Larbreck Hall Gig

Great gig last night for David and I out at Larbreck Hall Caravan Park.

We were going to do an outdoor, but the weather was appalling. The organisers had sorted out an old barn and built a stage with scaffolding, pallets stacked and carpeted over and a backdrop and sides of sheet plastic - pretty good too for such a temporary set-up!

The pallets were very springy though - when we started foot tapping and getting into the faster stuff I thought I was going to be catapulted off stage a couple of times but we survived and dragged Jeannie up to sing backing vocals for The Ronette's song Be My Baby.

Thanks to the holiday makers and residents at the caravan park for such a great reception and your enthusiasm! Thanks too to the very enthusiastic group of girls who screamed and shouted and kept demanding Bob The Builder for some strange reason! I managed to work it into my keyboard solo on Ho Ho Silver Lining - that has to be a world's first...!

The gig rounded off a charity event organised mainly by my mother which she has run every year in support of Cancer Research since Dad died in 2004.

The Airfix Railcoach Kit

Apart from all of the aeroplanes I used to make with Airfix and Revell plastic kits as a lad, I remember a few other sorts of kits with great affection.

This railcoach for instance. Dad had bought it in the early 1960s with a view to putting a small electric motor in it so we could run it on the OO-guage model railway he had built for us. No photos exist of this as far as I've been able to find anyway. It was built on four large pieces of fibreboard which slotted together to give a floor-filling layout with an oval track shape with platforms on both straight runs and twin tracks (I have a brother - it was necessary for a peaceful life for us both to be able to play at the same time!)

We each had a full size engine - his was Princess Elizabeth and mine a more American-looking affair with a huge cow catcher on the front. We each had a shunter engine too. Mine was a GWR tank engine and Frank had a diesel shunter. Between us we had a collection of rolling stock including a couple of pullman carriages, four red carriages with lights inside and a varied assortment of trucks and goods containers of one sort or another. Looking through the Internet now, it becomes obvious how many Dad had built for us out of Airfix kits. In fact all of the buildings that we had to go on the layout; platforms, stations, kiosks, houses, signal boxes etc. all came from Airfix kits.

The Railcoach however, stayed in its box, pristine and a source of never-ending anticipation for us. When would Dad finish it? When would we be able to put it on the tracks and send it whizzing round? I'm not really sure why, but it never did get built. But in truth we probably got more enjoyment over the years from opening the box and looking at all the green pieces of plastic, the set of decal transfers, the instruction sheet and - great excitement - the tiny electric motor that Dad had placed in the box, than we would have done had he built it for us to smash up in a collision with one of the metal locomotives after half an hour's play!

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Brixham

Just to round off the posts about our weekend in Torquay (before the next weekend actually hits!) here are a few of views of Brixham.

We had been before and the roads are somewhat exciting around the harbour - very narrow streets with at least one hairpin bend that requires you to try your best, then reverse and try again! Single-track streets that are two-way etc. etc. Anyway we chickened out and went on the bus. This made it more relaxing and used less fuel which was a bit hard to come by that weekend anyway!

The harbour is lovely. A typical fishing harbour, with pastel painted cottages lining the hills behind and to the sides of the cove.

This is the unlikely landing point for William, Prince of Orange who led The Glorious Revolution to become King William III and deposed King James II who it was feared would lead Great Britain back to Catholicism. It is called the Glorious Revolution because it was mainly bloodless (though I'd be willing to bet someone got a bloody nose over it somewhere...) However the fact that he turned up from foreign parts with a dirty great army and was suddenly given the crown of England could justify the thought that there had been an invasion. It may have happened to have been a convenient time to be invaded but when he jumped onto the quay at Brixham and gave his speech the locals were probably a bit bemused. He couldn't speak a word of English...

"Woss he say?"
"Dunno - it's all in foreign innit? Oy! You! I'll buy your fish, how much a pound? Talk in English can't you? Ow! Me nose! I thought this was supposed to be a bloodless revolution?!?"

His imposing statue is either less than flattering...or the nose has fallen off at some point. William III of England was the son of Dutch ruler William II of Orange and Princess Mary of Orange, who was the daughter of King Charles I of England. In an effort to totally confuse readers William III (not William II) went on to marry Mary (not Mary his Mum) but Mary, his fifteen year old cousin, daughter of his Uncle James, the Duke of York. They ruled England jointly as King William III and Queen Mary II (the first Mary being Henry VIII's daughter, Bloody Mary).

Fran decided to go for a look around the shops whilst I walked around the harbour taking the odd (sometimes very odd) photo and reflecting a little on royal inbreeding which just a decade or so later would lead to the most severe case of Habsburg Chin in the person of King Charles II of Spain whose ancestors had spent eight generations in happy incestual relationships. Keep it in the family then... There was a notably unmodern ship in the harbour, so I went to have a nosy.

