Chocolate, Dates and Gazpacho

The Dear Boys – the transatlantic musical project helmed by myself and Tony Page - release a new single today. It’s called “Chocolate,” it’s a suitably summery power pop song all of two-and-a-half minutes long, and it has an appropriately sunny video to go with it also. Have a listen as you have a look. (The video is also on YouTube and Vimeo.)

Thinking about it now, it’s almost 45 years to the month since I invited TP, who I’d come to know from the West Norwood/Crystal Palace area, to join the band I had put together at school, Apocalypse: I needed someone to sing my songs as my voice wasn’t good enough (nor was being lead vocals my real ambition). Given that Apocalypse already had another songwriter/leader in the group, Jeff Carrigan, Tony P’s role was somewhat supportive. Front man yes, but band leader/songwriter, no. (It’s all in the new memoir.)

The Dear Boys, on the other hand, is a proper partnership. Each of us Tonys comes up with songs, and depending where they are at, the member on the opposite side of the Atlantic adds to them accordingly. Twice now, I’ve sent Tony instrumentals that I couldn’t think of a suitable subject matter for, and found completed lyrics waiting for me – good lyrics - in my Inbox in the morning.

But equally, sometimes one of us has their song fully in hand. That was pretty much the case with “Chocolate,” which Tony Page wrote earlier this spring for his wife of 33 years’ standing, Sarah, and which he had a clear vision for. Though I added a slight chord change, it’s very much his song. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s his best song. Ever. It’s pure pop, it comes from the heart, and it is an earworm. I love it. (Listen below on Bandcamp; you can also access all the streaming platform options from here.)

Recording, producing and releasing “Chocolate” has been very much a family affair. For backing tracks, in the month of May I went into The Building studio in Marlboro, New York, where I laid down guitar and bass with my younger son Noel playing drums. (We also laid down tracks for two other songs which will be included on the forthcoming Dear Boys album.) The engineer was a former Rock Academy student still in his teens, Ronan Roche, the same kid who, a couple of years earlier, had inadvertently given me the title for the first Dear Boys single of 2026, “I Hope You Know How Fucking Cool You Are.” Ronan did a great job, delivering raw tracks as clean as any we’ve gotten.

A rough mix was assembled, and sent by magic bytes some 3000 miles across the Atlantic, where Tony Page went into his preferred local studio, Graffite in Sidley, East Sussex to record his vocals over the top of it. The files returned swiftly by WeTransfer, then back in New York Noel and I folded in Page’s best performances and harmonies, and I added some bells (literally) and whistles on keys and guitar. One of those whistles was a tremolo string part that was immediately mistaken for a musically appropriate mariachi band by both Pagey and my Hudson Palace partner Paula. Regardless of what they are, they appear to fit the song! Noel recorded acoustic guitar – his forte - in two perfect takes and the files were handed off to Danny Blume here in the Woodstock area to mix. That mix was nailed in three passes. It was a fun process all round, the way it should be whether you’re making music in your sixties – like Tony, Danny and I - or in your teens (or close enough), like Ronan and Noel. We trust that sense of fun comes across in this song.

We’ve learned along the way that it’s supremely handy to have a video to accompany a single, given just how many people of all ages spend time in front of a screen these days, and we’ve been fortunate that a friend of almost 50 years’ standing now, Jeni de Haart, has organically stepped into the role for our “house director.” It was especially fortuitous for “Chocolate” that another long-long-standing mutual friend, Denise Alexander, was coming back to the UK from her long-long-term home of Sydney, Australia, to celebrate her 60^th birthday in coordination with her dad marking his 90^th – and that the timing of that celebration dovetailed with my brother and I distributing our mum’s ashes, which meant I could attend.

Accordingly, the morning after the event, a summer Sunday on the Sussex Coast (Cooden Beach if you want to be particular about it), we Dear Boys connected with Denise and her Australian husband Steve, and two other long-term couples, and Jeni shot a video of us all being… us. The ease with which it came together could be summarized in the fact that Tony P and I had not planned to both wear yellow that day; we just did. I’m pretty certain everyone’s individual and collective sunny spirits come across in the finished vid.

There’s something about us Dear Boys – nostalgia perhaps? - that demands we commemorate each digital 45 with a physical release. For “Chocolate,” Pagey put together a personal CD of his own design, adding our early recording “Action” to the package and including what I believe to be a couple of (chocolate?) Easter eggs in the bargain. (I’ll know for sure when my copies arrive.) The physical releases are something of a loss leader, but they are lovely personal souvenirs.

To be honest, and it won’t come as a surprise to anyone else making music in this time and space, the whole project is a loss leader… though what it’s meant to be leading to, we couldn’t exactly tell you. There is no money in making music, not unless you’re in the top 1% or you’re lucky enough to have a song adopted/adapted for some form of sync license: TV, a movie, a game, or a product commercial if you don’t mind that compromise. We’ve sunk thousands into the Dear Boys by now and we don’t have unlimited funds. But we do look on it as a more productive mid/late-life hobby than collecting fast cars – or indeed, electric guitars – and we’d like to believe that over the course of these last four years, we’ve put out some decent music.

