vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 24, 2010 11:14:35 GMT 1
Doing the research for The 75 Club, I came across an act that I was unsure whether to include or not. Because although they spent 1 week at number 75 in the charts, they had also had bigger hits under a different name. OK, many 75ers did form part of another collective (e.g. Fish & Tony Banks, Pete Burns); but none of them had done so under the exact same composition. So I decided to exclude them. But it got me thinking. Who else has had pseudonymous hits? Who else has recorded under an alias for whatever reason? And it turns out there are quite a few. So, here are some of them. To start with, the 75 Club miss-out. DéjàStarleana Young and Curt Jones spent the week of 18 August 1987 at the bottom of the singles chart with this track. It was not their only UK chart appearance, however. A year earlier they had been known as Aurra and just missed out on hitting the top ten with You And Me Tonight. A song which I do not remember AT ALL, which is unusual for that chart period...frankly the Déjà track is better. So why the name change? Same as with a number of these sorts of things. Legal problems. Back in the 1970s Steve Washington founded the Ohio funk band Slave (who included Steve "Feel So Real" Arrington) and had some success; as part of the ever-fluctuating membership he incorporated Young and Jones, having spotted them singing with the Symphonic Express. Washington was impressed by their songwriting skills and signed them up to the Salsoul label under the name Aurra, at the same time as they recorded for Atlantic under the Slave name. Although the duo remained the core, there was an ever-shifting set of instrumentalists behind them, inclunding the trio who went on to form Surface and have a US number 1 with "When I See You Smile". Thing is, the trademark in the name Aurra belonged to Steve Washington of Slave, and when the relationship with Washington broke down there was a bit of a legal spat. Although their big hit was recorded after the split, complications with a settlement deal saw Young and Jones decide to drop the Aurra name entirely and record under the name Déjà, picked at random from a dictionary by Young. They never regained that earlier success and the whole thing fell apart; Young married JT Taylor of Kool & The Gang and went solo, Jones continued Déjà with a new vocalist for an album and went onto the cabaret circuit. Young's brothers incidentally had a top 20 in 1980 under the name Young & Co.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 24, 2010 14:21:56 GMT 1
The Imposter
"I'm a secret lemonade drinker..." The mythical band The Thirst could briefly be observed on the little-seen first R Whites television advert. Lead singer, Ross MacManus, Birkenhead-born trumpeter who wrote the music. On backing guitar one could glimpse his son Declan, making his television debut. Most people remember the follow-up advert with lookalike actor Julian Chagrin sneaking down in the middle of the night to taste a sip of the translucent treasure.
Declan MacManus followed his father into music, and adopted his father's old stage name as a surname, before copying the most successful singer in history as a new first name. Under the name Elvis Costello he has had oodles of hits.
Being a bit of a politico, he decided to unleash his fury on Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, with the song "Shipbuilding" as a protest on the Falklands War, and, before the 1983 General Election, with a more bitter thinkpiece on the privatisation mentality. Trouble was, his label F-Beat was going through a bit of a distribution crisis, and its material could not be sent out. F-Beat operator Jake Riviera had a subsidiary label called Demon, and Costello invented Imp Records to take advantage of its distribution network. The only release on the label was Costello using the pseudonym The Imposter to avoid any legal shenanigans from F-Beat's contracted supplier. Guess how the label got its name.
It was released on 27 May 1983, with the intention of being deleted on 9 June, the day of the election itself, but as it was selling tolerably well it remained in print for a while. It peaked at number 16 the week after Thatcher was returned as PM with a 140+ seat majority. Well, that worked then.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 24, 2010 22:26:22 GMT 1
Buster PoindexterRemember "Happy Talk" hitting number one? That came out of nowhere. The Damned's bassist performing something from South Pacific. Punk ethos firmly flushed down the bog or performance art? Difficult one. But Ray Burns wasn't the only punk icon who tried something extremely mainstream and had success. David Johansen was one of the most important figures in early punk, replacing Johnny Thunders as lead singer of the New York Dolls, just before Malcolm McLaren discovered them. The Dolls are the missing link between glam and punk - just listen for example to their riotous performance of " Identity Crisis" - and McLaren borrowed the sound for his Sex advertising Pistols. The Dolls imploded amongst various drugs and Johansen reinvented himself in the late 1980s as a joke house musician on Saturday Night Live - Buster Poindexter, covering a mixture of all sorts of random stuff, calypso, boogie, lounge, jazz. And as is typical of these things, the novelty outsold the serious stuff. The Dolls never reached higher than number 116 in any US chart; Poindexter reached the top 50 with the above single...