It was a replica of Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, in which he sailed around the world. (I mean in the first one...not the replica.) In fact there's another replica in London and they look nothing like each other. This is possibly because it's hard to build a replica when we haven't a clue what the boat looked like. What we do know are the measurements of it and the fact that it is highly likely that there was a pointy bit at the front, a window or two at the back and a deer's head stuck on it somewhere as otherwise it would have been called something else.

"'Ere - wossat on 'is boat?"
"Aw no... it's Bambi's mam, ain't it?"

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Central Pier Maintenance

This was a spot of good luck. As I was on the Central Pier yesterday, taking photos of grown men making ultra-large sand pies, a separate gang of workmen were at work on the supporting structure of the pier itself.

Because of the shape of the decking (narrow bit, gets wider, goes narrow again, gets wider again) I was able to get a good view of them.

Unfortunately no great sprays of welding sparks but a few here if you look closely!

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Devon Cream Tea

Saturday 14 June 2008. We are in Torquay, land of little petrol, due to a strike by tanker drivers, and today at least, land of precious little sunshine...

We sat for a while by the gardens, but the splendour was slightly spoiled by the parents who were proudly watching their two boys riding their bikes all over the grass and flower beds...

We moved before my annyance levels were raised far enough to snatch the kids off the bikes and wrap the frames round the parents' necks. Instead we wandered up the shopping streets and then returned to the seafront and sat looking out over the harbour.

Lunchtime arrived and I'm really, really sorry but it just had to be done... [scoff!] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! I knew there was another reason for going to Devon! The rebellious streak in me came out and I spread the jam first making it a Cornish cream tea not a Devon one where they do it the opposite way round, little realising that jam is much more sturdy than clotted cream.

I should point out that these photos were posed and that we knew the foodstuffs were fattening and so merely posed for the camera and then disposed of the scones and clotted cream and jam tidily. Well... I did... Fran spilt a bit down her front...

The cream tea put us on very nicely and after another short walk along the harbour we walked back to the hotel and the car and headed for Babbacombe where we were going to a show at the theatre that night.

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Blackpool Sea Defences

Well this isn't fair at all is it? The only thing I had to build sandcastles with when I was a lad was a bucket and spade!

I've had a day off work today and whilst Fran had a bit of a shopping excursion in Blackpool I wandered down the Promenade to the Central Pier to see how the work on the new promenade was coming along. The work has been going on for quite a long while and the workers seem to be cleverly doing little bits here and there perhaps with the intention of unveiling it all at once, or perhaps because the bloke who hoovers up at the end hasn't turned up yet? Perhaps there's still a few days work left yet because another gang of men were busy painting the old railings...

Anyway, this is a splendidly deep hole they were digging with their diggers, egged on by a row of holiday makers and sightseers along the railings of Central Pier. The other digger was employed digging in a pipe so that the blue pump could empty the puddle in the foreground. Bet it fills up again when the tide comes in... In fact so will that dirty great hole they were digging, so I hope no one wanders down the beach and fancies a paddle or they could end up having a bit of a surprise!

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Babbacombe

Saturday 1 June 2008. Today we are in Babbacombe, just a short distance along the Devon coast from Torquay. Tonight we are going to see a couple of mates who are part of a Sixties Reveal show at the local theatre.

Babbacombe lies just north of Torquay on the opposite side of a small peninsula and has sandstone cliffs overlooking a small beach that you can get to on a furnicular railway.

There's an excellent and large green. There was however the added enjoyment of the local ...er... character. In her sixties, she was dressed in a bikini top and long skirt and was carrying a deck chair all over the place, putting it down and then picking it up again talking angrily to herself all the while... She never actually sat on the deck chair, but then there was no need really because with her antics she had soon emptied all the nearby benches...

The theatre itself sits at one end of the green and there are several large hotels strung along the road between the theatre and the furnicular railway.

We had a walk along the cliff tops to the theatre and, having got our bearings and having noted that despite the lack of crowds along the seafront, there was also quite a lack of car parking spaces along the seafront road. We decided to go back to the hotel, get changed and ready for the evening then head back early to Babbacombe, to secure a parking spot and have a meal before the show.

Once we were back in Babbacombe, we had a meal in the Babbacombe Inn and the food was excellent. Halfway through our meal most of the cast of the show turned up and we were spotted and had a chat with Tony Harte, then the lead singer with The Honeycombes. In the next article we'll have a look at the show itself.

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Juke Box Heroes

Saturday 14 June 2008. This was the reason for our trip down to Torquay for the weekend. The sixties revival show Jukebox Heroes at the theatre in Babbacombe.

