ROCKPILE - Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe - "Born Fighters" - 1979

This post was originally posted here on April 18, 2017. The accompanying video has since been removed from youtube. Luckily someone else has reposted the Rockpile documentary, "Born Fighters" and I have updated this blogpost. So here it is (again)...

Rockpile was a British rock and roll group of the late 1970s and early 1980s, noted for their strong rockabilly and power pop influences, and as a foundational influence on new wave. The band consisted of Dave Edmunds (vocals, guitar), Nick Lowe (vocals, bass guitar), Billy Bremner (vocals, guitar) and Terry Williams (drums). Rockpile recorded four albums, though only one (Seconds of Pleasure) was released under the Rockpile banner. Two other albums (Tracks on Wax 4 and Repeat When Necessary) were released as Dave Edmunds solo albums, and one more (Labour of Lust) was released as a Nick Lowe solo album. Scattered Rockpile tracks can also be found on a few other Lowe and Edmunds solo albums. Additionally, Rockpile served as backing group on tracks recorded by Mickey Jupp in 1978 and Carlene Carter in 1980. When Robinson and Jake Riviera co-founded Stiff Records, Lowe was the first artist signed to the label, and he and Edmunds recorded new material for release under Lowe's name. Stiff promoted its ties to Edmunds. However, the relationship between Edmunds and Riviera was always rocky, and in 1976 Edmunds signed a solo contract with Led Zeppelin's Swan Song Records, rejecting Riviera and Stiff. With help from Lowe and Terry Williams, Edmunds recorded a new solo album, Get It. Lowe and Edmunds then formed a new version of Rockpile, with Williams returning on drums and Billy Bremner joining as rhythm guitar and third vocalist. Rockpile appeared as a backing band on one track of Lowe's debut solo album, released in March 1978 with different track listings and titles in the UK and the US. The UK version (Jesus of Cool) featured Rockpile on the live recording of "Heart of the City", while the US album (Pure Pop for Now People) featured the Rockpile studio track "They Called It Rock", credited as being written by Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds/Rockpile. Meanwhile, Edmunds' 1978 solo album (Tracks on Wax 4) was the first album to be completely a Rockpile album, but with Edmunds on all lead vocals. The album included the same live version of "Heart of the City," except with Edmunds' lead vocal overdubbed in place of Lowe's. Rockpile toured behind both the Lowe and Edmunds releases in 1978. The band also backed Mickey Jupp on side one of his Stiff album Juppanese, produced by Lowe. In 1979, Rockpile simultaneously recorded Edmunds' Repeat When Necessary and Lowe's Labour of Lust. Rockpile (under solo artists' names) enjoyed hits in 1979 on both sides of the Atlantic with Edmunds' "Girls Talk" (a top 20 hit in both the UK and Canada) and Lowe's "Cruel to Be Kind" (top 20 in the UK, Canada and the US). Rockpile also played in the 29 December 1979 Concerts for the People of Kampuchea with Elvis Costello & The Attractions and Wings, where they were joined onstage by Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant (co-owner of Swan Song). Two of the band's songs were included in the concert album. In 1980, Edmunds submitted the solo album "Twangin...", which was mostly a collection of outtakes from his prior solo albums, to complete his Swan Song contract, freeing Rockpile to record a true band record for Jake Riviera's new label F-Beat Records. Released in the fall of 1980, Seconds of Pleasure featured lead vocal turns by Edmunds, Lowe and Bremner, and spawned the minor hit "Teacher Teacher", sung by Lowe. Twangin... was issued six months after Seconds of Pleasure, and featured Rockpile on nine of its eleven tracks.

(from youtube upload notes)

NEW BLOG: The Eternal Rhythm of Gardening

I've started a new blog called The Eternal Rhythm of Gardening about gardening, food, plants, locations, observations. I will reproduce the first installment below. If you like it, please head on over to Wordpress at the link above and follow it.

My mother always loved her plants, and I dabbled with gardening in my twenties back during my first life. That is one good thing I can attribute to my horrible controlling ex-wife. Back in the 1970s, she got me started planting a few vegetables in our back yard. I’m sure there are other good things too, but I just can’t remember them right now. After the escape and divorce and eventual severing of all ties with the city of my birth, Dallas; I decided to plant some tomatoes and peppers in the front flowerbeds at the dilapidated duplex I lived in during my first Austin residency in the mid-1980s. Then I moved to Southern California in 1986, and it was urban apartments in Hollywood and no gardening. When I moved back to Texas in 1990, I finally had vacant space at a tiny rent house set way back from the street with a big yard in Dallas. I have planted a garden every year continuously since then. By 1995 I moved back to Austin, and by the end of 2004 my sweetie and I got away from the rent houses and into our own place to landscape and garden forever. Even at my lowest points of drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression; I have always managed to gather the desire and energy to put some transplants in and hope for the best. I learned that every year is different. Different weather, different bugs and diseases, different varieties did better and worse than last year. I learned you can’t predict the future, but there were a few things that remained constant. Yes, there were actually a few things I observed and remembered through the last 30 years. I also noticed that the traditional gardening season coincided with one of my other loves, the baseball season. Gardening also taught me how to be mindful and remain in the present. To observe every single day and not regret what happened yesterday, and not get too far ahead of myself. How to endure adversity and sit with it until it passes. How to be happy and satisfied with what I have. That happy is an unobtainable goal. But rather happy is a by-product of my going with the flow. When I have relapsed and had that somehow forgotten again misery come flooding back into my thoughts, gardening gives me concrete proof that things have before and will soon be better again. I guess it is my religion, my medicine, my drug of choice, my salvation, my inspiration, my best friend, and my favorite creative outlet. Not to get too carried away here, but along with my soulmate of the last 32 years, it is my rock and the thing that keeps me going. And I am most appreciative.

(painting – wildflowers don’t do social distancing (corona series #1) by T. Tex Edwards
https://ttexedwardsart.tumblr.com/post/614231409406754816/wildflowers-dont-do-social-distancing-at-t )