FM Family Tree

[wetcamelfood]

Sorry to dig this up again but in case it's of interest anymore, I got a book called "Blues rock explosion" I would recommend (from 2001, Old Goat Publishing, ISBN No.: 0-9701332-7-8) which explains that the Bob Weston line up of Black Cat Bones was:

Bob Weston - Lead guitar
Derek Brooks- Rhythm guitar
Paul Tiller - Vocals
Stu Brooks - Bass
Terry Sims - Drums

Unfortunately the dates are hazy. It does say that this line up of BCB only recorded one song called "The warmth of the day" which was recorded for a mainly narrative commemoration album regarding the Queen Elizabeth II ship. I did track down a copy of this album and it's called "Come aboard! QE2" (1969, Sceptre Records, catalog number: SALR 1216). As there are few songs woven in to the narration of the album, there is no tracklisting as such but it does list BCB as the "pop group" on the album and although the song's lyrics don't say "The warmth of the day" specifically, they do discuss the sun etc. so it stands to reason this is the song in question but back to the "dates". The "Blues rock explosion" book says that Weston was in a band prior to BCB known as Giant Marrowfat and that it included a sax player named Lol Coxhill (but that's it). I would imagine they weren't together too long as it doesn't say anythimg else about them. It does say that as Weston had replaced Paul Kossoff (and Kossoff and Simon Kirke went off to start Free) Free's first rehearsal took place (according to this book) on April 19, 1968 and "Beat instrumental" magazine reported that BCB was to go in to the studio and record a full album for release at the end of 1968 (but of course we now know that BCB's one and only album "Barbed wire sandwich" was not releaed until Nov 1969 (and this book also confirms that Bob Weston was NOT in the line up of BCB that recorded the BWS album) so I think it's safe to assume the ORIGINAL recording sessions for the planned album didn't happen (at least not with this line up). So, if we figure that Kossoff & Kirke needed SOME time to set up Free then maybe we could get away with saying the Weston BCB started in 3/68 and maybe went to 12/68 and then we could have Weston & Sims starting Ashkan in 1/69? Just a thought.

Not sure what to put for Giant Marrowfat (if anything) as I can't find anything else about them and with The Kinetic "Live your life" album in 1967, my guess would be 1/68-2/68 for GM and end The Kinetic in 12/67 (if we can come up with any other members of GM but if it took this long to find out about the story behind BCB then it's not likely we'll find out anything further on GM but here's hoping anyways.

This "Blues rock explosion" book is cool anyways though as it's more accurate than most other similar books of this type and it has a forward by Bob Brunning and a chapter on FM and other interestig related chapters on BCB as well as the Brunning Hall Sunflower Blues Band, Chicken Shack, John Mayall, Savoy Brown, Dave Kelly, Jo Ann Kelly, among many others. OK, end of commercial. If anyone has any ideas on how any of this can be taken further then please do post about it here.

John