Café Jacques -

Café Jacques was a Scottish trio on Epic–Columbia that released the 1977–78 albums Round the Back and International, both produced by Rupert Hine.

Members: Chris Thomson (guitar, vocals), Mike Ogletree (drums, percussion, acoustic guitar, vocals), Peter Veitch (keyboards, accordion)

Background

Café Jacques formed as a septet in 1973 when guitarist–singer Chris Thomson, an accounting student at Edinburgh University, teamed with keyboardist–singer Peter Veitch, a design major at Edinburgh Art College. Chris’s pianist father once played in a band with Peter’s guitarist father. They named their act after an alcoholic coffee served by a friend named Jack.

Café Jacques established a Thursday residency at the West End Club on Princess St. Gradually, they trimmed from seven to four members with drummer Mike Ogletree and a sequence of bassists.

One of their most avid supporters was Edinburgh law student Hugh “Pogey” Barry, who entered Café Jacques into the 1975 Melody Maker Rock–Folk Contest, a competition of unsigned acts held at London’s Roundhouse. (The prior winner, Druid, signed with EMI and made the 1975–76 albums Toward the Sun and Fluid Druid.)

Café Jacques performed to a voting panel that included Queen guitarist Brian May. They ultimately came in second to Deaf School, a Liverpool twelve-piece that signed with Warner Bros. (as a nine-piece) and made the 1976–78 albums 2nd Honeymoon, Don’t Stop the World, and English Boys, Working Girls.

In 1976, Café Jacques found a business champion in music entrepreneur and aspiring rock manager Bruce Findlay, the namesake of Bruce’s Record Shop, a multi-store Scottish chain. Findlay generated interest from several labels but favored CBS due to their strong global distribution (a key concern to Bruce, a longtime record retailer). A group of label representatives led by CBS A&R Dan Loggins (Kenny‘s brother) flew from London to Edinburgh, where they witnessed the band’s West End Club set and signed them after the show.

CBS first paired Café Jacques with producer David Batchelor, a soundman for the Scottish hard-rock bands Nazareth, Tear Gas, and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. After the union proved fruitless, they teamed with Rupert Hine, a veteran musical artist whose growing list of production credits included albums by Jonesy, Kevin Ayers, and Nova. His current band, Quantum Jump, plied similar soul-funk territory to Café Jacques, who admired Hines’ grand visions of sound creation, which they likened to Beatles producer George Martin.

Round the Back

Café Jacques released their debut album, Round the Back, in November 1977 on CBS. Mike Ogletree wrote the laidback opener “Meaningless” and conceived the title for “Eberehtel,” one of three spacious ballads (along with “Sands of Singapore” and “Farewell My Lovely”) by Peter Veitch.

Side B contains three Chris Thomson compositions: the chanson ballad “Crime Passionelle,” the R&B-flavored “Sandra’s a Phonie,” and the spiraling epic “Lifeline,” which demonstrates the jazz-funk and symphonic influences of the album’s two musical guests: Genesis–Brand X drummer Phil Collins and Caravan multi-instrumentalist Geoffrey Richardson.

Veitch and Thomson co-wrote the two upbeat numbers: “Dark Eyed Johnny” (a harmonized riff rocker) and “None of Your Business” (a syncopated boogie). Round the Back also features a raw rendition of Bobby Bland’s “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City.”

A1. “Meaningless” (3:54)
A2. “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” (4:02)
A3. “Sands of Singapore” (4:21)
A4. “Farewell My Lovely” (4:37)
A5. “Eberehtel” (5:45) Ogletree, who had a knack for backward pronunciation, conceived the title as “Let There Be” spoken in reverse.

B1. “Dark Eyed Johnny” (3:40)
B2. “Sandra’s a Phonie” (3:09)
B3. “None of Your Business” (3:25)
B4. “Crime Passionelle” (3:37)
B5. “Lifeline” (6:10) The mid-section contains news of whale hunting, presented by the World Wildlife Fund.

Rupert Hine produced Round the Back in sequence with the second Quantum Jump album, Barracuda, which also features sundry contributions by Richardson, who recorded two 1977 albums with Caravan, Better By Far and the long-vaulted Cool Water (released in 1994).

Round the Back sessions occurred in July/August 1977 at Trident Studios, West London, with engineer Peter Kelsey, a soundman on recent albums by Charlie (No Second Chance), City Boy (Young Men Gone West), Mallard, Spiders from Mars, Supercharge, Graham Parker & The Rumor, and Alan Hull‘s Radiator.

Collins dropped in amid a busy 1977 schedule that included the second Brand X album (Moroccan Roll) and the tour behind the late-1976 Genesis album Wind and Wuthering. In addition to “Lifeline,” he plays percussion on “Sands of Singapore,” “Eberehtel,” and “None of Your Business.”

