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Where was the only place to go on a Sunday night? The
Imperial on An unassuming pub, the front bar was the picture of respectability but
if you should venture down the side alley to the back bar bar on a Sunday
night in the mid seventies, you would be greeted by the funk rock jazz
soul sound of Cisco. |
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Cisco were an 8 piece usually, 2 brass, keyboards, drums,
kongas, guitar, bass guitar and singer, and covered stuff like the Boxtops
The Letter, and lots of Joe Cocker stuff. Their singalong choruses were
legendary, and complete with a lot of percussion and whistles they could
last for hours! Catchy lyrics such as "Cisco have got it
together" went on forever and were inevitably translated to
"Cisco have got an umbrella!" |
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| We used to travel all round the country watching
the best bands in the world - it didn't matter whether we'd been to a
festival to see The Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin....we'd
always rush back on a Sunday straight down to the Imperial to catch Cisco! |
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Sadly their recorded material was little, although they did
make an appearance on a sampler album called Nottingham Castle Rock. They
also appeared on the local Radio rock program Extravaganza and
luckily Pedro was busy with his tape recorder putting together those
"best of" tapes that we all made in those days before CD writers
were invented (and before Cisco was just a router!). |
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| As a result we have here a Cisco track for you
to listen to. It nestles on an old Boots C90 cassette (because everyone
knows C90s were the best length - just enough music and didn't stretch
like the C120s!) between such bands as Caravan, Cockney Rebel, PFM,
Blodwyn Pig, Fairport, Be Bop Delux, Sassafras, Barclay James Harvest and
UFO. Pedro obviously had some taste as did John Holmes who presented
Extravaganza. He still does, as John was at the recent Sassafras gig at
the Boat and is presenting on Radio
Nottingham even now. |
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The full file is about 3 mb so could take a while to
download - I don't even know what the track is called but I would hazard a
guess at "Get on down the Road" or something like that! The
sample file is only 416kb so should be a lot quicker.... |
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| So click on the link below and be transported
back to Sunday night in the mid seventies when you could dance on the
tables, although you did run the risk of falling on the broken glass like
Fiona and suffering the unkindest cut of all! |
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Cisco sample mpg file - click to listen...416kb Cisco mpg file - click to listen ...3mb If anyone has any old photographs of the Imperial please send them to me...thanks to Pedro for the tape....and thanks to Penny Garnett for the original photos - she didn't go to our school but found the Imperial page on the website and emailed me the photos. |