Expect a very different line-up at next year’s Inns of Court Ball. Luminaries from pop’s illustrious past, including Midge Ure and The Fine Young Cannibals, might have stolen top billing at its revival earlier this year, but the bar boasts a musical pedigree all its own. And Tulkinghorn feels obliged to draw it to the attention of the event’s organisers.
Take 3/4 South Square’s Paul Cooklin, a man who drives his band, Cruel But Fair, with his stirring bass and catchy keyboard sounds. Eight years in the making (the band was formed following the dramatic split of Cooklin’s previous outfit The Barcodes) its cracking debut album, Checking for Squirrels, is finally released this week. A world tour is expected to coincide with 3/4 South Square’s next marketing trip to foreign shores, but the band will be returning to the studios this winter to start work on Vorsprung durch Bhuna.
This seminal event coincides with an important footnote in the history of punk in the form of The Lucifer Star Machine’s gig at the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town on Thursday 11 September. Going under the pseudonym The Phabster, lawyer Robert Anderson is the glam punk band’s guitarist in a line-up that also includes a traffic warden.
Anderson, a top commercial barrister at Blackstone Chambers, joined the band in time-honoured fashion after answering an ad in music magazine NME. Not that Anderson has used his musical background to build on an existing entertainment practice. A cv that includes disputes concerning Tom Jones and Spandau Ballet is hardly likely to be augmented by his status as a glam punk legend (only a slight exaggeration).
While the titles of only two of The Lucifer Star Machine’s ‘hits’ are actually printable within these pages – Baby is Neglected and The Models are Dead – Anderson himself effects a remarkable transformation from glam punk icon to a darling of the High Court – just check out our exclusive pictures. It’s all a far cry from Morrison & Foerster’s classic We’ll do your IP, we’ll do your IPO. Thank goodness.