The Portsmouth Music Scene

Dave Allen's Facebook Diary

Dave Allen April 12 • OK, this might be really simple, or it will drive you nuts, or you'll shrug your shoulders and ignore it. Whatever suits ... I mentioned to Jim Lush that he'd nominated Lather by Frank Zappa which was also the title of a Jefferson Airplane track. The thing is apparently you can't copyright titles, just lyrics, so how many more duplicate song titles might we come up with? ... I can think right now of maybe three PLUS this one: "Yield Not to Temptation" by a couple of Bobbys - (a) Bobby Bland and (b) the Valentinos (aka Bobby Womack and family). They are both on Youtube and both worth checking out if you like your soul music gospel-tinged. The important thing is they have to be DIFFERENT songs. Any more? Anyone want to play? Come on, be a train-spotter. x Dave Allen April 13 • I still have five answers up my sleeve for the question below, but this is a more serious post. I ration my engagement with the TV News every day but I'm finding some very interesting things to read about the Covid-19 Crisis. In yesterday's Observer, there was what I thought was a wonderful piece by Tobias Jones called "The Rebirth of Humanity". It offered a clear analysis of how we got here, what's happening and where we might go - by turns, alarming and optimistic, challenging and hopeful. I have a feeling you have to pay to read it online, but if you do and you don't like it, next time we meet I'll give you your money back. Here's the last bit where, having acknowledged the current heroes of the NHS and other services he writes: "Heroism for the rest of us is much subtler and quieter: it's about restraint and retreat, solitude and stillness. And our quest is perhaps even harder: to discern the common good and look for enlightenment in the darkness". Dave Allen April 14 • Some people have made splendid efforts to contribute to the collection of different songs with the same title - and that's the key, NOT cover versions or variations on a theme, but DIFFERENT songs. You can keep it going if you wish, here are the ones I've been storing up, wondering if someone else would get them. Firstly "Rolling Stone" by Muddy Waters (led to a band name you might know) and an older blues (1927) by Robert Wilkins "Love In Vain" by Robert Johnson (covered by the Stones) and secondly by Sonny Boy Williamson "Bring It On Home" by Sonny Boy Williamson and also by Sam Cooke (bit of a cheat as the second one adds "To Me". Led Zeppelin stole the first one) "My Girl" by the Temptations (cover by Otis Redding) and Madness And my favourite threesome history of rock and roll: "ROADRUNNER" by (1) Bo Diddley (2) Junior Walker & the All Stars and (3) Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers Carry on if you wish ... Dave Allen April 16 • A couple of times recently I've posted things on here which might be construed as 'political' and which one or two of my friends haven't agreed with. I guess my politics are pretty obvious, but on the whole I avoid politics on here (a) because I don't see Facebook as a site for informed political discourse which leads people to changing their minds (b) following on, it's too often simply a medium for people to shout at each other across the airwaves, while remaining resolutely fixed and (c) because I like the idea that my posts will bring some pleasure, not least in these crazy times. So, I posted something about Trump yesterday, and some people liked it, but one of my friends (not just a Facebook friend) emailed me a different response and I've taken it down. I guess it's circulating anyway. Nothing will ever persuade me that Trump is OK (although I understand why some vote for him) any more than Farage or generally any politics right of centre. But apart from environmental issues, about which I might have the odd thing to say from time-to-time, I'm making a deal with myself and anyone who reads my posts to avoid politics here. Elsewhere, face-to-face, privately by email etc. FINE. But not here. And since music is of course a big thing in my life two thoughts: Billy Bragg (Southsea Common 2018) "The BIG problem isn't capitalism and it isn't conservatism - it's cynicism", and Nick Lowe "What's so Funny about Peace, Love & Understanding?" Enjoy the day folks, keep well Dave Allen April 16 • OK, enough seriousness - ain't the sunshine lovely (if you're in southern England at least) Here's a new musical question. In this enforced living indoors are you listening to lots of music, and in particular are you playing stuff you haven't heard for ages? What is it? I was just scrolling through my ITunes Library and came across a bunch of stuff by Lonnie Johnson. I first heard him on an album of one of the folk-blues tours of Europe about 55 years ago, but I haven't played his stuff for ages. I guess he's the most 'jazzy' of all the pre-war blues guitarists with a very smooth voice - he often accompanied the early singers like Bessie Smith. I'm playing it now - great version of "He's a Jelly Roll Baker" and his special "Too Late to Cry". You? Dave Allen April 19 • Backyards and Back Doors. What can you see today? There's an old blues song (probably loads) with these lines: "Mama, mama, come and look at sis Out in the backyard and dancin' like this" Then there's Howlin Wolf's "Back Door Man" ("The men don't know ...) Out of my back door, caught in early sunlight, is this beautiful thing growing - it's called Smoke Bush, which back in the old days meant something else entirely different ... PS Just realised that if you'd seen what I tried to post last night you'd have heard us singing "Georgie Crawl" with very similar lines "Hey There, Papa, look at this. Out in the Back Yard Shaking Like This". My friend, Andrew Grays probably knows the Little Sister song by Stevie Ray Vaughan which kicks off like this Dave Allen April 20 • I have a question about identity - YOUR identity (or more accurately, self-identity, sense of self). I guess that might come from family, work, significant 'hobbies', politics, cultural groups etc. but my principal interest here is in PLACE. Like my dad, I'm Portsmouth born-and-bred so that made us both Hampshire-men, and English, and British (and UK? etc). But other people move around and sometimes people, including some of my Facebook friends, shift continents. So, my question - and later I'll tell you why I'm particularly interested right now, is this: IF I asked you to identify just ONE location which is most important to your self-identity (a) could you do that? and (b) will you share it on here? Thanks Dave Allen April 20 • You guys have been absolutely wonderful answering my question this morning, thank you - and if you wish to, please continue. I'll explain now why I asked it. It has to do with my fondness for cricket and more, my active involvement in Hampshire (at the Ageas Bowl) and various organisations of historians and statisticians. It's not all about cricket though, I am really interested in this as a broader question - and equally interested by answers suggesting that place might not be important to some of you in terms of identity. But it came through cricket because the main domestic game in this country is and essentially always has been competed for by COUNTIES. That's because in the 18th century counties were politically and economically the power base, whereas football, which grew up a century and more later, settled in post-industrial revolution towns and cities. (Ironically, these days most county cricket is played in big cities, but not Hampshire). So I find myself often suggesting to cricket people that one of the challenges for the game is that relatively few people identify significantly with counties, there isn't the same loyalty as there is to (for example) Portsmouth. I'm going to look more closely at your replies this week, but I'd suggest that so far (around 70 replies) you have confirmed that. Some people have mentioned counties but the vast majority have gone more local - around here for instance, Portsmouth, or Southsea, Eastney or Farlington marshes. Your replies are rich and fascinating and I thank you for them - and this Pompey bloke, who rarely crosses Fratton Bridge will think more and come back on it. But feel free to add further thoughts. Thank you - stay well folks. Dave Allen April 22 • The other day I mentioned that my buddy Nick Evans had been busy sorting all sorts of unlabelled CDs, DVDs etc and found that gig of ours from 25+ years ago, which was a treat for us at least. At that distance, watching yourself is intriguing because it's not necessarily how you remember things. With lots of time for listening, watching, and reading, things are perhaps more likely to jump out and trigger recollections. Yesterday my friend over many years Alec Adams (IOW boy but these days lives out west) sent me the double CD of his blues band Built for Comfort - a live recording of his farewell gig after years singing the blues. It's playing now and I'm enjoying it. The blues will always be at the core of my musical tastes and there are familiar songs including some I've sung myself over the years. But the last track on disc one triggered very specific, long forgotten memories. It's a song credited by them to Lionel Hampton, called "Riding on the L&N". I never knew about its origins with Mr Hampton, which is delightful in itself, but the song triggered a very specific memory of my mid-teens (mid 1960s) when I was listening to a lot of contemporary white blues, while getting used to the black American stuff, which is now my preference. If you knew those times, you won't be surprised that I was fond of John Mayall and with Alec's track I'm transported to a long-lost memory which, without checking (I hope it's right) goes a bit like this: Firstly, there was new Chicago-based Blues band led by harmonica/vocals man Paul Butterfield - first album on Elektra. He was a great 'harp' player (voice maybe only 'so-so') and the band (including guest guitarist Mike Bloomfield) really cooked. Then there was Mayall over here, and my recollection is that he did an EP (I loved EPs) on which appeared that track "Riding on the L&N" with guest harmonica by Paul Butterfield. OK so far (as Chris Abbott might observe) so 'train spotter' (guilty!). But what's really powerful about that memory - I guess because it was forgotten - is how it transported me almost immediately to another place, another time, when everything seemed possible and there was so much still to learn (including playing the harmonica!). So, there's my story for today - and I don't think it's mere nostalgia (itself much underrated anyway). Thank you Alec ... anyone else holed up and discovering/re-living great times from the past? Dave Allen April 25 • For today and tomorrow a story in two parts. The date of the 'tomorrow' bit is important and will be revealed then, and while it's a fairly detailed story of things that happened long ago but not so far away, I'm as interested in the coincidence that occurs as in any other part of it. I've mentioned before I love what we choose to call coincidences. It begins in the summer of 1967 when after one year in the sixth form I'd had enough of grammar school rules and teaching and left, hoping to go to art college in 12 months time but with nothing to do. I decided eventually to do a second year of 'A' levels at Highbury College, which was where I met up with some old school friends who had a band. I had previously played with one of them (Pete) in my days as a musical beginner - shifting from the Shadows to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and when they decided to expand their Hendrix/blues-inspired outfit to an eight-piece soul band called Harlem Speakeasy, I was hired as a second singer; among all the influences, our biggest role model at that time was the Alan Bown Set (important information) who played often at the Birdcage and then Brave New World (name changed to The Alan Bown). The band was very ambitious. We did pretty well around Pompey and beyond - mostly clubs and youth clubs - and got involved in a scene in Romford run by the infamous agent/manager Don Arden (Small Faces, Amen Corner, daughter Sharon Osbourne). The quick version of all that is that he promised much ("Mickie Most is interested boys") and delivered nothing, just making door money from us on Saturday nights. One morning, a few of us went to his office in Soho to confront him, and found him with a couple of 'heavies' and a message which put simply read "Fuck off". We went to a coffee bar in Denmark Street to discuss what had happened and a guy in the next booth overheard us. Here's big coincidence one: He asked about the band, we described it and mentioned Alan Bown. He revealed that he worked with them as a roadie and they had just split with their agency/management who in turn were looking for a replacement. He gave us a contact (Richard Cowley) and we approached him. He wanted us to do an audition at the Speakeasy Club with the offer of a recording deal. The night before the audition there was a serious fire at the club, so the only time he heard us was in his flat playing semi-acoustically. On that basis alone we had a recording (Polydor) and agency deal (Chrysalis) and released a single "Aretha". We were his new Alan Bown Set. The short version of what followed is that I left college (no 'A' levels, didn't go to Art College) and had instead an extraordinary adventure which was over by Christmas with no record sales, no agency and a new band. All quite remarkable and if we hadn't been in that coffee bar at that time with that story, none of it would have happened. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Dave Allen is with Roger Easey. April 26 • Part Two: As my official biographer Mo Maureen Buckingham says there was Harlem Speakeasy, then Rosemary, then Gilbey Twiss by which point I was digging and weeding flowerbeds on Southsea seafront for a living. In 1972, a week or two from my 22nd birthday I went to Milton's College of Knowledge to train to be an art teacher. I chose it because I could get out in three years rather than five through art college and PGCE - I needed a proper career and I thought that was the end of music. It wasn't. During my first year I was elected for a 12-month spell as Social Sec and also I met a fine acoustic guitarist Bob Cooper-Grundy - he looked like a cross between a mountain man and Roy Wood, and unlike me wasted few words. We got together because some of the people studying English were making recordings of Bob Dylan songs for a school project (he's a poet you see?). I remember little of that but Bob and I found a common fondness for the good old country/folk/ whatever blues and associated wonders (ragtime, string bands etc). We started playing together, mostly just at the College and became advocates for that stuff with a column in the student 'newspaper'. Neither of us had much interest in the way pop and rock were going. So far so modest, but two key things happened. Firstly, Bob was about my age and although neither of us arrived at the college with significant qualifications or academic records, we both did well and we were taken on to a fourth year to complete a degree. I loved almost every minute of my time there, including playing with Bob. The decision to say 'yes' to the fourth year was crucial because early in that year (1974/5) a bunch of publicity arrived in the Students Union about a national talent competition for student folk and rock acts. It was sponsored by Tartan brewery and the deal was you went to a college venue, played alongside three other acts, one act won and went forward with a bit of dosh and everyone got free beer. Easy decision then, but Bob and I reckoned our somewhat 'purist' approach to the blues might warrant livening up and anyway if we had a bigger band there would be more free beer for more of our mates. And so, Skys Is Cryin' was formed as a country blues/jug/skiffle ensemble with violin, harmonica, mandolin, guitars, washboard etc. And off we went as one of the folk acts to Worthing College for round one where Radio One DJ Pete Drummond decided we were the winners! OK long story so, next round Thames Poly, we won again, Semi-Final (Geordie also played headline) we won again and so we were in the FINAL at Hammersmith Odeon; four acts in the first half, followed by Steeleye Span (MC Bob Harris) and prizes on offer for best folk act and overall winners, and of course I wouldn't be telling you all this unless we won the lot which we did (£750 not to be sneezed at in 1975) The band lasted about four years and did some interesting, mostly folk gigs. It was also the first time I had played with fellow student Dennis Reeve-Baker with whom over the years I have now played in Skys, the Operation, the Mooks, the Reds, Reet Petite & Gone, Sky Divers, Scarlet Town and the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra (which includes Skys washboard man Roger Easey). But in the context of this story, the REALLY SIGNIFICANT two points are: (1) It was 45 years ago TODAY (Saturday 26 April) and (2) The Chairman of the judges on the special night was ALAN BOWN. Dave Allen is with Alf Pink. April 28 • I have a plan for a new story linked to the photo of the fine Gentlemen pictured below, but a rather urgent job flew in last night (if you don't want to know the score, look away: details for the curious in the first comment). So a thought. I keep receiving clever videos about our current predicament; some very clever. Maybe the Beatles 'Hand Washing' one - early in the proceedings - gets my vote (there's a good one of four (one) nuns and a problem called corona) but what interests me is that they are mostly parodies/re-workings of familiar songs. Although not parodies and from what I saw little humour, it was rather the same with that TV show with the Stones, Lady Ga Ga, Elton John etc - that was all a bit earnest and mostly re-cycling. Captain Tom's number one is great in one sense but it's the same thing ... So I got to thinking about how popular musicians in particular responded to similar unwanted or unexpected problems and in particular, because I would, I looked at the pre-war American stuff about illness and severe flooding across the established genres, and wondered why our more famous contemporary musicians aren't writing serious songs which document the experience (or, if they are maybe I'm not hearing it). So, because I must get on, some examples from me - and to pick up an earlier theme, two different songs with the same title, "TB Blues" by Jimmy Rodgers and Victoria Spivey, Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" and a couple of flooding classics (that fits today huh?) Bessie Smith's "Backwater Blues" and Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere". Others? (Bob must have at least one John Roberts?) Dave Allen is with Alf Pink. April 29 • There's some Bob stuff going on below although I'm never clear how many people who look on here, see stuff that others post of 'my' timeline. Anyway, referring back to the photo of those lovely gents that I posted yesterday, one of them, Alf told me that they are: Left to right Terry Bragg, Dave Boltwood*, Don Golding, Alf Pink, Steve Stevenson, Tony Dawes** and Marc Tuddenham. These guys were among the stalwarts of the early group scene in Pompey in the late 1950s and 1960s - and it's worth adding that some are still playing; indeed I did a gig guesting with Dave, Alf and Marc just last year. In the early rock & roll years in Pompey, these guys and others like the Cadillacs were in a number of groups (not bands) including Jake & the Warriors, the Renegades and a bit later Barry & the Strollers. Some of them had started on the skiffle scene (circa 1957/8) and plugged in to play rock & roll. Patrick Green in the Thunderclaps (skiffle/rockabilly) went on to the Cadillacs (rock & roll with red drape suits). Alf Pink is a Facebook friend of mine, so too Peter White and they were both playing in Pompey as rock & roll, beat groups and rhythm & blues caught on in the early 1960s. They can add their stories here, and in addition there is lots of information in the book 'Dave & Mick's Pompey Pop Pix' and on the splendid website run by my pal Mick Cooper: http://www.michaelcooper.org.uk/C/pmsindex.htm So here are some stories. Firstly David Boltwood*. Around 1960 quite a few groups played mostly instrumentals (Shadows, Ventures, Santo & Johnny etc) including the Renegades, but they began to realise that a singer/front-man helped the look and variety. One such, David, thus became the lead singer known as Danny Raven & the Renegades - they still get together from time-to-time, but after the Renegades, Don Golding, Tony Dawes, Terry Bragg and Marc Tuddenham (today playing in Tuxedo Junction) formed the Dynamos. Drummer Tony** was then replaced by Alf Pink and that quartet entered an ITV talent show 'Ready Steady Win' (1964). Do you remember/know of the legendary 'Ready, Steady, Go!'? This was the sister show, looking for the best unsigned British groups and the Dynamos entered. What follows is Alf's story of what happened, and below a photo of the Dynamos from that show. It centres on a particular track by the group: "It is the one recorded by Mickie Most and was included in the LP from 'Ready, Steady, Win!'. From that we got a recording deal with Decca and then spent months learning demos they sent us and going back to London to record them. None proved worthy of release and then out of the blue Don left the band and it all fell apart. In all modesty Marc and I were particularly pleased with our performances given that Marc wrote the song about a few days before applications for the show closed. We rushed to our agent Bob Potter’s little recording studio to make and send in our demo to 'Ready Steady Win' and got in. On the night of the show Manfred Mann was on the panel and rated us highly but Alan “Fluff” Freeman was more interested in himself and cost us the win. However, we were the only band that never won an episode to be invited on to the LP". Cheers Alf - many years ago now I wrote a book about my life in 'Pompey Pop' and called it "Almost". It applies to quite a few of us, doesn't it? On the other hand, many of us are still out there playing (well not right now of course)! Here's that track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAEeCpO-yNc Dave Allen April 30 at 2:13 PM • Many of you know that 11 months ago, while spending an almost perfect four days on the Isle of Wight (cricket? Who mentioned cricket?) I had a call from my GP about a routine blood test that revealed I had prostate cancer. Over those months I've had all kinds of procedures and treatments, culminating in 20 consecutive days of radiotherapy (Mon - Fri) which very fortunately ended in the week before Lockdown. Then a couple of weeks ago I had a 'final' blood test to check my PSA score. 11 months ago it was a worrying 7.4 - today it is "undetectable". They will keep checking me every six months from here, but the wonderful NHS has effectively cured me for now at least. I know some of you have wondered, and I've had many very kind messages and other support over the period - not least from fellow sufferers. It's been a most extraordinary and in some respects enriching experience. Put it together with what's happening now and what matters in the world becomes very clear, and friendships are at the heart of all of that, so thank you for every kindness (I might have a glass of something tonight, then applaud the NHS twice as loudly!). Dave Allen May 2 at 3:20 PM • Meanwhile ... what were the 'girls' up to? There is a stereotypical depiction of the '60s which shows girls screaming at groups like the Beatles, and musically most of the active participants were singers, although there were notable exceptions like jazz saxophonists Kathy Stobart and Barbara Thompson. The folk scene too included many women performers some of whom were also players but there were few women pop group members back then (Honey, drummer of the Honeycombs and Megan, bass guitar, the Applejacks) Around Pompey it was much the same. Audrey Jeans was a singer and all-round entertainer in the 1950s & 1960s and in that latter decade, the For-Tunes (Josie Franklin) and the Furys (Ann ???) both had 'girl' singers, fronting the 'boys' on their guitars and drums, for a while. In the photo of Frank Kelly & the Hunters (previous post) is guitarist Tony Hutchins, and pre-Hunters, he and his sister Gill both played guitars in Frank's previous backing group, the Crestas. Gill continued playing for many years in the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra. But in many respects my favourite tale from way back is of a vocal trio that began as the Liddell Sisters who grew up around Commercial Road. In the late 1950s they were a mime act, wearing appropriate costumes and miming to records, but once told that they must sing to go further they worked with a very well-known local blind pianist Bill Cole, and became in the early 1960s, something like Pompey's equivalent of the Beverley Sisters. Sadly, Anita, Pearl and Vilma never got to record, so we can only guess at their sound, but we know that they were in considerable demand across the country and abroad. They did TV shows, Summer Seasons and a number of package tours, appearing with stars like Adam Faith, Bobby Vee, Helen Shapiro, Cliff Richard, Ken Dodd, Joe Brown, Matt Monro, Lonnie Donegan, and Tommy Steele - and on the package tour with Helen Shapiro, they shared the bill with Danny Williams ("Moon River") and an up-and-coming quartet from Liverpool - at least until their new single "Please, Please Me" hit the charts, and they were replaced by Jet Harris & Tony Meehan. The Honeys retired in the mid 1960s, but in 2009 it was a delight to welcome all three to my Theatre Royal talk where they were given a terrific reception. Sadly, Anita died a couple of years ago but I know that local recognition through the Pompey Pop project meant a great deal to them. There is MUCH more about them, Audrey Jeans, and the local scene on Mick Cooper's terrific website: http://www.michaelcooper.org.uk/C/pmsindex.ht Dave Allen May 5 at 10:38 AM • I have a couple of new stories about life in Pompey back when, but I thought I'd set a broader context. Like the last two pieces this is about young people in the 1950s and early 1960s, and about music, appearances, attitudes etc. It starts with a very resonant word; 'Beat'. It's been reported that in 1948, the American writer Jack Kerouac was talking to John Cellon Holmes about the naming of different generations, and the glamour of what they called the Lost Generation. There was a suggestion that Kerouac's generation might be known as the "Found" or "Angelic" generation but Kerouac is reputed to have said "This is nothing but a Beat generation". Four years later, Holmes published an article in 'The New York Times Magazine', titled "This is the Beat Generation", then Kerouac published a fragment of what would be 'On the Road' under the name "Jazz of the Beat Generation".