SOB – Saxon Deep DISCOGRAPHY

Short introduction and formation

Source: https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk

Graham Oliver: We started in 1970 in the Doncaster area at Two Palfreys, Cantley, the Adam, Eve, Scawthorpe, Game Cock, Harworth , White Bear Rossington and many gigs at progressive night Top Rank and have great memories of our Donny (Doncaster) roots early in our career. I bought my first electric from Smedleys in town in 1966, it was a blue Rossetti Airstream 3 for £20.

Graham Oliver: The very firsthand early gigs we were the band ‘Blue Condition’ but we saw Free and renamed Sob after the album ‘Tons Of Sobs’ .

Source: Broadcast Barnsley

The previous line-up of Bitch gigged very regularly in Barnsley. The pub Changes, situated on the edge of the town centre, offered live bands at least once a week and “SOB” played the venue nine times in 1974 and eleven times during 1975. I assume that the capitalised SOB was a discrete abbreviation of the band’s name (certainly the local paper preferred to avoid giving offence by using it). The band hailed from Mexborough and were described after one Barnsley gig in July 1974 as a “good tight, noisy band” who “belted out good solid rock… great.” This was perhaps not the greatest of endorsements, but the reviewer went on to suggest that SoB could “mellow into something really good.” Whether the transformation into Saxon counts as ‘mellowing’ I’m not sure.

SOB line-up

Source Picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission
Dave Bradley, Steve Firth, Steve Dawson, Graham Oliver

Source Picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is afbeelding-43.png — Source Picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission

John Walker, drummer of SOB
Source Picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission

SOB: Line-up: Steve Dawson, Graham Oliver, Steve Firth, John Walker, John Batty (around 1975)
Source Picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission

Known concerts

Acknowledgement: John Kruse (Barnsley Broadcast) verified most of these 1973, 1974 and 1975 SOB dates with an extensive research based on copies of original newspapers in the British Library

Blue Condition (=Pre-SOB) 1970, January: Canal Tavern Swinton Yorkshire, England

First ever concert of Blue condition

Blue condition (January 1970)
Source picture: Graham Oliver with kind permission

Blue Condition (=Pre-SOB) 1970, March 2: Arts Lab, Isleworth, England

SOB: 1971 First ever recording

Graham Oliver, Steve Dawson, with a singer Steve Firth and the drummer John Walker before they join with Biff and Paul.

SOB 1973, Rare recording at the Changes in Barnsley (exact date unknown)

Venue

**Source: John Kruse with kind permission**
[Changes, in Barnsley), was a pub at the bottom of Sheffield Road as it came into the town centre and turned into the shopping street called Cheapside. The whole area no longer exists now as they built a large shopping centre and a roundabout on top of it. The above picture dated to about 1980 which shows the pub on the extreme left hand side. It may have traded under a more English pub type name, and just used ‘Changes’ as a name for the venue aspect]

Barnsley nowedays 2020, with large shopping centre and a roundabout on top of it.

SOB 1973, June 18: Top Rank, Doncaster, England UK

Source: https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/

SOB 1973, August 16: Northgate Club, Mexborough, England UK (‘Grand Concert’)

Source: https://concerts.fandom.com/wiki/Be_Bop_Deluxe

Venue

Closed around 2009. Now demolished with houses built on the site.

SOB 1973, September 7: Changes, Barnsley, England UK

SOB 1973, October 10: Changes, Barnsley, England UK

SOB 1973, November 11: Changes, Barnsley, England UK

It’s notable though that the newly constituted SoB themselves played at Changes in October and December of the same year (1973), perhaps picking up dates vacated by the defunct Wilkinson Band (Source: Broadcast Barnsley).

SOB 1973, December 12: Changes, Barnsley, England UK

1973: First ever outside Gig, Steve Dawson and Graham Oliver (Rotherham, England UK)