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Post by Shireblogger on Jun 24, 2010 22:37:54 GMT 1
I can see I'm going to find this thread fascinating and educational. Good choice vas. I knew Costello and Johansen, but I'm expecting plenty to come up where I didn't know the connection.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 25, 2010 9:40:07 GMT 1
KennySo, you are Mickie Most. You run RAK Records. You have put a decent chunk of money into a decent Irish singer called Tony Kenny and even manage to provide him with a hit single Heart Of Stone. You have however knocked his first name off to appeal to the teeny crowd. He has a follow-up hit and you get your in-house composers to provide a gigantic smash hit for him. It's already been trialled as a Bay City Rollers b-side so you know exactly what it will sound like. Unfortunately he is a serious singer-songwriter and does not like the teeny crowd. Not credible enough. So, what do you do? Record the vocals regardless and stick it over the Rollers backing track. Even stick a photo of Tony on the record sleeve. The DJs will recognize the name and be more willing to give it a whirl and, let's face it, they never notice the b-sides. Hey presto, you have yourself a hit. Unfortunately this is pre-video. You can't promote the single on Top Of The Pops without a band. No matter, this has happened before, when it was The Rubettes they just told the session musicians that they had to be a band, when it was Tony Burrows having three top tens at the same time you just made up bands on the spot to mime. Only following the Burrows fiasco when the Musicians Union complained it looked like the charts were a Burrows stitch-up you can't do that any more. The solution is simples. Get another band desperate for fame and tell them that they are the new hit hot happening band Kenny. Perhaps the key was to find a band with a name worse than Kenny, so the North London band Chuff were recruited. No need to bother with all that mucky recording stuff, chaps, you can go straight onto Top Of The Pops. Instand stardom. Just sign on the line. They did so, went on to mime, having of course proved beforehand to the unions that, yes, they COULD play, and turned "The Bump" into a top three. Chuff were rewarded with a couple more hits, with more of their input, before they split with RAK and signed to Polydor. Whether it was the loss of the Most magic or the arrival of punk, their glam sound never hit the charts again. Although in Germany they continued to have some success. Then again, so did David Hasselhoff.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 25, 2010 14:22:39 GMT 1
The CrystalsMickie Most wasn't the first to do the group swap thing. Phil Spector, as with so many production techniques, beat him - and everyone? - to it. "But Vas," I hear you say, "The Crystals were Barbara Alston, LaLa Brooks, DeeDee Kenniebrew, Mary Thomas and Patsy Wright, at least in their heyday. And here I can see LaLa and DeeDee with Frances Collins, who joined the group just before this performance. Surely The Crystals were The Crystals?" "No," I confidently respond back. "Or yes. Depending on your definition of The Crystals. "You see, Mr Spector has had his legal difficulties in the past as well as the present. Such as jumping between labels and forming his own Philles Records outfit. And in early 1962 he quit Liberty Records and left NY for LA. Taking with him a song that Gene Pitney had demoed for him at Liberty. He still owed one record to Liberty, so he got The Crystals to record "He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" knowing it would be controversial, and when that bombed he was free." "So, what was this song he took, Mr Tariner?" "The very one you see above, stout yeoperson. In LA, however, he found that someone else was recording the song with Vikki Carr. So Phil had to rush-release a proper Wall of Sound version, and he got on the phone to The Crystals telling them to come out. Only they were already booked up with their previous contract and so could not come out." "Oh noes! What did he do?" "Only brought in the finest session singers available in California. Session singers who had already had an uncredited number one as backing singers to Shelley Fabares on her hit " Johnny Angel". A group of girls known as The Blossoms, led by Darlene Love." "And they recorded the song?" "Yes. And because the DJs would not know their name, he pressed up copies with the name The Crystals on them. Under the impression that this was a follow-up by a group that had already had a couple of top twenties and therefore had a market waiting to listen." "So, what happened next?" "It became a US number one. Love and the Blossoms were signed up to Philles under their own name, and indeed recorded the follow-up to "He's A Rebel", plus also tagged with Bobby Sheen as Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. The Crystals themselves performed the song for its public appearances, although not generally well received, as Alston was hit by stage-fright and Brooks tended to take over lead vocals. By the time the "real" Crystals recorded their next big hit, "Da Doo Ron Ron", Thomas had left and Alston herself quit soon after. Indeed anyone with a brain could tell this was not a Crystals single, the shtick of The Crystals was that they were really a harmony group, whereas this song was more a singer with backing vocalists." "But US DJs could not tell?" "No."
