Join us to celebrate 100 episodes of Music Maps with the mighty Kevin Rowland to discuss hew recent memory Bless Me Father & the story of Dexys Midnight Runners. 

We start with Kevin’s early years in Wolverhampton, the families relocation to the London suburbs & how he ended up attending the 1966 World Cup Final & briefly meeting Cassius Clay. 

Kevin’s tells us about his early years as a skinhead, his early musical influences including Bob Dylan & Bryan Ferry, his brief career in hairdressing & the beginnings of his first band Lucy & The Lovers. 

The band morphed into punk band The Killjoys with future bandmate & collaborator Kevin Archer. 

Kevin develops a very specific idea for a band right down to the clothes, the dancing & the unique brass sound. 

We hear how Kevin missed Joy Division while having a haircut, how close Dexys ever came to signing to Two Tone & their appearance on the famous Two Tone tour.

Geno reaches number 1 & Dexys become much better known with their debut album Searching For the Young Soul Rebels (we also hear what actually happened with the demo tapes for the album). 

However just as success arrives Kevin veers in a different direction & develops a new version of Dexys with multiple new members & a different sound. This incarnation go on to score huge hits with Come On Eileen & Jackie Wilson Said both featuring on the Too-Rye-Ay album. 

It takes anything from 5 to 40 hours to prepare each episode of Music Maps - if you’d like to make a contribution to help us cover the costs & time of producing these episodes for you, you can do so at this link: ko-fi.com/musicmaps

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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

Music by Andy Maxwell

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