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The STROLLING SCONES are a 60's influenced pop/rock/psychedelic vocal band. Take 1 part early Beatles, add a shot of Kinks, Mamas & Papas, and a splash of Rolling Stones, sprinkle with a dash of Syd Barrett, sieve through Motown and the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, add a pinch of early funk a la Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown, and voila - THE STROLLING SCONES SOUND (check out "Paradise - It's Just Around The Corner"). This, their debut CD features all 5 members of the band singing intricate vocal arrangements and playing funkingruvin' rhythm and blazing guitar licks. In keeping with the 60’’s vibe, this album was recorded analog, using as much tube gear as possible. A sprinkling of instruments from the era (sitar guitar, Rickenbacker 12 string, brass & woodwind instruments, backwards guitar leads) complete the retro, yet fresh and original sound. Half of the songs are new never-before-released originals. The other half are Scones’ renditions of great, but seldom heard songs from the 1960’s. The band’s stage show is pure theater, as they play a British Invasion band. To learn more, read on. THE STORY OF THE STROLLING SCONES The year was 1969. The up and coming British Invasion band the Strolling Scones were on their first North American tour. En route to a New Year’s Eve gig on a frigid night in the Colorado Rockies the band had an accident of unknown cause and their VW micro bus careened of the road into a frozen high altitude lake. All of the band members were frozen instantly as the vehicle broke through the ice and sank to the bottom. Search and rescue attempts failed and the band was presumed dead. Early in 2004 exploratory drilling crews were dynamiting in the lake looking for underwater gas wells. They blew open an ice cave and the micro bus floated to the surface, with the band member inside in a state of suspended animation. Rushed to the Prestone Cryogenics Lab in Boulder for thawing, the miraculously preserved musicians were restored to their pre-accident state and, after a period of adjustment, resumed their American tour. A BIT ABOUT THE VARIOUS BAND MEMBERS Yardley London was born February 28, 1945 to show business parents. Mum, Misty London, was the print ad model for the famous English Lavender cologne that she named her daughter after. Dad, Nigel London, was a film director who later was a pioneer in television with the BBC. After graduating from the Royal Academy, Yardley knocked around the British Isles in and out of bands. It was pal Chelsea Morning, whom she met on the set of "Kill Me Tasty" a film her dad was directing, that introduced Yardley to T. Malcolm Oxford and got her the job in the Strolling Scones. In the Scones, Yardley has finally satisfied her ambition to play American Motown music. With recent marriage to T. Malcolm, she now feels fulfilled both personally and professionally. She hopes for a pair of little Oxfords in the near future. T. Malcolm Oxford grew up in Berkshire. With both of his staid,scholarly parents teaching at the Wellington Prep School, his academic path seemed predestined. But fate moved in when he first heard an old recording of Big Bill Broonzy. T. Malcolm became immediately obsessed with American blues and R&B and soon picked up the guitar and, to everyone’s dismay, started performing locally. After graduating, he spent some time playing around Portsmouth for tips, and then moved to the London area and placed an ad in a weekly music paper soliciting other like minded musicians to form a band. Several people answered the ad, including "Screamin" Mimi Manchester, her then husband Stewart Dewar, and Sugarbeats partner Chelsea Morning. T. Malcolm decided to name the band the Strolling Scones after the classic Blind Willie Williams song "Strolling to the Scone House Blues". When original Scones bassist Basil Bellingham left the band and Chelsea's pal Yardley London came on the scene it was love at first sight. The North American tour was as much a honeymoon for them as a show tour. Though brooding and introspective, T. Malcolm's grand vision has held the band together isince the thawing of the band as it did in the 1960s. Chelsea Morning would like to set one thing straight after nearly 40 years: "I did not name myself after the Joni Mitchell song! In fact, Joni wrote that song after she met me." Chelsea (nee Marjorie Morningside on Nov. 22, 1947) cites the Church as the source of her passion for drama and music. At the age of 10, she started singing in the girl's choir of St. Thais Lady of the Mariners, while she made her acting debut at age 4 as a lamb in the Christmas pageant. Chelsea's life changed forever when American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated on her 16th birthday. She dropped out of school, changed her name and ran away to London to pursue an acting career - and T. Malcolm Oxford, whom she met in a Portsmouth pub. She met "Screamin" Mimi Manchester during an audition for a Twining's tea commercial. Neither one got the gig, but they had a great time improvising harmonies to Motown and Beatles songs in the hallway. After forming the Sugarbeats with Manchester, the two started touring with Malcolm's band, the Strolling Scones. She bore Malcolm's child (whom she named George Harrison Oxford in honor of her favorite Beatle) in 1966. G. Harrison Harper is the love child of Chelsea Morning and T. Malcolm Oxford. Only 3 years old at the time of the Scones' ill-fated North American tour, little Harrison was left behind in England under the care of Chelsea's sister, Harriet Harper, who formally adopted the boy after the band was lost. In 1970, the Harper family moved to New Zealand, where Harrison grew up. Although the Harpers were wonderful people, they were somewhat staid, so Harrison left home at the age of 16 when his genetics began to stir and he knew he had to play blues music or die. He hopped from island to island on freighters and fishing boats to be wherever the blues was being played. It was in Christchurch that he saw the magazine cover that broke the news that the Strolling Scones had been found alive. Harper caught the first plane to America and rushed to Boulder, CO where he met his biological parents, joined the band, and married "Screamin" Mimi Manchester. The strange twist - Harper is chronologically