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 25, 2010 21:57:27 GMT 1
Wigan's Chosen Few
Those of you who puzzled over the title of the Bearsuit song "More Soul Than Wigan Casino" need puzzle no more. Wigan Casino was the centrepoint of northern soul, a strange outpost of adoration for the Stax and Motown sounds, usually concentrated around as obscure a 7 inch as could be found. As a result, many of the northern soul classics are hugely expensive as there may only have been a few dozen copies ever sold.
So, sixties and obscurity. This is what we have here. One of the Wigan Casino DJs bought a seven-year-old single by Canadian surf guitar band The Chosen Few. The a-side was not obscure enough. The b-side was where it was at - the track "Footsee". Throw on a few horns and crowd noises, and speed it up, and it became a club anthem.
So much so that Pye Records decided to release it as a single. Big problem. Nobody knew who The Chosen Few were, probably still don't, as it was an old single, and Roulette Records, who had released the original, had no idea where they were. With such a conundrum they added the word "Wigan's" to the front of the artistes and released it, and gained a top ten hit.
Thing is, the chap who spotted the record - an A&R chief at Pye who had such a love for northern soul that he had edited a fanzine on the scene and ran the Disco Demand subsidiary for Pye which released the single - was a Mr Dave McAleer...
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Post by suedehead on Jun 25, 2010 22:47:18 GMT 1
Poppy Fields (The Alarm) still to come?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 26, 2010 11:27:11 GMT 1
Well, I'm not doing it in any order, so why not now?
The Poppy Fields
There's always been a bit of them & us about The Alarm. Previously named Seventeen, after the Pistols song, they soon morphed into a seemingly war-obsessed band of north Welsh rockers. First hit "68 Guns" was about Naaaam, and album "Standards" had a bloodstain in the shape of a poppy on the cover. Add to that them bringing a Welsh male voice choir into the top forty and recording albums in Welsh, and you see that they were a band that didn't care that much for what the rest of the world thought.
But despite a devoted following their hits tailed off. They could be reliably counted on to peak between 41 and 60, on fanbase sales alone as airplay was not exactly overflowing, and in 1991 broke up. A few years later the name came back as lead singer and motive force Mike Peters recorded new material under the name Alarm MMII, now adding the appropriate year to the band name, but was stymied from reaching the charts. The industry had moved on, nobody was interested in an old name like The Alarm.
So, how to overcome this? Record the same thing but remove the name. And so the retro-sounding "45 RPM" was recorded under the name The Poppy Fields, an exciting and fresh new band from Cheshire. To complete the disguise Cestrian teenage band The Wayriders lipsynced their way through for the video. Peters sent out the video with a note about this hot new band influenced by the Pistols and the Buzzcocks and DJs fell all over it. It got airplay, sold 4,000 in its first week, and made the top 30. Only then was it revealed that the song was actually The Alarm...
Point made, the follow-up single "New Home New Life" reverted back to normal Alarm form of reaching the mid-forties. And, chart-wise, that has been it to date.
Peters is still around, doing bits and bobs, including playing with the Mescaleros and doing some solo bits. The Wayriders morphed into Out From Animals and are now known as Scams, with a more electronic, Inspirals-y sound than their faust-punk.
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Elmer
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Post by Elmer on Jun 26, 2010 11:42:43 GMT 1
This is an awesome thread and when I've a spare couple of hours I'll do some serious reading of it.
Are you going to include Apollo C Vermouth who produced Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band ?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 26, 2010 12:16:00 GMT 1
Yes, and another couple of producers at least...
