Thunderclap Newman: Something In the Air

Working in a press office, you have to keep abreast of the news. So we were talking about the man who was hospitalised with thunderclap headaches after eating the world's hottest chilli.

Which naturally put me in mind of this record.

Wikipedia explains:

Thunderclap Newman was a British rock band that Pete Townshend of the Who and Kit Lambert formed in 1969 in a bid to showcase the talents of John "Speedy" Keen, Jimmy McCulloch, and Andy "Thunderclap" Newman.

Townshend played bass on Something in the Air, though he was not there to mime on this television appearance.

Jimmy McCulloch was only 15 or 16 when this record was made. He died young, but you can see him playing some years later on one of my favourite music videos: Roger Daltrey's version of Say It Ain't So Joe.

Thunderclap Newman himself was the group's pianist. Which means that this is another of those bands - Brinsley Schwarz, the J. Geils Band and arguably Manfred Mann and the Spencer Davis Group too - that are named after a member who is not the most prominent.

Something in the Air still appears regularly on film and television soundtracks when the makers want to summon up the spirit of late Sixties radicalism.

You can see why.