It’s the late seventies. Punk has been tearing a satisfying swathe through the likes of Yes, ELP and, god help us, The Sweet. So naturally, you think, what we need is some straight-down-the-line Brit r’n’b.

Enter Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves, going straight for the jugular with standards like Crosscut Saw and Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil. The band was the pipe dream turned real of music writer Charles Shaar Murray, then burning it up at the New Musical Express.

Sounding like the mutant spawn of Wayne Kramer and Wanda Jackson, the band was a shoo-in for the thriving pub rock scene in its London home base. As Julien Temple’s film Oil City Confidential explains, it was a scene Dr Feelgood took on as outsiders and stormed. This band, with its feel for the same brand of gas guzzling US blues, could follow.

But with connections to rock royalty you can do more than pub rock. Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves ended up gigging with their heroes. Supporting The Damned, The Clash and the Boomtown Rats gained them a following. And when they went into the studio to make their Blue Wave EP (tragically not currently available on iTunes but easily found elsewhere on the net) the backing vocals were supplied by Phil Lynott and Bob Geldof. It being a time when everybody needed an alias, they are credited as The Dublinaires. One of the tracks, Can’t Stop the Boy, showed Furnace and the gang could pen some very respectable numbers themselves.

Days after the recording, bassist Kevin Allen saw them playing a gig at Battersea Arts Centre. He was in The Stukas but they were coming over all pop and eventually split. Kevin’s true home turned up that night: he joined the Heatwaves there and then.

‘We just got on really well,’ he says. ‘A week later we were doing gigs and then we went on tour with Wilko Johnson.’ More tours followed, with Dave Edmunds’ Rockpile and The Pirates. In fact, the next two years turned into constant touring – and Kevin has no complaints. ‘It was a really good time.’

The band’s next recording, South of the River, was set for release and a visit to New York’s premier club Max’s Kansas City was booked. Then disaster: in true rock’n’roll fashion the band was sued over their use of the name Heatwaves. Legal wrangling cost them their publicity materials and prevented them gigging using the name. So the fire was doused from Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves. And that’s about it, for the next 30 years.

Until 2010 in Scarborough – and Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves are back for just a single gig. Why? Because Kevin has been a well known photojournalist here for quite a few years now. And as he so rightly points out, ‘It’s well away from London.’ The band are going to record their Scarborough outing, and who knows what might happen after that. He explains: ‘If we can spend the weekend together without killing each other we’ll do the logistics and see about recording new stuff. We’re all up for it.’