The Rah Band

In 1977, the UK charts welcomed a really weird dance cut into their top 10: The Crunch, by the Rah Band. When the single's success propelled the "band" into the pop TV circuit, they were forced to improvise their appearance.

Perhaps the masks were employed because "Rah" simply stands for Richard Anthony Hewsen and there was no band at all. Just one very talented veteran session composer who knew his way around a stack of vintage synths well enough to pull off a album's worth of material by himself.

Hewsen had made his first big musical mark in an ignominious fashion: he arranged the strings that broke up The Beatles. Phil Specter tapped him for those legendary Long and Winding Road overdub sessions and one can imagine him motioning towards the strings with an expensive handgun held to his head.

The Rah Band went on to produce a few more dance hits in the decade to follow, but none with such brilliant timbral wrongness as The Crunch. In a stroke of sonic self-flagellation it says, "I'm sorry for what I did."

Comments

[jeff]

bring out the gimp.

[Jude]

that could've easily gone on for days without complaint.

[Andy]

You do realise that they ain't miming -its a 'live' performance. The record was faster.

[fatty jubbo]

wow. must find this. absurd...timbral wrongness...yes!

[andy (snall caps)]

Anyone looking for more of that "timbral wrongness" would do very well to check out the Stavely Makepeace CD, which this sounds exactly like. It's pretty cool, and a little weirder...

[Stephen]

Actually almost all of the Top of the Pops performances were mimed, but in order to conform to Musician's Union rules tracks had to be re-recorded beforehand, I think in the BBC's music studios.

I remember there was one fuss about a band who switched the tapes before broadcast for their actual single, rather than the re-recorded one...