Voiz and Pete Yates-Round

Thanks to the new Heavenly Grooves blog I've been able to listen to one of the Grapevine albums, Boanerges by the Dutch rock band Voiz.

This was produced in 1978 by Pete Yates-Round the "last" member of Parchment. It's a great album in the classic 70s rock mode - but it also contains traces of the lightness of feel and experimentation that you'd expect from Parchment. The standard review, copied on Heavenly Grooves, praises the flute playing but there's also an astonishing use of a ukelele, mandolin-style.

Pete Yates-Round was discovered by the band playing solo in Holland and it seems that Grapevine maintained strong links in both Holland and Northern Ireland. When Brian Smith left after Shamblejam, the band played as a two piece for a while until they came to Chepstow, when, apparently, the organiser demanded a three-piece. Yates-Round was drafted in and John Pac, quoted in Buzz, recalled: "The guy said it was the best he had ever heard us."

A quick Google search suggests Yates-Round has had a subsequent career either as a publisher or a solo musician - or possibly both.

Voiz seemed to have produced a second album Disaster Electronics, the following year. There is no sign of it on the second hand market but Boanerges is selling for about 200 dollars. Meanwhile that elusive Whitsuntide Easter album goes for about 400 dollars and Reynard's first album is up to $155. Also no sign of Rufaro, which we think is another Grapevine rock album, so expect a scramble when that appears.

We have a number of Grapevine albums on order but are reluctant to say more for fear of prices continuing to rise. We should stress that this site is not in the game of bidding or trading high prices for these albums. Wonder who has the masters and the rights to the catalogue.