older than his parents. After performing with his mum and dad for several months G. Harrison longed for something a little more cutting edge musically so he quit the group to join the 80’s revival “hair band†known as Hell Toupee, but still occasionally makes a surprise appearance with the Scones when his schedule allows. Bad boy Stewart Dewar has defined rock drumming for the past 20 minutes. After landing a dream gig with the legendary Sod That, he went on to create rhythmic magic on every stage in the free world passing out in every pub in Brixton, and spending most holidays in a quiet place with some nice folks in "lightly colored" suits. He likes old scotch, new places, and finds time every day to call his Aunt to say hello and borrow "usually just a couple of quid". Joining the Strolling Scones has been "a real pain in me neck" says Stewart with a knowing wink, and his complex yet simple, loud yet almost inaudible, steady yet "galloping around like a pissed donkey" backbeat has become the inside joke of the band and most industry types. With a degree in rocket science and with 8 languages to speak, a conversation with Stewart is always a treat, an adventure, a crap shoot with the emphasis on, well, have a listen for y'self: Q: Stewart, really honored to meet you and have a chat. How is the tour going so far? A: Bollocks! (sound of tape recorder leaving through open window of tour bus.) Q: I appreciate that. Thanks for your time. At first, after the big thaw, Stewart seemed to be doing swimmingly, but the rock & roll life style and adjusting to the new millennium took its toll and in 2006 he went on an extended sabbatical from the band. When Mimi Manchester came into the world on August 2, 1945, she didn't need to be spanked. Dubbed "Screamin" Mimi by hospital staff in Hampstead, England, she spent her time in and out of the headmistresses' office as a child and in and out of correctional facilities as a teen. At the age of 16, Mimi felt the urge to go out and conquer the world while she still knew everything. At 17, she auditioned for and was hired by Sod That as a backup singer. 2 months later she married the band's "bad boy" drummer, Stewart Dewar. This tempestuous relationship miraculously lasted nearly 2 years, until the couple left Sod That to join the Strolling Scones. Almost immediately she divorced Dewar to marry the enigmatic T. Malcolm Oxford. Mimi and Malcolm's divorce came shortly before the birth of his son, G. Harrison, to the incandescent Chelsea Morning, Mimi's sister-Sugarbeat. At the time of this writing, Mimi and her recent ex-husband, G. Harrison Harper, (whom she married in 2004 when he came to the Prestone Cryogenics Lab in Boulder to re-connect with his long lost parents) were working on a reconciliation when Oedipus Johnson came on the scene. Oedipus “Shine Top†Johnson was born November 2, 1961 in Hampstead, England. He was raised by his father, never knowing his mother. From an early age, he had a passion for 2 things - playing the drums and hot air balloons. In 2001, Shine Top took his father for a balloon ride to celebrate his 70th birthday. The trip came to a tragic end when the balloon struck an electrical line and father was electrocuted. Severely traumatized by the accident, Shine Top went to his drumming studio, where he played the drums 24 hours a day for a week before he was taken to an asylum in the countryside by the local authorities. Some friend sprung him from the booby hatch and took him to Heathrow, where he boarded a plane to America. The next few years, Shine Top found solace playing in blues bands in New Orleans. He joined the Strolling Scones early in 2006 when he jumped up on stage during a concert and took over for Scone’s drummer Stewart Dewar who had fallen backward off of his drum stool and was whisked off to rehab. Shortly after joining the Scones, Johnson married Mimi Manchester, but the 2 were quietly divorced a week later when Manchester discovered that Johnson’s late father was Cyril Johnson, her reform school Latin teacher, with whom she’d had a brief affair when she was 16. Problems in settling his late father’s business affairs have demanded that Oedipus return to England periodically. Although he still considers himself a member of the band and played all the drums tracks on the bands latest CD, he is only able to make sporadic live appearances. Slide Clubblefield slid in to fill the vacant drum throne left when Shine Top Johnson left to attend to family business affairs in England. Slide, the only yank in the band, was born Arthur P. Clubblefield in the mid ‘60’s and raised in Detroit. While still a child he earned the nickname “Slide†due to his imitation of the slick dance moves he saw James Brown doing during his performances. He was exposed to the Detroit music scene from his earliest years, when his attractive young mother took on the job of night manager at the Soup Kitchen, a late night hangout for musicians where they could eat, drink, and jam. When Motown Records moved their operations to L.A., it was none other than the suddenly-underemployed Pistol Allen, one of the legendary Funk Brothers, who began to teach young Slide to play the drums. Slide started professional musicianship early; his mother had to accompany him to his first paying gig at age 12! In following years, Slide became a session and performing musician, having a yo-yo career playing R&B, jazz, musical shows, and whatever paid. In 2006, he found himself auditioning for the band “Hell Toupeeâ€, where he met G. Harrison Harper, the renowned heavy-metal harmonica player (only recently divorced from Mimi Manchester). Harper mentioned that his parents' band, the Strolling Scones, were needing a new skins man. The rest is soon to be history, and Yardley, Malcolm, Mimi and Chelsea feel completely chuffed at the idea of playing with a musician from Motor City. Check out the artist's website: http://strollingscones.com Track List: 1. Can't Get Away 2. Agony 3. When The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game 4. She May Call You Up Tonight 5. Out Of Her Mind 6. Picture Book 7. Carla 8. Another Day In The Park 9. 8:05 10. Long Way From Heaven 11. Lonelyphobia 12. Road To St. Stephens 13. I Tried 14. A House Is Not A Motel 15. Paradise (It's Just Around The Corner) 16. You Don't Realize Other Genres:
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