Tony Harte, then lead singer with the 1960s band The Honeycombs had brought this show to our attention and we had booked the show in Torquay after finding there were no dates (as yet) booked up in Lancashire. If we were going to travel it may as well be to somewhere nice we figured! Also on the bill were John Leyton (Johnny Remember Me, Wild Wind, and a few not inconsequential films such as The Great Escape and Von Ryan's Express) and Craig Douglas (Only Sixteen, Teenager In Love), both these singers being backed by a band called The Flames.

We went over to Babbacombe early and were nicely ensconced in a local inn, waiting for a meal to be placed in front of us when Tony and the rest of The Honeycombs members came in. We've swapped messages and emails via the excellent Billy Fury website, but this was our first meeting. It would be fun to suggest he lives up to the image of vodka-swilling reprobate that he likes to put about, but truth is he comes across as a great guy! And once the show started he and The Honeycombs work hard as they filled the entire first half of the show. Have I The Right is, of course, their biggest hit and it still sounds great today! Tony and the boys (yes a male drummer these days, though they joked that it was Honey Lantree after a sex change!) do some of the original Honeycombs songs and a running tribute to a number of late 50s and early 60s singers with Billy Fury's Halfway To Paradise getting the audience singing!

Singer Kelly brought a bit of feminine glamour to the proceedings and she sang a few excellent numbers including Connie Francis's Stupid Cupid and a brilliant duet with Tony providing the harmonies. I spoke to her afterwards and she said it was only her 5th outing with The Honeycombs. She's made an impressive start then! Aaaah - and those matching Burns guitars look and sound the biz! I play Fender Stratocasters and the only time I've played a Burns is for a brief try-out in a guitar shop. I like my Strats though!

Part Two and The Flames do a couple of Shadows numbers before introducing Craig Douglas, who delivered a good set with some gentle self-deprecating quips; "I've been singing these songs day in day out, decade in, decade out..."

Then on came John Leyton in leather jacket and trousers, looking and sounding the business and setting off to a good start with Shout Shout Knock Yourself Out. Wild Wind and my favourite JL song Son This Is She both got an airing before the finale of his great hit Johnny Remember Me.

He then did an encore of Sea Cruise which brought the show to a rousing finish. All in all a fabukous night for anyone who lived through the 1960s and was brought up listening to the best decade of music that ever was.

We met up with Tony and the rest of the Honeycombs afterwards and he lost no time in separating me from Fran for a photo! Smooth operator that he is! However he has to admit that he has too much hair and is too slim to be seriously sexy like me... I chatted for a while with Martin Murray, the last of the original Honeycombs and the one who actually formed the group in the first place.

John had a queue in front of him - mostly being held up by a determined lady who had brought 964 photographs to be signed... We've met a few times before - maybe just as well, seeing as Tony yelled, "John, have a word with my mate - he fancies you like mad...!" A great night! And if you bring the show up north Tony - we'll see you again!

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Torquay Weekend

Mmm! Just back from a long weekend down in Torquay.

We went down on Friday, which turned out to be the best day as far as the weather was concerned. It was after lunch by the time we got down there so we didn't have a lot of time to do very much.

We had a walk round the harbour and booked into our hotel (The Marstan Hotel, Meadfoot Sea Road, recommended). We had gone down specifically to visit the theatre at Babbacombe on Saturday night to meet up with and clap and stomp along to The Honeycombs and John Leyton in the "Juke Box Heroes" show.

More of that later! But seeing as that would be tomorrow, we went to the local theatre at Torquay to see if there was anything on that night that we could see. There wasn't...

It was now late afternoon and we went in search of some petrol to get us home. Shell tanker drivers were on strike and petrol down there was extremely scarce! There were more closed garages than open ones and in the end we had to go down as far as Paignton before we found enough fuel to get us home. We found somewhere for a meal and then headed back to the hotel for the evening.

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Eurovision 2008

I know it was weeks ago but we had a bit of a gig that night with the band so I didn't see it until later.

Well what a kerfuffle! So the UK came last (joint - as if that makes it somehow better...) again. But for Heaven's sake, however well Andy Abrahams sang on the night, the song was a bit of a disaster let's face it. Most of Europe put in songs with verses and a chorus and a tune you could actually hum afterwards and we put in a dog's dinner so enough wingeing already.

I love Terry Wogan's humour but saying that Bosnia Herzegovina's entry (pictured) shouldn't have got more points than the UK was way out. It was a good song. The chorus made me want to sing along (even though I couldn't because I had no idea what they were singing!) and the rather bizarre setting with the "four knitting brides of Frankenstein" and that ridiculous skirt and the washing line didn't take anything away from the song itself. I thought it could well have won. I wasn't that keen on the winning Russian song to be honest. But no matter.

