Splinters

* In process of stocking * Strictly limited, Deluxe edition 3 CD set housed in 12″x12″ (LP size) with a 34 page hardcover book. Features dozens of previously unseen images from the 100 Club and Grass Roots shows by legendary British jazz photographer Jak Kilby, and an extensive essay on the history of the group by Simon Spillett including interviews with Trevor Watts, Jeff Clyne and Clark Tracey amongst others.

Newly mastered from Trevor Watt’s original tapes. The complete recordings of the original Splinters lineup, including for the first time, the entire legendary 100 Club show and the previously unheard Grass Roots concert. The latter is believed to be the final recording of drummer Phil Seamen who died two weeks after this performance. If you are looking for a story which captures the mood of Great Britain in the early 1970s then what follows cannot be bettered. Indeed, all the folk memory leitmotifs of this period are contained within its sprawling narrative; polarised politics and protest; economic instability and wage concerns; unemployment; a very public tussle between old and new values; the forging of promising new alliances that, come the dawn, never quite delivered what they aimed to, their collective ideals crashing against the flinty realism of personal ambition, circumstantial change and individual discontent. Then there is the cast list; a mix of moderates, mediators and extremists, all struggling to make sense of an arena in which uncertainty, novelty and hubris rub shoulder to shoulder. They even look the part, their riot of sideburns, outrageous hair, chocolate brown shirts, tank tops and leather jackets a reminder that, as far as sartorial fashion went, the 1970s was an all-time low for men of all ages. And if that were not enough, into this heady mix you can add the BBC, a rich source of anecdote and allegation that has become synonymous with the double-standards of the age, yielding both comedy gold dust and questionable personal mores in equal measure. Simon Spillett