Round the Back sports cover photography by Peter Lavery (Casino, Pat Travers, The Enid), whose use of odd-angled partial views and garter reveals also show on the 1977 Negram release First Offence by Scene Stealer. The graphic artist, Roslav Szaybo, also designed 1976/77 covers for Boxer (Absolutely), Crawler (S/T), The Clash (S/T), David Essex (Out In the Street), Moon, Mott, Sailor, and the Sutherland Brothers & Quiver (Down to Earth).

“Dark Eyed Johnny” preceded the album on September 30 as the lone single (b/w “Sandra’s a Phonie”). Café Jacques performed the song on the December 6 broadcast of the BBC music show The Old Grey Whistle Test.

“Meaningless” appears on Sounds Like a Good Album to Us, a 1977 CBS sampler with cuts by Crawler (“One Too Many Lovers”), Kansas (“Paradox”), Kursaal Flyers (“Original Model”), Lone Star (“The Ballad of Crafty Jack”), Mahogany Rush (“Broken Heart Blues”), Ram Jam (“Let It All Out”), Santana (“Dawn–Go Within”), Sparks (“Forever Young”), and The Vibrators (“He’s a Psycho”).

CBS portrayed Café Jacques as space-age travelers in a comic promo illustration with labelmates Elvis Costello, Judas Priest, and the Hounds.

Café Jacques promoted Round the Back on a twenty-date UK tour with Pat Travers, then promoting his late-1977 third album Putting It Straight. After three additional dates with Southside Johnny & The Asbury Dukes, they gathered material for a followup album.

International

Café Jacques released their second album, International, in late 1978 on CBS. It features nine group-composed originals and a re-written “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a 1930s showtune set to new music.

International continues the mix of soul, symphonic, and West Coast styles with forays into romantic Rea-esque balladry (“Station of Dreams”), jagged 801-style quirkiness (“Knife Edge”), dark Metro-like spaciousness (“Man in the Meadow”), laidback Little Feat-flavored syncopation (“How Easy”), and spiky Rats-ian velocity (“This Way Up”), each rendered with signature harmonies, sensitive interplay, and the lavish, nuanced production of Rupert Hine.

Keyboardist Peter Veitch plays accordion on International, which features guitarist Chris Thomson on lead vocals throughout apart from “Man in the Meadow,” sung by drummer Mike Ogletree, who plays acoustic guitar on “How Easy.”

Caravan’s Geoffrey Richardson returns on multiple reeds (clarinet, flute) and string instruments (12-string, mandolin, viola, fretless bass). Additional guests include Quantum Jump bassist John G. Perry (“wal bass”) and Phil Collins, who makes unspecified percussive contributions.

A1. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” (3:08) originated as a 1933 Tin Pan Alley tune by Broadway composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin; popularized by actress/singer Constance Bennett in the 1934 pre-code musical Moulin Rouge. Café Jacques set new music to Dubin’s lyrics. The song opens with a swelling fade-in on the polyphonic Moog synthesizer.
A2. “How Easy” (3:54)
A3. “Waiting” (3:46)
A4. “Station of Dreams” (4:21)
A5. “Chanting and Raving” (5:02)

B1. “Can’t Stand Still” (2:59)
B2. “Man in the Meadow” (4:35) features backing vocals by the Little Chalfont Swamp Choir.
B3. “Knife Edge” (3:15)
B4. “This Way Up” (2:58)
B5. “The Medley” (6:12) features backing vocals by Two Shouting Doctors.

Hine produced International in sequence with 1978/79 albums by Anthony Phillips (Wise After the Event), Murray Head, and Camel, whose 1979 release I Can See Your House from Here also features Collins on guest percussion. Kelsey co-engineered International with Trident staffer Steve Short, a soundman on 1978 albums by UK (S/T), Renaissance (A Song for All Seasons), Peter Gabriel (“scratch”), and Genesis (And Then There Were Three).

International appeared in another Szaybo-designed cover with photography by Victor Albrow, who pictured Veitch in color (front) slumped over bananas and the band (back) in monochrome apart from Thomson, who sports red dots and stripes. The inner-sleeve features further monochrome group shots, including a mirror-art photo in the style of Man Ray. Albrow’s imagery also graced 1978 sleeves for fellow Scottish acts The Rezillos, The Valves, and Silly Wizard.

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” preceded International as an August 1978 single, backed with the prior album’s “None of Your Business.” In March 1979, “Knife Edge” appeared as the b-side of “International,” the album’s punkish missing title track, which replaced “The Medley” on US copies of International.

A. “International” (2:42)

After Café Jacques

Café Jacques weathered management fallout and retreated to Edinburgh for a new set of demoes, which CBS rejected amid shakeups at the corporate level.

Mike Ogletree joined Simple Minds (a subsequent Findlay client) for their 1982 release New Gold Dream and did a two-album stint in Fiction Factory.

Peter Veitch (d. 1990) appeared on albums by Marianne Faithful, Murray Head, and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Chris Thomson formed a new Café Jacques in 2010.

Discography: