Home Service is a British folk rock group, formed in late 1980 from a nucleus of musicians who had been playing in Ashley Hutchings' Albion Band, and who had participated in recording 'Rise Up Like The Sun' in 1978. Their establishment was partly out of the confusion caused by line-up changes when the Albion Band were playing as the house band in Bill Bryden's National Theatre productions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including 'Lark Rise to Candleford'. Members of the group took part in an adaptation of Michael Herr's 'Dispatches' without band leader Ashley Hutchings, and in late 1980, eight members began to rehearse together in Southwark, London and had soon splintered off from the parent band. The original line-up was: John Tams (vocals, melodeon), Bill Caddick (vocals, guitar, dobro), Graeme Taylor (vocals, guitar), Michael Gregory (drums), Roger Williams (trombone, tuba), Howard Evans (trumpet), Colin Rae (trumpet) and Malcolm Bennett (bass), but the large group was somewhat unwieldy and complicated by other projects, including the fact that both Evans and Williams were also members of Brass Monkey. Rae soon left and the remaining members initially chose the name 'The First Eleven' and then switched to Home Service, which had both associations of Britishness/Englishness and of a bygone world in the defunct BBC Home Service radio station. In 1981, two tracks from what was initially intended as a demo session were released as a single, with 'Doing The Inglish', and its b-side 'Bramsley', designed to accompany the group's appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival, and their transmission on the BBC TV programme 'A Little Night Music'. Bass player Malcolm Bennett then left the band, and was replaced by Jon Davie, following which they returned to the National Theatre as a supporting band. Courtesy of geofmcm, here is the soundtrack to 'A Little Night Music', remixed into stereo, and featuring all the songs broadcast in 1981. Videos can be found on Youtube, which even contain a very rare paper tearing solo, and as this is quite a short album, there's a special bonus post coming up next.
Track listing
01 Napoleon's Grand March Etc
02 Barmaid Song
03 Auntie Vera
04 Bramsley
05 Doin' The Inglish
06 Conniston Chaconne
Thanks to geofmcm for the idea and music.
