20th Century Music Group

Opening the Concert

As the house lights dimmed and the spotlight zoomed in on Graham at the keyboards, we lifted off with cascading arpeggios from the Moog, backed by one, two, then three strikes from the kick drum and bass guitar, signalling the start of After the Fire's barnstorming instrumental Joy, which the band always liked to use as the opening number. Graham tweaked the Moog's controls so that the tone ranged between a steady fat note and a wildly oscillating tremelo effect. At the end, Mark entered centre stage and announced to rapturous applause:

"Good evening, Sheffield! We are called 20th Century!"

He welcomed the audience, which consisted of local Fulwood people, students from the University of Sheffield and the families and friends of the band members. We had styled the evening as an open celebration, rather than a ticketed event, so it felt more like sharing in a big party. The students at the front were taking photos on their mobile phones (some of which are reproduced here), which captured the atmosphere in a dynamic way.

The next number was an very old 20th Century classic, called Help Me. No-one can remember who originally wrote this song, but it was certainly around in 1975. Mark Allchorn appeared to have created a third verse out of improvised lyrics, which became part of the regular song. The main thing about this number was the opportunity for just about every band member to have a solo break. Graham's Moog took the first solo, two verses in a really high register, with considerable detuning of the oscillators to get a really ear-splitting shriek out of the synthesizer. After the next verse, Tony took a lead guitar break consisting of a melody over one verse, and a Pink Floyd-like climbing set of minor chords over the second. Dave followed this with a twanging bass solo with plenty of top harmonics, then Simon did a second verse with drum rolls, with the rest of the band just underscoring the first two beats of each line.

Stand Up and Be Counted

Of course, you couldn't be very far into the gig before you played the single for which this line-up was best known. Stand Up and Be Counted had been penned by Graham to show off some of the Moog's flashy arpeggiating abilities, with glissando and tremelo varying throughout. Well, the song set off pretty well and got into the verses, with suitable guitar breaks in between the verses. At some point, Mark started forgetting last lines of the verses, which came out more like stream-of-consciousness. And when the Moog solo started, Graham realised that he'd left it switched to the higher ear-wax cleaning register for Help Me and had to adjust the octave control in mid-solo! Oh well, we got another chance to play this one a bit better in the encore.

The next piece was Tony's prog rock number Loser, subtitled Alright Jack, since the lyrics include puns on just about every popular phrase containing that name. Graham did a fantastic impression of an alien flying saucer at the start, before Dave entered with the 6/4 bass riff and Tony punctured the rhythm with minor 7th chord stabs. In retrospect, we needed more bass tone coming out through the speakers, but for some reason this had gone unnoticed. Into the song, Tony lost count and missed the entry for the quiet contrasting section with 9th chords, so ended up converting this into an extra guitar solo! The minor 9ths came later in the song, with Mark picking up the vocal line at the end and we produced, by amazing serendipity, a fabulous climing crescendo into the last verse.

Although neither Sam Gibbs nor Paddy Searle-Barnes had been able to attend, we played pieces they had written, in their honour. The next number was Sam's Song, which probably should be called Brand New Day, a delightful number with more than a touch of Caribbean flavour, with cross-cutting rhythms in the contrasting mid-section over which the guitar picked out a light solo. We followed this with After the Fire's original successful single One Rule for You, whose lyric argues that people should give Christians a fair hearing and not dismiss what they are keen to talk about, just because it's different from what the rest of the world talks about.

Mainstream Classic Numbers

The next song was Tony's rearrangement of Wishbone Ash's apocalyptic number The King Will Come, which should have had two guitars, but we played it with one guitar and a Moog for the double solo. Also, we transposed it from D minor down to A minor, just to give vocalists Mark and Tony a chance of reaching the high notes! This starts with a military-style snare drum marching beat, with underscoring bass riff and punctured by guitar breaks, until the main melody line enters. The altered chorus lyric reads: "See the word of the prophet / In the book of the Lamb / Wrath of God, revelation / Is there anyone will stand?", which only really changes two lines, but underlines the message of the song. Tony and Graham handled the double solo, with Tony hanging on the last chord, before launching into an extended guitar solo. Later, there was a quiet guitar riff with a keyboard solo, before the reprise of the second verse and finale.

After this came Dave and Paddy's song Masquerade, with its challenge to drop your pretences and consider where you are in life. This song is ideally suited to the tones of a Hammond organ, which Graham duly provided with his Yamaha DX7. Each verse ends with a chord progression that eventually clashes with the repeated bass note, before resolving to the same minor key as the bass, which then cascades down into the next verse. In the middle section, there was the contrasting section, with some beautiful harmonic modulation on the organ, with bass guitar beats underscoring the crescendo back into the verse, over which the lead guitar led the soloing, followed by the Moog solo over the chorus. There were some minor slip-ups in the execution of this piece, with interestingly variable chord progressions at the ends of each verse, and an over-eager vocalist managing to enter half a bar early on a couple of occasions!

The next song was Sam Gibbs' number Real Revolution, which was played in its original guitar-led form, with counterpointed guitar and bass work. Sam recorded this song on an album How Far? in the early 1990s, in an even more sparsely-scored version, led by the piano, but with other instruments dropping in notes seemingly at random. The overall effect was achingly beautiful. In the original version, there is a hint of Cuban cross-rhythms in the verse, then a gentle series of modulating minor 7ths over the chorus leading to the jazz chords backing the line: "He who has the ears to hear / Let him hear." This song has an extended middle section, over which the keyboards played a sparse piano melody, before the reprise for the final verse.

On to the Finale

Mark then introduced members of the band to the audience. He got nearly everyone's professions right: Mark (history teacher), Tony (academic software engineer), Dave (general practitioner), Simon (fine art dealer), Graham (digital map maker) and John (mathematics professor); but when he got to Mike (psychology researcher), he hesitated: "Mike, you're still working for the BBC?" Shaking heads from the sound crew desk raised laughter all round, and the response: "Oh well, I always get one wrong!"

The band now went into the finale cycle, with more up-tempo high-energy songs. The first was a cover of After the Fire's song Listen to Me. This has a great introduction, with the organ chords building a crescendo as the Moog goes swooping up and the guitar makes a dive-bombing entry caused by scraping the pick along the strings, with the drums building up the beat into the first verse. By the time we got to this stage of the concert, the opening lines of this song seemed fairly apposite: "I know you think we're crazy / Maybe you think we're mad..." What were we doing, all fortysomethings, reliving our student years? Well, it was massive fun; and the audience agreed. The last song of the official set was Jon Wicks' He is the One, which badly needed two guitars, but we managed with just the one. We were starting to get into our groove at last; and this song worked a treat, with its contrasting third verse. Tony managed to pull off a Dermot-style solo, but not quite as fast on the blues riffs as Dermot would have been. Wherever he might be... (see previous page).

The audience would not let us go. So, not having another prepared song to pull out of the hat, we decided to Stand Up and Be Counted, one more time. This was one of the better achievements of the evening, so if you want to listen to just one of the MP3s on the 25th Anniversary Bootleg, this is perhaps the track to choose. We played out the verses, the guitar breaks and a smashing Moog solo (in the right register), complete with the boys on the sound desk giving us the echo repeat on the last line: "Stand up and be counted if you dare (dare, dare...)", just like on the single.