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 26, 2010 14:35:10 GMT 1
Actually, let's do a producer now. Whistling Jack SmithYou may think that this appealing nosegay of whimsy is mere fluff. Hardly. The whole of the British music industry is in some way linked to it. Possibly. Noel Walker was a producer on the Deram label in the 1960s, his biggest success coming with the Fortunes' gorgeous pop classic " You've Got Your Troubles". He picked up on this song, written by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, who performed under the name David & Jonathan (" Lovers Of The World Unite"), presumably as Roger & Roger would sound a bit like the instructions for an orgy. And recorded it himself, with a bit of whistling help from John O'Neill (who did the whistling bit for Ennio Morricone's "The Good The Bad And The Ugly") and backing help from the Mike Sammes Singers, who only had one hit under their own name, but who backed all sorts of the great and good from the fifties to the seventies - including number ones for Ronnie Hilton, Antony Newley, Ken Dodd and finally The Beatles. When it became a hit, someone needed to be recruited to be the whistling one himself (the name being a takeoff of Whispering Jack Smith, a hugely popular singer from the 1920s whose gentle half-talking tenor was affected by his being gassed in the World War I trenches). Who better than the brother of the Unit 4 + 2 guitarist Tommy Moeller? Billy Moeller had been roadie-ing for the Concrete & Clay outfit and stood in as the alleged batman. The surprise top five success of the song spawned an album, but surely it was the most obvious one hit wonder of all time. But quite a hit, top five in Germany and top 20 in the States as well. Oddly, it wasn't the end for Billy Moeller; he formed the duo Bill & Buster with Buster Meikle of his brother's band and had a big European hit with another Cook/Greenaway composition " Hold On To What You've Got". And Cook and Greenaway were yet to have their biggest success - they gave up performing in the early seventies to concentrate on songwriting (after Cook had been part of Blue Mink with Madeleine Bell and Greenaway Pipkins with Tony Burrows), and then came up with "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" for the New Seekers. Before eeturning to the top when their collaboration with Gene Pitney was recollaborated with Marc Almond. Who was in Soft Cell with Dave Ball, who formed The Grid, who collaborated with Robert Fripp, who is married to Toyah, who starred in Jubilee with Adam Ant, who used to be managed by Malcolm McLaren...I could go on.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 26, 2010 22:59:20 GMT 1
Bill ParsonsAin't life a bitch. You have a dirt-poor childhood after your mother dies, you find solace in music, and you scramble yourself a deal. But a couple of non-hits later you're dropped. And then you get drafted. 1958. Bobby Bare therefore wrote a song about his drafting, ready for when he finished his tour of duty. A friend of his, Bill Parsons, had just finished his stint with the US army, and approached Bare to ask for his help in recording a couple of demos for record companies before Bare went off. Bare was happy to do so, especially as Parsons had written a little song - "Rubber Dolly" - and had a few hours of studio time booked. They spent it largely on Parsons' song and, with half-an-hour to go, ran out of time to record another one. So Bare just popped down "All American Boy", his draft song, as a guide for Parsons to follow. So Parsons took the demo along to a studio owned by Fraternity Records, who heard the demo master, fell in love with it, and issued it as a single ASAP. Unfortunately there was a bit of a mix-up - Bare had assigned copyright in the song to Parsons - and Fraternity assumed both songs were recorded by Parsons. And when it came out, "All American Boy" was the promoted a-side, with Bare's vocal, but Parsons' name on the label... With Bare off doing soldier duty Parsons had to step up to mime for television appearances as the thing became a surprise hit in the States (incidentally, in Billboard it had a very odd run, as it ran in the teens a while, then leaped to 2 for one week and then dropped heavily, in Cashbox throughout the period it remained in the teens, peaking at 10). Making the best of a bad job, Fraternity signed Parsons up, but he never managed a hit single with his own voice and soon left the industry entirely. They also snapped up Bare on his return from the Army - Fraternity complained that Parsons never sounded like he did on "All American Boy" - and this time had a proper artist on their hands. Bare concentrated on the country side of things, finally reaching number one on the specialist chart at the 38th time of asking, and was followed into the industry by his son, a member of Young Criminals Starvation League - perhaps living down his Grammy nomination when aged 8 for providing vocals with his pop on the sickening " Daddy What If".
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Post by Earl Purple on Jun 27, 2010 0:39:21 GMT 1
I'm waiting for all those Jonathan King songs
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 27, 2010 8:21:54 GMT 1
I was only going to put one in as a representation...besides which I can't find any Father Abraphart videos.
