Rikki & The Last Days On Earth

Rikki Sylvan – Vocals, Valac Van Der Veene – Guitar
Nik Weiss – Keyboards & Hugh Inge Innes Lillingstone – Drums

If you are going to have such a portentous sounding and long band name like Rikki & The Last Days On Earth then you are definitely setting your stall out to be different and have got to have the goods to back it up. Sadly they didn’t. Namechecked in Caroline Coon’s 1988 Punk Explosion and liked so much by Sound’s Jane Suck that she was to award 5 stars to their debut album till unfortunately, she heard it, they set neither the critic nor fans world alight.

That said there are many great stories from the great punk wars and Rikki & The Last Days On Earth certainly is different and that is what makes their story interesting. To this day (2024) there’s very little info out on the net about the band because none of the past members have come forward to be interviewed or broken cover.

Rikki (whose real name was Nicholas Condron) was a tape operator at CBS Studios in London in the late sixties and keenly interested in synths.

The Drama Band with Nick Condron

[I had]… worked in electronic music since my school days and having been involved albeit briefly with Stockhausen, Cardew, Birtwhistle et al,

He was also a graduate of the same Beckenham Arts Lab scene that David Bowie was in. Through that, he was introduced to Dick Jones and became the guitarist and synth player in the Drama Band – a kind of loose hippy collective ensemble.

Dick Jones My initial musical partner was a moody but brilliant guitarist whose speciality away from the fretboard was the creation of electronic soundtracks on state-of-the-art equipment in a suite of rooms in his mother’s luxury basement flat in Kensington. His name was Nick Condron (although his subsequent alter ego, Rikki Sylvan, will be more familiar to students of the nascent New Wave 10 years later when he flared brightly but briefly). Access to Nick’s battery of electronica was a major initial stimulus in the devising of some of the more outré drama pieces with the sonic media that Nick could produce frequently dictating the content of the writing. And his angry aptitude on his blue Strat pushed the musical direction towards the much heavier sounds that were superseding the whimsical, serpentine approaches of the post-psychedelic/folk-rock stylings. Sisyphus

Nick left the band and later in 1973, he co-wrote with French composer Nino Nardini 9 tracks on an album called Electronic Music under a band name called The Machines.

Fast forward to November 1976 and he and guitarist Valac Van Der Veene form the band obviously around himself and bring in bassist Andy Prince and keyboard player Nick Weiss via music ads. A drummer named Nigel played with them for a while.

I think we can surmise that they are influenced by punk and Bowie as Nicholas views Rikki as a Ziggy Stardust type alter ego and for the next 6 months they write and rehearse. May sees Nigel replaced by Hugh Inge Innes Lillingstone.

The band itself is slightly unusual in that it comprises members from the more affluent section of society with a couple of ex public school boys and drummer Hugh Inge-Innes Lillingston coming from a stately home just outside Tamworth that got some publicity in the local papers there. (see tab)

It’s likely one of those public schools was Oundle as the day after they first play live at The Man in the Moon in Chelsea on May 28th they play Oundle School with the price of admission being their first single on the independent Oundle RocSoc label which stands for Oundle Rock Society. It features early versions of two songs, “City of the Damned” and “Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Other early shows were at private parties, where you really needed to know the right people in order to land an invitation; indeed, you needed to know the right people even to get a copy of their first single! “City of the Damned” was recorded at the band’s TPA Studios base and pressed up not for regular release, but as the price of admission to their next show, a private gathering at the exclusive and historic Oundle Public School near Peterborough, the day after the Man in the Moon show. Shazam

The band continue playing including places like the Roxy Club in June and pick up interest from DJM Records who, like everyone else in the music industry, have become aware of punk and are looking to revamp their old school roster and become a bit more relevant again. DJM is the home of Cilla Black, Elton John and Dennis Waterman who would have a massive hit in 1979 with I Could Be So Good For You.

Suitably punky looking on the back cover of ‘City Of The Damned’

For DJM, Rikki are a little bit different though they initially market them as punk. They have also picked up a more straightforward punk band in Satan’s Rats. DJM would later pick up the reformed Slaughter & The Dogs and Skrewdriver. DJM do not have a clue how to market or look after punk bands. They are also distributed by Pye Records who are similarly rooted in past and no longer relevant and have themselves signed Cyanide and Dead Fingers Talk who will get nowhere on that label too.

DJM obviously invested though.

City Of The Damned / Victimized was re-released in November and Loaded / Street Fighting Man warning was released in January.

The band got some press including a very positive from a gushing Jane Suck Sounds which I’m not sure helped when Rikki droned on about  Aleister Crowley and that his name was deliberately chosen of magical reasons. “The name is magical…I plotted an astrological course for Rikki, from the day I invented him”

PR in the music press wasn’t wholly negative!

The album was released with Rikki producing but it but didn’t set the world alight and they kept playing. Rikki also produced labelmates Satans Rats who were less than enthusiastic about DJM’s saving of money and also the resulting weak production.

Paul Rencher (Satans Rats) “What the hell are your lyrics about anyway, Rikki?”

The bony-faced prophet of doom ignored my question, but promised to do a competent job. As he did. Of sabotage.

We got a farting drum sound, indistinct vocals and too much top in the tonal range. Sylvan was aloof throughout, silently hostile to DJM’s newest signings who posed a threat to his domination of the company’s new wave roster… Sylvan took a band that should have sounded like a young MC5 and left us sounding like Elvis on the toilet. Punk77 Interview

The 2 bands even went on tour together in a DJM punk package tour. DJM did everything on the cheap. Rikki produced the Rats for free and his album and 2 singles all used the same artwork for the same cover with slight variations!

The band started pulling together songs for a second album. Tokyo originally called In Tokyo had been demoed and acetated in March 1978 but wouldn’t appear till September and with a different mix. It showed the band moving to a more synth-driven sound and anticipating the Gary Numan/Tubeway Army/New Romantic. The single had no picture cover, and at best poor reviews, and was credited to Rikki Sylvan & The Last Days. (obviously, the magick needed some recalibration with a name change!) in September 1978.

So in the midst of recording their second album at Utopia Blue Room Studios, someone at DJM must have realised the band hadn’t made 3 digits in sales yet and pulled the plug. An acetate of a song Twilight Jack was made showing the band now sounding like an early seventies Roxy Music.

An entry on Shazam has the following

A second album, recorded at CBS Studios in London with producer John Timperley, was a magnificently overblown affair that bass player Prince described as comparable to “a jazzy, doom-laden Magazine.” But the sessions went wildly over budget and DJM canned the album and dropped the band. Shazam

Rikki went solo in July 1979, signing a 3 year contract with Pete Townsend’s Eel Pie recordings and recording a single What’s That Sound to no more success than his previous band before slipping back into obscurity. Well to be fair obscurity band-wise.  

Sylvan was also involved production-wise with Gary Numan’s very successful Replicas and The Pleasure Principle albums. He also released a solo album, The Silent Hours, and then formed a band called 3AM with Steve Wilkin (guitar) and Derek Quinton (drums), both ex-Neo.

He appears later on in an article in the early eighties talking about his self-built studio, being a synth session artists and the variety of synths he has which I think was always his first love

Bassist Andy Prince (aka Andy Prinz),  via a number of bands eventually ended up in Sham 69 in their 1987 comeback album, Volunteer.

During my musical career, I have played bass with many bands and solo artists, including Sham 69, Toyah Wilcox, Damo Suzuki, Classix Nouveaux, Rikki and the Last Days of Earth, Jimmy Edwards and the Profile and Random Hold. https://about.me/andyprince

Van Der Veene went into journalism.

 To be kind to Rikki & The Last Days On Earth. I think they can be summed up as aiming high but missing spectacularly!

It’s hard to describe the music, but what you can definitely say is that Sylvan’s overtly theatrical vocals (the vibrato is overused!) do tend to overpower everything and in some cases the banality of the lyrics just reduce songs to almost comic proportions.

Rhyming couplets like the one below for the song Aleister Crowley do not good songs make:

I’m Aleister Crowley – tolling the bell
I’m Aleister Crowley  – At the gates of hell

There’s no compilation of their stuff available and just 4 Minute Warning on Spotify which generates 36 listeners a month.


City Of The Damned / Picture Of Dorian Gray
(Oundle RocSoc 29th May 1977)

The first mega rare single and an oddity in itself. After playing their debut gig the band played the mega exclusive Oundle private school and apparently, this single was the price of admission.

Oundle RocSoc stands for Oundle Rock Society so likely that one of the boys went to the school or had a connection and they pressed up the 200 copies. Never heard these versions so can’t comment but they would be re-recorded when the boys signed to DJM. One sided and plays at 33 RPM.


City Of The Damned / Victimise (1977)

Recycling is the name of the game. Their first single is re-recorded and it’s full of bombast and some earnest singing and playing from Sylvan and the boys but fails to convince. The end of Victimise wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Bat Out Of Hell. Sorry! On the back the boys look suitably punky with spiked hair and zipped t-shirts but the music doesn’t match.


4 Minute Warning Album (1978)

Punk77 says: Produced by Sylvan and apparently released as far away as Brazil, the album is basically the singles minus Street Fighting Man plus 9 other tracks. They are all in the same vein. Sadly the production is weak and the vocals are much too high which means you get a lot of Sylvan’s baritone vibrato.

I struggle to find a single track for redemption but if I was pushed it would be Twilight Jack which sounds like early Roxy Music on speed and which possibly was mooted as a single as an acetate exists of it.

While they may have skimped on the cover, DJM gave the boys a full insider sleeve with all the lyrics on. The only trouble with this is you can see how bad the lyrics are in places.

Others of course others find the album ahead of its time etc etc like below.

Dave Thompson A year too early to ride the synth explosion for which they were most obviously intended, Rikki Sylvan and crew wreaked their revenge with an album full of scything riffs, bitter humor, dystopian violence… Goldmine

Unknown author ‘My name’s Rikki Sylvan’… announces you guessed it ‘Rikki Sylvan’, as the opening instrumental of his debut album shatters to its conclusion… ‘and these are the Last Days Of Earth.’

