Cardinal
BAND INDEX
Nigel Clark (guitar/vocals). (Maybe spelt Clarke – not sure). Duo from Harbury / Southam c 1969 / 72. Acoustic duo.
Trev
Teasdel’s recollections –
Played various types of venue including folk clubs, St Osburg’s,. Coventry Arts
Umbrella club for the HUMPOESIC HAPPENING July 12th 1972, which I organised.
Not to be
confused with The Cardinals operating in Coventry in 1964
Nigel was
from Harbury / Southam near Coventry. I first met him in a non musical setting at the Coventry Butts Tech College in 1967 / 8 – both apprentice electricians. Nigel
was apprenticed to the Electricity board and I to DF Gibbs (next to the General
Wolf pub). We were both on a day release course.
We became mates through music – Nigel played guitar, Simon and Garfunkel and I wrote
song lyrics. Nigel had an interest in Psychology and in the lunch hour we’d go to the collage library and he’d get me to take out psychology books which I thought would be good for my writing. RD Laing, The Forgotten language Erich Fromm (An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths), Psychology of Thinking, Fundamentals of Psychology and I started to buy a psychology magazine and wrote two songs from the case studies The Ups and Downs in the Life of Mr Toil and Strife which Nigel put to music later on and performed as far as I know at their gigs at St.Osberg’s. The other was Mrs Stress and Strain – video below.
Erich Fromm was useful as an introduction to symbolism and Paul Simon’s songs of the time were depictions of social forms of alienation.
Nigel left the Electricity Board and came to DF Gibbs as a TV engineer in 1969. Here he introduced
he lent me Dylan and Beatles songbooks to encourage my lyric writing,
In 1972, I bumped into Nigel again at the Lanch Polytech gigs and invited him to do a gig with Cardinal at the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club.
No idea what Nigel went on to do musically as we lost touch.
Below is
one of the songs Nigel put music too back in 1968 (although I never heard him
play it.). Maybe influenced by Paul Simon’s Big Bright green Pleasure Machine a
bit.
THE UPS AND
DOWNS IN THE LIFE OF MR TOIL AND STRIFE (Trev Teasdel 1968)
He’s
sittin’ on his posterior, feeling
he’s inferior
with a sudden
burst of hysteria, he acts
upon an impulse.
Chorus
One day
he’s up and around
Next day
you’ll find he’s fallen down.
He cannot
keep his feet on the ground.
The Ups and
Downs in the life of Mr Toil and Strife
The Ups and
Downs in the life of Mr Toil and Strife
He’s
sittin’ on the railings, contemplating
his failings,
Unable to
reach compromises
with the
problems that he so despises.
To him his
virtues are inconspicuous
He feels he
is ridiculous
The grass
is greener over yonder
Of that he
likes to ponder.
(Chorus)
On
occasions his gusto tends to ascend
but on many
things that does depend
Company and
success
inspire him
more than words can express.
The figures of authority are the
root of his inferiority
His hurt he
tries to hide as they
tread upon his pride.
An endless
life of labour
An
unsociable next door neighbour
A life of
little variety, A life
that’s full of anxiety.
……………
A follow on
song from this in Mrs Stress and Strain 1969 (re written in the mid 70’s)
Songs From the Coventry Underground by Trev Teasdel
