At the end of the day, sit back, pour yourself a cup of moonshine, and enjoy the Tabletop’s take on Mike Rutherford’s first solo outing, 1980’s “Smallcreep’s Day.”
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At the end of the day, sit back, pour yourself a cup of moonshine, and enjoy the Tabletop’s take on Mike Rutherford’s first solo outing, 1980’s “Smallcreep’s Day.”
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Subscribe: RSS
Mike Giles was the drummer on Sides
Hello, Didn’t anybody notice how Between Tick and Tock sounds like Back in NYC?
Hi Bob, Tom here. On the episode, I noted how Cats and Rats sounded like Back in NYC, but it was only until I was QA’ing the podcast did it occur to me that the keyboard melody of Between the Tick and the Tock is a slowed down version of the Cats and Rats theme! So technically both BTTATT and CAR sound like Back in NYC! 🙂
Great installment of the podcast here! I’ve had this album (the U.S. version) since it was released. I think “Moonshine” is a perfect opener along with the other individual non-concept tracks. To me, it makes the Smallcreep’s Day side better because you have to wait for it. Also, the album is much more poignant with the beautiful “At The End of the Day” as its closer. I had to laugh throughout at how all the members’ individual notes and comments aligned so well. The “Star Wars” sound is produced by an instrument called a synare, btw. Look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwzlsImvnxU (The ringtone was particularly special.) I’ve also long associated the beginning of “Between the Tick & the Tock” with Pink Floyd, so glad I’m not alone there!
It was fairly well-known at the time that singer Noel Mccalla was one of the vocalists (though not the lead) in the band Duke & the Drivers, who had a hit single the year previously with “Driver’s Seat.” You can pick out his voice during the choruses of that song.
Oops, the band was Sniff & the Tears, not Duke & the Drivers!
Sorry for multiple posts, but here’s the video of Sniff & the Tears doing “Driver’s Seat.” Noel McCalla is the fella with the sunglasses. It was a one-hit wonder band, but this is a cool song, so they can still be proud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blrHHRWKygw
Thanks for bringing this overlooked gem back to light. I’d forgotten about it myself, but having a good time revisiting it with all the “simpatico” commentary on your podcast guiding me.
After listening to this, I’ve ended up listening to Smallcreeps Day about 3 times.
The funny thing is before I preferred the non suite tracks (like Moonshine and Overnight Job) to the Smallcreeps Day suite. But since I’ve been starting to have a change of heart and an liking the Suite side over the stand alone tracks.
I wish Mike would have let it rip more on the Genesis side of things that he did on Smallcreeps Day. I don’t know if it was just how they was recording the albums post Duke (jamming with very little to non material brought from outside the jams), but it would been really nice to here more like what he did on Out Into The Daylight.
We have glimpses of it with Me and Virgil and Do the Neurotic which both strangely enough ended up has bsides.
I asked Mike after a Mechanics gig many years ago about this album being very keyboard based and he told me a lot of the chord work what you hear is actually Guitar synth mixed with Ants keys, and also vocal wise Steve Gould from Rare Bird was supposed to sing on this album,but his Record company/management had issues with it so Noel was second choice..did a great job though.