There are several threads to the story of how the band came together in 1980 – I will try to bring the two stories together here.
Trev Teasdel recalls – I’d known Tony Mojo Morgan from the City of Coventry Boarding School, Cleobury Mortimer in the mid 60’s and in the early 70’s re-met him at the Coventry Arts Umbrella Club. He was playing bass in a three piece band The Mick Green Blues Band. The drummer, Steve Harrison asked me for some lyrics for the band and Tony had put music to one of them when the band split up.
Fast forward to 1980 I once again bumped into Tony Morgan outside the Dog and Trumpet in Coventry – The Specials and Selecter had broken through and Tony told me he was putting together a new band called EMF (Electro Motive Force). Tony was a blues man but said he intended that EMF would be a ska band but with blues bass lines.
He had some musicians lined up including Jim Allen on sax who had played with Tony in the past and through musician Amos Anderson (a relation of Charley Anderson of the Selecter) had recruited the other musicians but not the two female singers Donna and Sharon Elkington.
Tony invited me back to his flat in Hillfields to talk about me writing a couple of songs for the band, which i did – With Someone Nice Like You (rough demo and lyric below) and Saturday Night with the lyric set in the Dog and Trumpet cellar involving a drunken brawl – at a time when there was racial tensions and cities were becoming violent. I remember had ska style verses and a 12 bar bridge to fit in with Tony’s concept of using blues bass lines.
After writing the songs, Tony told me that Elkington sisters had joined the band and had their own material – I met them all down the Dog and Trumpet.
Donna and Sharon had been busy writing songs and trying to form a band themselves and had advertised in the Coventry Telegraph. Tony had seen the advert and contacted them.
In the Coventry Telegraph the narrative goes that Donna and Sharon started everything off but putting the ad in the paper but according Tony and my own memory, there were two parallel and independent developments which came together when Tony responded to the girls advert.
20 year old Sharon Elkington of Woodshires Road, according to the article, wrote songs about her own and her friends experiences. Apart for the two sides of the single, her songs included Don’t Push me, Black Girl, White Boy, Cheesed Off. Things that were happening at the time like Anorexia.
Although my songs didn’t get in, EMF were a lesser known but great Ska band. I used to go to their gigs at the Dog and Trumpet and a regular gig in Tile Hill and mostly was the frist one up dancing trying to encourage others to join in.
By 1981, I had moved to Teesside to do a degree and found the Battle of the Bands album with EMF’s Ante bellum on in WH Smiths in Middlesbrough. Teesside band Carl Green and the Scene had one but EMF had a single out – not a hit but nonetheless a single on RCA.
Tony Mojo Morgan recalls “EMF supported The Specials, Bad Manners, The Beat, and the Bodysnatchers. I was doing a lot of blues riffs in the band on bass. We played all over the country, and just had a great time.
With EMF. I just wanted to do something different! I had just met Amos Anderson who knew Fitzroy Wilson – rhythm guitarist and Fitzroy knew Leroy Wright – drums.I alredy knew Jim Allen (Sax) and I think Dave Gordon – lead guitarist heard what we were doing and just turned up. The first practice we had all together was in Hillfields in one of the flats! and it just came together like that. It just jelled straight away!
After a while we got under Oak Agency from Birmingham, and then the gigs started rollin in, playing all over the country in collages and then we started supporting all the Two Tone acts which was a great buzz!
I can’t remember how we got into Battle of the Bands in 1981 but we had to go to The Odeon in Birmingham for the first heat with all the Area bands, and we came first. RCA put us up in London to go in the studio to do a single which went on to a compilation album for the best of Battle of the bands, and was given a trophy of Battle of the bands. There was a lot of bickering in the band by then, and you don’t need that in a band, so then i put an advert in the shop to start another band, Yea! A blues band! I left my own band and started The Travelling Riverside Blues Band with John Alderson. EMF got hold of another bass player and did the final battle of the bands. After 2½ years I had itchy feet anyway to get back to my blues roots.
……
Trev Teasdel’s early song for EMF before Donna and Sharon joined the band.
For interest this is the acoustic cassette demo of one of the songs I wrote for EMF before the girls joined the band. You can listen to it on bandcamp. The demo was pub lished by Broadgate Gnome’s Gnome Label in 2007 on Trev Teasdel’s CD Songs From the Coventry Underground consisting of 17 of his writing demos.
WITH SOMEONE NICE LIKE YOU
©Trev Teasdel 1980 Coventry.
I torture myself, with pent up fears,
I brood a lot, I brew tea for one
I ask myself “How come”,
How come I just can’t face the pots.
I tie myself right up in knots,
Chorus
And I long to spend my time
And I long to spend my time
Yes I long to spend my time
With someone nice like you.
I smashed a cup, washing up.
I burnt the toast, I missed the post.
I ask myself “Whyfore”
Whyfore I haven’t fixed the drafty door.
I’m frozen right through to the core.
Chorus
And I long to spend my time
And I long to spend my time
Yes I long to spend my time
With someone nice like you.
Oh the nights are cold.
Oh the nights are long.
All I do, it comes out wrong.
I wash my clothes but still they pong.
How come I just can’t get it right?
Sadness got me in his long-range sights,
To chorus..
Bridge
When I see a lover by your side,
I turn my love lights low.
Take my part in a melancholy show.
Oh I just don’t know
Don’t know how to show that I just don’t care,
When my feeling set fire to my hair.
