two bands worth of tweaking and Colin made it as New Romantic ready as he could. A ballad worthy to sit with the other moody synth-pop staples of the time. Kudos to Simon Brenner for his synthesizer work here. You cannot beat Lee Harris and Paul Webb as a rhythm section. Instrumentally, this song is perfect. But to me, Mark always sounded a little flat, (not off key! but...) as if he's already sung this song too many times. It's a great piece, nonetheless and if you hadn't heard the other versions, you wouldn't hear the flatness I'm talking about. Almost as if the business had already started pissing him off and grinding him down a little. 

Talk Talk's demo - featured on their 'Asides and Besides' album

Now here is the demo, from Talk Talk. Fortunately they released this officially on their 'Asides and Besides' album so you need not worry about hissy bad quality tape recordings here. Slightly faster than the album version but mostly the same. Mark's not as flat here. All the emotion behind the song is much more pronounced here. But I think he's still holding back.

The Reaction's demo - unreleased

So when I started working on collecting the music I liked, it became pretty clear there was a specific style of music I gravitated towards. Anything ska, mod or punk was going to be my cup of tea. Here is the demo that Mark Hollis' first band, The Reaction, pumped out. Mark's younger here and channeling all the energy of the mod revival/punk. If you ever needed to hear this song at it's rawest, here is it. This is, vocally speaking, my favourite version.

This pack of candy comes with a 25% bonus - The Reaction's LIVE performance of Candy

 
It is with some surprise, when I started traveling through the Internets earlier today, that I should find this. I went out just to satisfy my own curiosity that there were no other versions of the song that I might have missed in order to write my directionless and rambling post today. I'm not sure how I missed this. The YouTuber posted it in May. I'll assume that I was being inundated by too much stuff all at once when he uploaded it for the world. There were a total of 6 views when I discovered it. Sad really. Seems a lot of people missed this.

I tend to steer away from discussing live versions of songs. They're all going to be different from one another and different from the demo/album/single. It also depends on how the musicians were feeling that night. Being a one time audience member, you're likely not going to notice if a performance was slightly off. But this being the only recording I've ever heard of The Reaction, well... Damn. It's pretty effing good! It's on par with the Reaction demo. Mark Hollis, as usual, is able to pull off a live performance that more often than not, overshadows the original album version (in this case, the demo). 

Oh, for good measure, here's a pic of the Reaction performing at the Aylesbury Friar for no more reason than I really like this picture. 

Photo by Mark Jordan. Found at the Aylesbury Friar's website.  From L to R (George Page (guitar), Bruce Douglas (bass), Mark Hollis (vocals, guitar), Gino Williams (drums)

Stuff I'm Listening To - A Week of Covers - Day 3 - My Way

Viewer Discretion Advised because violence, bad words and such. 

Artist: Sid Vicious

Original Artist: Frank Sinatra

Favourite Lyrics (Cover): 
There were times, I'm sure you knew
When there was fuck fuck fuck all else to do 
But through it all, when there was doubt
I shot it up or kicked it out. I faced the wall and the world
And did it my way

Favourite Lyrics (Original):
Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way

  
Why?: At 14 years old I was learning a lot about music. If it had not been for Duran Duran's bassist, John Taylor, stating in an interview that the Sex Pistols were one of his favourite bands, I would probably have discovered them much later on. So in my pursuit of all of things Duran Duran (which also meant looking for anything they talked about... Don’t laugh! I only listened to Tago Mago by Can because Mark Hollis said to!) I found myself purchasing the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. 

I want to tell you that upon hearing Sid Vicious screeching out old blue eyes’ hit song was some kind of epiphany. It was. It was raw, terrible and noisy. I was amazed. Here was the kind of strange weird unsettling angry energy, mixed with the right amount of childish mischief I was feeling as an angsty teenager, reflected back at me through Sid's off-key howling. This was likely my first jump into punk. I had never heard God Save the Queen, or Anarchy in the UK before this, that I could recall. I never heard the Clash, or any number of great punk bands up until that very moment. And the video, the meaningless violence... I've always been a fan of meaningless fictional violence. After all, horror movies are great fun. 

My dad seemed to really like Frank Sinatra (though my brother assures me, not that much. The multitude of Frank Sinatra's records from his collection? A product of joining Columbia House (you know, the 10 records for a penny thing?) back in the day. I’m not sure if he ever listened to Sid's version with me or not. As with most things that I did in my teenage years, my parents accepted things with a kind of quiet patience in hopes (I assume) that I would outgrow my weirdness. 

As I get older, I've come to appreciate Frank much, much more, and Sid, much less. I've become an old bitter lady, yelling at kids to get off my lawn. But at heart, especially while I'm hooligan riding my motorcycle through the streets, I assure you, I'm singing along, off key, not with Frank, but with Sid. Below, Old Blue Eyes belting out his anthem and Bonus: Comme d'Habitude by Claude François - the song that the music comes from, though it was Paul Anka who wrote the English words (unrelated to the French song) that became the hit that it is. 