And we still don?t know whether he was referring to his band, which was indeed called the Last Days Of Earth, or to some unimagined apocalypse that he believed was about to befall us.

But listening through what swiftly established itself among the most powerful albums of 1977-78, it?s not hard to guess which one he thought he meant. The world was about to fall apart, and Rikki Sylvan was here to orchestrate Armageddon. Goldmine


Loaded / Street Fighting Man (1978)

This time recycling the City Of The Damned cover in blue. Maybe this was DJM’s attempt to position the boys as punk rock. Expletive on Loaded meant no airplay and the Rolling Stones’ Street Fighting Man a safe choice of cover in the musical and political zeitgeist, though arguably looking backwards rather than forwards.


Tokyo / Haven’t Got A Face (1978)

This was the way to go. Funky and has a groove, but whereas a singer like Pete Burns had an aggressively strong baritone voice or David Sylvain a highly individual vocal inflection, Sylva has a combination of the both, but his inflection is the vibrato and it’s just plain annoying and overused. This is arguably their best song and in a Simple Minds kind of dancy/alternative way. B side good as well.

1978 UK unreleased Mix Demo Acetate In Tokyo

Haven’t Got A Face – Tokyo B-Side


Tamworth Herald – 10/03/78 – The drummer was an ex Eton schoolboy from very wealthy parents who live in a stately home just outside Tamworth. The local paper did an interview which has a certain unintended comic flavour to it.


Spit and beer
While his Father relaxes to Beethoven and Chopin, surrounded by stately elegance. Hugh Inge-Innes Lillingston’s musical talents are rewarded by fans spitting in his face and throwing beer.

Lieutenant Commander George Inge-Innes LillingstonHugh has the most unlikely of backgrounds for a member of a “New Wave” group that attracts dozens of safety-pinned punk rockers to its concerts. The 21-year-old drummer of “Rikki and the Last Days of Earth” was an Eton boy who gave up his education to play in the punk band.

The family’s home is the 17th century Thorpe Hall, near Tamworth. His father, Lieutenant Commander George Inge-Innes Lillingston, is a gentleman of the Crown Estates …and deputy president of the Country Landowners Association.

Hugh is a likeable rebel and…idealist. The lyrics of the groups records take quite a swipe at the established order of society. Against bureaucracy, red tape and the continual infringement of people’s freedom,” he explained on a visit to his family’s seat – sporting tight jeans and a Last Days of Earth badge and barefoot except for Jesus sandals. He is convinced the world is heading towards chaos. “It’s such a tragic story that we have made such a mess of our technological world,” he said.

IMPALED

Copies of the group’s records – two singles and now an album – show the Earth impaled on a piece of barbed wire. And the traditions of Thorpe Hall would be impaled on Hugh’s idealism if a long-term dream of his ever materialised. He would like to see the hall and its huge estate used for a commune, with every inch of land being turned over to growing food and natural herbs.

“I’ve got enormous respect for my father as a farmer and think he’s done a brilliant job there, but if ever I were in a position to take on the estate I would open it up to more people, “ he said.

The 21-year-old drummer of “Rikki and the Last Days of Earth” was an Eton boy who gave up his education to play in the punk band.“It would be a commune for people prepared to work – and without the hangers-on and all the trappings. I wouldn’t want to start a marijuana farm or anything like that.

“May parents haven’t exactly said they dread the thought. But they are obviously sensitive about something which wouldn’t fit in with their way of life.”

Hugh, now a London maisonette dweller, can’t see their way of life lasting very long anyway. He says that’s because the Government sees land in private possession as representing power. If the spectre of a Thorpe commune doesn’t exactly appeal to father, the group’s music seems to have brought a slightly warmer response.

DELIGHTED

Rikki and the Last Days of Earth“He liked the beat – tapping his feet and slapping his thigh. But I don’t think he pretends to understand,” said the ex-public schoolboy who used to hit the drums with a pop group at Eton. Mr. Inge-Innes Lillingston senior says he’s delighted his eldest son is using his musical talent. The group’s album – Four Minute Warning – is rated by the country landowner as “interesting – as an exposition of what some young people enjoy.

“I must admit I don’t understand a lot of it – as I don’t understand a lot of modern music and modern art. None of it is my preferred music. But that doesn’t mean I have to dislike it.”

He reveals there was something of a musical split in his family when he was Hugh’s age. His parents didn’t like Victor Sylvester – but he did. Of the punk rockers of today, Mr. Inge-Innes Lillingston is less tolerant, “I have seen their photographs and am not at all impressed. But I suppose it’s a cult which comes and goes.”

Hugh himself is not too happy about the punk’s behaviour. When he first became a target for spit and beer – and had a beer container thrown at his head – he was furious.

APPROVAL

“We discovered afterwards that this was their sign of approval,” he said. “If they hadn’t been interested they would have turned their backs on us and read newspapers.

“But I still think it’s ignorant to come to a rock concert and spend your time throwing expensive beer and spitting.”

His father would be pleased with the news that the group are to progress from Four Minute Warning towards something “less raw and rough”. But they want to take the punks with them.



TalkPunk

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