** OK fast forward a few years, past Ginsberg's poem "Howl" and we get from Beat to Beatniks (much to Kerouac's disapproval). But that's where my two stories will reside, in the idea of a tribe that was not rock & roll or mainstream 'pop', but had other musical tastes and stylistic preferences - and as you can see from the illustrations attached, this beatnik 'sub culture' attracted attention from the worlds of popular music, television ("It's Hancock's Half Hour") and cinema. But what will follow is how that manifested in Pompey, generally and in two specific, interesting ways. **In later years Kerouac performed some of his poetry with jazz musicians - the recordings survive (including on Youtube). Dave Allen May 6 at 11:14 AM • I've realised, having set the scene that this will be a mini-series. Since it's easy to discover Kerouac's 'Beat' objection to the later Beatniks, I'll shift to Pompey where for some years from the late 1950s there were local young people who identified themselves as Beatniks. While 'Beat' was essentially American, with part of its heart in Paris, Beatniks were more widespread including the UK, and including Portsmouth. Beatniks tended to prefer jazz, blues & folk ('authentic') music to pop, especially as it became somewhat anodyne following the brief excitement of skiffle and rock & roll; many supported CND, while generally rejecting mainstream politics and materialism, they wore dark colours (duffle coats & donkey jackets very fashionable) although livened up slightly with striped 'college' scarves - whether they were students or not. Beards, shades, black Russian cigarettes and poetry also came in handy. Like other 'tribes', they caused inevitable Moral Panics in the media. In Pompey, mid-July 1961, the local Evening News ran a series called “When Youth Drifts” which examined issues like under-age drinking and sex, drugs, the impact of working mothers and “the Beatniks and their Followers”. In a city pub, reporter James Bayes found an “authentic” beatnik who was only too ready to dismiss beatnik ‘look-a-likes’ as “part-timers”. In October 1962, the newspaper published a women’s page feature about a group of local beatniks including poet ‘Holy’ Peter, 18-year-old Dave with “multi-patched jeans” and Johnny, in a duffle coat. They disputed the label beatnik insisting they were “individualists” and criticised the fashion-conscious “pretence of art students”. They claimed to live “on the road”, sometimes sleeping under South Parade Pier, saved money on haircuts and shaving, and could not understand why Portsmouth people did not accept them, or their opposition to materialism, class divisions and race hatred. Towards the end of 1964 there was a report of two men sought for an armed hold-up on the A3. They were being linked to a young Waterlooville woman, who was described as a “runaway beatnik”. Her mother said that she had seven ‘O’ levels (GCSEs) and a decent job, but bored by “very dull” Waterlooville, had gone to live with other “beatniks” in Southsea. The photos that follow are all of local 'beatniks' or press reports about them. There is more to come ... Dave Allen May 7 at 7:19 AM • So Rod's been spotted (below) and here, courtesy of my friend Trevor Jones a tale (plus photos) that has been told before but is probably new to some of you. It centres on Rod Stewart meeting up with Pompey people, I think either/both at one of the Beaulieu Jazz Festivals and/or a CND London-Aldermaston march. From what I know, I'd guess it was 1962 (or thereabouts). The outcome was that Rod came to 'doss' in Pompey, camping on Portsdown Hill, sleeping in people's garages and generally 'hanging out', although as I suggested below, he managed to forget the whole episode in his autobiography. I believe he spent quite a bit of that summer here and these photos - provided by Trevor, Robbie and others of Trevor's pals - mostly show him on the hill, the city centre and in Southsea. Later today I'll add a second post about his early musical career, his frequent visits to play in Pompey at a variety of venues and the city's role in the formation of Steam Packet. Dave Allen May 7 at 3:27 PM • ROD 'The Mod' Stewart - Part Two: I believe Rod played first in Portsmouth in 1964 at one of our R&B Clubs, although I can't be sure (a) whether he ever came with Jimmy Powell & the Five Dimensions (Kimbells or the Oddfellows Rendezvous) or (b) first with Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men at the Rendezvous (poster photo 1). We know too that he began his solo career that year with the cover of the old blues song "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" (photo 2 - PC? Huh?). He competed with the Clapton-era Yardbirds who got more chart success, but Rod's version was close to a recent one by Muddy Waters (LP 'Folk Singer') while the Yardbirds', like the Kinks was embryonic rock. By 1965, he'd left Powell and Baldry (the latter sacked him after a bust-up at the Rendzvous, Christmas 1964, but he was reinstated). He started working with a fine R&B group from Southampton, the Soul Agents and in May 1965 he played at Clarence Pier, an apprentices' dance when he supported the popular Rendzvous R&B group, Downliners Sect (photo 3). During that evening the Birdcage at Kimbells, across Southsea Common, had brought together Gary Farr (minus T-Bones) with organist Brian Auger's Trinity. I was at Clarence Pier and remember Gary's brother Rikki and Robin Beste from the Birdcage coming across and persuading Rod to return with them and sit in. This led to a return as a formal booking a few weeks later (photo 4) and the Rod/Auger link was set. Rikki Farr & Robin Beste were also trying to sort out something with Julie Driscoll and not long afterwards she, Rod, Brian Auger and Baldry came together in the very fine Steam Packet. They played at the Eastney Birdcage, the Savoy and the Guildhall on a Rolling Stones tour. Sadly they were signed to different labels so recorded very little. Long John Baldry who had first played in Pompey as a folk-blues soloist at the Railway Hotel (photo 5) now followed Rod's lead in the dressing-up stakes, while Rod's 'mop top' of his Portsdown Hill days was now beautifully back-combed and lacquered (photo 6) - a look I have heard he acquired from Gosport Birdcage Mod, Barry Gnome. What's certain is Rod won't remember, and as far as I know after about five years of being in-and-out of Pompey, I don't think he ever returned to play with Jeff Beck, the Faces or solo (is that right?) although like Shane Warne, he did play at the Ageas Bowl, just up the road, a few years ago. Dave Allen May 8 at 6:56 AM • A change of tack just for today - back to the beatniks tomorrow (another fascinating tale). For today though, this is JP (John) BLAKE who was born in Portsmouth in November 1917. He was a very fine schoolboy cricketer and while still in his teens he made his debut for Hampshire v Sussex at Worthing. Then he went to Cambridge University and in his first match for them scored 70 & 45 not out. He continued to play for Hampshire, and in 1939, age just 21, enjoyed a full season with both sides, including winning his 'Blue', playing v Oxford University at Lord's (it's the cricketing equivalent of the Boat race). Then came the war and first-class cricket in England was suspended for six years. John joined the Royal Marines and on 3 June 1944 was killed in action on Brac Island, Croatia (Yugoslavia). His younger brother David played some cricket as an amateur for Hampshire after the war; he was also a dentist in Southsea. He died in 2015 but just a few months earlier he attended a ceremony at the Ageas Bowl where Hampshire unveiled a new Honours Board listing their players who were killed in action during the two wars - including John, one of 'ours'. RIP. PS A beautiful new photo has arrived - the 'Light Blue' Dave Allen May 9 at 12:22 PM • Back to the Young Ones then ... There is a Portsmouth follow-up to this looming (tomorrow) but this is more general about Teenagers and Tribes. I guess if you're reading this, you've been a Teenager (do you notice how teenagers today behave so much worse than we did?) but not everyone back then was in a 'Tribe' despite the Record Mirror advert (below) from 1965. In fact it's pretty certain that while we all knew members of our peer group who identified with the sub-cultures, the majority were at most 'fringe' members and probably either quite happy with mainstream fashion or pop, or not very interested in that stuff at all. I've added the covers of two very interesting books about this stuff - read them by all means but the covers tell their own tale. 'Juke Box Britain' is about the 'Yanks' and their machines arriving here during and after the war and influencing young people in the UK. It is however worth noting that Teddy Boys (and on this cover, Teddy Girls) and Mods were to a very large extent British creations; Teddy Boys for example are identified with American rock & roll and it seems they liked that stuff, but as gangs, pre-occupied with the LOOK, they pre-dated the arrival of rock & roll over here. Rockers resemble the motorbike gangs depicted by Marlon Brando and his mates in 'The Wild One' but while it was released in the USA in 1953 it didn't get a certificate here until 1967 by which time American 'rockers' were rather more Hell's Angels. It's a separate history and not one I'll pursue here having never worn a leather jacket or ridden a motorbike! It's possible to link their so-called rivals the Mods to Italian, French and Ivy League fashions, 'continental' scooters, and of course Black American/Jamaican music and its British derivatives, but from such eclecticism there was something very English about Mod, with working-class kids exercising "clean living under difficult circumstances". All that points to the popular idea that 'teenagers' were a creation of post-war Britain, tied to the increasing affluence and full employment in the 1950s and 1960s - but Jon Savage's fascinating and very thorough study suggests it started way before that, while Queen Victoria was on the throne. I guess the key point for us is the extent to which the tribes, with their fashions, musical tastes, modes of transport etc became more (media) visible and more widespread after the war - tomorrow, an example of one such self-defining group from Pompey, forever enshrined in media history. Dave Allen May 10 at 7:49 AM • OK, to be clear, from here on I'm going to be referring specifically to 'teenage' tribes. Some might have been older, and some never put that tribal loyalty aside but I'm talking about post-war young people, mostly in Britain and I'm going to suggest that the particular features of these tribes were a concern with fashion & music (in either order) followed by types of behaviour, transport, preferred intoxicants, maybe other arts etc. Three of the key features of these groups (Teddy Boys, Beatniks, Rockers, Mods, Skinheads and onwards) was a degree of greater financial independence than previous generations, access to a greater range of goods (and therefore a teenage market), the creation of 'moral panics' among parents & teachers and perhaps most significantly how those panics were represented in the media - television (which grew in influence through the 1950s), newspapers, literature and documentary and feature films. For example, if you check Youtube you can find a BBC piece about the 'problem' of Beatniks in Newquay in 1960, although some representations were more positive. Also on Youtube, the film "Momma Don’t Allow" shows ‘ordinary’ young jazz fans, leaving work to see Chris Barber’s band in the early 1950s in a north London club. When a car full of youthful ‘toffs’ arrives, they are tolerated despite their demonstrable lack of awareness of how to dance or fit socially with this sharp scene. It was ever thus. If you have to ask, then probably you don't know. A few years after that film, anticipating what was to come, Colin MacInnes published his celebrated novel "Absolute Beginners" (1959) in which the anonymous leading figure, a young stylish photographer, is in looks and attitude essentially a prototype mod. He describes his unlucky half-brother Vernon who is “one of the last of the generations that grew up before teenagers existed” and he dismisses the “full-fledged Teddy boy condition – slit eyes and cosh, and words of one syllable, and dirty finger nails and all”. On the other hand, he is impressed by “a young coloured kid called Mr Cool … (who) wears a beardlet and listens to the MJQ and speaks very low”. At a time of racial tensions in London (exacerbated by Teddy Boys) and elsewhere, our narrator gravitates towards black London culture. "When the teenage thing began to seem to me to fall into the hands of the exhibitionists and money-lenders, I cut out gradually from the kiddo water-holes and made it for the bars, and clubs and concerts where the older members of the jazz world collected". In 1959, Karel Reisz, who had also made "Momma Don’t Allow" with Tony Richardson, directed the documentary "We Are the Lambeth Boys" (extracts on Youtube), about teenagers (boys and girls) attending a south London Youth Club (and shot in the summer of 1958). The participants are all white and living mostly in the local council blocks; the majority have left school and are in employment and while, as in Absolute Beginners, there is a somewhat forbidding gang of Teddy boys (“Smithy’s Mob”), the majority of these teenagers dress in more up-to-date, and generally smart fashions and enjoy a live rock & roll group at the Saturday night dance (see photo and Youtube again). At one point, there is a very interesting session in the club where a group of the boys discuss clothes and one argues for the importance of spending perhaps 15 guineas (£15.75) to ensure you have the best and latest suits. If they were willing to spend such sums, you can be sure, there were older people happy to take their money. All of which brings us to other teenage tribes who sought to reject that materialistic outlook - including (at last) a group in Portsmouth. Dave Allen May 11 at 9:05 AM • John Boorman had some success as a film-maker over many years with Deliverance, Excalibur, Hope & Glory, Point Blank the original (Dave Clark 5) Catch Us If You Can and others. In the early 1960s he was making his way in regional BBC, first in Southampton then Bristol. He was one of the younger documentary film-makers, enjoying the new technology which allowed them to record sound & image at the same time. In "Momma Don't Allow" (see yesterday's post) everything had to be overdubbed so there's a commentary and we see Chris Barber's band playing something different from the piece we hear. Lip-sync 'on location' was difficult if not impossible. But by 1958 "We are the Lambeth Boys" (ditto) has lip sync, so we see and hear people speak, sing etc., and the film comes alive in a different way. In 1963 John Boorman got the green light to make five 30-minute documentaries about five different people in England - not representing specific groups, but indicating what the country was like then. They were screened around 10pm in late summer 1963. The subjects included an entrepreneur from Brighton, a police officer, a shop steward, a scientist and, according to the 'television heaven' website "a somewhat rebellious young schoolgirl". The "young" is somewhat superfluous - were there 'old' schoolgirls? - but this one is of real interest in Portsmouth. Her name was Marion Knight she lived in Southsea, near Fawcett Road, and she was approaching the end of a Nursery Nursing course at Portsea's John Pounds Secondary School, having stayed on past the leaving age of 15. It is a fascinating document, not just about her, but of life for a specific group of young people in Portsmouth in 1963. While few of them are still with us (including Marion) the names Lin Stone, Dave Arney, Pete Sloman (hello Natasha Modane Sloman!) and others, who appear in the film, might be familiar to some of you. For starters just this thought from John Boorman and some stills from the film (two montages & one Southsea seafront on the way to Billy Mannings Funfair) - I shall pursue this topic over one or two more posts in the next couple of days. Boorman (2003) suggested retrospectively that Marion was “rebellious” but with qualities of “leadership and grace”, and added, she and her friends “thought of themselves as beatniks, a faint echo of the Beat Generation”. Dave Allen May 12 at 8:29 AM • By the early 1960s documentary film-makers, notably in France and USA had embraced the new technology and the idea of 'cinema verité' - an attempt to present some kind of 'reality', as purely as possible. It's not an unproblematic idea, but the British films I'm looking at, were far more deliberately constructed - including "Citizen 63". Boorman uses careful editing, voice-overs and live sound, tracking shots, zooms, still frame montage and all kinds of ways to build a picture of Marion Knight and her 'tribe': "the biggest influence in her life", which the film calls 'The Crowd'. There are in a sense two parts to the portrait; Marion with her friends, and Marion at school. I'll look at the second part tomorrow and the controversies that caused, particularly around Portsmouth. The film opens with her riding pillion along Southsea seafront on the motorbike of her boyfriend Nigel while a (male) voice-over tells us she is "part of our society" whether you "admire" or "dislike" her. It also tells us she is a "leader, a rebel" and at school is "difficult, wild". It offers little invitation for the interpretation of the viewer. Marion speaks in close-up about having been adopted and tells that her parents, devout Salvationists, brought her up in the Christian faith which she has rejected, creating some unhappiness at home. We see her singing in the school assembly which cuts to her crowd singing a folk song (Pete Sloman on guitar) by the popular Ian Campbell Group together in the Youth Club, while Marion speaks about her friends, a couple of whom want to "go on the road", one who is an artist, another a poet and 'Oedipus' who has a "complex about policemen". We learn that they met mostly through membership of CND and that while they are all broadly left-wing, the Anarchists and Marxists don't always agree. Then follows a series of sequences at the school leading to Marion in her bedroom, speaking about the difficulties with her apparently tolerant parents. She brushes her hair, reads a magazine, rolls and smokes a cigarette, sorts through her LPs (including Ray Charles) and speaks dismissively of contemporary 'pop' music as 'tripe ... by the barrel-load". We see a sequence of her at school, working with the young children; there is live sound in the background but a commentary from Marion which we shall see tomorrow, caused considerable ructions. Then the crowd are decorating a church Youth Club (possibly Wesley Central, Fratton Road), and dancing there the 'Stomp' to a Trad Jazz record. Marion is shown arguing with the "Complete Tory" woman who runs the coffee bar, a clearly staged, but nonetheless live conversation: "it's the principle of the thing Marion, do you betray your country?" Towards the end come two seafront sequences: a summer afternoon on Hayling beach ("a party, a rave") swimming, stomping while some of their number play live jazz (snare drum, clarinet, banjo), and drinking beer. This cuts to a walk along Southsea seafront and into the funfair, and this time they stomp to the "loudest, latest" pop records in front of the Waltzer partly to provoke the other tribes that hang out there, who apparently prefer "twisting & bopping I think they call it". Marion and Dave Arney wear fashionable caps in the film and she speaks about the fashion for roll necks, chord jackets, denim, dark colours. The film ends with a classroom reading of Byron ("She walks in beauty like the night ...") which segues into a voice-over poem by Marion over a montage, reminding us of shots from the film. There is much more to say of course, but for tomorrow, the schooling and the controversy. Dave Allen May 13 at 8:40 AM • One aspect of the school-focused sections of "Citizen 63" is the school's clear commitment to the Arts. We see younger pupils engaged in expressive dance, pupils arriving with instruments for music lessons, and Marion and her fellow students in a poetry class. We also see Marion in a white working coat with the very young children with whom she is learning the skills of being a Nursery Nurse. They play outside in a pool, they sing together, there is some painting. Boorman apparently chose John Pounds not least on the reputation of an enlightened Headteacher (Miss Bray I think). The film's construction sometimes uses live ambient sound and sometimes - in easily manageable spaces like interviews or the classroom - live speech. But there are also quite a few occasions where Marion's interview is the voice-over to specific images, and in two places, one in particular, it caused a big problem, not least for her. In the opening interview she speaks to camera about being adopted and suggests that her 'Crowd' get on well together partly because quite a few come from similar circumstances or "broken homes". In the sequence showing her working with the young children she returns to that theme and talks about the impact of illegitimacy and broken homes on young children. Then, during the Hayling Beach sequence she speaks about "Free Love", suggesting that in 1963 young people are generally comfortable with this idea (and we might remember it's the year that a leading Conservative MP gave a lead in this attitude!). On the other hand she says she resists indulging, because of her experience with children who are disadvantaged through such activities. She suggests her classmates would feel the same. It's important to recognise that the choice of these topics and in particular the juxtaposition of those particular views with those particular images was a product of the editing in BBC Bristol. The Director and his colleagues presented Marion through speech and images in a particular way and it led to a considerable local controversy, after one of the mothers of the children, living in a 'normal' home objected to her reading of the implication that the children were disadvantaged, "difficult", with "problems" and enjoying "opportunities for play" they would lack at home. In fact, Marion speaks clearly of the most disadvantaged children coming from a previous experience in a residential school, and adds that most of the children who come to the school's nursery are from "good homes" and "more confident". The mother however, wrote to the local Evening News and it became a headline story, involving the Chairman of the local Education Committee (see images). Marion finished the course, but never worked as a Nursery Nurse. Dave Allen May 17 at 8:50 AM • I had an image to post in response to Jim's choice of Morisot by Manet but I decided it wasn't quite working because the 'vow of silence' made it difficult to figure out the link. It's also because we inhabit a culture that needs words to engage with visual art. I'm as guilty as anyone in that respect; a rather fine account of how that tendency grew and grew 40/50 years ago can be found in Tom Wolfe's 'The Painted Word'. My idea came