Oh hey, no big deal, so apparently a few blokes from Roxy Music, the Smiths, Suede, and Supergrass all teamed up to form a new supergroup called Chaz Chance And The Prophets. It’s all for a new UK television series called The Records, and well, the first offering, dubbed “She’s A Queen,” sounds like a lost ’70s-era David Bowie classic. Or at the very least, something that sounds right at home on the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack.
Chaz Chance And the Prophets showcases Gaz Coombes on vocals, Phil Manzanera on guitar, Mike Joyce on drums, and Mat Osman on bass. “She’s A Queen” is the first of a trio of songs for the TV drama The Records which, according to writer Johnny Daukes, is currently still in development, with six hour-long episodes planned. It’s described as “a psychological thriller based around themes of revenge, forgiveness and pre-destination. The events of the present day appear to have been foretold by the father of the protagonist Marc Chance, Chaz, who was a Bowie/Bolan-like figure in the ’70s.”
The drama and the songs were written Daukes (of ’90s Britpop band FIN). While they’re being mixed in San Francisco by Tom Waits engineer/mixer Karl Derfler, the long-term goal is to to record an additional seven Daukes for a soundtrack LP. It’s certainly off to a good start.
Here with this new group, which hopefully becomes a semi-permanent thing, Osman and Joyce are reunited from their early Suede days when the former Smiths drummer rehearsed and recorded some early material with the band. Joyce recently told the NME, according to a post today on Sky News: “The calibre of the players – heroes, y’know (sic) – it’d be mad not to do it. And the tracks are genuinely good. They sound Bowie-ish, but they’re not a pastiche.”
Head explode.