Kursaal Flyers

What hath ye to say about them? I thought maybe they would have a following on here.

Didn't realise J@mes Fr@nco was such a big fan. Thumbs up if he brought you here.

I would post clips, but just seek out 'Modern Lovers' which has a great intro, and 'Little Does She Know', obv, which reminds me of the Juicy Fruits from Phantom of the Paradise crossed with the Beach Boys. It makes me happy that songs like this may have been played lots on the radio once upon a time. Also, 'The Great Artiste (2nd House Excerpt)' has some nifty banjo-pickin'.

prefer kersal massive

It's their least typical song, but "Television Generation" is pretty great. Maybe a cynical play for the younger '77 crowd, but a classic nonetheless.

That was the first one I heard, on the 'Teenage Kicks' comp. Might dissuade some from investigating further, as agreed it's a tad cynical, but they appear to have had a crack at rather a few different styles in their brief time. The Yachts and Mike Batt are somewhat related, I think, even a bridge between early 70s Kinks and Andy Partridge or Martin Newell, imo.

On Rolling Hard Rock thread, earlier this year:

more powerchorded than I'd remembered: "All Messed Up And Ready To Go" (kinda punky that one), "Girl," and especially "Girls That Don't Exist" on the first Records LP. (Self-titled in U.S., not in U.K.) "Girls That Don't Exist," the hardest rocker, gets a different publishing credit than the rest of the album, and is partly songwriting-attributed to Richie Bull, who was apparently in the mid '70s pub band Kursaal Flyers along with Will Birch; looks like it's a carryover from them. (Have never heard the Kursaals, I don't think, except "Television Generation" on Epic's Permanent Wave V/A comp, which I always liked, though I guess that came near the end of their career? Suddenly I'm curious, though supposedly they started out doing Brinsley Schwarz style country rock?)
― xhuxk, Friday, 18 February 2011 14:35 (8 months ago)

Okay, just checked out the Kursaals' "Drinking Socially" from 1976, on the Goodybe Nashville: Hello Camden Town pub-rock CD comp -- definitely lands toward the cordial honky-tonking country end of the pub spectrum. Okay, but no great shakes. (First two Kursaals LPs apparently came out in 1975, and apparently one of the original band members was Graeme Douglas, who went on to be in Eddie and the Hot Rods.)
― xhuxk, Friday, 18 February 2011 14:48 (8 months ago)

Liner notes to Permanent Wave comp: "'Television Generation' is the last single ever recorded by British pub-rockers the Kursaal Flyers. A pop punk parody...'Television Generation' suggests not so much the Kursaals as it does the future band of the K.F.'s drummer and chief lyricist Will Birch: The Records, a charming pre-Knack, mop-top-sounding quartet who have scored heavily with 'Starry Eyes'." Hmmm.
― xhuxk, Friday, 18 February 2011 15:00 (8 months ago)