from Jim's first choice, a COLLAGE by Schwitters. As it happens, collage, montage etc have been at the heart of most of my academic work for years, so my idea was that my image would 'dance' with Jim's (he likes dancing), or perhaps more accurately sit against it as it might in a 'classic' photomontage or film montage. I mean by that term, where one image with a meaning is joined to another with a separate meaning, but when they come together a new third meaning is produced, so that 1+1 = 3. The black & white photomontage below is an example of that. I made it years ago to use with students, showing them first the two separate images - a shouting man and a seated man - and then the two joined together, where the man on the left might be seen to be shouting at the other. Why would he be shouting? The images were simply taken from the same Sunday 'paper magazine (the seated man originally in colour) - the key point is that by joining the two a new meaning emerges. With students I would then get them to add a caption, which is how we often see images, and ask how that either shifted again or confirmed the meaning in the image. This kind of photomontage has often been political (check John Heartfield in Nazi Germany) - one very good example is a work by Peter Kennard for CND in which he inserted cruise missiles into the pond in Constable's 'Haywain' But without all these WORDS there is something different - and my idea about creating 'wordless' Facebook montages foundered by being (a) too personal and therefore (b) too obscure. Back to the drawing board (where's that knife?) Dave Allen May 17 at 11:01 AM • I had an image to post in response to Jim's choice of Morisot by Manet but I decided it wasn't quite working because the 'vow of silence' made it difficult to figure out the link. It's also because we inhabit a culture that needs words to engage with visual art. I'm as guilty as anyone in that respect; a rather fine account of how that tendency grew and grew 40/50 years ago can be found in Tom Wolfe's 'The Painted Word'. My idea came from Jim's first choice, a COLLAGE by Schwitters. As it happens, collage, montage etc have been at the heart of most of my academic work for years, so my idea was that my image would 'dance' with Jim's (he likes dancing), or perhaps more accurately sit against it as it might in a 'classic' photomontage or film montage. I mean by that term, where one image with a meaning is joined to another with a separate meaning, but when they come together a new third meaning is produced, so that 1+1 = 3. The black & white photomontage below is an example of that. I made it years ago to use with students, showing them first the two separate images - a shouting man and a seated man - and then the two joined together, where the man on the left might be seen to be shouting at the other. Why would he be shouting? The images were simply taken from the same Sunday 'paper magazine (the seated man originally in colour) - the key point is that by joining the two a new meaning emerges. With students I would then get them to add a caption, which is how we often see images, and ask how that either shifted again or confirmed the meaning in the image. This kind of photomontage has often been political (check John Heartfield in Nazi Germany) - one very good example is a work by Peter Kennard for CND in which he inserted cruise missiles into the pond in Constable's 'Haywain' But without all these WORDS there is something different - and my idea about creating 'wordless' Facebook montages foundered by being (a) too personal and therefore (b) too obscure. Back to the drawing board (where's that knife?) Dave Allen May 18 at 8:47 AM • I'm intrigued by my Facebook 'site'(? - site? page?). It reminds me of the Noticeboard in a GP's surgery where every poster or notice that comes in gets stuck in any space, or on top of the oldest one. (Then all the people there either stare into space or into their mobiles). Every now-and-then I post something on here about things like music or art but then my friends (and wife) stick other things on it too, usually about the same topics, but it means that while each post stands alone there's no thread, no coherence to it. Sometimes people post one of these 10-type 'challenges' but then they tail-off, so if you want to see the lot you have to visit their site. I've just checked the sites of the people who post on here and their's are far more coherent - mostly just their own posts or posts which are specific to a topic central to them. This site is a bit like a DADA scrapbook and that probably reflects me and my life. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to pursue topics of my choosing in a coherent way, and even when I try, my posts get 'bumped'. It's odd. What can a poor boy do, if he can't play in a rock & roll band? Dave Allen May 19 at 12:29 PM • Some thoughts about Facebook and where I'm going with it. I've been having a conversation with my sister - she and her 'boys' (big) are much cleverer with things that 'plug in'. By-and-large I'm only interested in doing stuff with media, not understanding it. In the next day-or-two I shall resume telling stories until I sense that people are bored with them. They will have some kind of 'logic' - sometimes but not always chronological. I'm realising that it is a particular way of using Facebook as a publishing medium - and incidentally, it's no good tagging me any more because there's a block on. I'll come and find you. Here (slightly edited) is what I said to my sister (the whole conversation is below): "The thing I'm not keen on is the idea that Facebook is somehow 'rule-governed' (this is how you 'use' Facebook)- within the constraints and possibilities of online publishing, I can do what I wish with it, even if that is not something anyone else does. I'm not interested in using it to post trivial snippets of information about my day because I'm not interested in that kind of writing anywhere. With my montage responses (to Jim) I tried something I've not seen before (visual responses) but it didn't work, so if I'm going to use Facebook at all, I'll go back to writing the equivalent of very short illustrated chapters, that work in a sequence. While I don't like 'Tags' that appear out of nowhere, one of the things I do like about Facebook is the conversation that emanates from Comments. I could do it on a website of course but I can't be bothered with the technical stuff websites require - anyway, when I did create a quite interesting website (Pompey Pop) Apple decided nobody wanted that software any more and it was stuffed (and it cost me). I ain't wasting time on that again". And anyway, one day we'll figure Dave Allen May 20 at 10:48 AM • OK Here goes ... We left Marion Knight (and her 'Crowd') stomping at the Waltzer in Billy Mannings Fairground, summer 1963. The group played music, danced, wrote poetry, had clear views on fashion - were generally 'creative' and maybe 'cool'. During the previous year Ken Russell made a documentary film for the BBC (Monitor) about four young artists who were also identified as "a Group". They were broadly seen then as 'Pop' artists and the film is accompanied by a soundtrack including recent 'pop' records. The first one by James Darren "Goodbye Cruel World" (about a man joining a circus) is somewhat typical of the pop hits from the time (autumn 1961), and we get another slice of Darren later with "Her Royal Majesty" - much more of that kind of stuff later. (The 'name check' song is "Got A Girl" by the Four Preps from 1960). The best known of the four artists is Peter Blake, not least in pop terms as the designer (with Jan Haworth) of the Sgt Pepper cover (and others for Paul Weller, the Who, Clapton etc) - he speaks a lot about his 'pop' music subjects. Pauline Boty who died sadly just a few years later has found somewhat belated posthumous recognition, then there is Peter Phillips, and last but not least DEREK BOSHIER from Portsmouth (St John's College) who lives and works in USA now but had a show at Jack House Gallery (High St, Portsmouth) last year. Bobby Rydell, Elvis post-Army, Ricky Nelson, the Everly Brothers and others get a name check, while that soundtrack particularly interests me. If Teddy Boys liked rock & roll, is this the soundtrack to the lives of art students early 1960s? (We get a slice of avant-garde jazz with Peter Phillips - it might be Mingus, but I'm not sure). It finishes with a party and some adept twisting (plus bunny hops from Hockney!) You can find the film (complete 40 mins) at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5h1hvq It jumps about a bit, adverts might intrude, but it is worth a look if you've never seen it. The intro by anchor Huw Wheldon is not an unconditional recommendation but revealing in its own way. Dave Allen May 22 at 11:13 AM • In Citizen 63, Marion was quite rude about the pop music of the early 60s ("tripe") although she did enjoy earlier rock & roll, while the films shows her and her Crowd on the Waltzer winding-up the regulars by doing the (jazz) Stomp to the hits that were played there. Her Crowd were in their mid-late teens in 1963, and had discovered apparently 'cooler' stuff whether (Trad) Jazz, Folk songs or maybe Ray Charles. The latter was however something of a crossover, since in the early 1960s UK charts he enjoyed a number of hit records - mostly taken from his 1962 album 'Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music ("You Don't Know Me", "Take These Chains ..." etc)', and also "Hit the Road Jack" in 1961. It's sometimes suggested that the (long) 1960s started in 1956 (Elvis, Little Richard, rock & roll riots and the Suez anti-war protests), but that otherwise they didn't start until 1963 (of which more later). The early 1960s in particular are seen as a rather bland time - a 'phoney war' - after the first blast of rock & roll & skiffle had calmed down, Teddy Boys were a bit passé, mods were a small and highly elite group, unknown outside bits of London, and the 'hip' were just a few people here and there, sharing tastes and attitudes similar to Marion's 'Crowd' (Beatniks?). We're often told that pop music 1960-1962/3 had returned to the anodyne pre rock & roll days while the world waited for the explosion that arrived when mods hit the media and the Beatles and Rolling Stones appeared. But for people like me, born in the late 1940s it's not entirely true. Firstly there were still fashions to get excited about which for us young men (even pre-teens) might at the extreme include V-neck mohair jumpers and ice-blue Wrangler jeans (from Charlotte Street's Shirt King) shoes with buckles rather than laces, and cheap imitation silk ties in bright colours from Woolworths (other offers?). Quiffs were toned down from the Teddy Boy look, crew cuts had their day in the sun (like hula-hoops) and drape suits became short/slim Italian cuts. Then there was the music. This came down partly to where you might hear it, often at home on your Dansette record player, maybe the youth club, or a coffee bar juke-box, while on the radio, pre Radio One and the Pirates, Radio Luxemburg was a good bet, and pop stuff 'popped' up occasionally on the BBC's Light Programme (Saturday Club, Pick of the Pops etc). It wasn't all crap either. In addition to Ray Charles, from 1960 to early (pre-Beatles) 1963, the charts included the Everly Brothers, Mel Tormé, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Dave Brubeck, Billy Fury, Roy Orbison, the Shadows and two of the greatest pop records of all time: the Shirelles' Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" and the Drifters "Save the Last Dance for Me". And one of the best places to hear it all was the Waltzer at Billy Manning's (then much larger) Funfair, Clarence Pier - as featured in the David Essex, Ringo Starr movie "That'll Be The Day" Dave Allen May 24 at 11:49 AM • Pop (popular) music didn't start in the UK in the autumn of 1952 of course but that's when the New Musical Express published its first Hit Parade - a Top 12 which because of shared sales actually included 15 acts and every one of them a solo singer. Al Martino was top, followed by Bing, Nat, Rosemary Clooney, Frankie Laine, Johnny Ray, Max Bygraves and Vera Lynn with three entries. What about going out in Pompey? Through the summers especially, the seafront around South Parade Pier and the Savoy Ballroom would be the focus of bigger name acts which broadly spilt between dance bands (with their crooners), modern & 'Trad' jazz, and - in the summer shows, comedians. Elsewhere in the city other venues included the Theatre Royal, King's Theatre, Kimbells Ballroom, Empress Ballroom, the Empire and any number of other halls, clubs and venues. There were loads of pubs and cinemas of course and since very few people owned TV sets, going out was an attraction. By November 1952 the summer seasons were over of course, but during that year, visiting acts in the city had included the bands/orchestras of Chris Barber, Johnny Dankworth (with Cleo Laine), Ted Heath (with Dickie Valentine), Geraldo, Ronnie Scott, Joe Loss, Humphrey Lyttleton, Ivy Benson, Stan Tracey & Kenny Baker (with Tommy Cooper!) - also 'New Orleans'-style trumpeter Mick Mulligan & his New Magnolia Band featuring vocalist George Melly. The latter's book "Owning Up" (drawings below) is a brilliantly entertaining account of life on the road in a 'Trad' band through the 1950s. And so it was for much of that decade in Pompey, with the majority of those acts returning regularly to the bigger venues, often supported by local dance bands led by men like Johnny Lyne, Wally Fry, Benny Freedman, Reg Bannistra and others. In 1953 Lyne's band was voted the best national act in a Melody Maker competition in Manchester and those local dance bands included some very capable musicians. But while to a large extent, things continued like that through the decade, a number of key events that occurred in 1956, pointed the way to a rather different future in Pompey and further afield ... Dave Allen May 24 at 9:23 PM • I'm very sad to report that I have just heard of the death today of my old musical pal JOHN LYTLE - I know that some of you will remember that we shared some wonderful times together from 1967-1970, first in Harlem Speakeasy and then in Rosemary. I hadn't seen John for some years - the last time was when I gave a talk at the Theatre Royal and showed the photo below of him playing a sitar. I commented that he was the keyboard player in those two bands, who I saw master a violin and sitar in no time, while you can see from the group photo of Rosemary that he also played guitar (and in later years bass guitar). I said then that he was the most naturally talented musician I played with - it was rather funny too, because I had no idea he was in the audience until he stood up waving! He was a terrific songwriter; with Keith Shilcock, we shared credits on the Speakeasy 'B' side and later signed over around 15 songs in a contract with Warner Chappell. He could also sing harmony at the drop of a hat. There is something very special about making music with other people and that something survives even after years of not seeing each other. Rest In Peace my friend. Image may contain: 1 person, on stage, playing a musical instrument, guitar, child and outdoor Dave Allen May 26 at 8:34 AM • One more picture of John - this is from one of the two one-day 'Festivals' that took place at the Tipner Dog Track in the summer of 1970 - neither of which attracted many people. Rosemary played at both - the first featured bands like Keef Hartley, Gypsy, Affinity and one of the first excursions for Gentle Giant. The second was called 'Polk', run by Jon Isherwood and mixing 'pop' & folk. On one them John, knowing that time was running out for Rosemary, did a solo spot with his own songs. I guess he was poised then between a career as a songwriter and/or as a singer-songwriter. They were fashionable at the time, Nick Drake, Ralph McTell, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Sandy Denny, Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley and loads of others. Go back 20+ years and to a very large extent only musicians working specific genres would write and perform their own songs - and much more in the USA than the UK (I'm thinking of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Hank Williams, Robert Johnson etc). Even then many of them worked with traditional songs or recycled lyrics and formats. There had been a folk 'revival' in Britain through the 20th century but it was somewhat detached from the 'pop' in popular music. In America of course, pre-rock & roll was dominated by the Great American songbook, the wonderful songs of Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern etc etc - performed by some of the great singers, Ella, Frank and many more. One or two (e.g. Mel Tormé) wrote and sang but it wasn't common and even when Elvis burst on the scene his writing credits were a contractual arrangement rather than a true record. Early rock & roll had its great songwriters like Leiber & Stoller, Pomus & Shuman or Bert Berns and there were still professional songwriters, notably in New York's Brill Building turning out hits for others. In the UK we had 'Tin Pan Alley' - Denmark Street off Charing Cross Road, doing the same for Tommy Steele, Cliff, Billy Fury etc. In the USA one of the songwriters, Neil Sedaka, became particularly successful performing his own hits (Carole King briefly too and again in the 1970s) but American rock & roll also produced what you might argue were the original singer-songwriters - albeit a little more lively than what came in the early 1970s. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, Carl Perkins & Fats Domino (with Dave Bartholemew) wrote some cracking songs and paved the way for the next generation to feel confident that they could writer, perform and record their own songs. A couple of young men in Liverpool liked that idea. PS: In a week of tributes, thanks and a little sadness, might I note the passing of drummer Jimmy Cobb who played with Miles Davis around 60 years ago and was the last man standing from the seminal 'Kind of Blue' album. RIP Dave Allen May 27 at 4:18 PM • 1956 was one of those years when so much happened and so much changed. It was the year of the Suez crisis, the London launch of James Dean in 'Rebel Without a Cause, the theatre premiere of "Look Back in Anger", the opening of the 2iis Coffee Bar in Soho, and the year that Skiffle in the form of Lonnie Donegan's "Rock Island Line" hit the UK and American charts - followed shortly over here by Elvis Presley's first UK hit record, and then a bunch of other rock & rollers. This was an American invasion on radio, record player and juke box but there was also a very important agreement between the Transatlantic Musicians Unions. For over thirty years there had been an embargo on bands from the UK or USA crossing the Atlantic - solo acts could come (Fats Waller played Pompey in 1939) but no bands. Finally an agreement was reached and we sent the Ted Heath Band - regulars at the Savoy - to America and they sent us the Stan Kenton Orchestra who, on 14 March, played two, apparently very loud sit-down concerts at the Savoy ballroom. Before long, many more American acts came to Britain. While skiffle was a very English reworking of American folk & blues, rock & roll was initially all-American - at least until September 1956 when the accomplished British jazz drummer Tony Crombie, who had played quite regularly at Southsea’s Savoy Ballroom, briefly forsook the dance bands and his modernist mates like Ronnie Scott, and attempted to produce an equally lucrative English version of Bill Haley & his Comets, called Tony Crombie & his Rockets. They made records ("Teach You to Rock" was a minor chart hit) and movies ("Rock You Sinners 1957) eventually included a very young Jet Harris, and toured the country for a year or two, although it did not work out for them and Crombie went back to the jazz and dance bands. Nonetheless, in September 1956, with considerable attention from the music weeklies, they made their debut as Britain’s first-ever professional, recording rock & roll outfit – and that debut was a week’s residency topping the bill in a variety show, at Portsmouth’s Theatre Royal, which means quite simply that the birthplace of British rock & roll (at least the proper, professional version) was, without question Pompey! After a week in Portsmouth, ‘warming up’, the Rockets were promoted to the London Palladium. Shortly after a rather younger teen sensation called Tommy Steele appeared ... Dave Allen 29-5-2020 In the UK there was just BBC TV until 1956 (ITV) , limited popular music on BBC radio, and not that much spare cash to buy records, so live music (along with jukeboxes) was the 'thing' in the 1950s. There was a variety of venues and musical styles. These included dance bands playing foxtrots, waltzes etc for the traditional dancers, others with more of a feel for American 'swing' (and often one band would mix these approaches); there were solo singers (often 'crooners') who, like Lita Roza or Dickie Valentine (Ted Heath) sang with the dance bands, and there was jazz. Post-war British jazz was a bit complicated (more to come) but simply it was either rooted in a 'New Orleans' sound of 30/40 years earlier, or it was 'mainstream' (USA later 1930s) or it was 'Modern' - based around the post-war innovations of the Be-Bop guys (Parker, Gillespie etc) Pretty well all those styles/genres had a drummer, most had double bass, many had piano. On top of that the instruments were common - brass (trumpet, trombone) and reeds (clarinet, saxophones). That's a somewhat general view but it will do for now. Some of these bands used guitars but they were not essential if you had a piano or (New Orleans) banjo. Then came skiffle - initially interval music played by a few members of that night's (New Orleans) jazz act. The most important initially were Ken Colyer's group who released their first skiffle record in the Autumn of 1955, just as Chris Barber's banjo man, Lonnie Donegan released his 'Backstairs Sessions' EP. In just a few months, Donegan would hit the UK & USA charts with "Rock Island Line" and the skiffle craze was in full swing. The New Musical Express carried an article which was none too complimentary about these English musicians making records covering Black American folk-blues (that issue has never gone away) and it added a put-down of the fans of this new sound who happened to be 'teenagers' - in commercial and media terms a new phenomenon. But like it or not - and Melody Maker didn't much either - the skiffle boom had an absolutely crucial effect on the development of popular music ever since - it got young people (mostly boys) playing guitars. In his excellent history of skiffle, Billy Bragg records that you could buy an acoustic guitar in 1956 for less than £7 (and on HP), adding that about 6,000 had been imported to the UK in 1950 but by 1957 it was around 250,000. Some of those guitars ended up being played by people who were to make a massive impression of the UK (and world) music scene. The dance bands didn't simply fade away however; rather a new audience (and therefore market) was created. The pictures here show the bill for the local bands fund-raising night at the Savoy in 1956 - and there are plenty of them - plus one of the bands and dancers (n.b. the sailor in required uniform). The third photo is from Somerstown Youth Club, showing local skiffle group The Saints, plus their adoring fans. Dave Allen 31 May 2020 In that photo interlude I included a 'pop'/rock & roll poster for Bobby Vee and the Crickets at the Guildhall. The Guildhall was bombed in the war and was re-opened by HM the Queen in June 1959. The first concert there was classical with Sir Arthur Bliss, and the next featured the Chris Barber Jazz Band. In the early years, the Guildhall featured many top Jazz acts although by 1969 that was fading, partly due to a diminishing audience, and partly because many of the great stars were too old to tour. Here's a 'Top Ten' - no special order - of American Jazz performers who played the Guildhall in its first decade: the Modern Jazz Quartet, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gerry Mulligan (& Bob Brookmeyer), Oscar Peterson and Bud Freeman. And here's another of Jazz & Blues singers: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Jon Hendricks (& Annie Ross), Nina Simone, Muddy Waters, Rev Gary Davis, John Lee Hooker, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, BB King, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Not bad huh? One interesting aspect of that list is that jazz was very strong in the early years but started tailing off, whereas the blues singers (and a number of UK acts too) came more frequently in the second half of the decade. Also within the broad definition of 'Popular Music' (but other than 'pop') Folk acts began appearing on the big stage - but generally later than the jazz acts. There were also two American Folk/Blues tours - the first with Muddy, Sister Rosetta, Sonny & Brownie and others, the second with Rev Gary, plus Josh White and Buffy Sainte Marie. The first folk concert in the summer of 1963, featured the leading ideologues of the UK Folk Revival, Ewan McColl & Peggy Seeger. They were followed by Julie Felix, the Spinners, Rambling Jack Elliott, the Ian Campbell Group, Ian & Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Trevor Lucas, and the Strawbs, but by 1969 a concert featuring Noel Murphy reported a "poor turnout" in the local 'paper. By then however a couple of the major crossover folk/rock (jazz) acts had been to the Guildhall as well: Fairport Convention (with Sandy Denny) and Pentangle. Of course, as ever, all this depends on precisely what we might MEAN by Jazz or Blues or Folk. But we'll leave that for another time, and have some pictures Dave Allen2nd June 2020 I'll get back to jazz, folk & blues around the Pompey pubs and clubs but for now, a switch back to the 'pop' end of popular music, and the early 1960s. I'll begin with a confession: I'm a musical snob, no doubt about it. I'm not the only one either. My popular music history is full of stories about buying the coolest records, digging the hippest cats and dissing all that 'pop' stuff that Marion Knight didn't like either. I'm so hip I've seen Stockhausen live (WTF as they say, was that all about?) BUT the first pop record I owned was a '78' by English singer Dick James, a double-sided hit 'Robin Hood' ("Riding through the Glen") and 'The Ballad of Davy Crocket'. Just when all the really cool cats heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' and 'Rock Island Line' and saw the future clearly, this six-year-old had a toy bow-and-arrow and a fur cap with a long tail, to live out the fantasies enshrined in his first slice of wax (Dick James soon gave up singing, became a publisher and signed among others a couple called John & Paul). Then just past my eleventh birthday around Christmas 1960 I started buying 45s. What do you imagine they were then? Well the first one was a straight toss-up between 'Poetry in Motion' & 'Save the Last Dance for Me' from (Ivan Veck's?) Albert Road - and because they'd sold out of the Drifters I took Johnny Tillotson home. Gradually over the next couple of years I added a Bryan Hyland EP, 'Return to Sender' by Elvis and a couple of Mark Wynter singles too ('Venus in Blue Jeans'). Around then too, I performed at a school concert with two pals singing Neil Sedaka's 'Happy Birthday Sweet 16'. You see, I loved all that nice white early 1960s 'pop', devouring it whenever I could at the Waltzer, and juke boxes on occasional café visits and the radio. The UK charts in the first couple of years of the decade mixed some fine performers like Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Eddie Cochran, Ray Charles, the Everlys, & Dion with those nice white clean-cut boys who included, in addition to those above, Bobby Vee, Ricky Nelson, Cliff, Adam Faith, John Leyton, & Craig Douglas while the women included Carole King, Susan Maughan & Connie Francis. Among the 'Brits' I reckoned Billy Fury and Helen Shapiro were perhaps the best, but I liked most of that stuff - "Bouncy bouncy" - there were lots of instrumentals too. In the world of pop, 1962 came to an unsurprising end with Cliff, Elvis and the Shadows in the UK Hit Parade’s top three, and for the first seven weeks of 1963 it was instrumentals all the way with the Shadows, followed by their ‘old boys’ Jet Harris & Tony Meehan, topping the charts. Then, suddenly, while many familiar names continued to enjoy some success, a new sound swept the world of British pop music. In late February 1963, the NME announced that the Beatles had knocked Jet & Tony from the top of the charts with their second release “Please, Please Me”. During the rest of that year, they would return with three more chart-topping singles, and other Merseyside/Manchester acts to appear in the Top Thirty for the first time were Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Searchers, Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas, the Hollies, the Swinging Blue Jeans, the Big Three, the Fourmost, and Freddie & the Dreamers. Add in groups from elsewhere like Brian Poole & the Tremeloes, Bern Elliot & the Fenmen, the Dave Clark Five and Johnny Kidd & the Pirates (the only 'old-timers') and it was clearly one of those key transitional moments - and you an see from the Savoy advert that it had an immediate impact on the local scene ... (to be continued) Dave Allen 3rd June 2020 I watched the News last night, Oh Boy! (ITN, 10pm). Is the current situation in the USA the only thing that has kept the Virus from top spot? The second story was the high incidence of deaths among BAME UK citizens. Just before the news there was a daft advert (for what?) with two footballers - Jamie Carragher and Chris Kamara - and it struck me in that context that Chris Kamara was almost the first Black Pompey footballer - and that in the mid-1970s. (I know about Jamaican LIndy Delepehna who played eight matches in 1948/50, but I guess few people still remember him). Growing up, I guess I took it for granted that Pompey and the surrounding area was essentially white; maybe I gave it little thought, although in other contexts I remember admiring Martin Luther King as a human being, and as a football and cricket fan I was in no doubt that Pele and Garry Sobers were the best in the world. But Black Lives Mattered most to me through music of course (I'm quite happy to acknowledge the complex issues around white eyes & ears, black identities, sport, music etc, but I'm not going there today). I thought instead I might just survey this period I'm interested in, the world of music in Portsmouth at the time, and the ways in which we encountered aspects of Black British, American and Jamaican cultures. For starters, there were very few local Black performers - Jo Bennett sang jazz & standards with her husband Stan for many years, Karl of K & the Rapiers was a black singer but from over to the west a bit, and Brother Bung had a Black (bass?) guitarist but again they were from Southampton. I've noted that the Guildhall was booking wonderful Black musicians from the start - Ella, Miles, Louis, Sarah Vaughan, Ellington, Basie, Muddy Waters, Oscar Peterson, Rev Gary Davis, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Nina Simone, the Motown Revue, MJQ, the Platters, Shirley Bassey, Johnny Mathis, Chubby Checker, Dick Gregory, Albert King, John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix all appeared there in the 1960s. Blues men Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter and Champion Jack Dupree played at the Rendezvous/Kimbells and as tastes turned from blues to soul, the Birdcage presented Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, Major Lance, Lou Johnson ('Always Something There to Remind Me'), Sugar Pie DeSanto ("Soulful Dress"), Inez & Charlie Foxx, Ben E King, the Drifters, Arthur Alexander ("You Better Move On"), the Soul Sisters and of course by far the most regular visitors, Jimmy James & the Vagabonds. Late in its life Prince Buster came to the legendary club as part of a shift towards Blue Beat, Ska and Reggae by some of the mods. Three American, UK-based singers, Herbie Goins, Ronnie Jones and Geno Washington were other regulars while in clubs and theatres we saw saxophonist Joe Harriott more than once, and - as mentioned previously Roland Kirk. I'm not dealing with any political issues here, I'm just suggesting it was a very special time culturally for those of us who grew up through it- compare for example the predominantly white acts we saw at the IOW Festivals (1968-70) or Victorious in recent years. To be a teenage music fan in 1960s UK was an astonishing privilege, and a MASSIVE part of who am I today is down to my encounter in my early teens (and since) with the wonderful music of Black people; I thank them for it. Dave Allen5/6/2020 On 20 October 1959, Cliff Richard & the Shadows played Portsmouth Guildhall for the first time. They would be back (and once to the Troxy Cinema in Fratton Road). When the new concert hall first opened a number of influential people tried to prevent too many bookings for the new ('teenage') pop music - but commerce prevailed, as the audiences were often better than for more 'esoteric' acts. In 1960 Adam Faith came with the John Barry Seven, a relatively sophisticated 'backing group' who, like the Shadows enjoyed their own successes (notably the original, instrumental James Bond Theme). Later Adam Faith was backed by the Roulettes (inc Russ Ballard later with Argent). The Tornados enjoyed huge success with "Telstar" in the UK & USA and also backed Billy Fury (Guildhall 1963). December 1960 saw the first Guildhall appearance of perhaps the finest of the early British groups, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Next came Emile Ford & the Checkmates. Always then it seemed, the singers were identified as distinct from the groups - we have already noted Pompey's own Frank Kelly & the Hunters. The exception was perhaps were instrumental groups like Sounds Incorporated who came in April 1961 with Brenda Lee & Gene Vincent. Even then, drummer Peter Jay had his name ahead of his Jaywalkers (October 1962) and Johnny (Paris) from the USA, in front of his Hurricanes (January 1963). Then, in March 1963 came that first Beatles gig, and here was a self-contained quartet - no named lead singer, all their own backing and increasingly of course, writing their own songs. Things didn't change immediately as their 'stable-mates' Gerry & the Pacemakers and Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas soon appeared in Pompey (and the charts) but rock & roll or 'pop' singers with instrumental backing groups were being replaced by coherent units, known for a little while as 'Beat' groups. So it was in Pompey although not before one outfit, Mike Devon & the Diplomats, with a singer fronting the classic four-piece (two guitars, bass guitar, & drums), had their moment of fame. They were one of the top local acts in 1962/3 and with a few others, were booked regularly at the Savoy as support to the main acts. So it was that on a Sunday evening in April 1963 they were there on the second side stage as the Beatles, with their first hit secured, topped the bill. What's more, Ringo arrived but his drum kit met a problem on the road so he doubled-up with the kit of Diplomat's drummer Terry Wiseman (who we met previously in Mick Glover's rock & roll outfit). This wasn't a simple matter as the kit had to be carried between sets from one stage to the other - and the Diplomats for sure played twice (not sure about the Beatles - anyone?). Terry traded in that kit a year later for a better one and I'd like to tell you he got thousands for it, on the back of its use by Ringo - but he didn't! Never mind, he got the story. (For many decades Terry was part of the Southsea Shakespeare Actors) Dave Allen6/6/2020 One of the things I like very much about this Facebook project is that unlike a book, it unfolds over time and lots of people contribute. On the previous post about beat groups and Mike Devon & the Diplomats, Scott McKeon and keyboard man Rod Taylor (of whom much more more soon) got into a detailed conversation about technical aspects of those days - the very early days of Fender Strats in the UK for example. In the years of doing all this 'Pompey Pop' research, I've been lucky to get hold of quite a lot of recordings of local beat, R&B and rock groups, (traditional) jazz bands, dance bands and folk musicians. Many were recorded on pretty basic equipment in halls or clubs but they give a really good idea of the material that people played. I've mentioned Danny Raven & the Renegades before and I have two sets of recordings by them. The earliest are covers of instrumentals from around 60 years ago, including "Sleepwalk" (Santo & Johnny); "Jack's Good" & "Samovar" (Krew Kats); "The Mexican" (The Fentones); & "Saturday Night at the Duckpond (aka 'Swan Lake' by the Cougars). There are other recordings of them with Danny Raven singing "Move It" (Cliff), "Poor Little Fool" (Ricky Nelson); "Twenty Flight Rock" (Eddie Cochran) and a really fine version of "Paralyzed" by Elvis. I also have the recording mentioned by Scott of Mike Devon & the Diplomats. The Renegades material is perhaps 1960/61 - the Diplomats a couple of years later and the changes are clear. It includes these songs - and I'm mentioning here the likely source, not necessarily always the original - for example "Do You Love Me" by Brian Poole & the Tremeloes or Dave Clark Five rather than the Contours (* Peter White has asked me to add the Liverpudlians Faron's Flamingoes*). On the tape are a number of Beatles songs: "There's a Place"; "I Call Your Name"; "I Saw Her Standing There" plus their covers of "Money" & "Roll Over Beethoven". Other songs, include "The First Time" (Adam Faith & Roulettes); "Keep Your Hands Off My Baby" (Little Eva); "Just Like Me" (Hollies); "I Can Tell" (Bo Diddley); "Memphis Tennessee" (Chuck Berry); "Sugar & Spice" (Searchers); "Shot of Rhythm & Blues" (Johnny Kidd & Pirates); "I'm Telling You Now" (Freddie & the Dreamers); Love Potion No. 9" (Coasters) and a novelty song "The Hooter Motion" (?);. There are hints here of the next big shift for lots of local bands across the country particularly in the songs of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. More of that soon, but if anyone has any information to add about set lists in the late 1950s and early 1960s - yes please, and thank you! Dave Allen7/6/2020 Here comes a fascinating history of playing in a rock & roll/beat group in Pompey from 1958-1966 (after which incidentally I'm going back to 1960 to trace the development of Jazz, Folk & R&B in the UK). What we have today however, is a great contribution (TWO PARTS) from my Facebook friend Peter White, with song lists and photos, showing how they developed and changed over that exciting eight-year period. From 1958-1962 they started with just instrumentals to a few vocals then more vocals. The vocalist came on in the middle of each set for a few songs, then was a permanent fixture as the group developed. Set Lists included these instrumentals: Apache; FBI; The Savage; Dance On - The Shadows; Walk Don’t Run; Perfidia – The Ventures; Hava Nagila; Amapola; Orange Blossom Special - The Spotniks; The Mexican – Fentones; Jacks Good – The Krew Kats; Besame Mucho; Diamonds – Jet Harris & Tony Meehan; Jet Harris; Can Can 62 – Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers; Peter Gunn – Duane Eddy Teen Scene – The Hunters; Bristol Express; Theme from Exodus – The Eagles And songs included: Move it; Travellin' Light; Livin' Doll; The Young Ones - Cliff Take your Time; Maybe Baby; Words of Love; Everyday; Tell Me How; It’s So Easy; Someday; I fought The Law – Buddy Holly/Crickets; Plus Shakin all over – Johnny Kidd; Sheila – Tommy Roe; Ebony Eyes – The Everly Brothers; The Locomotion – Little Eva The Twist – Chubby Checker; Sea of Love - Marty Wilde; Some People - Valerie Mountain and the Eagles; Take Good Care of my Baby – Bobby Vee (thanks Peter White) 1963-1966 This period shifted to the Liverpool influence but still kept several favourites - actually it was not 'overnight'. In 1963 through to 1966 we had three guitarists in the band giving us harmony lead capability, which I think made us fairly unique for the time. Late 1964 we had remover the separate vocalist/ front man and three of us sang. In late 1966 added a Girl singer. Songs performed: The obligatory Beatles (although we never were much fans of them): She loves you; Please Please Me; Money; Twist and Shout; From Me to You; and others … Plus other Merseybeat How do you do it; I Like it – Gerry and the Pacemakers plus their version of The Night has a Thousand eyes Do you love Me; See If She Cares - Faron's Flamingos Everything’s alright; Give your Lovin to me – The Mojos (We recorded version of this as Meteors UK in 1966) Bad to Me – Billy J Kramer & Bad to Me – Billy J Kramer & Cruel Sea (Inst) The Dakotas Mailman Bring me no more Blues (a BlueBeat version of the Buddy Holly Song) plus Rave on – Buddy Holly Johnny B. Goode; Memphis Tennessee; No Particular Place to Go; Route 66 – Chuck Berry plus Chuck's Come On by the Rolling Stones Sweets for my Sweet; Sugar and Spice; What have they done to the Rain – The Searchers Summertime (Version of the Gershwin classic) Summertime Blues – Eddie Cochran Wild Thing – The Troggs House of the Rising Sun – The Animals Stay - the Hollies Time After Time – Song written for us and Recorded at Decca in 1964 Glad all over; Bits and Pieces – Dave Clark Five Hungry for Love; I’ll Never Get over you – Johnny Kidd I get around; Surfin Safari; Surfin USA; Help Me Rhonda – The Beach Boys Do Wah Diddy Diddy – Manfred Mann Downtown – Pet Clarke (plus a couple other girl songs I don’t remember) Dave Allen 8/6/2020 I keep tempting you with a hint of jazz, folk and R&B - the obvious difference between those scenes and what we've been covering lately is style/genre and that to some extent was reflected in and determined by the instruments. All the 'beat' groups we've looked at recently, including those in the previous post, plus the Renegades, Residents, Furys, Cadillacs, Dynamos and Diplomats featured essentially the same line-ups: guitar(s), bass guitar, drums and vocals - either by the instrumentalists, or a separate singer. In addition the photographs show the deliberate wearing of uniforms, however varied. That's true of this last group picture of The Rebels at the Savoy in 1962, EXCEPT they have two tenor sax players. I know very little about them (Mick Cooper?). The singer is called Johnny Rocco, the drummer is Bryan Hatchard previously in the Cadillacs and Mick Reeve who is featured went on to a successful local group the Talisman. But I have a feeling that the sax player on the left is John Crow who would have an impact on the next local scene, R&B which, despite the influence of the Stones, Yardbirds etc, sometimes featured other instruments (anyone know?). Dave Allen 9/6/2020 Three photos today of 'punters' enjoying themselves at the Savoy, Ricky's Club and Clarence Pier (1955-c.early 1960s). For some people a night out, favourite songs on the radio, buying records now-and-then and the occasional concert suffices. Music is a fun, entertaining part of life. Then there's the rest of us. I'm not sure how universal this is, but for sure, the English (all the Brits?) like a good argument and enjoy gravitating to tribes, with clear codes, preferences and dislikes about which they can have a good grumble. So it was with the post-war growth of the Jazz, Folk & R&B (Blues) scenes in the UK. Today, here's a focus on post-war UK jazz, next folk and then I'll have a look at the local manifestations of those scenes from around 1959/60. This is a brief but broad historical context - with the hint that while there are discernible differences between Jazz, Folk, and Blues, the three were also intertwined in this country as they developed from 1946-1960. But within each of those three there were also significant differences of styles, opinions and ideologies and this is where the tribal fondness for an argument comes in. In the late-1940s in Britain for example there were musicians (Ronnie Scott, Tony Crombie etc) who often earned a living in dance bands, but thrilled by the new sounds of Parker, Monk, Dizzy in the USA hankered after playing 'Modern' Jazz. At the same time there was a craze for attempting to recreate the sounds of Black New Orleans in the period thirty years earlier. London's Crane River Band probably kicked that off, and the key figure in that movement known as 'Traditional' Jazz was Ken Colyer, who went to New Orleans and played with some of those guys. He did that because there were no recordings, so nobody really knew what they sounded like. (Incidentally from around 1954, Colyer was also central in the development of skiffle). Most people today might hear those Traditional bands and think 'Trad' but it was not so. Chris Barber played with Colyer for a time but was less ideological and more catholic in his approach and he was eventually one of the musicians who chose instead to draw more heavily on the sound that was more readily available on 1920s recordings - particularly by Louis Armstrong with his 'Hot Fives' & 'Hot Sevens'. In the UK, these guys were known as the 'Revivalists' and Colyer - the purist - got upset with them and said theirs' was not the 'true sound'. While both approaches used broadly the same front-line brass and reed instruments, the key difference seems to be that the Traditional Jazz guys played as an ensemble without the more careful arrangements and solos of the Revivalists. George Melly, singing blues in the Revivalist Mick Mulligan Band, saw beauty in the Traditional approach but added it was "clumsy". So those two groups argued with each other and both argued with the Modern Jazz guys. When Humphrey Lyttleton shifted from Revivalist to a (fourth) more 'Mainstream' (1930s etc) sound and added a saxophone, some former fans turned up at a gig with a placard that read 'Dirty Bopper'. At the Beaulieu Jazz Festival of 1960, broadcast live on the BBC, the Traditional and Modern fans got in a battle over who should be playing. But by then, Traditional had become 'Trad' and for a brief period it was commercially successful as Barber ('Petite Fleur'), Lyttleton (Bad Penny Blues) and most obviously Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball enjoyed hit records, album releases and big followings - there were also modern jazz chart hits like Dave Brubeck or Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd too. But while some 'Trad' sounded like Traditional Jazz, Melly suggested that the younger fans in this brief commercial period "knew nothing about the history of jazz (and) wanted 'the trad sound' as a background to jiving and that was all. And while all these ideological differences were emerging and the arguments increased, the pop singers and beat groups sneaked in and, commercially at least, kicked 'Trad', Traditional and Revivalist jazz into the long grass. It seems to me that unlike Modernism, it is now old folks entertainment at summer fetes and the like (?). Next, 'the Folk Wars'! Dave Allen 11/6/2020 Popular histories often characterise the 1950s in Britain as a grey, dull time - contrasting it with the burst of colour that heralded the so-called 'Swinging 60s'. There is almost always some truth in stereotypes, but another tale can be told. 10 August 1951 there was a Jazz Band Ball at the Savoy Ballroom with music from leading 'Revivalist' bands of the time led by Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber, and Mick Mulligan (with George Melly), plus Mike Daniels' Delta Jazzmen and local bandleader Benny Freedman's assorted bands. Those visiting acts were all regular visitors to Portsmouth, while shortly after, the more 'modern' sounds of the Johnny Dankworth Seven (with Cleo Laine) and the Ronnie Scott Orchestra began regular visits. Approaching Christmas 1952, the outstanding British modern pianist Stan Tracey (Stephen Didymus) came to the Theatre Royal with trumpeter Kenny Baker, supporting a variety bill with Tommy Cooper! On Monday 27 April 1953, a less well-known Revivalist jazz band from Surrey, The High Curley Stompers played the first of a number of regular gigs at the Savoy and therein lies an interesting tale. You can see from the photo, taken at the Savoy, that their line-up was typical of the Revivalist bands of the time, and, rather like Chris Barber and Ken Colyer (in the absence of DJs and interval records), they had a band within the band, to entertain between jazz sets. They called it Barrelhouse rather than skiffle but it was American blues-based, featured four of the guys on piano, bass, banjo/guitar and drums or washboard and included songs like "Trouble in Mind" and "Tight Like That". The really interesting point is that the young man on banjo or guitar was Chas McDevitt, already interested in the blues and corresponding with American musicians, including Josh White. By 1955, Chas was playing with the more 'Traditional' Crane River Band who dated back about a decade, but he was also putting together a skiffle group, to which he added a Scottish folk singer, Nancy Whiskey. And of course, they recorded a single, a cover of Elizabeth Cotten's beautiful "Freight Train", which in April 1957 entered the UK charts, and by the following month was a Top Ten hit. Nancy soon chose to return to folk singing (replaced by Shirley Douglas) which illustrates the idea that while skiffle was a fairly short-lived phenomenon, it was the glue that in the UK, brought together jazz, folk, blues and a touch of country here-and-there and led to a sudden explosion in the sales of acoustic guitars which together with those stylistic influences would have a massive impact in the UK on the 1960s folk, R&B, beat and rock scenes, although guitars, central to skiffle, beat, rock & roll and R&B, were not always so welcome on the early folk scene (that's a cliff-hanger folks). Dave Allen 14/6/2020 “UNDERSTAND CHANGE” might be the theme running through all these posts. ‘Trad’ jazz and in particular the ‘Big Three Bs’ enjoyed commercial success as the 1950s turned to the early 1960s, notably Chris Barber’s “Petite Fleur”, Kenny Ball’s “Midnight in Moscow” and Acker Bilk’s huge transatlantic hit “Stranger on the Shore” (1961). But these were melodic pop tunes whose chart success undermined the status of revivalist jazz as an authentic genre, and in early 1963 the final Top Ten ‘Trad’ hit, Kenny Ball’s “Sukiyaki” (a Japanese tune) enjoyed a few cold weeks in the charts. That was it as far as hit records were concerned, after which the Beatles began reeling off a succession of number ones, although the big names in New Orleans-style jazz worked successfully for decades. 