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he subsequent legal tussle held “It’s beautiful there but it’s not easy,” millennium as e2k with Kwame Yeboah,
them up for a few years but says Glen. “I speak to Alton quite fre- Kellie While, Andy Morel and a host of
they eventually escaped the quently. He’s very busy. He keeps sending other assorted luminaries, making two
contractual shackles to set up everyone his love. We were hoping to get well-received albums for Topic, If Not Now
their own label and publishing him back to play with us this year but it and Shift continuing the band’s spirit of
to release Zest, the 1996 album which wasn’t really practical.”
adventure with plenty of jazz and African
they broadly consider their most signifi-
The Ethiopian adventure was the cata-
input. There was the spin-off band T &
cant work.
lyst of the split, forcing the others to
Latouche (which also included John Hart
Hart: “Looking back over the history reassess their own futures. “We were and Gavin Sharp) that was purely reggae,
of the band the seminal album was proba- working in a niche market and we’d hit while T and Glen also put together a tour-
bly Wicked Men, but for the most fruitful, the top of it,” says Hart. “We’d headlined ing show celebrating Bob Marley. Gavin
rewarding and energetic time I think it all the festivals of choice and we’d gone as Sharp became a promoter initially in
was Zest.” far as we could with it. So we could have Manchester, then moved to Kendal Brew-
They went on to release This Way Up
kept going round the same treadmill or go ery Arts Centre and Liverpool Philharmon-
in 1998 followed by a live album recorded
away and do something else. We felt it ic and is now back in Manchester as CEO at
at Cropredy Festival (ironically almost the
had run its course really and it was good to the Band On The Wall. Neil Yates has
only major festival they’re not playing this go out on top with that phenomenal gig played with various outfits in the interven-
time round) and they paint such a won- at the De Montfort Hall. You can only do ing years, notably Mike McGoldrick and
drous picture of fun, fun, fun you wonder 250 nights a year gigging for so long – the Uiscedwr Big Band; and Jon Moore set-
why they felt the need to split. once you’ve turned 30 that gets very hard. tled in the north-west playing jazz with a
The story circulating at the time was
It was always a hand-to-mouth existence Django-Reinhardt-flavoured trio and occa-
that the Rastafarian contingent of Alton, T
with eight people in the band; it was never sionally popping up for Tiger Moth
and Glen wanted to mark the millennium
very lucrative. There was also a danger it
reunions at Womad and the like. Simon
with an exodus to Ethiopia. Indeed they did
would become a pastiche of itself… we
Care set up business in the property mar-
go to Ethiopia. T and Glen stayed for about
used to say the only way we were likely to
ket while returning to his roots in morris
a year and Zebby, the drummer, has subse-
make money out of it was to become an
dancing and the ceilidh circuit, reuniting
quently settled there, playing in bands with
Edward II tribute band… which some
with Ashley Hutchings in the Morris On
local musicians. T and Glen make regular
would say is what we’ve now done!”
and Lark Rise Bands and “boring my wife
forays and plan to relocate there them- Jon Moore, Simon Care and Neil Yates senseless for years” talking about how
selves at some point along the road. did reinvent the mighty beast for the new great Edward II were.
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