The photo above is of Anthony playing at the iconic Hope & Anchor, Islington, London in the summer of 1979, right at the onset of the Mod Revival. It not only reminds us of how we all miss performing live, but the picture captures the era perfectly, the emerging culture of the time, the audience, and the keen enthusiasm! For guitar nerds, the Rickenbacker is a 3/4 size 1964 325 Rose Morris model and provided the opening guitar sound on Get Ready To Go, the rhythm of 'Kings Road', Its A Mod Mod World, the riff of The Face of Youth Today and was Anthony’s main guitar until he swopped to electric 12 string. We have since discovered that the guitar serial number is 1 away from John Lennon's exact same model! The guitar was changed from a vibrato bridge to a classic R shape to make the tuning more stable, and that version can be seen in the Singles Album CD booklet.
A big thank you for those who bought the last album Get Ready To Go! The record was released not only on CD, but on vinyl in Black, Translucent Green and Yellow! And on cassette as well! Both coloured vinyl editions have now sold out, but there are a few CDs, black vinyl LPs and cassettes to be had. We got some great reviews, the Shindig piece was very complimentary, and was written by Chris Twomey who also wrote the excellent XTC Biography Chalkhills & Children, so bonus points for Squire!
Of course, we expected to play many live dates this year, Ebro Club in Spain, The Brook in Southampton with From The Jam, The London Mods Mayday 2 dayer with Kenney Jones, the Liverpool IPO festival, Berlin and Hamburg, Germany, the Pump It Up London Power pop festival... and that was just April and May - all postponed or re-scheduled. The Mods Mayday concert is now further postponed from October to May next year. It would be foolish to assume any dates are safe at the moment, but they will appear on the live events page here (provided by Songkick) and as soon as we all know it is safe to return to playing live we will share the news! Similarly, recording studios have also been closed so getting together to rehearse recordings has been impossible.
While we're looking back to the early Squire years, with the photo at the top, and reflecting on the recent Get Ready To Go LP release, 2020 marks the 40th Anniversary of Hilo Records. There are some exciting events planned to celebrate this remarkable anniversary and the next newsletter will expand on the details!
Finally, we have decided to try and bring together all the news here on the website as well as spread across all the social media, and produce a more regular newsletter which you may be receiving by email for the first time. Many people missed the 2nd newsletter last September, and its sometimes hard to keep up with the variety of social media channels so although we will still be serving up snippets of news and trivia on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, et al, this web page and email will also be your one stop shop for all things Squire! We also look forward to hearing from you, here, in the various social pages and email too!
All the best & stay in touch!
Squire