As part of their "20 Years Ago" feature, BBC2's "Top of the Pops 2" show ran a clip of Quo's appearance on "Top of the Pops" from 3/11/77 when "Rockin' All Over The World" was at number 5 in the charts. The start of all manner of problems between the band members, Alan Lancaster appeared as a dummy due to him being unavailable for the show while in Australia...
Revisit the November 1997 event list
After a long and unpleasant drive in late British Autumnal weather, the sight of the Golden Martlet in the small Sussex village of Hellingly was very welcome. The band arrived with similar feelings about two hours later, their Transit van well laden with band members and kit. Nick and Kieran Rossi, Ian and Duncan were very relaxed about the gig, even playing a few games of pool with us before setting up their equipment as the back room came free following an 18th birthday party. By 9pm the pub was quite busy and a few of the young partygoers decided to hang around to hear some decent live music.
Little Egypt took stage at 9.30 to a crowd of two expectant Quo fans,
some friends and the remainder unfamiliar and largely unstirred. As hard
as it must be in these situations, Nick confidently strode forward to
kick things off and tried hard to get everyone involved, especially the
youngsters. Their tour of Germany certainly seems to have done them a
lot of good and they played very tightly indeed, reeling off familiar
songs from their debut album, "Eyes of the World", some covers and some
of their new material. After 45 minutes, the guys took a half hour break
before storming back for almost another hour, including a hard
pressed-for encore culminating in the absolutely superbly rendered "Eyes
of the World", one of Egypt's strongest and loudest tracks. The live
sound was excellent and their new material sounded quite strong,
although the best received tracks were the more familiar covers.
An excellent evening of good live music, played to an eventually enthusiastic crowd but always, at least for me, overshadowed by a sense of disappointment both that more Quo fans didn't turn out to support them and that Little Egypt have to do this kind of gig at all, a sad reflection it seems of the state of the UK music industry towards rock bands at the moment.
Set list (those marked with a * are from "Eyes of the World")
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