Certainly, the number of radio DJs and stations who have featured us on air would appear to confirm that our creative spirits have been noted and appreciated. And that, of itself, is a form of success. The lovely thing about doing this in our old age, as opposed to 45 years ago, is that we don’t have dreams of fame and fortune, of being a star.

However, if you’d like to buy a CD or pay for a download, via Bandcamp or elsewhere, far be it for us to stop you!

That debut Dear Boys album should be out in September, and it won’t just be a collection of our six singles thus far: there are seven additional fantastic songs in the can already that have yet to see release, only one of which is still waiting to be mixed. To celebrate/coincide/commemorate, and also because “why not?” Tony Page and I will be performing as The Dear Boys for the very first time on a couple of dates on my forthcoming UK book tour, the schedule of which you can see below, and the full deets of which you can read about from this recent post here.

Our live Dear Boys debuts – at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Friday September 4^th and the Sound Lounge in Sutton on Thursday September 10^th - will be relatively low-key affairs: the most you’ll get at any one moment will be two guitars and two vocals. But given that it’s now over 42 years since Apocalypse broke up, playing together again formally presents an exciting proposition – especially if we decide to play a couple of old Apocalypse songs in the process. And why wouldn’t we?

I have to apologize in advance that coming weeks will likely see a lot more self-promotion on my Substack. (I’ll make sure paid subscribers still get their money’s worth.) The new memoir POW! When UK Punk Went Pop, 1980-84 and the Dear Boys album are two of the most important items left in my creative journey, certainly two particular projects I have been determined for half a decade now should be seen through to fruition before anything happens to make that no longer possible. (The unexpected death of our friend Lee, who we should have been seeing socially in Sussex rather than attending the funeral of, makes that determination all the less hyperbolic.)

While the story of POW! is, as the type just slightly gives away, set in the UK, and mainly discusses British music of the era, it is being published out of the USA and accordingly, I also have several book events lined up on the east coast before – and one after – my September UK Book tour. The schedule for these is below, and the full deets you can read about from another recent post here. I hope to see some of you here, there or anywhere.

Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith posts twice a week, minimum, usually on Thursdays and Sundays. To receive all posts in your Inbox, please subscribe. To keep the page going, please consider a paid subscription at just $6 a month, $60 for the year (less than £5/£50 at current exchange rates.) You get access to all the archives all the time, exclusive interview transcripts, and the monthly Crossed Channels podcast I host with Dan Epstein . (New episode next week and did you hear our Ramones episode last month?)

Elsewhere in the cultural universe, not too far across the digital realm from Wordsmith, I always get a kick out of Judy Cantor-Navas’ posts. Officially, her Substack is entitled Cuba On Record, but as Judy currently lives in Barcelona, she’s as likely to write about flamenco or gazpacho. She drew on a decade-old article posted in Food Republic to pre-celebrate Spain’s victory in the World Cup Final, posting her and her husband’s favourite gazpacho recipe. (I share my memory of my own first attempt at gazpacho in the comments that follow. I have subsequently learned to make an excellent all-yellow gazpacho, not that you can truly tell as much from the photo below.)

Judy also used the opportunity of her post to link to an earlier playlist she made of FlamencoRockeros. Given that the subject of the ‘Capstone Project’ that concluded my BA degree studies last year (it was only last year?) was on the Indian Roma Influence on Flamenco, it was interesting and informative for me to hear how modern Spanish rockers have adopted what is often perceived as a purist sound into their electric sets. I link to it here in the interest of us all maintaining wide tastes in music.

Judy’s playlist is 17 songs and 67 minutes long. Shindig! editor Jon ‘Jo Jo’ Mills’ Sixty Years of Powerpop, presented exclusively by Qobuz, is 60 tracks (but of course) and just over three hours long, confirming via simple math what most of us already know: that for a powerpop single, 3:00 is the sweet spot. (I managed exactly that length on an earlier Dear Boys single, “A Word That Doesn’t Rhyme.”) It also comes with a lengthy essay on the genre, the kind of thing Qobuz offers that other streaming platforms do not. I know as much, because I’ve just been invited to write notes to accompany a forthcoming playlist from POW! As I say, there may be an inordinate amount of self-promotion in coming weeks; hopefully, it will never slip into hubris.

“In short,” writes Mills, “powerpop is both infectious and catchy, has ringing guitars a la The Byrds, and Beatles-inspired melodies that have kissed so many of the best tunes of the past 30 years.”

On that ringing note, go grab some chocolate, and enjoy our collaborative Dear Boys slice of transatlantic powerpop. Inspired by romance, created by humans, distributed in bytes. It takes the cake.

Leave a comment