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Elmer
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Post by Elmer on Jun 27, 2010 8:58:39 GMT 1
I remember reading about the Bobby Bare, Bill Parsons story a while back. How fascinating In the American chart book it's listed under Bobby Bare but with a sub text as Bill Parsons. It reached #2 there. In the UK charts it's simply listed under Bill Parsons.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 27, 2010 12:34:58 GMT 1
The Guess Who
In 1978, Anthony Hopkins starred in the psychological horror film "Magic", about a magician whose act flops so badly that he tries ventriloquism as a sideline. Miraculously, he becomes successful. Too successful, as he becomes bound with his dummy Fats, to the extent that Fats becomes Hopkins' character. Needless to say lots of death ensues.
In a similar manner, The Guess Who took over their parent band. Chad Allan & The Reflections - later changed to & The Expressions - had had some limited success in Canada in the mid-1960s, but the charts were overwhelmed by the British invasion. To the extent that Canadian acts could not get a look in. So their label Quality Records released their version of "Shakin' All Over" to DJs as an anonymous recording. "Guess Who?" asked the credit on the 45 label.
The DJs were very excited. Could it be a Beatles record? Stones? Some new unknown Merseybeat act? All very exciting. So they played it to death and turned it into a number one hit in Canada. Then Quality Records announced that this unknown British band was actually Winnipeg's own Chad Allan & The Expressions. So naturally the DJs ignored this and continued to call the band The Guess Who.
The band had little choice but to continue under their forced name. "American Woman" became a US number one hit; Randy Bachman then fell ill and left the band, to return as a founder of Bachman Turner Overdrive of Smashie & Nicey adoration. The Guess Who broke up in 1975, Bachman's co-songwriter Burton Cummings had some solo success, and the band has reunited on occasion for the chicken in a basket tours.
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vya
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Post by vya on Jun 27, 2010 21:46:03 GMT 1
Oh yes, another great, informative thread. I wonder if The Incredible E. G. O'Reilly might feature at some point, even if (under that name) he didn't quite make the Top 75?
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Jun 27, 2010 22:13:37 GMT 1
He might. They don't need to have hits, I don't think Buster Poindexter did in the UK. You're going to have to click on the name for this one, as the humourless - or possibly humourful - chaps and chapesses behind youtube have taken it down. Henhouse Five Plus TooKen Dodd's most successful records were straight songs. The tears of a clown, so to speak. Norman Wisdom had a big hit with a straight song. Kenny Lynch had a couple of top tens with straight songs. Freddie Starr. Sometimes comedians can have hits without making people laugh. Ray Stevens is another one, only his comedy hits tended not to make people laugh anyway. "Bridget the Midget" for example. She's a midget, therefore has to have a high voice. Oh, how hi-LAR-ious it is to make fun of the vertically challenged by chipmunking yourself! Then there's his number one hit "The Streak", complete with swanee whistle and completely unresponsive TOTP studio audience. And there's " Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills", the longest song-title ever to reach the US chart (not counting the full Starsound title, insisted upon by the copyright holders). However, Stevens did have a gigantic degree of success with his straighter, countrified tales. Especially in the country charts. "Everything Is Beautiful", a Cat Stevens soundalike, was a US number one, and his version of "Misty" was a Grammy winner. So, when he recorded a version of "In The Mood" under the name Henhouse Five Plus Too, which Ray Stevens do you think we would get? Two clues. One, the Firehouse Five Plus Two [sic] was the name taken by a bunch of animators at Disney who played Dixieland classics in the 1950s and 60s, and were often seen on telly. Two, Stevens performed it in the guise of chickens. Ohhhhh dear. Stevens still performs and records, and is a regular feature in the Billboard comedy charts (indeed right now he is at number 4), featuring such performers as Weird Al Yankovic, Adam Sandler and the Jerrky Boys. Evidently the definition of "comedy" is a very, very, very wide one.
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Post by Shireblogger on Jun 27, 2010 22:42:33 GMT 1
Wigan's Chosen FewThing is, the chap who spotted the record - an A&R chief at Pye who had such a love for northern soul that he had edited a fanzine on the scene and ran the Disco Demand subsidiary for Pye which released the single - was a Mr Dave McAleer... Well I never. Dave McAleer is a bit of a hero of mine. Do the ...s mean anything ? Is he going to appear again ? Does Mr McAleer lurk at Haven under a pseudonym I don't know ?
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