Garbage Days Revisited #33: The Crybabys - "Where Have All The Good Girls Gone?" (1991)

(ANDY'S NOTE: A few days after I finished the final draft of this article, I received the terrible news that Crybabys guitarist Darrell Bath had suddenly passed away. After a lot of consideration, I decided to publish it as it was as I think/hope it, along with the forthcoming GDR on the UK Subs which covers his time with the band, comes across as a good tribute to the guy without the need to add anything apart from this intro - these articles had been scheduled in for a good few months and I desperately wish they weren't finally being published in these circumstances. As I mention below, I met Darrell a few times during my decade living in London and he was that most rare of rock stars, a guy with a really cool musical CV and a supremely good guitarist who was also one of the nicest and most down to earth people you could possibly hope to meet, always happy to have a chat about good music and life in general. Similar to Mark Keds earlier in the year, it really feels as if he's gone too soon - he was only in his early fifties - and my thoughts are with his friends and family right now. RIP Darrell, hope you're having a good pint with Charlie Watts and Johnny Thunders up there in the big pub in the sky)

"Cold outside, looks like rain, to make matters worse I missed me last train..." - The Crybabys - Where Have All The Good Girls Gone?

Ah man...I know I say this a lot on Garbage Days Revisited (and Songs From The Junkshop for that matter) but HOW did this band not become megastars? Emerging as the '80s turned into the '90s, the Crybabys should have been a shoo-in to follow their fellow Faces acolytes the Quireboys (although these guys were nearer the Marriott version than the Rod version) into the charts. Instead, they left behind one sadly underappreciated album, a whole ton of unreleased stuff and a legacy as the early '90s Britrock scene's arguably most undeservedly forgotten band.

The group were formed in the late '80s by former Boys guitarist Honest John Plain and fellow six-stringer Darrell Bath then fresh out of a spell with the UK Subs with bassist Robbie Rushton and ex-Doctor and the Medics (they of the '80s cover of Spirit In The Sky fame) drummer Vom Ritchie completing the line-up. They quickly gained a reputation as being a cracking live band with some great tunes but never made it beyond the indies meaning their one and only album Where Have All The Good Girls Gone? kind of slunk out to minimal fanfare. Soon afterwards, Darrell would join the Dogs D'Amour for their More Unchartered Heights Of Disgrace album leaving a second unreleased album in the vaults and, temporarily at least, that was it.

I'll give credit where credit's due, it was a drummer in one of my old bands who got me into the Crybabys in my mid-twenties. As I remember it (although my memory's often a bit waxed when it comes to that period in my life due to my alcohol intake) we'd bonded over a shared love of the Dogs D'Amour when I joined the band and when I mentioned that I liked the Boys as well, he mentioned that Darrell and John had had a band together and I really needed to listen to the album if I found it. As happy chance would have it, a week or so later I was looking around the excellent Discovery second hand record shop in Bradford (which I can hearteningly report unlike a lot of similar places I used to get my second hand CD's from in my mid twenties is still there and going strong and well worth a visit should you ever be in the area) and found a copy on CD for a fiver which I duly purchased. As soon as I cued it up that evening and was hit with the knockout opening one-two of the title track ("There I was thinking she'd show me a bed, to my surprise got shown the door instead" - hey, we've all been there right guys?) and the rip-roaring and excellently titled You Don't Have To Wear Boots To Be A Cowboy But You Gotta Leave Your Horse Outside, I think I knew this one was going to be a favourite going forward.

The great tunes just keep on coming through this one whether it's Plain kicking loose with a Steve Marriott style laddish rocker like This Is What We Want ("I don't want trouble, I just want fun, doin' all the things that I've never done...") or Darrell putting in something a bit more moody like She Didn't Like Rock 'n' Roll (the name of one of the first webzines I used to follow way way back - I didn't realise until hearing this one that that was where it had got its name from!) or the bluesy Remember To Forget (a distant cousin of the Quireboys' I Don't Love You Anymore - Darrell would actually fill in with them on guitar for a little bit after leaving the Dogs in the mid-'90s). Meanwhile, Go-Go Girl (with its excellent chorus of "My go-go girl has gone" is pure Mott the Hoople (which will become ironic in a paragraph or two's time) and the raucous and again brilliantly named If You Leave Me Baby, Can I Come Too? is a flat out fantastic album closer, a full throttle bar room rave-up ("So before you pack yer bags, don't forget my duty-free fags") which signs this one off perfectly. I mean, seriously, if you don't have a copy of this album then you're properly missing out, it's pure aural prozac for a bus journey home after a long day at work to make you smile again.

As I've mentioned before, unfortunately due to being stuck on a minor label, chart success very much eluded the Crybabys and when Darrell left to join the Dogs in '92 they were temporarily no more. However, after Tyla split up the Dogs Mk2 line-up in '94 and after his brief aforementioned spell with the Quireboys, Darrell, John and Vom were reunited as part of the legendary Ian Hunter's backing band for his excellent Dirty Laundry album (indeed, the Crybabys had supported Hunter and Mick Ronson on a tour in their early days) which also featured Plain's ex-Boys bandmate Casino Steel on keys and Glen Matlock (Pistols, Rich Kids, Iggy) on bass. As well as a re-recorded Where Have All The Good Girls Gone?, it also features some other cracking Plain/Bath/Steel co-writes including Darrell's slinky Never Trust A Blonde which I've heard him do as part of his live set on a few occasions.

There've been a few more Crybabys albums down the years with both Darrell and John reforming the band intermittently in between their other projects - Plain with a re-formed Boys and Bath with his solo career (his Love And Hurt and Roll Up albums are well worth a listen) and spells in the Chasers with Danny McCormack from the Wildhearts/Yo-Yo's, the Vibrators and the Peckham Cowboys). I was lucky enough to catch them a few years back at one of their rare London gigs at the Archway Tavern and it was a beautifully drunken evening with a packed crowd bellowing along just like all the best gigs should be. I was also lucky enough to meet Darrell a few times during my years living in London and can confirm he's one of rock 'n' roll's genuine nice guys as well as having arguably one of the coolest CV's in music today. I've got fond memories of seeing him and Garry Lammin (Cock Sparrer, the Little Roosters, Bermondsey Joyriders) doing a gig in Ladbroke Grove and the two of them very kindly giving me a lift back to my place in Clapton as I'd missed the last tube on a Sunday night - unfortunately as I'd only just moved in there a couple of weeks previously I was well south of hopeless in directing them to where it was for which I should probably apologise again!

Anyway, although the other Crybabys albums (1992's What Kind Of Rock 'n' Roll although it didn't get released until 2003, 1996's Daily Misery and 2002's Rock On Sessions) are all well worth a listen as well if you can track them down, Where Have All The Good Girls Gone? is the real jewel in the crown, a proper lost classic that the world missed when it really should have been listening. I mean, they deserved to be every bit as successful as the equally good and not entirely musically dissimilar Dogs D'Amour and Quireboys were. If you've got an evening in on a Friday night after a week of drudgery then I find there's no better cure than tipping yourself a pint, cueing this one up at full volume and enjoying yourself. Pure rock 'n' roll heaven.