Austere and minimal 45 from ex-Bent Frame member
Label: Decca
Year of Release: 1971
Many moons ago, I had a friend who decided to start calling himself Aitch for no reason any of us could discern. True, his surname began with the letter H, but it wasn't a nickname anyone else had foisted on him, he just began answering the phone with the introduction "Alright! Aitch here!" in the hope we'd all pick up on it. It's better not to judge, really - each of us deals with our identity crises in our teens and early twenties in different ways.
In a similar fashion, Aitch here is, so far as I can judge, John Hetherington of the Roger Daltrey managed group Bent Frame trying to give himself a unique new identity. By this point, he'd already recorded a few tracks with that group which had not seen commercial release, among them the compelling "Fairy Lights" (which eventually saw daylight on the "Circus Days" compilation series in the nineties) and a version of Thunderclap Newman's "Accidents" as well as a track called "It's Only Me" which was released as a solo single of his by RCA in 1970.
This March single under a temporary new identity appears to have been a one-off for Decca, and is a strange 45 to say the least, taking its arrangement cues from John Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance" or possibly early T Rex. A minimal, pounding rhythm pattern joins a simplistic melody to create something anthemic but threadbare, and how much you enjoy it is going to depend on your attitude to underground campfire singalong discs.
The flip is barely more complicated, to be honest, and it's hard to know where this project would have gone next had the single been a hit - as it flopped, however, Hetherington abandoned this moniker and returned to his rightful performing name. He put out a string of singles for various other abels throughout the seventies, including "Home" on Uni in 1971, "Teenage Love Song" on MoWest in 1973, and "Seventeen, You're A Star" on Neighborhood in 1975. After that point, the trail goes dead.
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