THE GIG

I am now making music in various projects.  As a solo artist (and duo with pianist / guitarist Ant McBride) I ply my trade as a singer / songwriter or covers act depending on the demands of the promoter - more usually a mixture of both.  Here I go under the guise of QJB.  I am constantly trying to form a stable band to deliver the same material and have had various drummers and other musicians.  For that I am now going under the name of John Burton and the Burdens.  I also play occasional one-off shows with a bunch of old friends including Michael, Adrian, Nick Moore and Stuart Chalmers.  These are usually called No Prima Donnas.  Additionally there is the Songs of Katrina project which collects songs and covers about natural disasters.  There's an album of the same name inspired by the terrible hurricane in 2005 which hit New Orleans.  Why so many names?  Well ... a bit of history and backgtround may help explain.

The Burton family hailed from the Norfolk hamlets of Hackford and Whitwell where they had been farm labourers and intensively in-breeding since at least the early 1600’s. A victim of upward mobility and aspiring middle-classdom ‘Q’ was christened Quentin Francis St.Clair-Burton (he got off lightly compared to some brothers) and was thus destined for life to being assumed as ‘posh’, royalty, public school, university graduate, homosexual and a rugby union player (helped by the ‘labourer’s build’). (Not that there’s anything wrong with being any of those things. Apart from the royalty of course. And the public school bit. And the rugby playing.)

Most generations contained someone called John Burton and this tradition was echoed when first meeting fellow Even In Hollander and generally bonkers person Justine he was re-christened John on the grounds ‘I couldn’t possibly call you Quentin, it’s too stupid, I’ll call you John’). His parents aspirations to have names that couldn’t be shortened had already bitten the dust by then and he was mostly known as ‘Q’ but in becoming John also he was following a long line of family name changes, where Arthur had become Bill, Bill had become Rufus and Peggy Doreen had become Susan. 

Musically inspired to take up bass at the age of 15 on the grounds that the recorder and violin weren’t cool enough and the piano and guitar were too difficult ‘Q’ messed about in various school bands until leaving school to pursue a musical career much to the disgust of his father and headmaster and much to the relief of some of his classmates and teachers. His outstanding mediocrity and lack of drive meant that he spent much of the next 10 years or so rehearsing, writing, and gigging around the South East with a notable lack of success. High spots were few and far between. Brief membership of the art-school-punk combo Happy Xmas Nicola (who once had their single ‘Set A Table/Great Party’ played on Simon Bates, presumably by mistake) meant a support slot at the Marquee to Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit (top man that Nik – let us share his beer - Q) and a bizarre support slot at the Greyhound to a naked man wrapped in cling-film (the names of man and band thankfully escape him after extensive treatment, though we think the man might have been called Simon—spooky Simon connections eh?).

Most enduring were the band bafflingly (to most) known as Even In Holland (the name actually came from a Marks and Spencer book on houseplants – though there is still some dispute to this day about this but thankfully also a complete lack of interest in the subject amongst the wider populous to make it matter). During the mid-80’s they touted their spiky-pop tunes about the pubs and clubs of London town and surrounds, whenever they could be bothered or persuade someone to let them play, to moderate indifference apart from a small band of supporting stalwarts and people who would later benefit under the Tories ‘Care In the Community’ scheme. (Spot the misnomers in that sentence – clue: care, tories and benefit). Finally frustrated the lack of a regular drummer and in a wave of boredom they called it a day in 1990 when Q went west. They left behind some pleasant memories, a handful of songs and a bunch of demos and recordings which today are sought after by absolutely nobody.

It was great fun though and some of the songs may yet see the light of day in other guises. The opportunity to play at long-gone venues such as the Clarendon, Greyhound, Moonlight Club, Rock Garden and Marquee would lurk as a Q memory and rise up to bite an unsuspecting world 13 years on when he and Mike would get together to spawn No Prima Donnas. The rest, as they say, is yet to come, and probably won’t matter too much when it does.