1963 was simply one of those years. In the pop world, it started with solo singers and instrumental groups at the top of the Hit Parade, but ended with the beat groups in full control, ending with the Beatles and others about to launch the ‘British Invasion’ of the USA. Local beat groups, too, were enjoying success in the Portsmouth area and further afield. In January 1963, Portsmouth’s Evening News decided to launch a second special page to complement its ‘Pop’ page (written under the pen-name ‘Spinner’). The new page, “Off Beat” (by ‘The Jazzmen’) was described as a “new and controversial series covering all fields of jazz”, and began with articles on Duke Ellington’s “dream of what a big band should be”, Dave Brubeck’s saxophonist Paul Desmond, and the suggestion that “skiffle is back – but in disguise”. This concerned the rise of folk clubs in Portsmouth – in particular “a shy but purist brother (whose) name is American folk”, Georgina Boyes (2010) has recorded the number of folks clubs in the UK growing from just five in 1959 to 1,700 twenty years later, while Michael Brocken (2003) adds a figure of 300 in the mid-1960s. The new column reported on two local examples, both in the Fratton area and offering, “an amazingly wide range of the styles grouped under this general heading” of folk, including ballads, blues and “many hybrids” with the Broadside (Monday nights) presenting British, southern Irish and Appalachian songs as well as those from the southern states of America, sea shanties, modern nonsense songs and melodic tunes with a chorus for the whole audience to join in. They published a newsletter and welcomed local ‘floor’ singers and occasional guests – in the previous week Colin Wilkie & Shirley Hart. The other club, Folkways, was described as having some evidence of the “normal jazz club” atmosphere. Their guests included bluesman Long John Baldry, Alex Campbell and (again) Colin Wilkie & Shirley Hart. Folkways, in a larger venue, attracted a bigger audience than the Broadside. In their weekly column, the Jazzmen, always keeping an eye on the growing folk scene, refuted accusations of a “strong leaning towards modern jazz”, and regretted that jazz is too often “torn by internal controversy and dispute”. By March 1963, they were suggesting the ‘Trad’ boom died “some months since”, disapproving of its “brash” sounds and ensnarement by the “net of commercialism”. They were sad that the great jazz performers were now ageing not least because they were critical of the music of younger experimental jazz musicians like Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy. In some ways though the remarkable thing is that such musicians were being covered at all in a provincial ‘daily’. They watched the folk scene growing and warned that Tin Pan Alley was now “catching on” to folk, suggesting folk singers “have, of necessity, to stay pure” because “folk on an electric guitar is just not folk” - they were even concerned about the rise in club memberships since that suggested commercialism. Dave Allen 15/6/2020 The pop charts only tell certain tales – through the late 1950s & 1960s a very different story was being created with live music in the pubs, clubs, ballrooms and concert halls, which were more plentiful than in recent years. The charts however, back then at least, did reflect something of contemporary tastes. The first UK number one of the 1960s was “What do you want to make those eyes at me for” by Emile Ford & the Checkmates (oddly, number two was Adam Faith with a similar, briefer title “What do you want”). Otherwise in those early months, there was often a record by Cliff or Elvis in the Top Ten, plus other solo singers like Adam Faith, Connie Francis, Marty Wilde, Paul Anka, Bobby Darin (etc.), the Everly Brothers, occasional appearances by rock & rollers Fats Domino or Gene Vincent, some novelty/comedy stuff (“Seven Little Girls …”) and instrumentals by the Shadows, Duane Eddy, John Barry Seven, Johnny & the Hurricanes and drummer Sandy Nelson. The charts were often dominated by men – to take just one example the NME chart of 20 February 1960 had just one woman in the Top 30, and that was Joan Regan with a new entry “Happy Anniversary” at number 29. Next week it was gone. We’ve noted that the ‘Trad’ guys, particularly Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball (plus the ‘retro’ Temperance Seven, notably “Pasadena”) enjoyed a number of hits in the early 1960s, although from 1963 rarely the Top 20. Skiffle was pretty well dead as a commercial proposition but in mid-1960 Lonnie Donegan was still at number one with “My Old Man’s a Dustman”, his version of an old Music Hall song. He was followed at the top by Anthony Newley – a London voice that would influence David Bowie. By contrast, right at the end of 1960 Ray Charles had the first of a number of hits from his album ‘Modern Sounds in C&W’ – this one “Georgia on My Mind” followed by a number one “I Can’t Stop Loving You” in July 1962, then in the autumn “You Don’t Know Me”, and by Christmas his version of Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart” - serious quality in the ‘pop’ charts. In September 1961, the commercial potential of a certain kind of sing-along ‘folksy (acoustic) style was suggested when “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” by the Highwaymen reached number one, with a cover by Lonnie a bit lower. That ‘sound’ took a little while to take off commercially. Approaching Christmas 1961, there were a couple of jazz hits – Dinah Washington’s “September in the Rain” and the big ‘modern’ hit record “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (their next, “Unsquare Dance” was also a modest hit). 1962 opened with “Stranger on the Shore” at number one, and Kenny Ball’s “Midnight in Moscow” at number five, followed immediately by Cliff’s movie title song “The Young Ones”, holding Chubby Checker’s twisting at bay. Then came a brief period of success for a young English woman, Helen Shapiro. Lonnie had a modest hit with the somewhat prophetic “The Party’s Over”. In the NME chart of 27 October 1962, “Telstar” was top, followed by “The Locomotion” (Little Eva) and Tommy Roe’s “Sheila”. A few months later Tommy Roe would tour the UK and also on that bill was a promising British group who in that same October week entered the same chart at number 27 with a catchy little thing called “Love Me Do”. A change was ‘gonna’ come - and as these adverts from our seafront suggest, not just in the charts: Dave Allen 16/6/2020 As 1963 reached the autumn, the BBC broadcast Citizen 63, which showed Marion and her friends celebrating folk songs and New Orleans jazz in preference to current ‘pop’ music. A month later, journalist Peter Preston – did he watch Marion? – wrote an article in the Guardian of the “minor folk-song boom” which had started in the mid-fifties, when skiffle’s bubble burst” after which “the devotees split two ways”: electric guitars and onto the “dated beat bandwagon” while “others went pure and became good simple folksingers” where they were “aided and abetted by a trickle of expatriate Americans” – notably Alan Lomax who with his father John had recorded many key folk and blues singers, Peggy Seeger (sister of Pete), Rambling Jack Elliott (Woody Guthrie ‘tributes’) and Carolyn Hester; the latter three and others played in Portsmouth. Preston also drew a political comparison between “those on the right” from ‘Tin Pan Alley’ keen to exploit any Folk Boom’ for commercial gain, and those on the left in the UK, who, “shunning commercialism” might be “anarchist, Marxist, Trotskyite and ban-the bomb folkniks (converted beatniks)”. He made an important point about performing in the clubs, suggesting that the folkniks are “sticklers for racial reverence; only Americans are allowed to sing American songs”. Marion Knight presented her credentials of authenticity quite carefully in the film - possibly encouraged by the director? She described her pals as Communists or Anarchists and supporters of CND, and they were shown folk singing and jazz (playing & dancing) and dismissive of 'pop'. It was nonetheless a very English variety of folk & jazz and apart from the sight of one Ray Charles LP cover perhaps Preston's "racial reverence" dissuaded them from any cultural crossing of the Atlantic? Is so, they differed from a bunch of scruffy London musicians who arrived in Pompey for the first time in the same month that Citizen 63 was broadcast, when the Savoy presented the Rolling Stones, supported by the Vigilantes on Friday 20 September 1963 (5/-). The Stones' first single "Come On" had reached the Top Twenty, it was a cover of a Chuck Berry Song, and the next month Chuck enjoyed a hit with "Memphis Tennessee" - Chuck, surely the greatest 'poet' of teenage rock & roll, was the common factor between the two big groups of this period onwards, the Beatles and Rolling Stones. But while the Beatles drew on rock & roll, soul/Motown and even musicals in their early career, they exhibited no obvious 'feel' for the blues. The Rolling Stones did, and their commercial success spearheaded a 1960s 'blues boom' - albeit with UK roots in the previous decade. Dave Allen 17/6/2020 The Rolling Stones were probably the first major band of the new London-based R&B scene to play a headline gig in Pompey although we had previously see Ottilie Patterson (with Chris Barber) and George Melly (with Mick Mulligan) singing their jazz-style blues at local venues, plus Long John Baldry, solo, at the Railway folk club. Meanwhile in London, guitarist Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies (12-string 'Leadbelly style and harmonica) had met a little club success as a skiffle act around 1957, shifted to a jug band and then formed the fully-fledged Blues Incorporated which at various times included Charlie Watts, Jack, Bruce, Graham Bond and Ginger Baker. They established a successful blues club in Ealing and guest vocalists included Baldry, Mick jagger and Portsmouth's Paul Jones - who was then working in London. Paul Jones was also invited to audition for a predominantly modern jazz outfit led by Manfred Manne (as in Shelley) and Mike Hugg from Gosport- they had struggled to earn a living and wanted a blues vocalist to shift to the newly fashionable R&B. From March 1963, the new line-up kicked off at Southampton's Concorde Club, followed soon by a Pompey residency at the Railway, then the larger Kimbells. Meanwhile Alexis Korner added a saxophonist or two to Blues Incorporated including Dick Heckstall-Smith who, in his autobiography suggested Alexis pushed them towards a "wonderful crypto-avant-garde-ish Mingus influenced blues music". In 1962, before that shift they recorded an album, "Live at the Marquee" (which wasn't) but Cyril Davies, with a strong commitment to the post-war Chicago blues sound, departed and with members of Screaming Lord Sutch's Savages, formed his blues group the All-Stars. In late 1962 they recorded some of the finest of 1960s UK blues tracks including the wonderful harmonica instrumental "Countryline Special" - sadly Cyril did not ride the incoming R&B wave for long; during 1963 he become increasingly unwell, and he died in January 1964. But the music, and his influence, survive. Dave Allen 18/6/2020 OK that's the ad break over, back to the story. Time for another look at the (NME) charts, with a continuing eye towards folk, jazz and blues. From the start of 1963, the chart-toppers were first the Shadows, their ‘old-boys’ Jet & Tony and then, on 23 February, the Beatles with “Please Please Me”. By that time the Rooftop Singers with “Walk Right In” had been moving up from 26, to 13 and 11 before they started walking right out again. The Rooftop Singers were a ‘folksy’ 12-string trio, formed specifically to record that song for Vangaurd Records which was for the most part one of the smaller independent labels devoted to the roots and fringes of popular music. The trio included Bill Svanoe, Eric Darling – formerly of the top folk act the Weavers – and jazz singer Lynne Taylor, so that was a nice mix of genres. Even more significantly, the song was a cover of a 1929 recording by Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Gus, a Black American, played banjo and had various other musicians in his group including top inter-war blues players like Blind Blake and the fine harmonica player Noah Lewis. They also recorded the original versions of “Minglewood Blues” (1928) and “Viola Lee Blues” later recorded by the Grateful Dead**. So there you have it – in little more than three minutes of music we’ve got folk, jazz, blues and psychedelia, plus a ‘Pop’ hit. In the USA it went to number one (and even today it’s part of the repertoire of the Southsea Skiffle Orchestra). Meanwhile ‘Trad’ jazzers Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk were hanging on to ‘pop’ life with a number of releases through the year that hovered around the mid-20s but no further. In August the Stones hit the lower reaches of the charts with “Come On”, then in September “If I Had a Hammer” by Trini Lopez began its way into the Top Ten – it was a Weavers’ song, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. It was followed almost immediately by Peter Paul & Mary’s gentle rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind”; he had emerged interestingly from the American folk revival centred on Greenwich Village New York – not quite the pastoral idyll then, but apparently ‘folk’ music. By the autumn of 1963 he had released two albums Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin’ – the latter for the first time, showcasing his song-writing abilities with “Hard Rain …”, “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”, and “Masters of War” (etc.), that one is considered one of his finest so-called ‘protest’ songs, but its topical content is built on a traditional English folk tune. The Rooftop Singers, Trini Lopez and Peter Paul & Mary were not the first American ‘folkies’ to enter the UK charts; in the late 1950s the Kingston Trio enjoyed a hit with “Where have All the Flowers Gone” and we’ve already noted the Highwaymen’s “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” – a Civil War Black American spiritual. Meanwhile back in 1963 chart-toppers included Cliff, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Beatles, Billy J Kramer (with a Beatles song), Frank Ifield, the Searchers, Billy J (again), the Beatles, Brian Poole, Gerry (again), the Beatles and the Beatles. You get the idea? As Christmas loomed the Stones’ second single (a Beatles song) entered the charts – in the following year a couple of their real blues heroes would be there too! ** A Pompey group called Reet, Petite & Gone also recorded their version of “Viola Lee Blues” a lifetime ago. Dave Allen 20/6/2020· The Blues and its links to jazz and folk grew gradually in the 1950s and into the 1960s in the UK, but a particular 'Rhythm & Blues' style developed rapidly in the early 1960s and in or around London, clubs at Ealing, the Marquee and Eel Pie Island gave opportunities for young R&B musicians to develop their skills. Then through 1963 and into 1964 new clubs began to open around the country, sometimes - as with Kimbells in Southsea - simply starting up in a local venue as part of the general 'menu', while other named clubs like our Rendezvous shifted from jazz to blues. Pompey's Rendezvous had presented revivalist jazz in various venues from 1960 until it closed in late 1963 - about the time the Rolling Stones first visited Portsmouth. After a short break, Ernie Sears moved things to Oddfellows Hall in Kingston Road, where from February 1964 until August 1965 he presented many of the best known UK R&B club acts - plus occasional visits from American stars, notably Little Walter. The groups presented included Long John Baldry (with Rod Stewart); the Graham Bond Organisation (+ Jack Bruce & Ginger Baker); the Animals; the Pretty Things; John Mayall's Blues Breakers; Manfred Mann; the Moody Blues; Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames; the Spencer Davis Group; Alex Harvey; the Soul Agents; Alexis Korner's Blues Inc.; Downliners Sect, the Alan Price Set and others. Some were following the Stones as guitar/harmonica-based groups playing Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry etc., some were more jazz-based (Bond, Fame, Brian Auger etc) and there was also evidence of two imminent developments - a shift from blues to soul with acts like Geno Washington or Herbie Goins and a newer sound following the Who - maybe 'Pop Art'? - with acts like the Clique or Steve Marriot's Moments. Over time, John Mayall was one of the few who stuck with a more precise UK blues sound. There was no DJ at the Rendezvous; they played records but there was almost always a support act, usually a local group like the Sons of Man, the Roadrunners; the Challengers and in its last months, the Soul Society. Dave Allen June 17 at 11:37 AM · The Rolling Stones were probably the first major band of the new London-based R&B scene to play a headline gig in Pompey although we had previously seen Ottilie Patterson (with Chris Barber) and George Melly (with Mick Mulligan) singing their jazz-style blues at local venues, plus Long John Baldry, solo, at the Railway folk club. Meanwhile in London, guitarist Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies (12-string 'Leadbelly style and harmonica) had met a little club success as a skiffle act around 1957, shifted to a jug band and then formed the fully-fledged Blues Incorporated which at various times included Charlie Watts, Jack, Bruce, Graham Bond and Ginger Baker. They established a successful blues club in Ealing and guest vocalists included Baldry, Mick Jagger and Portsmouth's Paul Jones - who was then working in London. Paul Jones was also invited to audition for a predominantly modern jazz outfit led by Manfred Manne (as in Shelly) and Mike Hugg from Gosport- they had struggled to earn a living and wanted a blues vocalist to shift to the newly fashionable R&B. From March 1963, the new line-up kicked off at Southampton's Concorde Club, followed soon by a Pompey residency at the Railway, then the larger Kimbells. Meanwhile Alexis Korner added a saxophonist or two to Blues Incorporated including Dick Heckstall-Smith who, in his autobiography suggested Alexis pushed them towards a "wonderful crypto-avant-garde-ish Mingus influenced blues music". In 1962, before that shift they recorded an album, "Live at the Marquee" (which wasn't) but Cyril Davies, with a strong commitment to the post-war Chicago blues sound, departed and with members of Screaming Lord Sutch's Savages, formed his blues group the All-Stars. In late 1962 they recorded some of the finest of 1960s UK blues tracks including the wonderful harmonica instrumental "Countryline Special" - sadly Cyril did not ride the incoming R&B wave for long; during 1963 he become increasingly unwell, and he died in January 1964. But the music, and his influence, survive. Dave Allen 25/6/2020 1965 was a very lively year, with a number of key developments in the city and further afield, so I might spend a few posts on the year. I'll start with a very active folk scene (with a bit of blues) ... In January Bob Dylan recorded the album Another Side - in fact there were two sides – one with amplified instruments (Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie’s Farm etc) and one acoustic including “Mr Tambourine Man” and “Gates of Eden”. He toured England in 1965, and was filmed for the documentary “Don’t Look Back” which was not released until 1967. If you did look back you would notice that about six months later the ‘folksinger’, strapped on an electric guitar for a set with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival and a certain controversy was born. Butterfield’s Band released their own first LP – a superb set of blues from a mostly white band with guest Mike Bloomfield on guitar. Locally, Spinner predicted that a folk boom was “on the way” as Dave Smith and Dick Richardson appeared at the Folkways Club, followed by Martin Winsor and Dorris Henderson (later of Eclection). By mid-1965 there were about six folk clubs operating in the city, including the Folk Barn at the Oasis Club, North End as well as another at the Coach House in Wickham. A number of local performers including Jon Isherwood, Pat Nelson and the Loft Folk Four were working regularly. Isherwood’s new Folkhouse Club at the Talbot Hotel, Goldsmith Avenue, enjoyed a “swinging start” and quickly attracted over 400 members – an impressive figure for a room above a public bar. Spinner praised the “excellent guitar playing” of Southsea’s Barry Roberts and other artists included blues guitarist Gerry Lockran, American Nadia Cattouse, and Red Wilmot, while Isherwood supported American Julie Felix and the Spinners at the Guildhall in May. Student Rag Week (‘Stweek’) had a number of interesting events. “Authentic negro folk singer” and one-man band Jesse Fuller (“San Francisco Bay Blues”) was at Clarence Pier supported by Cliff Aungier, Malcolm Price, Royd Rivers and the Levee Breakers, while Julie Felix and Ken Colyer also appeared in the festivities. Colyer was one of very few ‘name’ jazzmen in the city in 1965 – and there was barely any sign of ‘Modern’ Jazz. Ted Wenham of the Folkways Club welcomed the increase in folk audiences but feared “commercialisation”, wanting to protect “authenticity and quality”. Spinner suggested this commercial success was reflected in Donovan’s “national standing as a pop folk singer” after his March appearance on Ready, Steady Go! At the Guildhall there were Folk Concerts following Julie Felix, with, from the USA, Rev Gary Davis, Josh White, and Buffy Sainte and a couple of weeks later Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pete Sayers, and Jon Isherwood. In July, Carolyn Hester headlined a concert at the Oddfellows Hall. Dave Allen 26/6/2020 A related diversion - back to 1965 tomorrow. It's the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury and I've just been reading in the Guardian about the 50 Greatest Glastonbury moments. 1997 begins "In perhaps the worst year for mud and rain ever ..." (it goes on to talk about a beat combo called Radiohead). I was there, I'd been there in 1996 too and that was pretty wet but kind of sticky. 