From the Archives - The Local Yokels

Although this picture is perhaps only about 6 years old, it takes us further back, in a pluperfect way, to the mid-70's when The Local Yokels were legends in their own lunchtime.

Other top bands in our class at school were QVD- Quatre-Vingt Deux (Jewell, Ball, Horsley), and Tetrarch (Isaacs, Flower) from which Emergency Exit emerged as the genuine sixth form supergroup of teenagers with instruments who could actually play them. Their rousing rendition of my song, Everyone's an Onion, has been given loving revivals on special occasions ever since.

Tim and I found the band name by intuitively knowing, during a fourth year Eng Lit lesson on Thomas Hardy, that Mr. Broome had unwontedly provided it for us. I'm only holding a guitar here for decorous effect in the same way that Bing Crosby was once given a violin with rubber strings to hold. Although I can play as many as eight or ten guitar chords I prefer to be given notice in writing if required to change from the one I'm on to a different one. If we had been Simon & Garfunkel then I wouldn't have been good enough to be Garfunkel and if we'd been Wham then I wasn't even quite Andrew Ridgeley. But perhaps my most inspired contribution to music was the mournful riff played on the home-made bass kazoo of our own imagining and design on our As I Walk Down the Street.

Any plans for a 40th anniversary reunion will, no doubt, be announced here nearer the time, but meanwhile any ex-chart artist looking to restore themselves to the hit parade is invited to apply here in the first instance and we will see what we can do. The Curtis-Green songwriting partnership might have just the thing you are looking for and would be willing to accept their royalties on the download hit of 2011.