On Sunday at 3pm at Glastonbury, Eric Faulkner will be playing live. He was one of the Bay City Rollers (left as he was then - right as he is now). At Glastonbury he will be singing and playing workers' protest songs, mostly old ones, at least one written by himself. Apparently his father used to play these types of songs. His set will be an introduction, bizarrely, to Tony Benn.Radio Four's Today aired some samples from Faulkner's songs earlier this week. He's got a fine voice and plays the guitar very well. The songs sound great. Here's his MySpace page. He's had a very active musical life since the Bay City Rollers broke up.
"Who are the Bay City Rollers?" I hear some youngsters cry. There's a clip below. They were highly successful in the 1970s. They were the sort of Westlife of their day. They sold 70 million records according to the BBC. In my humble opinion, their music was utter rubbish. In fact, worse than rubbish. Johnnie Walker described their music as "musical garbage" and left the BBC when they were at their height, saying he wanted to play more album tracks. I think the Rollers hastened his departure. I don't blame him.
But, they were very successful. There were always rumours that their musical abilities were....ahem...limited. So the reason for this post is to express delighted amazement that one of the Rollers is playing excellent music some 30 years after the height of the Rollers' fame.
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