1997 was simply like walking around in thick oxtail soup, and every time you got dry, it rained again. At that point in my life I was beyond festivals, camping etc. I really enjoy Victorious because I generally go home for tea and only go back if the weather and the evening bill warrant it. Even in the 1990s I stopped in a B&B in Glastonbury town. Why did I go? We were playing. Reet Petite & Gone had a gig in a big marquee/veggie café (maybe The Wise Crone Café? I forget). Playing was great fun but the conditions were diabolical. We got paid £50 expenses and two tickets each per performer. If you flogged one, it paid you a bit - I can't recall what I did with my spare but it meant I could see the whole weekend, including BOB for free! But (sorry, John Roberts) it was all so shitty, that I drove home that night, missing Bob, threw my boots in the bin and luxuriated in a shower and my own bed! Dave Allen 27/6/2020 OK, back to 1965 - mainly the first six months - or at least parts of them: The High Numbers changed back to the Who and released their first single “I Can’t Explain”. Apart from the usual suspects (Elvis, Cliff, Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Hollies, Supremes etc.) top ten hits included Pompey club visitors Georgie Fame with “Yeh, Yeh” and the Yardbirds (“For Your Love”), plus the Righteous Brothers “Loving Feeling”; Donovan’s “Catch the Wind”; Them “Here Comes the Night” and Shirley Ellis “The Clapping Song”. In the early months, R&B continued to thrive at the Rendezvous as Graham Bond set a new attendance record and there was a Thursday night visit from Georgie Flame & the Blue Flames, while spring guests included a return for Graham Bond, plus the Clique, and the Stormsville Shakers. Among the local pop groups, the Talismen entered the new “All England Beat Contest” and came out winners, which included coverage in Record Mirror. In the Evening News, Spinner suggested they had “staked their claim at national fame” although it was not to be. Their set was certainly varied, with covers of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” and Manfred Mann’s “Don’t Ask Me What I Say”, plus two self-penned songs “Big City” and “Grey Day” then with their singer in “full highland gear” they finished with the comedy song “Donald Where’s Your Trousers?” Gosport’s Brothers Scarlett won the latest Savoy Beat Contest and another local group the Tea-Pots began playing regularly at the Savoy. Big-name pop visitors included the Hollies at Thorngate; while the Guildhall featured Gerry & the Pacemakers; the Kinks; the Yardbirds; Donovan; the Pretty Things; Unit 4 + 2, and the Motown Revue. PJ Proby was booked to come but split his pants and never made it. The Savoy often featured traditional big band dancing but also presented the Animals in late March, Tom Jones & the Squires one week later, then the Hollies. On Sunday 21 February the Yardbirds played the Kimbells Sunday R&B club supported by the J Crow Combo. It was one of Eric Clapton’s last gigs before he joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers – he was replaced by Jeff Beck. Just four nights later – Thursday 25 February – came one of the major events of Pompey’s 1960s with the opening of the Birdcage Club, also then at Kimbells. There is so much to say about that, so we’ll come back to it in detail very soon. Initially we can note that the club was in competition with the Rendezvous, albeit initially running on different nights, presenting favourites from the London club scene including Ronnie Jones & the Nightimers, Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and the Paramounts. American visitors in the early days included, Champion Jack Dupree, Goldie & her Gingerbreads, Charlie & Inez Foxx, and Sugar Pie DeSanto. There was an interesting GEC Apprentices dance at Clarence Pier in March with Rendezvous favourites Downliners Sect, supported by the Soul Agents with Rod Stewart. The local support was billed as Mike Devon & the Diplomats but they had split three months earlier – in fact it was the Diplomats singer Mike Devon, with the former (local) Fortunes. Mike did not stay with that line up, joining instead with Big Band drummer Arthur Ward’s Orchestra – the other guys reformed as The Rampant. Dave Allen 29/6/2020 This is a story of mid-1965, although I'm not yet talking much about the Birdcage which opened in February 1965 at Kimbells. I think that will be next. This story has a rather sad ending about a very important Pompey Club. The Savoy joined in the growing fashion for R&B (mixed with pop) on Monday nights, starting with Georgie Fame followed by bookings for Goldie & the Gingerbreads, the Four Pennies, the Yardbirds, Unit 4 plus 2, and the Moody Blues. July 1965 ended with Them (including Van Morrison) at the ballroom, followed by the newly named Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, then Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and a week later the Animals. The Rolling Stones returned to the city, headlining a tour with the Walker Brothers, the Steam Packet, Elkie Brooks and Tommy Quickly at the Guildhall. The Chris Barber Band appeared on South Parade Pier, which featured a summer season “Minstrel Show” with Mr Pastry. Among the local groups, the re-named ‘Southern’ Classics departed for a lengthy period in Europe, while fellow Gosport group the Brothers Scarlett played regularly at Thorngate. The Crow and Klimaks played Kimbells, then the Klimaks played London’s Marquee Club. The Fleur de Lys were at Thorngate Hall and the Shamrocks returned from Europe and played Kimbells. With competition from the new Birdcage, Ernie Sears switched the Rendezvous to Fridays starting with Downliners Sect and the Challengers. Evening News advertisements for the Birdcage and Rendezvous included sparring between the two organisations as Ernie Sears announced “Rikki’s Rendezvous to Birdcage taxi service suspended!” Manfred Mann were at the Rendezvous to celebrate its impressive fifth birthday - The Evening News noted it had been born with ‘trad’jazz in a church hall in Ashburton Road with “steaming walls and beatniks by the dozen”. Graham Bond and the Soul Society were also there – the Soul Society were the latest local support band at the club, and would go through various incarnations (eventually becoming Image). They carried the soul torch locally further than other Pompey bands, into the 1970s. Spinner suggested they had made a “debut of some impact”. Alan Price’s impressive new jazz-influenced band played the Rendezvous in late August but the attendance was poor. The following week the usual Rendezvous advert appeared in the newspaper but rather different in content and tone. Ernie Sears listed recent attendances of Manfred Mann (376), Graham Bond (221) and Alan Price (80) and commented that this reflected “on those who failed to appreciate the best”. The advert acknowledged the intensity of local competition with clubs “going small or closing”, adding “Pardon us therefore while we overhaul and re-shape our future – see you soon – hang on to those cards”. We never saw them again. In the 1980s, when the Hornpipe Arts Centre occupied the Oddfellows Hall site, its cinema was named the Rendezvous as a direct tribute to that important club - but its jazz/R&B days were over. Image may contain: one or more people Dave Allen 30/6/2020 The matter of the origins of all things Mod and questions of authenticity can be complicated. There were certainly groups of people identified as Mods - then short for 'Modernists' - in London in the early 1960s. In Portsmouth the mod scene grew around live music, mostly Black American Blues, R&B and soul, notably from 1964 at Kimbells, the (Oddfellows) Rendezvous and then in particular the Birdcage Club. There is a Facebook site 'Birdcage Boys, Modern Men, with lots of posts and information to which I'll add bits & pieces. In summary, the Birdcage was opened at Kimbells in Osborne Road by Rikki Farr & Robin Beste from Brighton, on 25 February 1965. It ran initially only on Thursday evenings, first with Rikki's brother Gary and his band the T-Bones, then Chris Farlowe & the Thunderbirds. They both returned very quickly, while others in the first ten weeks were Ronnie Jones (ex-Alexis Korner) & the Nightimers; American blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree & the Sheffields; Goldie & the Gingerbreads (USA all-girl group); Zoot Money's Big Roll Band and the Paramounts (to become Procul Harum). On Thursday 27 May, Gary Farr guested with the Brian Auger Trinity while Rod Stewart, who was playing Clarence Pier with the Soul Agents, crossed the Common to sit in. Thus the embryonic Steam Packet started. On Thursday 17 June 1965 Jimmy James & the Vagabonds appeared for the first time. They would eventually play the Birdcage 29 times, more than any other act. In broad terms their popularity indicated a shift from blues/R&B towards the soul/Tamla sounds which were where the Birdcage was going with its live acts and records (by DJ 'Brady'). Two days later Thursdays became regular Saturdays as well - first off with the Moody Blues, establishing the competition with the Rendezvous. On Thursday 8 July the Shevells kicked off a four-day Birdcage Festival. They were followed by Ronnie Jones with his new band the Blue Jays on Friday, Jimmy James & the Vagabonds on Saturday and then for one night only, the Birdcage went to the Savoy for the Who (plus local band the Crow). There was a huge crowd and a big fight. On the following Thursday (15 June) the other 'favourite' Birdcage band, the Action made their debut - the first of 17 appearances at the club, when it was anything but a 'Lonely Room'. Dave Allen 1/7/2020 There is so much to tell about the Birdcage, so here's another chunk. We got to the Kimbells (and one-off) Savoy version which continued through July and into August 1965, with the usual suspects, but on Friday 20 August the venue was suddenly "unavailable" and the Vagabonds gig was cancelled. The T-Bones played the following night but that was it - they both opened and closed the Southsea Birdcage - and that phase ended around the same time that the Rendzvous closed for the last time. What happened next was told to me in an email by Rikki's partner Robin Beste (2001): "Kimbells gave us notice to quit. At that very moment a white knight appeared in the shape of Tony Harris, part-owner of London's Flamingo who for some reason turned up one night at Kimbells. He took a shine to Ricky ... and it was Harris who found the Eastney premises through his estate agent contacts". It was previously the Court School of Dancing, just south of Bransbury Park and next door to 'Charlie Hurdles' pub (the Birdcage was never licensed). The Eastney Birdcage opened on Thursday 26 August with a fine double bill of Steam Packet plus the Action (all for 5/-). The official Eastney opening night came two months later on Thursday 21 October 1965 with the Vagabonds, the Action and Johnny B Great & the Quotations (plus sorry to relate, Jimmy Saville). The Walker Brothers were booked and advertised but they didn't turn up. It was nonetheless (or perhaps because?) a triumphant evening, and the start of 18+ months of great fun. Dave Allen 5-7-2020 The Birdcage was built around black American music (plus visitors from Jamaica in the later period). Every week DJ 'Brady' played the newest black soul records and almost all the English acts covered American blues, R&B, soul or Tamla. There were visitors too - it's interesting that number one Champion Jack Dupree was old-style blues piano but after him almost everything at the Birdcage shifted away from what Muddy Waters called 'the Deep Blues' towards more contemporary soul - generally more 'glamorous' and good for dancing and singing along. The American visitors were: 1965 (Kimbells) 25 March: Champion Jack Dupree 22 July: Charlie & Inez Foxx 5 August: Sugar Pie de Santo 1965 (Eastney) 16 September: Goldie & the Gingerbreads 23 September: Lou Johnson 2 October: Bo Diddley?** 28 October: Ben E King 23 November: Wilson Pickett 7 December: Major Lance 1966 27 January: The Drifters 10 February: Charlie & Inez Foxx 17 April: Arthur Alexander 5 May: Dee Dee Warwick 16 October: Ike & Tina Turner 25 November: Little Richard 1967 26 January: Charlie & Inez Foxx 22 April: The Soul Sisters 20 May: Prince Buster & the All Stars ** There's lots of evidence that he was booked but never came. But a good friend of mine who went regularly and kept a diary (including prices, pass-out stamps etc) swears he saw Bo, the Duchess etc. So that's for him - but it seems doubtful (I didn't go). Dave Allen 8/7/2020 A fascinating Pompey link. On New Year's Day 1964 the BBC launched a new programme called 'Top of the Pops' - you might remember it? The first number one was "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" although the best selling UK single across that month was actually "Glad All Over" by the Dave Clark Five. Other acts on that 30 minute show were Dusty Springfield with "I Only Want to Be with You", the Rolling Stones with "I Wanna Be Your Man", the Hollies with "Stay", and the Swinging Blue Jeans with "Hippy Hippy Shake". The Dave Clark Five were rather popular for a while back then, following that number one with "Bits & Pieces" (stalled at number two) although their next Top Ten hit was not until the summer of 1965. Back in 1964 they headlined a nationwide package tour which came to Portsmouth Guildhall on 16 June 1964: The Dave Clark Five plus the Applejacks, Millie and the Dennisons (from Liverpool). As a consequence of their popularity they - and Dave Clark in particular - followed the Beatles into the world of movie-making with a film called "CATCH US IF YOU CAN" (the first one) unless you saw it in the USA in which case it was called "Having a Wild Weekend' It's a somewhat light confection which nonetheless offers a dig at the commercial drive in pop culture in the mid-1960s. Dave Clark plays a stunt man working on a commercial for the Meat industry, but sick of the whole enterprise he absconds with the actress in an E-Type Jag they've pinched from the set. The rest of the group play parts and bits of music but Clark and his new girlfriend (played by Barbara Ferris) take off for an island off the coast of Devon. On the way they cross Salisbury Plain, and encounter a bunch of young drop-outs who are either the last of the beatniks or early hippies - take your pick. And this is where it's all a bit Pompey because for starters the Director (his first movie) is none other than John Boorman and the young people include Marion Knight and her pals again - some returning from 'Citizen 63' others who've arrived in the 18 months between the two filming periods. The most prominent of the Pompey crowd are the guitar/harmonica duet, 'Small' (recently arrived from Coventry) and Tom Powell, and among the others is Andy McGuigan. I'm very grateful to Alan Williams who put me back in touch with Andy recently and he's shared any number of photos and memories from those days - some of which I'll share here today. Andy told me that they "lived in a squat in notorious St Paul’s in Bristol; cash in hand and 6am coach to Salisbury Plain it was all smoke and banjo music and fun days on location. The beatnik scenes were all trope and mirrors, embarrassing even then, but Tom Powell was in his element". Dave Allen 12/7/2020 At the height of ‘Swinging London’, Joe Boyd ran the London Club UFO with ‘Hoppy’ introducing the original Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Arthur Brown and others to the Hippies – he preferred the term ‘Freaks’. Then he worked on recordings with the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention (‘Unhalfbricking’) and others. But he was an American who moved backwards-and-forwards during the mid-1960s before settling over here and so he had an interesting view of the changes over that period which, looking back, seem almost constant. And – as Paul Wild has observed previously – he wrote a fine book about those times called “White Bicycles”. One of the things he liked about the UK was the weekly ‘Melody Maker’ because it had “articles about pop, folk, jazz and blues all mixed together” - that “mix” was certainly something I enjoyed. Boyd recalled a visit to Padstow, Cornwall on May Day 1965, with a meeting of some of the major names in the UK’s folk revival including the Watersons, Martin Carthy, Luke Kelly (Dubliners), Cyril Tawney (who was born on the same day as me, in Gosport), Maddie Prior, Louis Killen and Anne Briggs. The latter was a major ‘cult’ figure - Sandy Denny’s “Pond & Stream” is about her: “Annie wanders on the land. She loves the freedom of the air. She finds a friend in every place she goes …” But as Boyd observes, “there were few venues or audiences for an unaccompanied ballad singer”. That’s the English scene, while in America Boyd had grown up with an involvement in their folk, blues and roots revival, including working at the Newport Folk Festivals, not least Newport 1965 when on Saturday afternoon Bob Dylan played for half-an-hour on a minor stage, contributing to a song-writing workshop. Later there was a blues workshop concluding with Son House before the Paul Butterfield Blues Band set up their drums, organ and amplifiers. Alan Lomax gave them a less than generous introduction with a snide comment about all the equipment and walking off he was confronted by Albert Grossman the manager of Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Odetta, Butterfield and others, and a fight ensued! That was nothing to the furore on the following evening, when Dylan played his headline slot on the main stage. Prior to this the Butterfield Band were unable to play because of a downpour which didn’t improve Grossman’s mood, but the sky cleared after sets by Dick & Mimi Farina, and the Moving Star Hall Singers, and then it was time for Dylan. He had assembled a back-up band including Al Kooper & Barry Goldberg (keyboards), Mike Bloomfield (guitar) and the Black Butterfield rhythm guys Jerome Arnold (bass) & Sam Lay (drums). He only played a few songs and they were from ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ and ‘Highway 61 Revisited’, not the earlier acoustic albums. Boyd reports that when the opening song “Maggie’s Farm” ended, “there was a roar that contained many songs” but the boos “were not in a majority”, although Lomax, Pete Seeger and a bunch of ‘traditionalists’ were furious at the sound levels – the noise. There were then, “two camps”. After three amplified songs they all left the stage, and Dylan returned to play an acoustic version of “Mr Tambourine Man” – according to Boyd “reclaiming the song from the shiny but shallow Byrds’ version”. But his major point – although we need to ask whether this can be so true of the UK (perhaps Manchester the following year?) – was this: “Anyone wishing to portray the history of the sixties as a journey from idealism to hedonism could place the hinge at around 9.30 on the night of 25 July 1965”. Dave Allen 13/7/2020 Back to the local scene today and a period from around 1966 when musicians who in many cases had been playing covers of Black American songs (R&B and soul) began to shift under the influence of white bands whether mid-60s Beatles or maybe the new American acts like the Byrds, Lovin' Spoonful, Love, Doors and others. This is just pre-San Francisco psychedelia and might be understood partly as young musicians quite naturally wanting to stretch out and explore new sounds, techniques and ideas, and partly a sense that however much white teenagers from Pompey loved Black American music (and I'm one of those for sure) it wasn't 'ours'. In our musical lives what began to emerge in the second half of the 1960s - often heard first on John Peel's Pirate and Radio One shows - was very exciting and offered all kinds of creative possibilities. As an example, I have just been talking on the 'phone with drummer Alan Williams who played with the Tamla/soul inspired St Louis Checks and he described how their last phase was as Magic Roundabout and then they reformed as England with Chris Ryder (vocals), Mick Gill (guitar), Mick McGuigan (bass) and Rod Watts (keyboards), playing songs by the Doors, the Byrds ("Eight Miles High") and others. It didn't necessarily suit those audiences whose preference was for dancing and singing along to pop or soul, and at times that became a significant 'tension'. To some degree it was solved in venues like the Marina where DJs replaced live bands. Elsewhere, the blokes started growing their hair and the boys and girls took to sitting down to listen, on dance floors and in muddy fields. Not everyone approved. Dave Allen 14/7/2020 I’m going to write some things about Mods and Hippies. I know that only a minority of young people in the 1960s thought of themselves as committed to one or both of those ‘sub cultures’, but while most were rather more ‘middle-of-the-road’, I’d suggest that some aspects of them impinged on most young people’s lives – even if it was just the music. Nik Cohn was one of the early special chroniclers of all things ‘pop’ – notably in his intriguing book “AWOPBOPALOOBOP ALOPBAMBOOM, subtitled “Pop from the Beginning” (the first three chapters, were about rhythm & blues/country/crooning, then Haley, then Elvis). It was published in 1969, when he wrote “it’s finished now, the first mindless explosion … Pop has got complicated … split itself into factions and turned sophisticated. Part of it has a mind now to make fine music. The other part is purely industrial, a bored and boring business …” Two years before that, he also called time on the Mod movement in an article called “Ready, Steady, Gone” in the Observer’s Sunday magazine. He described how in the (very) early 1960s, Mods “made a religion out of their clothes and rejected everything else as boring and uncool”; while by 1964 they were “the biggest teenage group this country had ever had”. Rather delightfully, he suggests that Mods “had no heroes but themselves”, until it became a commercial enterprise, exploited by designers and record companies until it became more-and-more mass produced. It; it “became the biggest teenage industry ever”, but as a consequence was “watered down”. He interviewed Mods who talked about drugs (mostly ‘speed’) and violence which was when the problems with the rockers started – Cohn says “Mod got violent because it got too big” and the Bank Holiday riots (which occurred before the Who released “My Generation”) were the “culmination. Nothing could ever be so exciting again (so) Mod went into a period of anti-climax and decline”. Cohn suggested that the next generation lacked impetus, and were too easily bored, but he ended by suggesting “there are signs we’re due for a swing back to involvement (and) the impetus … has come from the California-style hippies with their credo of love and beauty and LSD … the hippies have reintroduced a sense of genuine enjoyment and this is catching”. Of course while he was able in late August 1967, to write with a certain perspective about the growth and decline of the Mods, he did not then have the benefit of hindsight to offer a comprehensive account of the whole Hippie movement. But just three months later, under the heading “The New Society” aspects of that, the counter-culture, the underground or whatever you want to call it, and its relationship to ‘Pop’, were in the magazine again. It opened with: “If you are over 25 you feel uncomfortably aware that Pop is not just music; Something is Going On Underground”. If you are under 25 you are certain that It’s All Happening”. Next time - what was 'happening' in Pompey Dave Allenj 17/7/2020 “FOLK MUSIC: The body of a nation’s musical culture … accumulated from the experiences of the people as a whole; of no known authorship …handing on from one person to another”. (from A Guide to Popular Music – Gammond & Clayton,, 1960) Bob Dylan plugged in, members of the Byrds plugged in, so too almost all the major players from psychedelic San Francisco bands. A lot of the new sounds from America - which began to wrest the initiative back from the 1964 Beatle-led British ‘Invasion’ – were developed by musicians who had come up playing acoustic folk music. That wasn’t the case in this country, where much of the psychedelic stuff like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Move, late-Yardbirds, or Tomorrow came from electric bands. One of the few exceptions was the Incredible String Band, but for the most part the English folk revival didn’t shift into the mainstream rock album scene – at least not until July 1969 when Fairport released “A Sailor’s Life” on the LP “Unhalfbricking”, with Dave Swarbrick on violin. For some years, Swarbrick had been a key member of the Ian Campbell Group – it was one of their songs that Marion Knight and her pals were singing in “Citizen 63”. Early in 1966, the Ian Campbell Group appeared in an Anglo-American Folk Concert with Trevor Lucas (the future Fotheringay husband of Sandy Denny) plus Canadians Gordon Lightfoot and Ian & Sylvia. Ticket holders could take advantage of the special offer of guaranteed Albert Hall tickets to see Bob Dylan for one of his plugged-in gigs. Incidentally, Sylvia Fricker’s song, “You were on my Mind” was a British hit for Crispian St Peters, covering Ian & Sylvia’s original. At the time of that concert, the local folk scene was flourishing with clubs and concerts – for example, Martin Carthy had recently played at the Talbot Hotel’s Folkhouse Club in Goldsmith Avenue; the Loft Folk Four were managing the club above the Star in Lake Road, and the Lost City Ramblers including Mike, another of the Seeger family, came from the USA to play in their ‘old timey’ string band style in concert at the Oddfellows along with fellow countryman Paul Simon and the Country Strings. Around the same time Paul Simon, was paid just £15 to play the Folkhouse. Gosport’s Queen’s Hotel folk club presented bluesman Gerry Lockran, Malcolm Price and the local star Jon Isherwood, while Joyce Hyman and the folk-blues Wishing Boys appeared at Havant’s Jug of Punch. Kimbells presented folk on Sundays with the Settlers, but the appearance there of the Irish McPeake Family was poorly attended. One very special occasion was the visit to the Railway of legendary American Doc Watson. Tom Paxton a future performer at the Isle of Wight Festival, was a big-name guest at the Oasis Folk Club, North End, and his songs like “Last Thing on My Mind”, and “Rambling Boy” were popular among local performers. At the start of 1967, Portsmouth’s Pat Nelson was working for the BBC as the host of the weekly “Young Folk - Old Folk” on the BBC’s Home Service. The Jug of Punch advertised many of the leading local folk performers for a “Come All Ye” session including Jon Isherwood, Pat Nelson, Barry Roberts, Barry Gordon, Les Windley, Anne Lawrence, Len Betts and Phil Tree. This was followed by an appearance of television folk stars Robin Hall & Jimmie MacGregor, while Johnny Silvo appeared at the Railway Hotel and in concert at Oak Park School, Havant with Pat Nelson and the Broadsiders. Students held a folk gig at the Savoy with Dorris Henderson (future Eclection), Johnny Silvo, 3 City 4, and College Folk. American Hedy West with her Appalachian songs, came to the Ballads & Blues Club – she was perhaps one