Shropshire Star

Phil Gillam: When Paper Bubble burst onto the Shrewsbury scene

Shrewsbury’s historic Lion Hotel was the venue where I first saw the band Paper Bubble, enthusiastic local lads with acoustic guitars and great harmonies.

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Paper Bubble's superb double CD

Back then, for we young, gig-going types, shockingly bright and stupidly-patterned shirts and hideously flared trousers were the order of the day, and “real men” of course drank pints of lager and lime.

Kraftwerk, Status Quo and Barry White shared the Top 30 with The Osmonds, The Carpenters and The Wombles.

All that was 40 years ago, and in the intervening years I’ve often heard the question: “Whatever happened to Paper Bubble?”

Well, the short answer is that the group never achieved the success it deserved and its members went their separate ways and got on with their lives.

But two events this year are bringing Paper Bubble back into the public consciousness.

First, former local head teacher John Howard has used a whole bunch of Paper Bubble songs (and others by one of the band’s key songwriters, Brian Crane) in his stage musical Poppyfields. The show was premiered at Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn earlier this year and is due for a return run in September.

And secondly, a wonderful two-disc CD set has just been released – Paper Bubble: Behind The Scenery – The Complete Paper Bubble.

This is a lovingly put together compilation featuring 40 tracks. Released by RPM Records, the package comes with an information-packed 16-page booklet.

Terry Brake and Brian Crane - Shrewsbury lads who grew up as friends, living just two streets apart in Castefields - formed the nucleus of the band, later being joined by another pal, Neil Mitchell, on bass guitar.

For the uninitiated, the music here ranges from the jaunty and the sprightly to the reflective and the heartfelt, from the toe-tapping Fillin’ A Gap to the gorgeous She, a gentle and wistful love song.

Being Human Being, on the other hand, could have been (should have been) the theme tune to a Likely Lads/Liver Birds style late-sixties sit-com.

There’s charming flute-playing here and there that puts me in mind of Donovan.

It all falls somewhere between Magna Carta and Fairport Convention on the one hand, Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens on the other.

Paper Bubble’s album, Scenery, was issued in 1969. You’ll find it here in its entirety along with bonus tracks, an album called Prisoners, Victims, Strangers, Friends (1970) that sadly remained unreleased until now, plus I’m Coming Home, a 1981 album recorded by Brake and Crane.

Scenery was produced by Dave Cousins and Tony Hooper of The Strawbs. They brought in the soon-to-be-mighty Rick Wakeman on Hammond organ and piano, plus fellow Strawbs John Ford and Richard Hudson.

Sadly, the album was not well promoted and failed to make much of an impact.

As the CD sleeve notes put it: “They had tried and they had dreamed but that does not pay the bills, and so in the early 1970s, with Terry in London and Brian back in Shrewsbury, they decided to go their separate ways.

"Even so, in 1980, Brian – now a teacher of performing arts but also still following his musical instincts – invited Terry to collaborate on a single."

So, on this newly released disc, we now find we have suddenly moved on 11 years from the Scenery album and arrive at this (it has to be said: rather excellent) single release from 1980. Woman is the A side, Loving You is on the flip side. Really strong tunes, great harmonies, this could easily be The Hollies – or Marmalade. These are terrific, radio-friendly songs. After the post-psychedelic folk of Scenery, Woman and Loving You seem sharper, tighter, crisper, more poppy, as if Brian really was trying to get into the charts.

You do wonder if, given the right breaks, given a bit of luck here and there, the lads might have struck gold.

But again, it wasn’t to be.

Nevertheless, this superb double-CD set reminds us just how good they were.