Before tonight I had never heard what Zaine Griff sounded like, and on a whim I did a search, and turned up this little encapsulation of the 80s. The irony is that Zaine Griff will always remind me of the 70s

When I was at school my friend Barry (his name wasn’t Barry. Thats just what we called him) used to rave about Zaine Griff to the point that it became a running joke. None of us had ever heard the music, in fact we assumed it was a band name not a person’s name, but the name was all over the NME’s live listings pages every week – even more than Frank Xerox and the Copycats. I got the impression that Zaine Griff played about 500 gigs a year.

But despite the fact that it was a household name in our school, I managed to do another 30 years before knowing what the music was like. I don’t know if what he was playing in 1977 was anything like this early 80s track. Probably not. But I now feel that my curiosity has been satisfied.

As for a verdict… I reckon I would have liked this if I had heard it at the time. It is similar to a lot of stuff I did like then – Bowie, Ultravox and even the Thompson Twins who I did enjoy despite the ridiculousness of it all. Unfortunately I didn’t hear it at the time so its just another bit of archetypal 80s for me where the clothes and hairstyles are as interesting as the music. Maybe thats my loss, but I can’t help it.

No doubt Zaine Griff has a small legion of dedicated fans who I have now mortally offended, but who knows: if not for the vagaries of fate I could have easily been one of them instead of being part of Spizz’s Barmy Army!

Talking of which…