Saturday, July 30, 2011

Neil O'Connor - Musical History

Neil as he is today
Neil O'Connor (Hazel O'Connor's brother) was at the City of Coventry Boarding School for a short while in 1964.

Neil at Cleobury 1964
Neil became a musician, influencing his sister, in the early 70's. Trev Teasdel recalls - "In 1974 we ran the Hobo Workshop at the Holyhead Youth Centre in Coventry ( where Charley Anderson (later of Two Tone band The Selecter) and many of the Two Tone musicians had their beginning down in the cellar. We gave Neil's new band Midnight Circus their first gigs. The played mostly their own material in a rock style. By 1979 Midnight Circus had become The Flys and adopted a punk attitude. I saw Neil at a gig in Warwick University and he told us they had just recorded a single Molotov Cocktail and had been featured on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

The Flys were doing pretty well but eventually the band broke up by which time Neil's sister had broken through with the film Breaking Glass in 1981. Neil joined her band Megahype and toured with Hazel. he now lives in Montreal and still makes good music.



The Flys with their single Molotov Cocktail

Hazel O'Connor with Neil O'Connor's Molotov Cocktail - Neil did the backing track for it.


Neil can be seen on guitar in this video of Hazel O'Connor's Megahype

This is one of Neil's new songs -


And a version of his sister's song - Will You


If you want to down load any of Neil's songs from I Tunes - click here - about 79p a track I think.
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/neil-oconnor/id212571093

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