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Stars were a short-lived British supergroup that played a small number of live concerts in Cambridge in January and February 1972. Its members were Syd Barrett on guitar, Twink on…
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Investigate this subjectStars were a short-lived British supergroup that played a small number of live concerts in Cambridge in January and February 1972. Its members were Syd Barrett on guitar, Twink on drums, and Jack Monck on bass.
Stars were a short-lived British supergroup that played a small number of live concerts in Cambridge in January and February 1972. Its members were Syd Barrett on guitar, Twink on drums, and Jack Monck on bass.
After a spell in Morocco, Twink (ex-Pink Fairies) moved to Cambridge and worked with the 'Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band', initially with vocalist/guitarist Bruce Michael Paine (ex-Apple Pie & star of the San Francisco production of 'Hair') and John 'Honk' Lodge (Junior's Eyes, Quiver) playing bass. The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band, now with ex-Delivery bass player Jack Monck, backed American Blues guitarist Eddie "Guitar" Burns at King's College Cellar on 26 January 1972. Jack's wife Jenny Spires, a friend of Twink's and former girlfriend of Syd Barrett (ex-Pink Floyd), went with Syd down to the gig and he brought his guitar along and jammed with them in the last set. At the "Six Hour Technicolor Dream" at the Cambridge Corn Exchange the next day (27 January), the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band, with guests Fred Frith and Syd Barrett, played on a bill with Hawkwind and the Pink Fairies. The Boogie Band played four tracks before being joined on stage by Fred and Syd for a further three then followed by an additional two songs to close the set without Fred and Syd.
Within the next day or two Jenny, Jack & Twink said 'wouldn't it be great to get Syd playing again'. Twink recalled:
"We went round to his house and... Syd came to the door and Jenny said, 'Jack and Twink were thinking it would be nice to form a band, just the three of you.' So he said 'Yeah, alright, come in'. And that was that. We started rehearsing down in the basement of his house, that's how it started." "We were doing all of Syd's stuff, old material like 'Lucifer Sam'. We did about half a dozen gigs. I think it was a pretty tight set but some of the gigs were kind of loose because we didn't have road managers, we just had people helping out and stuff. We played all around the Cambridge area, didn't go out of Cambridge, just places like coffee bars - and we played the Market Square, that was the most memorable gig. It was a good gig, it was really brilliant." "And we did a few in the Dandelion Coffee Bar, I think we did two there & they were also good."
This gig was recorded, and while one mastertape was confiscated by EMI in 1985, another copy surfaced in 2005. In June 2010 this tape was offered for auction but failed to reach its reserve price. It was then purchased by the Easy Action label, who also hold the tapes of the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind sets from the same show. Easy Action released the Hawkwind set as an album licensed from EMI Music in 2012, and released the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band tape as an album entitled Six Hour Technicolor Dream in June 2014.
All 'Stars' performances contained Barrett-era Pink Floyd songs and tracks from Barrett's 1970 solo albums The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. The posters for the MC5 / Skin Alley gig also billed an appearance from a new line-up of the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band - Bruce Paine, Rick Fenn, Bill Gray & Gary Luvaglia. Paine went on to join Steamhammer for a tour of Europe in late 1972 before returning to the United States.
Stars roadie and occasional bass player Joly MacFie said:
"Stars played a number of times at a hippie-community cafe called 'The Dandelion' and then one Saturday outdoor in the main square in Cambridge and then two shows at the (huge, cavernous) Corn Exchange on a Thursday and Saturday, two days later. Nektar had state of the art audio... I mixed the band. Another roadie was Nigel, who took care of the stage. I think it was a friend of his that taped the show. I was lent the tape by Nigel some months later and it sounded good; I gave it back without copying. I later heard he lost it... The MC5 show was not recorded and was not a good show. The promoter of these shows - Steve Brink - had promised that there would be no press; however he did invite a guy from the Melody Maker, Roy Hollingworth, who had some sort of nervous breakdown at the [MC5] show. He wrote a piece that came out the next Wednesday detailing a wave of absolute alienation he sensed at the show, and used Syd as a metaphor for it."
Hollingworth wrote:
"He played a demented solo that ran ragged lines of up to 10 minutes. His raggled hair fell over a face that fell over a guitar and seldom looked up. He changed time almost by the minute, the keys and chords made little sense. The fingers on his left hand met the frets like strangers. They formed chords, reformed them - apparently nearly got it right - and then wandered away again. Then Syd scratched his nose and let loose a very short sigh. It was like watching somebody piece together a memory that had suffered the most severe shell-shock. I don't know how much Syd Barrett remembered, but he didn't give in. Even though he lost his bassist and even though Twink couldn’t share Syd's journey, Syd played on. ...He has a beard now, but his eyes are still deep cavities hiding an inexplicable vision. Tuning up presents awkward problems. He holds his guitar like he’s never held a guitar before. He keeps scratching his nose. 'Madcap Laughs' opened the set. It didn’t sound much like it used to. But Syd’s voice did. A well-spoken wine - "Barth", "Larf". See Emily Play? The chords are out of tune and he keeps looking to his right and sort of scowling at Twink and the bassist, as though in disagreement. I stood and watched and thought he was bloody great. A girl gets up on stage and dances; he sees her, and looks fairly startled. As the clock ticked into the small hours of Friday morning, Syd retreated to the back of the stage trying to find one of those runs. He messes chords together. There is no pattern but if you think hard you can see a faint one, you can see some trailers in the sky. The large concrete floor is littered now, not with people but with their relics. Plastic cups that contained orange ju
Source: Stars (British band) (CC BY-SA)
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Stars Members Syd Barrett
Stars Members Syd Barrett
