Drill - If I Could Read Your Mind/ Pretty Girls

The Gordon Lightfoot hit given a strange New Wave interpretation

Label: RCA

Year of Release: 1980

To a lot of people in the UK, Gordon Lightfoot is essentially a one-hit wonder, a Canadian curiosity whose sole chart entry "If You Could Read My Mind" occasionally gets airplay on Radio Two, or used in television soundtracks. It's a situation I've never quite got my head around. Skip across the ocean to Canada (or the USA for that matter) and he's something of a legend. Bob Dylan referred to him as the greatest folk singer of all time, and while I perhaps wouldn't stretch my praise that far, his LPs are all worth a punt, and usually turn up in the bargain bucket of your local second hand record emporium. Buy them at low prices while you still can - a record store cashier recently told me they're selling far faster than they used to. Quality and class always gets noticed in the end. 

The New Wave band Drill, who we've already featured on the blog with their single "Juliet", clearly had a certain fondness for Lightfoot, as they decided to take his sole British hit and inject it with their own inimitable style. Listening to it for the first time is a jarring experience. It's such a complete retooling of the track that it's initially barely recognisable, and you've got to give the group credit for not making this a slightly idle, angry punky facsimile. 

Drill - Juliet/ Pretty Girl

Label: RCA

Year of Release: 1979

While punk and new wave were often at opposite ends of the spectrum from British psychedelia in 1967, there's a much bigger debate to be had about some of the unacknowledged similarities too. The underground press, counter-cultural activity and the whole idea of the "kids doing it for themselves" were germane to both movements, though eyewitness accounts from 1967 often tend to dismiss that era's anarchy with the simple phrase "A bunch of rich kids pissing around with their parent's money".

Another two things both eras have in common is the fact that bands emerged, released one single or a select clutch of a few singles, then disappeared again - and a great many of the members of the groups would go on to much bigger and better things elsewhere. Take Drill, for example. The Chas Chandler managed group are barely mentioned anywhere these days, but featured the bass player and songwriter Chris Constantinou, who later went on to work with Adam Ant, Anabella Lwin, and Guy Chambers. 

Frustratingly, the details of the rest of their personnel are hard to come by, but this single is a real curiosity. The punk lovesong on the A-side "Juliet" is perhaps not the strongest offering here, being a bit 'boil in the bag punk' in places - there are only so many signposted references to "rebels" with "rings in their noses" you can take before you sigh "Yeah, we get it lads, you're those punks we've heard so much about". 

The B-side "Pretty Girls", however, is where the band get to play with the full sonic palette and end up sounding slightly akin to an XTC-less Barry Andrews doing his best nods to Eno and Talking Heads. It's essentially very yobbish, jerky New Wave, and an experience worth having.

Now, if only I could find their single with a punk cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "If I Could Read Your Mind" on the A-side, my year will be complete. 

The whereabouts of the rest of the group is not known, but Chris remains very active and is presently bass player with The Wolfmen on bass and vocals, and the punk supergroup The Mutants.