of the most underrated of the young American singers of the time, recording three albums for Topic Records in Britain. In mid-March Jon Isherwood played the Pomme D’Or, Talbot Hotel and Folkhouse over four nights; Wizz Jones & Pete Stanley brought bluegrass to the Folkhouse and Jo Ann Kelly her Memphis Minnie-style blues to the Railway Hotel. Early in 1968, the Guildhall offered folk fans the Dubliners in January, followed by Jon Isherwood, Pat Nelson, Diz Dizley and the Strawberry Hill Boys (subsequently the Strawbs), while Bert Jansch appeared solo at Havant’s Jug of Punch in February. Sandy Denny & the Strawberry Hill Boys played a concert at the Oddfellows Hall, just before Sandy joined Fairport Convention, and in May, the Railway Hotel presented Roy Harper and Diz Disley. Rikki Farr’s Brave New World Club, seeking a more diverse approach than the Birdcage, invited Jon Isherwood to run Sunday folk nights with a varied series of guests including the Singing Postman, Jo Ann Kelly, her brother Dave Kelly, Cliff Aungier and Malcolm Price but it did not take off. American guitarist, John Fahey - a favourite of John Peel - played a student gig in Park Building (behind the Guildhall) and towards the end of 1968 Al Stewart played the Railway Folk Club, The Jug of Punch would start 1969 in similar vein with west country folk-blues player Mike Cooper. By the late 1960s many of these ‘folk’ performers were acclaimed (acoustic) guitarists. In 1969 white American blues guitarist Stefan Grossman appeared at the Jug of Punch, followed by the leading English traditional singer, Shirley Collins at the Den of Folk. In October Bert Jansch and John Renbourn brought Pentangle to the Guildhall and in November, the King’s Theatre presented a night of “Folk Blues & Beyond”, starring Al Stewart, Ralph McTell, Michael Chapman, Diz Disley, Wizz Jones & local guitarist/singer Pete Quinn. Dave Allen 18/7/2020 I promised "Next time - what was 'happening' in Pompey" - and that was the Folk scene. What about elsewhere as the often American-influenced Psychedelia began to have an impact? In its first year (1965) the Birdcage booked almost exclusively UK and American blues, R&B and soul acts. They promised the Walker Brothers at the official Eastney opening but they didn’t turn up, so it was not until the last week of November 1965 that the Summer Set appeared. They are not one of big names of the 1960s but they were broadly a UK-style surf group. Like Jimi, I wasn’t big on surf stuff so never saw them, but someone must have liked them because they returned twice in March, then again in May, and July 1966. Nonetheless the club’s music policy (live acts and records) was almost entirely based in Black American music until August 1966. Then suddenly The Radio Caroline Show with DJ Tom Lodge, was followed by the Move - beginning a residency - the Radio London Show, the Kinks and the Hollies. For a while other ‘pop’ acts appeared including the Merseys, the Washington DCs, the Sands, Wishful Thinking, the Real Thing and The Syn – not so much ‘pop’, as prototype Yes, with Chris Squire on bass guitar. The first night of 1967 was called “Freakout” and two weeks later, complete with lightshow (was this the first ever seen in Pompey?) came the original Pink Floyd. February opened at the Birdcage with the return of the Who but it was also the final appearance of DJ Pete ‘Brady’ Boardman. By June Spinner reported in the Evening News that Brady, was “experimenting with backing tapes of noises and projected kaleidoscopes for his forthcoming musical ventures” – decades later he was living in York and actively involved in experimental music projects. By the time Pink Floyd returned Marc Bolan had appeared with John’s Children, soon to be followed by the popular In Crowd, currently transforming themselves into underground favourites Tomorrow. The Herd arrived in June 1967 and Denny Laine’s Electric String Band in July. During that summer ‘old’ favourites like the Vagabonds, Herbie Goins, Geno, Graham Bond and the Action still appeared, although the latter were about to transform themselves into the more ‘psychedelic’ Mighty Baby. The Joyce Bond Soul Revue came twice in August but by now the club was only opening on Saturdays, and on 26 August it closed its doors for the last time. The times were changing. The Guildhall seemed somewhat bewildered by all these changes. In January the local paper reported “no ‘pop’ there and their focus during that significant year was on some top-quality jazz (Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, Buddy Rich, Earl Hines, Jacques Loussier) although that rather petered out after June. Otherwise there was ‘Easy Listening’ (Mantovani, Acker Bilk, the Wurzels) and a single ‘pop’ show in March starring Gene Pitney and the Troggs. Then, as if out of nowhere in November, came that extraordinary package tour with Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Pink Floyd, the Nice, the Move, Amen Corner, and Eire Apparent - followed by a student Christmas dance starring the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. In the Summer Long John Baldry and Bluesology (with pianist Reg Dwight) played at South Parade Pier as that venue began to occupy an increasingly central role in the city’s venues. The Crusade (album) version of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor, played there in November, and in the same month the Action played at North End’s Oasis/Parlour while the Brave New World opened at the Eastney Birdcage venue with Ronnie Jones and the Savoy presented former another favourite Birdcage band, the Alan Bown! with Marmalade and the Nite People. Alan Bown, Wrong Direction and Perception were also at Manor Court while the Savoy presented Amen Corner, the Action and St Louis Checks Dave Allen 19/7/2020 It's an anniversary today and it's to do with drugs - Drugs, there I’ve said it. No ‘history’ of 1960s popular culture in the UK or USA can be complete without some account of the drugs that people were using, and the impact they had. I’m going to consider a few key points in this first part, and then look more locally tomorrow. I’m posting this first part today because it is, as near as makes no difference, the 53rd anniversary of the rally in Hyde Park in support of Legalising ‘Pot’ (Sunday 16 July 1967). The speakers included the American ‘Beat poet Allen Ginsberg but (in case you hadn’t noticed) in didn’t work. Nonetheless people took drugs, still do take drugs and I guess always will. All that changed was the types of drugs. Among the drug-takers were musicians; in this country some got ‘busted’ including Donovan, some of the Beatles and – just along the coast from here – Mick and Keith. Lots of things happened in July 1967, the height of the ‘Summer of Love’; as well as the Rally, Mick & Keith were sentenced at the beginning of the month and freed at the end, while George Harrison took Patti Boyd (and others) on a ‘trip’ to San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury but had a bad time – it’s said George never took acid again. Dave Allen 20/7/2020 The key point around drug-taking in the 1960s, is perhaps the extent to which it was spreading to the provinces, to 'ordinary' people - and to younger people. There were increasing reports of drug-taking in our local newspaper although no one could be quite sure about the extent to which this simply reported a 'problem' or whether it also stimulated it. In mid-July 1961, the Evening News ran a series called “When Youth Drifts” which examined issues like under-age drinking and sex, drugs, the impact of working mothers on the nuclear family, and “the Beatniks and their Followers”. On Saturday 24 August 1963, a newspaper headline revealed “Girl (14) took drugs, drank beer in bar at Southsea”. The drugs included Benzedrine and reefers and it was one of the earliest reported prosecutions of this kind in the city. On 24 January 1966, the Evening News carried the report of an article written by a Borstal officer suggesting that there were “few teenage drug takers”. He argued, as with the “fuss” about mods and rockers, the issue was “partly newspaper exaggeration of the behaviour of a few” and he also differentiated between ‘pep’ pills and ‘heavier’ drugs. Around Christmas 1966 the Evening News ran two consecutive exposes on teenage drug abuse in the city entitled “A City’s Sinister Secret” and “Youth in Chains” (5 & 6 December). Shortly after a city magistrate admitted “this drug menace has worried us considerably for the last few years”. The Evening News front page on 18 February 1967 ran a “stark warning on dangers of drugs” with statistics that prosecutions for possessing "hemp" had increased ten times in a decade and for heroin four times in one year. Five days later the main headline ran “Too Easy to Get Drugs - Doctor” adding “Grave Concern about Young” and the next day we learned that local schoolteachers were “alert to drugs peril In early summer 1967, The Evening News reported the city’s first prosecution for possession of LSD after a ‘tripping’ youth was arrested in hospital, having “stripped off his clothing and jumped through a first-floor window”. The city developed a strategy for addressing problems with drugs including pamphlets to be made available to all school pupils over the age of 12. In mid-October 1969, the Evening News ran a range of articles about the ‘swinging’ sixties. Mr Ralph Bonner Bink, Conservative MP for Portsmouth South, declared, “a permissive society is not a progressive one but an anarchist community”. There was however, a headline “Legalise all Drugs says Young Tory”. Dave Allen 21/7/2020 It's 'Poetry in Motion' today, especially to honour the Birthday of Pompey's Poetry Person Maggie Sawkins - I hope you're having fun! In 1965, a major event in London signalled something new, and rather different from the usual somewhat hedonistic mix of music, dancing and fashion. It was a Poetry reading to a large audience at the Albert Hall on Friday 11 June 1965, and is often cited as the event that heralded the start of London’s Counterculture. The event was stimulated by the London visit of American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, upon which a small group of people decided they must organize a venue for him to read in public. Not lacking ambition, they booked the Albert Hall and invited other poets to join the reading. The event was somewhat hastily put together with a degree of bravado, but thousands arrived and in addition to Ginsberg, other poets included Alex Trocchi, Christopher Logue, Michael Horowitz, Gregory Corso, Adrian Mitchell, Pete Brown, and Stevie Smith. Barry Miles and his wife Sue were involved in the planning and organisation and he recalled "Incense and pot-smoke wafted into the dome, bottles of wine and chillums were passed around. A dozen or so bemused schizophrenics brought along by anti-psychiatrist RD Laing danced to music heard only in their own heads and blew bubbles from pipes…(Ginsberg) opened the event with a deep-voiced Tibetan mantra" Three years later, the “Dance of Words” was a unique event for the city that took place in Portsmouth Guildhall on Monday 27 May 1968, using the main auditorium, without the seats, plus two side rooms with smaller stages. Different acts appeared throughout the evening as the audience ambled between the rooms, sat on the floor or danced when appropriate. Fairport Convention made one of their first public appearances with Sandy Denny, Free came to back Alexis Korner, poets Brian Patten and Michael Horowitz who had been at the famous Royal Albert Hall event in 1965, read work, Principal Edward’s Magic Theatre impressed compere John Peel sufficiently that he would sign them to his new Dandelion label, and Cream’s lyricist Pete Brown appeared with his First Real Poetry Band. Local art lecturer Ray Selden brought his modern jazz group who performed with other poets, while the Portsmouth rock scene was represented by Coconut Mushroom. Students Guff Putowski and his friend Jerry Ensor (who would later join Principal Edwards) were the main organisers. In the programme they said: In the Dance of Words “we have tried to combine the very best of the current British underground”. The Evening News reported that over 1,000 people had attended and that “the general policy was to do just whatever one felt like doing”. The crowd certainly included undergraduates, as well as ‘graduates’ from the Birdcage, although the hair was longer and the clothes looser, more colourful and more varied, while Guff Putowski described it as “something more than just an ordinary dance or concert”. It signalled the start of a period when student events became higher profile – and were usually open to all the young people in the city. Dave Allen 23/7/2020 A few ideas this morning that might turn out to be utter bollocks but nothing ventured … (etc). For starters try this – imagine (a bit like that recent film ‘Yesterday’) that you wake up one day and no one else seems to know anything about the 50s/60s ‘tribes – the Teds, Mods, Rockers, Skins etc – and you find yourself describing them to everyone. If you took example from each tribe, not a specific individual but the general ‘look’, what would that be like? What would that person look like? Just imagine. OK, here goes: I have suggested before that the existence of these ‘tribes’ owed quite a lot to media representations, images and stories that circulated in newspapers, TV & radio and sometimes ‘movies’, although not always, and not exclusively – the word ‘on the street’ that you either got or didn’t, was a part of the ‘secret society’ element but it was always going to be exploited by the media and by the fashion, and music/entertainment industries (etc). Back to your imagination. I’ll bet most of you imagined ‘boys’ not ‘girls’? If not, the next bit is a bit dodgy, but I’ll proceed on the assumption that like me you see those tribes as mainly dominated by the ‘boys’. In addition, we (I’m in it now) were mostly 1940s kids, with a few younger ones born in the first half of the 1950s. As a consequence, we grew up with images of masculinity often linked to soldiers, wars and uniforms - in many cases our fathers had served in the war, perhaps our older brothers and next-door neighbours were subjected to National Service through the 1950s (John Lennon missed it by months – Imagine there’s no Beatles, it’s easy if you try). And how many of us (especially in somewhere like Portsmouth) had our own mini-version with Cadets – I was in the Royal Navy cadets for three years at school (it was voluntary unless you didn’t fancy it). At the same time, the 1950s & 1960s were also a time of unprecedented prosperity for ‘ordinary’ people – as Prime Minister Harold Macmillan suggested in 1957, "most of our people have never had it so good". And so? Simply that it is possible to read those tribes as essentially masculine, materialistic, hierarchical and wedded to a certain kind of uniformity – less rigid than the services for sure but with their own codes and conventions. Most of the photos I’ve chosen are not from that period, they are from the recreation of the Mods in the movie ‘Quadrophenia’. That’s not unproblematic – In 2002, Gary Wharton wrote with some justification that “today’s mod enthusiast may not care too much for the sensationalist, drug-enhanced lifestyle portrayed”, but on the whole, my images are not of that aspect, not of Jimmy’s descent into a personal hell. There is, an important point in the film, where Jimmy chats with his old mate Kevin, now a fully-fledged rocker. Kevin is a kind young man, bewildered by the tribal animosity and says “underneath we’re all the same” to which Jimmy replies “I don’t want to be the same as everybody else – that’s why I’m a mod”. The new uniformity was not militaristic, but to identify with any of the tribes meant a limit to the expression of freedom in lifestyle choices. My final, very important point, is that membership of most of these tribes did not preclude engagement with mainstream, adult culture – indeed perhaps particularly for mods, without full-time fairly conventional employment there wasn’t sufficient money to engage fully. Many Pompey mods were in the Dockyard. Dave Allen 1/8/2020 I guess it's obvious that this is a Lockdown project - what to do when there's nothing to do? - although it draws on years of finding and being given materials and information. Some of it takes a while but I've had the time and the Comments have been very interesting and enjoyable, thank you. But over the next four days and on a couple more occasions in August I'm suddenly going to be rather busy (did I ever mention cricket?) I'm off to Hove for the next four days to rabbit on the radio as Sussex play Hampshire - the accreditation only arrived today and I am rather pleased but I'll have less time for this for a few days So I thought I'd shift to the late 1960s (Rikki Farr's last day's in Pompey) the on into the 1970s at the Tricorn and a specific Club there, Cromat, which took its name from DJ Pete Cross and Agent/Manager Ricky Martin who booked up-and-coming rock/Prog acts - with one or two bigger 60s names. Dave Allen 4/8/2020 What's the connection(s) then? Well you guys had me thinking with the films you nominated and most particularly the Rock (& Roll) Biopics - among those mentioned were films about Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Jim Morrison ('The Doors') and John Lennon (2) and there have been others - we might try to name them all but springing to mind are Forest Whitaker as Charlie Parker ('Bird'), Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in 'Lady Sings the Blues', 'Sid & Nancy' and Bette Midler in 'The Rose' - based somewhat on the life of Janis Joplin. What characterises them all is that the film-makers are as interested in these individuals as casualties and or 'rebels' as they are in the music. There's an obvious reason for wanting an expensive drama to be 'dramatic' but it applies also to TV documentaries about (for example) Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton - even the sweet Karen Carpenter got a biopic (and documentary) because of her troubles and early death. Are there exceptions to this pattern? Maybe, I'm not sure. So, by contrast, one of the two things that connects the three bands in whom I have interest for different reasons is that all the guys in the original 1960s line-ups (and I'm talking about the first album here) are still alive - a reason in these times in particular for celebration. I've also thought for some time that there can be few other bands who made their first album in the 1960s and can make that claim(?). I guess the Manfreds and 'Duprees' were good, clean-living boys but great credit should go to the members of Country Joe & the Fish for resisting all the temptations of San Francisco and Haight Street. As you can see from the album cover they were all fine upstanding citizens and long may you last guys! I did promise two connections - I'm not sure this one helps to explain number one but you never know. At various times over the past 70 years, members of all three of those bands have 'lived' in Portsmouth and/or its surrounding area. In the case of Country Joe & the Fish it wasn't a long residence but it happened more than once - while Phil Shulman of the 'Duprees' is still in Gosport. There you are - healthy place Pompey. Dave Allen 5/8/2020 I'm going back to Pompey in 1967 now and Parts One & Two of more personal recollections - how I got involved in some serious music-making which had immediate results and repercussions and changed my life. In the summer of 1967 in the midst of all the crazy things that were happening, the Birdcage closed for the last time, I left the Grammar School after one year in the sixth former doing little but art, spent a couple of weeks hitching to the west country, went to my first Festival (Windsor Jazz & Blues), tried a couple of jobs that didn't fit and went off to Highbury College to try to do some 'A' levels in a year (some hope!). There I met up with some pals who had a 5-piece Harlem Soul Band which oddly played quite a few blues and Hendrix covers. Their fine lead guitarist Pete Gurd was my pal with whom I'd set out playing music some years earlier in a folk blues duo. I hung out with them, went to gigs - I recall one at the Indigo Vat - but was very surprised when on deciding to pursue the soul route that fitted their name, they asked me to join as a second vocalist. Even today, it still seems an odd but rather delightful invitation - I wasn't weighing up lots of offers! My first gig was a Sunday night club in Guildford in the autumn of 1967 and off we went ... I'll now add some comments to the first set of images and press cuttings; then tomorrow I'll say more about how we 'took off' in 1968. Dave Allen 6/8/2020 I said two parts but I think I need to add this 'interim' tale about how Harlem Speakeasy went from local youth club gigs to a fully professional recording outfit with a London agency. The tale reveals quite a lot about the pop 'industry' in those days - I have told it before, so if it's familiar, skip this bit. Just one visual which reveals a degree of ambition in the band that was beyond anything I had expected. In the early months of 1968 we'd take ourselves off to auditions, including a gig in Romford Town Hall organised by the infamous Agent/Manager Don Arden (father of Sharon Osbourne). He ran the Small Faces and Amen Corner and these gigs - which you did for nothing - were supposed to be in search of the next big thing. It was a teenage and mostly female audience. We played it, went down really well and he asked us back to get Mickie Most to check us out. So back we went (Nick Lowe was in another band that night; years later I met him and he remembered it). Again, no money but again we went down really well. Don wasn't there but one of his 'people' said Mickie had loved us but had to leave early - maybe we'd do one more Saturday night and meet up with him. This time, we were billed and a little Essex fan base turned up. They paid to get in, we paid to get there, went down well again but apparently Mickie had a last minute complication and ... Well we were just 17/18, very naive, and we'd just been conned by a lying bully. On the Monday morning the bigger members of the band went to London and demanded to see Don Arden. Our Roadie/Manager Richie, no shrinking violet, carried a monkey wrench in his pocket and when we were ushered in it seemed we might need it as he had 2/3 'minders' with him. They were bigger and nastier than us and to put it bluntly he told us to 'Fuck Off' - so we did. We sat in a coffee bar in Denmark Street (Tin Pan Alley) talking over what had happened and in the next booth a guy overheard us. It's important here to remind you that the new sound/style of The Alan Bown! had become our role model. This guy told us he was a roadie with Alan Bown, they had just left an agency/ management run by Richard Cowley and he had a two-band recording deal with Polydor so was looking for acts to fill it. We contacted Richard - a nice man - and he fixed for us to do a Saturday night audition at London's Speakeasy (!) Club. We drove up hoping this time ... only to discover that it had a bad fire the night before and was closed. So we went to his flat and played 3/4 numbers acoustically (we were an eight-piece soul band!) on which basis he signed us. You couldn't make it up - and I didn't! Next - what happened ... Dave Allen 7/8/2020 April 1968 and Harlem Speakeasy found ourselves with a record contract with Polydor to make at least two singles per year for five years and an agent in Soho who would get us gigs in clubs and ballrooms across the country. Our producer was Chris Brough, son of Peter who had a career in a duo with a chap called Archie Andrews. He was OK with our choice of a Drifters' 'B' side "Aretha" as the first single but insisted that we must write the 'B' side and also future singles. We's never written anything before but Keith and John came up with a verse/bridge structure and I fitted words and melody to "Sights of Pegasus". It was released in July 1968, got reviews in Melody Maker and NME and Pete Murray played it as a new release on Radio One. Then we hit the road. We played lots in and around Norfolk (including the Maltings) all the main midlands and north west towns and cities - including Manchester's Twisted Wheel - Wales and London - including the legendary Flamingo. It was hard work. We had little money and often spent nights at Service Stations - four kipping in the van; four stretching coffees, swopping at 3/4am. Some gigs in the early days went really well but complications set in - I think some kind of analysis of how things go round warrants one more post, so here are some images to develop the story. Set wise I still have a list from our 'farewell' Red Door gig. It's mostly classic soul/Motown such as "I Can't Turn You Loose"; "It's Growing"; "Headline News"; "Ain't Love Good Ain't Love Proud", "Uptight" & "Land of a 1,000 Dances" with a couple of Impressions songs "I Need You" & "You Always Hurt Me". But there were some odd things as well which indicated shifts