KID CREOLE & THE COCONUTS PLAY THEIR FIRST UK BIG BAND GIG FOR YEARS AT THE FRIARS AYLESBURY CHRISTMAS PARTY (AYLESBURY CIVIC CENTRE) ON
FRIDAY NOV 27-TOGETHER WITH EIGHTIES ICONS CHINA CRISIS


Friars Aylesbury was one of the coolest and most renowned gigs in the UK from 1969-84 and had a large part to play in breaking bands such as Mott The Hoople, Genesis, Bowie, Cockney Rebel, The Clash, The Ramones, The Jam and U2. When it closed at the end of 1984 Friars was internationally famous and had over 87,000 members. This year in the same venue, three amazing 40th Anniversary Friars concerts were planned kicking off with The Pretty Things, The Groundhogs and the Edgar Broughton Band in June, followed by an overwhelming sell-out gig in October with Stiff Little Fingers and Penetration. The third and final Friars show of 2009 will once more create the Friars Aylesbury Christmas Party and a very rare appearance of the Kid Creole & The Coconuts 14-piece big band together with eighties icons China Crisis.

The Friars Aylesbury Christmas Parties of the seventies and eighties were legendary. To say a good time was had by all would be an understatement. With the old Friars venue, Aylesbury’s Civic Centre, scheduled to close in June 2010 this will probably be the last ever Friars Christmas Party and the last chance to experience that famous FA Christmas atmosphere. Whilst the Pretty Things gig referenced the early Friars hippy period in the late sixties and early seventies, the Stiff Little Fingers night was firmly based in the late seventies punk era. This third show is very much of the eighties period of Friars.

Straight out of New York, Kid Creole exploded onto the UK scene in 1982. Their 1982 hits ‘Stool Pigeon’ (July) and ‘Annie I’m Not Your Daddy’ (October) coincided with their two Friars appearances. Many rate those euphoric nights as two of the best Friars Aylesbury gigs of all time and not without reason. Taken from the album ‘Tropical Gangsters’ ‘Annie’ reached No.2 in the UK and was only held off the top spot by Culture Club’s ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?’

August Darnell aka Kid Creole was brought up in the Bronx where he absorbed multiple musical influences which manifested itself as Kid Creole & The Coconuts. Kris Needs wrote the best piece ever on the band for MoJo magazine in 2007. Talking about the KC gig at Friars in October 1982 he says “The stage show was like Busby Berkeley choreographing a gang of Manhattan disco hedonists aboard George Clinton’s Mothership en route to the Caribbean. Darnell’s intricately-orchestrated mini-soap operas mixing big band swing, merciless funk, disco, salsa, calypso, reggae and classic musicals. His incisive vignettes of street life, social issues and relationships dug deeper than any disco exhortation.”

Influenced by Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, David Bowie and Brian Eno, Gary
Daly and Eddie Lundon, first arrived as China Crisis in 1982 when they released their first single ‘African and White’ on the Inevitable label. They then signed to Virgin and released 5 albums ‘Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms: Some People think its fun to Entertain’, ‘Working With Fire and Steel: Possible Pop Songs – Volume 2’, ‘Flaunt the Imperfection’ (produced by Steely Dan’s Walter Becker) ‘What Price Paradise’ and ‘Diary of a Hollow Horse’. Then there were the big singles, ‘Christian’, ‘Wishful Thinking’, ‘Black Man Ray’ and ‘King in a Catholic Style’. Gary Daly and Eddie Lundun are superb songwriters and performers….. Liverpool’s best!

Tickets are £20 and are available from WeGotTickets.com, ticketweb.co.uk or from the Aylesbury Civic Centre Box Office. Tel: 01296 486009 or at the door on the night (if available).


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www.Aylesburyfriars.co.uk