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Ian ‘Emu’ Neeve (vocals), Pete Howsam (keyboards), Matthew Gillat (bass), Simon Page (guitar), Paul Vjestica (drums)
Formed in 1977 while their drummer was still at school and with an average age of 17, the Dole became Peterborough’s second
serious punk band after the Now. They secured local support shows to visiting bands including the Radiators and 999 and quickly
found a sympathetic home at local imprint Ultimate Records, who’d released the first Now recordings. ‘New Wave Love’, which
concerned a local girl who followed the band around, was surprisingly deftly executed, and earned a place on Cherry Red’s popular
Business Unusual compilation in 1979. However, by year’s end the band had broken up. Howsam joined Dancing Mirage, Page
joined the Point and Neeve formed mod revival band the Name with former Now drummer Joe Macoll before leaving after a few weeks.
He was responsible for alerting to me to the fact that in 1978, Emu was featured in a News of the World scoop about a punk and a
vicar’s daughter after it was revealed he was getting up close and personal to the offspring of a local cleric. Ah, those were the days.
This was actually also the source of the song ‘New Wave Love’, as Neeve explained to me. “The title of the News of the World piece
was 'Punk Rock Boss Plays Hell With Vicars Daughter!' It concerned the fact that Jo Edwards, our manager at the time, was pissed
with Belinda Cawood, who was seeing Heron (Pete Howsam), but whom I'd also shagged. She told Pete about our quickie and after I
made it clear that that's all it was, she gave him an ultimatum - her or the band! Pete chose her. A sad loss as he was our best
songwriter. He wrote ‘New Wave Love’ about her and on its release was featured in one rag giving her a six-foot Valentine’s card. Jo
Edwards was the one who got us involved with Ultimate, although we all knew the engineers.” It’s also worth noting that a gang of
Dole fans subsequently formed the Destructors, whose Gizz Butt went on to play guitar for the Prodigy on their live appearances.
Nowadays Neeve is a train driver and ASLEF steward. So is there anything in the vaults out there? “There is a CD kicking about of a
recorded set by the Dole, I haven't heard it myself, but would like to. Apparently Paul Vjestika has it. It was recorded at Spaceward,
Cambridge, just before we split up.”
Discography:
New Wave Love/Hungry Men No Longer Steal Sheep But Are There Hanging Judges? 7-inch
(Ultimate ULT 402 1978)
Compilations:
Business Unusual LP (Cherry Red ARED 2 1979; ‘New Wave Love’)
Punk Rock Rarities Vol 2 CD (Anagram CDPUNK 83 1996; ‘New Wave Love’)
Chefs
Helen McCookerybook (aka Helen McCallum; vocals, bass), Jim ‘Bruv’ McCallum (guitar), Russ Greenwood (drums), Carl Evans
(guitar, vocals)
Cute but gritty at the same time, the Chefs were a Brighton outfit formed at the end of 1978 drawing members from Joby and the
Hooligans and Smeggy and the Cheesy Bits. Their modus operandi may have been distinctly poppy, but for McCookerybook they were
definitely an extension of the original punk ethos. “I'd started off playing bass in a punk band called Joby and the Hooligans and was
literally still learning on stage in The Chefs. We also liked being loud and noisy although our songs were really tuneful and poppy.”
Much beloved of Uncle John Peel and most everyone that caught them live or on record, the Chefs delivered choppy pop-punk with
sweet melodies but occasionally brutal lyrics. Their subject matter included venereal disease, sexual politics and the glories of food.
All of which they were unremittingly direct about. Probably their most famous lyric came from ‘Thrush’. ‘I was just a bunk-up for you to
get your spunk up.” Rendered against the sweetpea rush of pristine pop music, it was some contrast.
I asked McCookerybook what it was about the Brighton punk scene that produced such maverick and disparate bands. “We were all
following the true spirit of anarchy - which is all about being individual, not following things other people do. All of us listened to loads
of music, all different, including punk stuff, and each band picked up on different influences and developed it in the Brighton scene. We
all went to watch each other play constantly too, and I think this may have encouraged us to develop really strong musical styles of our
own.”
Songs grounded in domesticity and everyday observation were key to the Chefs’ dynamic. “They were based on personal experience,
whichever member of the band was writing them. Right from the very first EP, with songs co-written by the original drummer, Rod
Bloor, while 'Lets Make Up' was co-written with a girl called Tracy Preston who sang with the Molesters and was in a pre-Chefs band
called the Smartees.”
They contributed two of their earliest recordings, ‘Food’ and ‘You Get Everywhere’ to the Vaultage ’79 compilation, before the
aforementioned four-track EP, again on legendary local Brighton imprint Attrix. In an attempt to build on the popularity of the EP they
moved up to London. The subsequent ’24 Hours’ remains a defining moment, a joyous, charming ode to obsessional love. “I know if I
catch you it might turn out/That it's not as much fun as I'd hoped that it would be/'Cos wishing and waiting is what it's all about/And
dreams are worth ten times more than reality.” Buddy Holly meets Billie Holliday. So who was the subject of ’24 Hours’? “The subject
of 24 Hours existed,” McCookerybook confirms. “There is a clue as to who he is in the sleevenotes of the Helen and the Horns album,
but you might have had to be around at the time to pick up on it.”