Stuff I'm Listening To - A Week of Covers - Day 2 - Talk Talk Talk Talk

Artist: Talk Talk 

Original Artist: The Reaction

Favourite Lyrics: (Original)
Well yeah, I told you before when I was up, 
Society was bringing me down.
Politicians they keep talking in rhymes.
Twisting around to make me think you're straight down the line

Favourite Lyrics: (Cover)

Well, did I tell you before when I was up?
Anxiety was bringing me down
I'm tired of listening to you talking in rhymes
Twisting around to make me think you're straight down the line

Why?: If I ever needed an excuse to post things by Mark Hollis three times in one go, this is it! 

The desire to know if Talk Talk had ever done a cover song has been stuck in my head for a long while. So far as I knew, Talk Talk never recorded any cover songs.

Recently, I had queried in a few Facebook groups a fun "what if...?". What if Talk Talk had indulged themselves and done an album of covers, what do you think would be on it or what would you have liked to see them cover? It was a fun discussion that gave me few new (to me) discoveries of some great music. But alas, we will never know what songs they would have wanted to remake.

There was one hint in an interview once with Mark noting how he loved Singin' in the Rain and the Gene Kelly dancing through the streets part. But trying to envision a Talk Talk cover and accompanying video for it has stretched the very limits of my Peanut brain (this is the same brain that, fueled by spicy pizza, managed to cast Mark Hollis and Lee Harris in Bladerunner one night)... trying to imagine Mark recreating Gene Kelly’s number has been hard to do. But as usual, I digress. 

After the fantasy covers album discussion had peaked and went away, my brain decided, in a 'too much shwarma the night before' laced dream, that Talk Talk did indeed release a cover song, originally recorded and released by a different band, albeit one that had the same lead singer. I'm not sure if this qualifies officially as a cover song as Mark co-owned the rights to the song with his brother Ed, but for the purposes of my list, it is a cover. Part of this whole cover/not cover debate was brought on by John Fogerty, who used the music from Run Through The Jungle and stuck his Old Man Down The Road lyrics over it. He was sued for copyright infringement by CCR's label. This was part of my justification for this as well, though I know the situation is entirely different and the outcome not entirely in favour of my criteria... but my brain, my logic, ok?*

Naturally, the first version of the song I'd ever heard would be Talk Talk's version from their debut album. I have these vague recollections that I may have known about this song back in the day but never made the connection that this was the same band that sang It's My Life until last year. Did I like the song in the beginning? I can't remember. Given that it was most likely the Russell Mulcahy version of the video (below) that I saw first, I'm going to say no. Mulcahy's video was likely too weird for six/seven year old me and definitely spurred some strange men in white-suits nightmares for me at that age. Hmmm... Let me explain. They only seemed to play decent music videos late at night back then. I was anywhere from four to eight years old back in those days. So here I was, up late when I shouldn't be. It's dark, quiet and a bit spooky (think older, creaky house). I'm sitting there watching these music videos, as quietly as possible and sometimes on mute because I'm waiting for something familiar, a little tired and with all the wrong heightened emotions running through me. It should be easy to see why a Talk Talk video, of all things, would cause me to have a weird dream/nightmare.

I have discovered in the past year that Mark Hollis fronted another band prior to Talk Talk, a mod/punk band called The Reaction. The Reaction have released exactly three songs. The single for I Can't Resist, and it's B-side I'm A Case, and this, their contribution to a compilation record. Their track for Talk Talk Talk Talk (audio only) is below. As for which version is my favourite? I'm a little torn. Of course Talk Talk rates high, as it's that 80s synth-pop I will forever love, but then the original version by The Reaction, a much younger and angrier Mark Hollis has its charms as well. I'll say that my favourite version is largely dependent on if I'm wearing my safety pins for earrings that day or not. BONUS: Russell Mulcahy's 'I'm gonna film stuff and throw in a monkey and use the same weird shots and concepts for Bonnie Tyler later' attempt for Talk Talk is also linked below (featuring Paul Webb's most aweome gravity defying pompadour... Yeah, I'm still jealous of it). 

(Personal aside: So far as I'm concerned, what worked for Duran Duran (i.e. Colin Thurson, Russell Mulcahy), clearly did not work for Talk Talk... everybody needs to stop comparing the two. It's lazy journalism. Thanks.)


*Thanks to my cohorts, Penny, Curmudgeon and the Queen for letting me bounce this idea off them a few weeks ago.

Stuff I'm Listening to #11 - the Dead Milkmen - Punk Rock Girl

Artist: the Dead Milkmen

Title: Punk Rock Girl

Favourite Lyrics:
We went to the Philly Pizza Company and ordered some hot tea. 
The waitress said “Well no, we only have it iced”. 
So we jumped up on the table and shouted “Anarchy!”

Why?: I just liked the song because it was catchy and fun. They seemed to have it in heavy rotation on City Limits on Much Music. 

*Originally posted without comments on Facebook.