CHAPTER FOUR: GARETH SAGER GETS BENT

Gareth Sager and Davy Henderson have had similar careers.  Both are veterans of influential post-punk bands (Henderson helmed the Fire Engines).  Both took a shot at the pop charts (Sager with Head, and Henderson with his trio Win).  Each then forged his own eclectic path (Henderson with The Nectarine No.9, and Sager with Pregnant and CC Sager).   Both have been deeply influenced by the "formal eccentricities" of Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart.  

Gareth Sager joined The Nectarine No. 9 for two albums.  Henderson sang three songs on Sager's solo album, Slack Slack Music.  The Nectarine No. 9 performed CC Sager's "Johnny Bristol Flu" during their recent reunion shows, and they once covered Head's "Tiger Tiger" (see Chapter 1).

"That guitar player from Bristol, the one who used to be in Head" was poet Jock Scot's collaborator on The Caledonian Blues, just as "Davy fucking Henderson" and the NN9 backed Jock Scot on his debut album, My Personal Culloden.  Sager and Scot performed a cover of Cockney Rebel's "Faith Healer" with a band called Port Sulphur.   Jock Scot died this year, and a documentary on his life called "Services To Rock And Roll" is in the making.

Much of Sager and Henderson's music was released by The Creeping Bent Organisation:  Slack Slack Music, CC Sager's The Last Second Of Normal Time, the Port Sulphur single. and several records by the NN9 and Henderson's current band The Sexual Objects.

In 2010, Gareth Sager reunited with his Pop Group bandmates Mark Stewart, Bruce Smith, and Dan Catsis.  The quartet released an album of new songs last year, and another this year.  Sager continues to perform with Davy Henderson and other Creeping Bent confederates, sometimes backing Vic Godard.  This brings us to the present day, and the closing chapter of our Sager saga.

Chapter Four: Gareth Sager Gets Bent:

Tracklist -
 Silver Street Blues (with Jock Scot)

On Fire Stickers (with The Nectarine No.9)

Misunderstanding (with Jock Scot)

The Unfunkadelic (with the NN9)
Trip to Butlins (with Jock Scot)

Pong Fat 6 (with the NN9)

Winching Advice (with Jock Scot)

It's Raining for Some Cloudy Reason (with the NN9)

Blues in the Company of Angels (with Jock Scot)

(sic) (with the NN9)

Grunge Girl Groan (Jock Scot complains about Sager)

The Faith Healer (Port Sulphur feat. Jock Scot & Gareth Sager)

Dollar Hungry (with Davy Henderson)

Not Since the Accident (with Davy Henderson)

Her Saucepan is Rouge (with Davy Henderson)

The Johnny Bristol Flu (The NN9 covers CC Sager)

S.O.P.H.I.A. (The Pop Group)

Shadow Child (The Pop Group)

City of Eyes (The Pop Group)

War Inc. (The Pop Group)

Burn Your Flag (The Pop Group)

Thaaats All, Folks,

jonder

CHAPTER THREE: GARETH SAGER GETS PREGNANT

Rich Beale formed a band called Apache Dropout after Head broke up, and recorded an album for Postcard Records in 1993, but it went unreleased.  Abandoning both his commercial aspirations and his sanity, Beale rejoined Gareth Sager in a new band called Pregnant, and they produced a 1997 album called Unusual Lover.  Jonathan Seal ("the sixth Head") was a member of Pregnant, as was Dave Hunter.   

"I've been very unwell," Beale confesses, "in the rock and roll sense of the word."  Head's lyrics had mostly been written by Sager; but in Pregnant, Beale indulged his gift for loony lyrical improvisation.   He rambles about John Cooper Powys, Biggie Smalls, and Gary U.S. Bonds, and begs Bono to "leave Eno alone".   

One reviewer wrote that listening to Beale is "like being locked up in a padded cell with someone who can mimic the voices of a thousand rock stars."   Another wrote, "Explaining the charms of Pregnant would be rather like explaining a magic trick -- it can only cheapen it."  Pregnant delivered a wide-ranging repetoire of rock, reggae, funk and suave R&B balladry.  The influence of sea shanties is once again evident in "O'Cassey's Minibar".

The last three songs are from Rich Beale's group Apache Dropout, his trip-hop duo Receiver (1996-2001), and the band Applecraft (2000-2004).  Beale adopted the alias Don Mandarin in Applecraft, and released a Don Mandarin solo album in 2000 called This Was Quo Country.  Sager soldiered on post-partum with a new group of comrades.