’24 Hours’ became a John Peel favourite, but not without some strategic intervention by the band. McCookerybook: “We had been
having photos done by a food photographer, strangely enough, and another band had told us you could meet John Peel by going
along to the BBC at 9.45 just before he did his show, because that's what time he went along there. So our manager [Jonathon
Chrisp] and myself stood outside waiting, and sure enough he came along and invited us up into the studio with him, took the record
and played it on his show live, there and then. I was so embarrassed I talked all over it but he told me to be quiet because he really
liked it - and played it every night after that for weeks. What a gem.” Two sessions followed for Peel, neither of which have been
released.
But despite a fair slab of justified critical admiration, the Chefs never did make it. Bad luck, or bad decisions? “Bad luck and too much
alcohol. We signed to Graduate for a ridiculously small advance and they didn't know what to do with us. At one stage one of their guys
helpfully suggested that I should wear make-up all the time. We had a lot of interest from Pete Waterman but he wanted us to sack
Bruv (my brother) and Carl (brilliant songwriter) so that just didn't happen. What was I going to do with just a drummer and no
guitarists? We met up with all sorts of glamorous producers too but nothing came of that.”
The highlight of their misadventure with Graduate came shortly before they signed, and they would have done well to take it as an
omen. “Graduate had come to see us play in a draughty church hall before signing us. They had a brand new BMW bought with the
profits from their success with UB40. They came to our horrible house for a chat after the gig, giving me a lift, and parked outside;
meanwhile the rest of the band had all piled into our van with my friends from home sitting in the back peering out of the back
windows. As we sat in their car, the cruddy old Chefs van started reversing towards us at high speed - the Graduate people started
yelling. At which point Jonathan fell out of the van, he'd been leaning out of it to see as he reversed, and the van ran over him,
backwards! It stopped millimetres away from the brand new BMW with my friend’s faces frozen in shock in the back window. Russell
had fallen on the brake and stopped the van just seconds before it crashed into the BMW and before the second wheel could run over
Jonathan (he'd had the steering wheel at full lock). Jonathan was fine - I went and sat in hospital with him but his ribs had just ‘bent’ a
bit. I suppose we might have wanted to have some sort of cool image before we signed our deal, but there was no chance. I just
wonder if anyone else has ever managed to run themselves over!”
After changing their name to Skat in 1982 (“which was suicide”) they recorded a third and final session for John Peel. A cover of the
Velvet Underground’s ‘Femme Fatale’ for Graduate followed, but they then broke up. McCallum formed Helen And The Horns,
featuring Dave Jago, Marc Jordan and Paul Davey, who cut records for RCA, Thin Sliced and Rockin’ Ray. After that finished she
released a 12-inch EP, ‘Leaving You Baby’, on Pure Trash Records. Evans put together the rather excellent, but obscure, Yip Yip
Coyote (again loved by Peel). He would later marry Michelle of Brigandage fame with whom he formed D.I.N. Russell Greenwood
spent some time with the Parrots and then joined the Popticians who recorded for Off The Kerb. He died in 2003 from a brain
haemorrhage.
Helen Reddington, as she is now known, has been a regular turn at the Edinburgh Festival for several years, writing the music and
libretto and playing in the band for a pantomime version of Titus Andronicus which played “to two nuns and a Scotsman reviewer”. Her
most recent production was Voxpop Puella, a multi-media show that looked at the ‘seven ages of women’ and she’s just completed a
thesis detailing, in academic terms, some of those formative experiences in Brighton. She also returned to live performance for a
series of shows beginning in September 2004 and announced plans for a Chefs/Helen and the Horns compilation CD.
I asked her if, like so many of her peers, she remains indelibly altered by her experiences in the punk wars, and if her perception of life
retains that punk viewpoint, of questioning rather than merely accepting things. “Yes, yes, yes. I have never changed from that and
never will. What a liberating thing to just be able to get up on stage and do it all without stupid music teachers getting in the way with
their rules, and without record companies excluding you before you'd even played a note! Makes you feel you can try anything at any
time, and makes you want to encourage other people to be like that too.”
Discography:
Sweetie/Thrush/Records And Tea/Someone I Know 7-inch EP (Attrix RB 10 1980)
24 Hours/Thrush 7-inch (Graduate GRAD 11 1980)
24 Hours/Let’s Make Up/Someone I Know 7-inch (Attrix RB 13 1981)
Compilations:
Vaultage ’79 (Another Two Sides Of Brighton) LP (Attrix RB 08 1979; ‘You Get Everywhere’, ‘ Food’)
WNW6 – Moonlight Radio LP (Armageddon Records MOON 1 1981; ‘Locked Out’)
Fear And Fantasy LP (Armageddon Records MOON 2 1982; ‘I’ll Go Too’)
Vaultage Punk Collection CD (Anagram CDPUNK 101 1997; ‘Sweetie’, ‘Thrush’, ’24 Hours’, ‘Let’s Make Up’
