"1973 - Five musicians, collectively named the Global Village Trucking Company, decamp to a house in Norfolk to focus on their music, supported by girlfriends, roadies and a baby – fifteen people in all. But was it to be an idyllic, natural life, or one of stressed, cramped arguments?
This was an episode of documentary series By Way Of A Change, and it captured the public’s attention so much that a follow-up documentary aired thirty five years later, in which the band reconvened for one last gig."- BBC Archive
Bonus Old Wave
Tractor and this lot surprisingly raw and rudimentary despite the Old Wave look
Hearing this next one was when I first got an intimation there might be more to the Old Wave than I'd reckoned
This would have been in 1988 on a tape made for me by Gerard from the Blue Aeroplanes, with the express aim of turning me on to the treasures of the pre-punk 1970s. Some of it I had actually heard already and in a few cases liked, but there were plenty of revelations. I even liked the track by Al Stewart. But "Burlesque" was the stunner on this C90 - it got me heading out to pick up some Family records. Never heard anything else I liked as much "Burlesque" and its Beefheartian lurch. A hit single, would you believe? Another song by them went Top 4. Different times...
First heard the name Family a year or two earlier when an older bloke I got friendly with mentioned them and was incredulous that I'd never heard them / heard of them. "One of the most important bands on the Underground", he noted with a trace of indignation.
Perhaps this was his first premonitions that the world he'd grown up inside was slipping away, slipping out of popular memory? I get these regularly - almost weekly - now that I'm teaching 20 year olds...
