Gig 058 Wreckless Eric / The Tourists


Wreckless Eric / The Tourists
Oxford College of Further Education
8 April 1978


Since I’d last seen him Wreckless Eric had become moderately well-known, acquired a proper group and released an album. He was still a scruffy little guy with a nasal estuarine voice, scrubbing away on the same Woolworths Top Twenty guitar I’d seen him play last time round. At one point he broke a string and swopped the the cheapo guitar for a rather beautiful red Rickenbacker, which I would have thought was perverse if there hadn’t been a whiff of contrivance about it.


Opening act were The Tourists, a competent and unobjectionable power pop act, whose singer looked like a new-wave Julie Andrews. A little later she and one of the guitarists would make the smart move of ditching the group and go on to massive success as Eurhythmics, but no one could have imagined this at the time.


To be honest I spent most of the evening trying to cop off with someone so I don’t remember much more than this.

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