Gareth Sager – Gets Pregnant

tracklist –

Refuel at Hamburg 

The Romance of Rock

Higher Type of Mind 

O'Cassey's Minibar

Wicked Tongue

Moodmaster

Rock of Rice Scum

Fallen for Bowey

Red West Coast Sunsets

Electric God

Bono Leave Eno Alone

Bewigged Unmarried Bizarre Car

It's Time for the Plants to Talk

God's Chosen Language

Francis (by Apache Dropout)

O'Driscoll's Curse (by Receiver)

The Benefactor (by Applecraft)

Enjoy,

jonder

CHAPTER ONE: GARETH SAGER GETS HEAD

After The Pop Group broke up, Gareth Sager and Pop Group drummer Bruce Smith formed Rip Rig & Panic with bassist Sean Oliver and pianist Mark Springer.  Neneh Cherry, Ari Up, and Sean Oliver's sister Andrea sang with RR&P.  Neneh Cherry and Bruce Smith married and had a daughter. Gareth Sager married Jeannette Lee (PiL), and they too started a family. Sean Oliver (who was mentioned in my Keith Levene post) had a daughter with Tessa Pollitt from the Slits.  

RR&P broke up after three LP's, but soon regrouped under a new name, Float Up CP, and recorded a 1984 album (Kill Me In The Morning) .  The following year, Neneh Cherry, Sean Oliver, and Bruce Smith (along with RRP saxman Dave Wright) made a one-off single without Gareth Sager called "Foot On The Rock" under the band name God Mother & Country (a nod to Rip Rig & Panic?)

Sager started a new band with guitarist Nick Sheppard (ex-Cortinas), and singer Rich Beale.  Beale had done the sleeve art for the Pop Group's single "We Are All Prostitutes" and the album Y.  They named their new group Head, and its members adopted pseudonyms:  Nick Sheppard became Candy Horsebreath (and sported a pair of assless chaps on the album cover).  Sager became Hank Sinclair. Rich Beale took the name of a Bristol landmark, Clevedon Pier.  On the next Head album, Clevedon Pier became Bertie Beale; Sager's new alias was Hamilton MacAdemical; and Sheppard was rechristened Chopper Harris.  

The port city of Bristol and the traditional songs of its sailors and fishermen were elemental to Head's music.   Head's debut album opens with a quote from "Molly Malone".  Mark Stewart from the Pop Group recalled in a recent interview, "As much as my punk roots, I grew up in blues dances and stuff, where people would just get on the mike and start shouting out nursery rhymes and sea shanties."   Head was a rock band, unlike Bristol's strident and abrasive Pop Group, or the wildly eclectic Rip Rig & Panic.   Big guitars, rock rhythms, and shout-along choruses, which were unabashedly silly, drunken and lusty. 

The first track on this compilation is a Float Up CP song that suggests where Sager was Headed. He sings,"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, come here baby and give me some."  On the second track, "Rockin' Rich" Beale introduces each Head member by name (including bassist S.M.T. and drummer Plastic Bag).   Tracks 2 through 5 are from Head's 1987 debut,  A Snog On The Rocks.  Tracks 6 and 7 are demos (released in 2009 on Bottled Vintage XXX).  Tracks 8-14 are from 1988's Tales Of Ordinary Madness (1988).

Tracks 13-16 are from the last Head album (1989's Intoxicator), which was recorded with Michael Jonzun of the electrofunk Jonzun Crew.  The songs were accessible but unspirited.  Virgin Records didn't promote Intoxicator, and Head disbanded. "Head were a hard-living band, and if we hadn't split up, there would probably have been some funerals," Sager later told Melody Maker, "Towards the end of the group, one or two of us were very, er, ill."

Nick Sheppard was called up by Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon for The Clash's anticlimactic Cut The Crap.  Rich Beale formed a band called Apache Dropout. The adventures of Gareth Sager will continue in our next chapter.

Gareth Sager – Chapter One: Gareth Sager Gets Head

tracklist –

M.A.D. –  Float Up CP

Crackers (Fer Yer Knackers)

The Captain, The Sailor & The Dirty Heartbreaker

Don't Wash Your Hair About It

I Can't Stop

Johnny Pulled On His Motorbike Boots (demo)

OK Brutus Sta-Pressed Power (demo)

Car's Outside (Joy-Ride Remix)

Get Fishy

Cheeky Little Monkey

Jesus Ain't Got A Daddy

32a 

Tiger Tiger

B'Goode or Be Gone

All The Boyz At War

Under The Influence of Books – Head

Tiger Tiger (cover version) – Paul Quinn and The Nectarine No. 9:

Enjoy,

Jonder