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Wasn't Demolition's bass player a Sikh?

could be either sik or punjabi....most likely just of punjabi origins

Avenger wrote:These are interesting photos.
I think at one point there was a thread specifically discussing blacks in Metal. Although it wasn't limited to just NWOBHM, it's quite rare regardless.

I think you're right Avenger, i'm sure i recall that thread too.
As far as the NWoBHM goes, although there weren't all that many involved in the grand scheme of things, i'm actually quite surprised & heartened that there were black or asian players involved at all, as music in the UK at that time was quite segregated along genre/colour lines. Black musicians tended to play Reggae, which was huge at the time, whilst white kids, more often than not played Punk & Metal. I'm generalising of course, and there were exceptions, but that was more or less the stylistic split then.
With the social climate at that time with the National Front & the skinhead movement in full cry, it must have been a pretty brave individual that crossed the colour divide to play Heavy Metal with a bunch of white guys. Good on them & the bands they played in.
Music First.

bigfootkit wrote: With the social climate at that time with the National Front & the skinhead movement in full cry, it must have been a pretty brave individual that crossed the colour divide to play Heavy Metal with a bunch of white guys. Good on them & the bands they played in.
Music First.

I would guess that their blatant punk influence would result in a relevant audience turnout, more race tolerant for that matter. I suppose there was a huge social background when both genres hatched.

If you read local zines of that time, you would understand that musicians that played in a band for 1 year, on the next year they would play on another genre band.
Specially at that time on those garage rehearsal rooms. When punk-rock bands did meet with hard-rockers and with rastas and mods and alternative bands. Also on those live events on Lyceums and Schools was common to see a NWOBHM live band on same bill with Punk Rock and Reggae and Pop/Rock and New Wave bands.

Perhaps this was a reason to a yong guy who just wants to play and to be in a band and why wasn't uncommon to see some guys moving from Punk to Hard-Rock and from there to Pop/Rock.

and as bigfootkit very accurately stated, Reggae (but also Soul ) was really huge at same time as NWOBHM exploded.

Just guessing that the black fellows were from the same street, neighborohood/area and were adventurous. They raise together, they were unemployed, they listened same records...
Everyone knew some LPs of Zep, Rush or Purple - wasn't that difficult...

This happened a lot among the most obscure bands - they recorded a demo, 2 or 3 live shows and faded away.

[youtube]6NO3q__Coso[/youtube]

Trigger wrote:

bigfootkit wrote: With the social climate at that time with the National Front & the skinhead movement in full cry, it must have been a pretty brave individual that crossed the colour divide to play Heavy Metal with a bunch of white guys. Good on them & the bands they played in.
Music First.

I would guess that their blatant punk influence would result in a relevant audience turnout, more race tolerant for that matter. I suppose there was a huge social background when both genres hatched.

Whilst that may have been true for the first wave of UK punk bands & later on in the 80's as the punk scene became more '...core', in the late 70's & early 80's there was an element which attached itself to the Punk crowd, (and the Mod/two-tone audience too), that was overtly racist & quasi-nationalistic & caused major problems for bands, promoters & gig-goers alike.
Sham 69 for instance, who were hugely popular at the time, were plagued by problems at their gigs caused by that element in the crowd, and it blackened the band's name & played a significant part in them splitting up.
And although the Metal scene wasn't infiltrated in that way, a big part of the audience for NWoBHM bands was made up of bikers, who, whilst not as overtly racist as the National Front & skinhead mobs, certainly weren't always very tolerant or progressive in their attitude or thinking.
Again, i'm using a big brush here, and i'm not saying that all bikers were racist by any means, but there were certainly enough of them with that attitude that any black or asian musician would rightly have thought long and hard about the wisdom of putting themselves in a position to test the tolerance of that particular section of the crowd.

DaN wrote:Don't suppose there's anyone out there who knows more about the old Essex band AVALON featured on the Points Of Departure local sampler?

To me this is one of the best and most research-inspiring one-off comp-tunes of the (post?-)NWOBHM era:

[youtube]9ZOJWN1q2E8[/youtube]

In 1984 they released the demo - Knights Of The Realm 1984 (3 track)

bigfootkit wrote:Interesting pix rumblefist.



Samson with Mel Gaynor.

http://imgur.com/a/JNDI8
LEFT HAND DRIVE
http://imgur.com/a/GALm2
ATLAS
http://imgur.com/a/Ft0y9
TOK-IO-ROSE

Thanks for the pix for Nwobhm/ Hard Rock- RARE

Welcome to the Forum and to the Thread, Conrad !

Abigail Conrad wrote:

bigfootkit wrote:Interesting pix rumblefist.



Samson with Mel Gaynor.

http://imgur.com/a/JNDI8
LEFT HAND DRIVE
http://imgur.com/a/GALm2
ATLAS
http://imgur.com/a/Ft0y9
TOK-IO-ROSE

Thanks for the pix for Nwobhm/ Hard Rock- RARE

In light of our recent discussion on the subject, another NWoBHM (ish) band with a multi-ethnic line-up:

JODY St.

That's a nice one Kit !

John Coghlan's future vocalist and the bassist off BBC 2's Rockschool. Ace.

rumblefist wrote:A polish friend (he should be here, because he knows a lot ) of mine who runs a NWOBHM page and that follows this discussion with some distance sent me these :

This is 1 of the several Overdrive's at that time :



Not sure about who these guys were - maybe Medusa or Tok-io Rose :

I found also:

Abigail Conrad wrote:

rumblefist wrote:A polish friend (he should be here, because he knows a lot ) of mine who runs a NWOBHM page and that follows this discussion with some distance sent me these :

This is 1 of the several Overdrive's at that time :



Not sure about who these guys were - maybe Medusa or Tok-io Rose :

I found also:

Can't see it ! I think you have to find a pictures hoster and upload picture by picture to that site and then copy/paste the link of the picture here to this Thread.

Abigail Conrad wrote:

rumblefist wrote:A polish friend (he should be here, because he knows a lot ) of mine who runs a NWOBHM page and that follows this discussion with some distance sent me these :

This is 1 of the several Overdrive's at that time :



Not sure about who these guys were - maybe Medusa or Tok-io Rose :

I found also:

http://imgur.com/a/nVR5C

http://imgur.com/a/ift8j

http://imgur.com/a/t0ycB

http://imgur.com/a/rZjZk