in the set which would cause us problems. In the middle we followed Bobby Hebb's "Sunny" with versions of "Summertime" and "Summertime Blues" and we also covered Alan Bown's cover version of "All Along the Watchtower". That was the start of a shift away from the soul stuff, towards more contemporary white songs - it didn't pay off but I'll explain more subsequently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x65L4Qqc2uU Dave Allen 8/8/2020 Harlem Speakeasy reformed in January 1968, were signed in March/April 1968, recorded in May, released their single in July and went on the road across the country - but by December (Friday 13th) it was all over. Why? Might be a number of reasons. Maybe we got 'promoted' beyond our level, while for sure we were too young and inexperienced to 'manage' ourselves, which raises another interesting point. I'm seriously prepared to believe we weren't 'good enough' at that level but, having been signed by Chrysalis and Polydor we were left to get on with it; we had no management, no-one came to watch us play; no one had any suggestions to make about how to develop. We had no Epstein, Loog-Oldham, Grossman; Chas Chandler, Chris Stamp/Kit Lambert (Who) etc etc. Much of the time we were tired and broke and did not cope with things at all. Might management have made a difference? Who knows? I'm not making any exaggerated claims but what happened was that mid-way through that brief period we 'ditched' drummer Sam Eddings and later bass player Geoff Gunson. I honestly don't remember the debates, who made the decision, how it was enacted or how we found the alternatives. After Sam departed we had the drummer (Roger?) from Brother Bung but he went back to them after one gig and Alan Williams joined from the St Louis Checks. Richie Anderson and I plus our big yellow Transit also did some roadie work when available for Tangerine Slyde's gigs at Middle Earth. That was exciting and it meant we knew Mick Legg well so late in Speakeasy's life he joined us and stayed with TS - and shortly after our demise, members of the two bands put together Rosemary. The other issue was that we were listening to lots of music away from our base in soul and Motown and admiring local bands like Slyde and Coconut Mushroom who were pursuing what we then tended to call 'West Coast' (USA). As a consequence we started to deviate from the 'pop/soul' stuff that had brought our success by playing stuff by the Byrds, the Rascals, Arthur Brown and others. I'm hoping Alan Williams and Mick Legg can recall some titles. I suspect had the agency/record label or a manager taken interest we'd have been pushed to stick with the Pop/Soul/Motown approach and a specific circuit but it didn't happen, and that was that. Dave Allen 10/8/2020 Through 1968, the Guildhall, presented a mix of older acts (Johnny Cash, Duane Eddy, Carl Perkins, Gene Pitney, the Four Freshmen, Kenny Ball), current 'Pop' (Bee Gees, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, Amen Corner, Status Quo, Simon Dupree & the Big Sound), and a couple of notable Student events, the first with Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger, and Zoot Money, plus the previously mentioned 'Dance of Words' (Fairport Convention, Gary Farr, Free, John Peel, Coconut Mushroom, poets Brian Patten and Michael Horowitz, etc). Other newer acts there included Spooky Tooth, Fairport Convention (again), Blossom Toes, Skip Bifferty, Small Faces, the Nice, Family, the Pretty Things and Pentangle In 1968 the Birdcage had gone, succeeded by Rikki Farr’s Brave New World which opened a licensed bar and took an increasing eclectic approach. The club featured the Amboy Dukes, the Herd and future Woodstock stars Ten Years After; invited Jon Isherwood to run Sunday folk nights with the Singing Postman, Jo Ann Kelly, Cliff Aungier and Malcolm Price, and offered jazz acts like Dakota Staton, Stan Tracey and Tubby Hayes. It also booked more soulful performers like Jimmy James, the Carl Douglas Stampede, James & Bobby Purify, PP Arnold, Patti LaBelle & her Blue Bells and Chris Farlowe, while Pete Brady brought his records show back to Eastney. Humphrey Lyttleton appeared there with Elkie Brooks, John Peel compered Blossom Toes and Gary Farr, and other acts included Lace, Family, Spooky Tooth, Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger. In mid-November, Rikki Farr opened a new Sunday night ‘Blues’ Club at Kimbells with Pete Bardens’ Village. The club was advertised as “all very freaky” with Irish band Taste the following week. Not everybody favoured the longhaired "very freaky" approach; there were 'refugees' from the Birdcage whose preference remained dancing to soul, Motown and ska - and most of the 'boys' favoured short hair, suits, and a smart late-Mod look. Some were happy with the wide variety of music on offer, but they were generally less enthusiastic about the new live bands and favoured DJs who would play records for dancing. In the days before the bigger clubs when the Savoy became Neros (etc) the Marina in Goldsmith Avenue was favoured and became something of a 'cult' venue. There was another group of younger people whose hair got even shorter - they favoured braces, Doc Martens and were definitely fans of 'Ska' and Portsmouth Football Club. Dave Allen 12/8/2020 I was wondering how to find some images of the new music around 1967. I couldn't see how to bring it down to 10/12 album covers but I think I have a solution - there are five discs here which hold the final 'Perfumed Garden' show John Peel presented on Radio London before it closed down as a result of the Government's Marine Offences Bill. You have to read the lists (or ignore them). The show started at midnight on 14 August 1967, went on for over five hours and as you can see here contained almost 100 tracks. It seems to me they give a pretty good idea of what was going on at the sharp end of the UK's 'Summer of Love' and of course Peel was poised to move to BBC Radio One and continue to play much the same stuff for a year ago. One thing that has always struck me about Peel is that apart from occasional Chicago Blues tracks (here Howlin' Wolf & Elmore James) and in the 1970s reggae he wasn't much of a fan of the Black American music that many of us grew up listening to - or as far as I know of anything too close to jazz. Here he plays more white blues tracks than going back to the originals - and I'm not sure whether he ever showed much interest in soul music. Apart from those two blues guys the only black musicians among the 100 tracks are two by Jimi Hendrix, and one by Love (Arthur Lee) - otherwise it's very white. In some ways these new sounds made sense to me in terms of playing music - I've been very conscious in a musical life of almost 60 years that the only time it wasn't dominated by the various sounds of Black America was in this late 1960s period, and in terms of playing the influences were very valuable in trying to discover what I wanted to play beyond copying the music of a land and a culture that wasn't mine. Anyway you can find (again) all the usual suspects here - the Dead/Airplane/Fish from the great San Francisco years, a whole side of the Mothers, lots of tracks from two Beatles albums, Beefheart, the Floyd, Dylan & Donovan, some rather special people like the Misunderstood, Tim Buckley, Traffic - and of course Peel's great mates at that time Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Incredible String Band are there with a sitar and it's interesting that he was fine mixing the sounds of Haight Ashbury with the Velvet Underground because I believe that was less straightforward in the USA. There are some acts that didn't go far although they might jog memories - and as well as being predominantly white, it won't take you long to count the contributions of the women. All the tracks on these CDs were remastered but they are interspersed with Peel's comments at the time and these aren't always so clear - but if you're in any doubt about those days from around 4.35am he reads two extracts from "Winnie the Pooh" followed by the Velvet Underground. That's the UK 'Underground" for you ... Dave Allen 15/8/2020 I was wondering how to find some images of the new music around 1967. I couldn't see how to bring it down to 10/12 album covers but I think I have a solution - there are five discs here which hold the final 'Perfumed Garden' show John Peel presented on Radio London before it closed down as a result of the Government's Marine Offences Bill. You have to read the lists (or ignore them). The show started at midnight on 14 August 1967, went on for over five hours and as you can see here contained almost 100 tracks. It seems to me they give a pretty good idea of what was going on at the sharp end of the UK's 'Summer of Love' and of course Peel was poised to move to BBC Radio One and continue to play much the same stuff for a year or two. One thing that has always struck me about Peel is that apart from occasional Chicago Blues tracks (here Howlin' Wolf & Elmore James) and in the 1970s reggae he wasn't much of a fan of the Black American music that many of us grew up listening to - or as far as I know of anything too close to jazz. Here he plays more white blues tracks than going back to the originals - and I'm not sure whether he ever showed much interest in soul music. Apart from those two blues guys the only black musicians among the 100 tracks are two by Jimi Hendrix, and one by Love (Arthur Lee) - otherwise it's very white. In some ways these new sounds made sense to me in terms of playing music - I've been very conscious in a musical life of almost 60 years that the only time it wasn't dominated by the various sounds of Black America was in this late 1960s period, and in terms of playing the influences were very valuable in trying to discover what I wanted to play beyond copying the music of a land and a culture that wasn't mine. Anyway you can find (again) all the usual suspects here - the Dead/Airplane/Fish from the great San Francisco years, a whole side of the Mothers, lots of tracks from two Beatles albums, Beefheart, the Floyd, Dylan & Donovan, some rather special people like the Misunderstood, Tim Buckley, Traffic - and of course Peel's great mates at that time Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Incredible String Band are there with a sitar and it's interesting that he was fine mixing the sounds of Haight Ashbury with the Velvet Underground because I be lieve that was less straightforward in the USA. There are some acts that didn't go far although they might jog memories - and as well as being predominantly white, it won't take you long to count the contributions of the women. All the tracks on these CDs were remastered but they are interspersed with Peel's comments at the time and these aren't always so clear - but if you're in any doubt about those days, from around 4.35am he reads two extracts from "Winnie the Pooh" followed by the Velvet Underground. That's the UK 'Underground" for you ... Dave Allen 16/8/2020 No reason not to go back but for now I have reached 1969 - the end of the sixties approaches. To start, this is the last of Spinner's 'Evening News' Pop Polls from December 1969: Local: 1-Heaven, 2-Mushroom, 3-Wanted, 4-Rosemary, 5-Dragonfly/ Virgin Circle. Visitors 1-Pink Floyd, 2-Family/Jethro Tull, 4-Amen Corner, 5- Bonzo Dog. Now a list (alphabetical) of all the local bands I know of who did gigs around here in that year. I don't know much about some of them and there almost certainly more - let us know. Aubrey Small; Chalk Farm; Cherry Smash; (Coconut) Mushroom; Concrete Parachute; Dirty Pig; Dragonfly; Gold Dust; Grandad; Heaven; Image; In Grandma’s Absence; Inspiration; Internal Combustion; Kimberley Dawson; Lace; Mirkwood; Mirrors of the Way; Paper; Parkas; Rivendell; Riverside; Rosemary; Shy Limbs; Steve Kray; Time Dynasty; Virgin Circle; Wanted. The Birdcage and Brave New World had been replaced by a fairly uninteresting nightclub called The Pack but Rikki Farr moved to Kimbells and there were plenty of live gigs. These were some of the acts appearing in the main venues GUILDHALL: Albert King; BB King; Blodwyn Pig; Cliff Richard & Shadows; Diz Disley; Duster Bennett; Edmundo Ros; Englebert Humperdinck; Fleetwood Mac; Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention; Groundhogs; Jethro Tull; John Lee Hooker; John Mayall; Kenny Ball; Led Zeppelin; Liverpool Scene; Mary Hopkin; Noel Murphy; Pentangle; Pink Floyd; Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee; Strawbs; Ten Years After KIMBELLS: Colosseum; Fairport Convention; Free; Keef Hartley; Led Zeppelin; Liverpool Scene; Mick Abrahams; Pretty Things; Savoy Brown; Taste; Ten Years After; Terry Reid; Village MECCA: Alan Bown; Amen Corner; Pretty Things SOUTH PARADE PIER: Alan Price; Blonde on Blonde; Bonzo Dog; Country Joe & the Fish; Deviants; Eclection; Free; Gun; Idle Race Dave Allen 19/8/2020 Harlem Speakeasy played their last gig at Manor Court on Friday 13 after which John Lytle & I from the original band plus Mick Legg who was in the reformed band plus Tangerine Slyde, recruited Steve Farrow and Brian Grice from the Slyde and drummer Dave Pittard. We formed Rosemary, which proved to be the most magical musical time of my life, even though it lasted just 18 months. Attached here is a 'diary' of sorts based on posters, adverts and flyers. We started out playing mostly covers by a whole bunch of people including Country Joe & the Fish, Fairport Convention, Tim Buckley, Dylan, the Doors, the Moody Blues and a couple of old blues things, but by mid-summer 1969 we had a set of originals and that's where we stuck. We signed about 15 of those songs to the big publishers Warner Chappell and went to London to record the two sides of our first single "If" and "One Hand Clapping" in the Orange Studios. A release date was fixed (April 1970) on a subsidiary of Major Minor records until the relationship between the label and the publishers imploded. And that was it really. We went on for a few months but the deal was never revived. I reckon the single was pretty good but all I have is a poor quality recording of the 'A' side from an acetate that disappeared in Pompey decades ago. I loved that band - always will. Dave Allen 22/8/2020 Resuming my stories, looking back, I've arrived at the point where local students began to have an increasing impact on the Pompey scene. In the 1960s there were events at the College of Technology, which (just) pre-Polytechnic only had a couple of thousand students (the 'Uni' has about 20,000), in addition to which there was the Art College - then independent - and Highbury. We've seen some posters and mentions of college events on here already; here's a kind of chronological look at other events which touch here-and-there on a broader tale of how things developed over those years - in some cases with some significant, highly experimental activities ... Dave Allen 26/8/2020 I started the 1970s going to the big festivals at Bath and the Isle of Wight which meant that by the autumn I'd seen many top world-wide acts - and enjoyed many of them too. But I was losing interest in the majority of guitar-based rock bands - and never really recovered it. I would not however wish to suggest I stopped enjoying music. I was still playing (the good old country blues), I retained a fondness for the soul sounds I'd grown up with - in the 1970s there were great albums by Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder and Al Green among others - and I did still catch quite a few enjoyable live gigs. The more memorable included: Captain Beefheart at Southampton Uni; Frank Zappa at the Oval; Ry Cooder at Hammersmith Odeon; Taj Mahal at the Victoria; Muddy Waters/Sonny Rollins/McCoy Tyner at the New Victoria; Tangerine Dream at Chichester Theatre; the Stones (& Meters) at Earl's Court; the Clash and Richard Hell & the Voidoids at Southampton; Van Morrison, BB King, Elvis Costello, the Two-Tone trio and Japan at the Guildhall; two or three of those Blues Legends tours in Pompey; Richard Thompson at the Centre Hotel; and quite a few Pier gigs including Hawkwind, Fotheringay; John Lee Hooker; Rory Gallagher; Roxy Music. There were also two great gigs at the Mecca, with Jamaican vocal group Culture (with maybe Lee Scratch Perry on the desk?) and Talking Heads, while I finished the 1980s seeing Ian Dury, the Blockheads and guests Don Cherry and Wilko Johnson in London. It was jolly good. Just one picture. I loved David Bowie - especially mid-period Berlin - but missed him at this gig on the Pier (and previously at the Birdcage) and so never did see him. Dave Allen 27/8/2020 Rosemary - a band I loved and still love - came to an end in July 1970. By that time, accepting a pro career wasn't happening for me, I got a job as a 'Gardener's Assistant' (i.e. labourer) on Southsea's Parks and started attending evening courses at the Art College with a view to a career in teaching art (which happened). The Parks job lasted 18 months before I went to College and initially Mick Legg and I joined with guitarist Denny Barnes and drummer Bernie Fox from Whiskey River plus saxophonist Mick Tuck (Inspiration/Wanted) to form Gilbey Twiss. Mick Dillon and Alan Roblin took us on as agents/managers. As far as I can recall (Mick Legg?) we wrote everything from the start which began live with two gigs on the same evening: Tuesday 6 October 1970, when we played the early spot at the Mecca supporting Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (no Dave Dee) then legged it over to South Parade Pier to finish an evening headlined by the Edgar Broughton Band (plus Jellybread and Bram Stoker). Spinner in the Pompey 'Evening News' said we were "frankly a disappointment". In exchange for rehearsal space upstairs, we played gigs at the 'lively' Appletree pub opposite the Dockyard gates and also at the Oasis, Crookhorn & Convent Schools, and the Tricorn's Cromat - once with DADA and once with Clark-Hutchinson & DJ Jeff Dexter, but after just four months Denny Barnes quit and went to London to join blues band Sam Apple Pie. Mick Tuck had left around Christmas, and so that was it. The local scene seemed to me (and others) to have lost some energy around then although it certainly returned. I thought seriously that I'd reached the end of my music-making and sold my PA, had my haircut, got that college place and went off to become a teacher. Little did I know Dave Allen 15/9/2020 When I was writing about music every day I said once or twice something like I never really got rock music in the 1970s and beyond - it's broadly true although I did mention some people I did like. Broadly speaking though, in terms of 'rock & roll' I never really recovered from San Francisco - I just thought it was the future and then it seemed not to be any more (except in my world). Well I've been watching a new and pretty daft space rocket series on Netflix (it's Lockdown you see) and counting down the hours until it's over until tonight, as Episode Seven drew to a close, they played "Ship of Fools" by the Grateful Dead - a mid-1970s tune by Jerry and the wonderful Robert Hunter - and now I'm sitting here listening to a whole heap of the Dead from that period such as "Ship of Fools" (again) "Peggy O", "Franklin's Tower" (which we did briefly in Scarlet Town) and boy do I love it. I really, really LOVE it. There - just thought I'd tell you. Here's one for you if you want it - I don't mind if you don't but I just LOVE it (I said that didn't I?) Grateful Dead ? Peggy-O, 1977 Before and after haircut during lock down

Other music memories fro Face Book Matthew Grant Little These are really for Dave Hardcastle's benefit......the control room of Toucan Studios, Hayling Island...star date 16th April 1984. The occasion was a demo for '1st Offence'...we lugged my Yamaha CP70B Electric Grand in to record with (which I still have!). Pat Shaylor was the other guitarist, Rick Buckingham the bassist, and Tony Farugia (Dena Farugia). I was 25, 10 stone with hair, and wore shiney clothes! It was sounding good, as you can tell from the second photo Robin Vick The Dodgers first recordings were completed at the Warblington Church Studio. Remember David Hardcastle being so proud of the 8 channel Dobly noise reduction system used on the 2nd recordings which tended to suck out all of the dynamics but at least there was no hiss. The Hayling Toucan recordings still sound great today with some lovely tape compression present :0) Phil Campbell The Time’s best recordings were from Warblington Phil Campbell However we demoed a single at Toucan which knocked the socks off the final recording which was done at Spaceward in Cambridgeshire For our publishing company. We had Graham Graham Maby with us in A 24track studio who… See More Jon Leadbeater Great memories of Toucan and Dave! Jump to the 80s November 10, 2014 by pompeypop & 1 Comment And before you read this, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair Ron Pryce sent me this – it’s a great story! (Thanks Ron): In 1986 I bought tickets for an oldies show at the Guildhall featuring:- THE MAMAS AND PAPAS MARTHA REEVES SCOTT MACKENZIE LOU CHRISTIE GARY (US ) BONDS Along with Mrs. Pryce I took my second row central seat, looking forward to an evening of nostalgia and finally seeing one of my early sixties heroes, Gary (US) Bonds. It soon became apparent that the show had sold poorly, and by showtime only the front 3 or 4 rows were occupied, with a scattering of punters spread around the hall. Time went on, and around 7.45 Scott Mackenzie strolled onstage and sang half a dozen songs, finishing with ‘San Francisco’. During his set, I could see John Phillips and others at the sound desk in the wings. They seemed to be barracking Mackenzie, and at one point midway through his set he made an off-mike gritted teeth request for the faders to be brought up. As he took his applause and walked off, Mackenzie made a theatrical flourish and said :- ” And now the show goes on!” For the next 15 minutes or so we looked at an empty stage, and then a P/A announcement told us that “Due to circumstances beyond control, the show will not continue.” As we filed out the sparse audience were promised a full refund and free tickets for a choice of shows promoted by the Guildhall. I removed one of the show posters from the entrance area, and we headed for the stage door. We had unfinished business, as I had promised a friend to try and get John Phillips’ autograph on the insert from one of those new fangled CDs. At the rear car park, we spotted the tour bus. Standing at the bus door was Spanky Macfarlane, who had recorded in the 60s as Spanky and Our Gang. She was now singing the Cass Elliot parts for the Mamas and Papas. She willingly signed my poster, and explained that the tour was a shambles, poorly publicised, and worst of all, the artistes had not been paid! This was the reason for tonight’s debacle. We spoke for several minutes, and she told us that John Phillips was still inside the Guildhall. We headed to the door, and outside stood Lou Christie, looking morose with a scowl on his face. I took a chance and spoke to him. He was quite affable and confirmed Spanky’s version of events. I was wearing a Jan And Dean T-shirt, and for a minute or two we discussed their career. Lou said he had worked with them recently in Canada. He signed the poster. We then ventured inside. It was chaotic, and we walked straight into US Bonds. He was in discussion with a fan club member and the American tour manager, who was a loud, foul-mouthed moron. He told Mrs. Pryce and myself to leave the backstage area. We were not the only ‘trespassers’, so we chose to ignore him as by then we had spotted our target, John Phillips. He was laughing and joking with Scott Mackenzie. We approached them, and both were only too willing to sign the CD insert, the poster, and other items. They also confirmed what we already knew, about non- payment. We then spotted Martha Reeves, who was about to leave, and we rushed over, along with other fans. She invited us all back to her dressing room. She was accompanied by a tall beefy guy. After signing autographs for all, including the poster, she told us that she had been paid, and her companion patted the kitbag he was carrying. She then left as she had a booking for a personal appearance at the Mecca ballroom (or whatever it was called then), in Arundel Street. As we left I spotted US Bonds, and managed to get an autograph on the poster, and a few words with him. That was about it, and all fans were shepherded out. In due course we did get a full refund from the Guildhall, and a choice of free shows. From the selection offered we chose what seemed to be the best of a bad bunch, and we were thrilled to enjoy the mercurial talents of ……..Bobby Davro! Ron Pryce Steve Tuffnell November 11, 2014 at 1:57 pm Saw the show at the Birmingham Odeon as l was working in the area at the time,and yes the audience was sparse there! l remember there seemed to be a bad vibe coming from the stage that night and John Philips making some bitchy remarks about the Grateful Dead!…l always wondered why!!

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