None of the western European countries put in particularly strong songs. Germany fielded four girls one of whom was singing out of tune and the song was instantly forgettable. France fielded a bearded nutter who inhaled from an inflatable beach ball and and was backed by four bearded girl singers. Spain... well how do you even describe it? The song was quite catchy I suppose but then compare those against some of the others. Armenia's Qele Qele delivered by a young girl with a great beat and a memorable chorus, Finland's heavy metal band but with a bloody good song, Latvia's pirates with a song that surely everyone wanted to join in with the "yo ho ho" bits... Turkey fielded a band also with an excellent song that I'm sure I'm going to listen to again and again.

And even the Ukraine had a great song - I think - I may have been a bit distracted by the lovely Ani Lorak to be honest... But indeed, who wouldn't be? Always a pleasure to have an excuse to feature a pretty girl! Could perhaps do with a bit of Harmony hairspray to keep that fly-away effect down a bit...?

So what will it take for the UK to win the competition again? Will we have to court friends in neighbouring countries? Will we have to move the islands to the Baltic? Should we give up having very little in the way of drama and ridiculous costumes? Nope, perhaps the UK should concentrate on allowing some decent songs into the final of the selection instead of chucking them all out before the public have a chance of voting on the crud that's left...

And finally - who couldn't love the Croatian entry of laid-back old geezers, accordians and wonderful song. They could have ditched the grumpy old octogenarian rapper though. ...and possibly the hitting of bottles filled to different levels of water...

The Ship Choppers

Remember the Riverdance ferry that was wrecked on Anchorsholme beach near Blackpool last January?

They were hoping for months to be able to refloat her whilst the residents of Blackpool shook their heads sadly and thought "No chance..." Well they have now come to the same conclusion and are in the process of cutting up the ship and taking it away bit by bit. We went down on Sunday morning to have a look and the stern of the ship has already disappeared. The first week of the operation saw the welding torches start a fire aboard the Riverdance - always a distinct risk of this type of operation.

So after six months it seems Anchorsholme is to lose the biggest tourist attraction since the Abana suffered the same fate in the late 19th century. At least there are a few spars of that wreck still left on the beach for people to see. Only a few hundred yards away in fact! Sad end to a ship.

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Great Music

I thought it might be fun to show some of the albums I've collected over the years which are not exactly mainstream. I have a huge collection of music including some 400+ 78rpm records, a thousand or so vinyl 45s and around 300 vinyl albums plus lots and lots of CDs.

I've digitised a lot of the music myself - particularly the 78s which can be hard to find on CD. So here are five of my albums which you may not have heard of, starting with the one that you are most likely to have heard of. It's possibly true to say that any readers over on the US side of the Atlantic may have a better chance of having heard of some of the following.

But we start with this one- The Beat of The Brass by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

I was still a teenager when I bought this and the music from the record was featured in a TV special recorded by the band. It's a very laid back record that starts with a version of Cabaret and ends with Herb's only vocal hit - This Guy's In Love With You. One of my favourite tracks is a jazzy thing called Slick. And a bit of trivia for you - Herb Alpert is the 'A' of A&M Records.

The Cactus Brothers

What can I say about this album? It wasn't even available in the UK when I bought it. We were in Florida on holiday in 1993 and I wanted to bring some of the music back that we were hearing on the car radio. I plucked this one off the shelves purely at random but have never regretted it and I play this album as much as any of the others in my collection. It is a country hillbilly group with a large collection of motley characters playing fast driving country rock and with a couple of finger pickin' instrumentals thrown in for good measure. It starts with a hard smacking version of Sixteen Tons and there's loads of superb tracks to savour.

Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen

I was introduced to this one by John Briggs, who was bass player with a group I was in called Spiral, way back in the early 1970s. He played it to me after we had listened to our traditional playing of his 78rpm version of the Everly's All I Have To Do Is Dream c/w Claudette and it knocked my socks off. There's a track called Boogie Man Boogie with some of the best boogie piano playing I have ever heard. Again though, this is an album without a single mediocre track!

In Search of Amelia Earheart by Plainsong

A strange mixture this one. It looks like a concept album but only two of the songs are about the titular flyer and her probable doom at the hands of the Japanese. The rest are a mixture of songs of the soft folk rock type. The band featured Ian Matthews, of Matthews Southern Comfort fame and Liverpool Scene guitarist Andy Roberts. I bought it after hearing them on a BBC radio In Concert programme.

Songs From Wasties Orchard by Magna Carta

Now if you like modern folk music or even just nice gentle sounds then this album has to be one of the ultimates! Best known for their concept album Seasons, which was their second album, this was the follow up with soon-to-be Elton John's guitarist, Davy Johnstone replacing Aussie Lyell Tranter full time. (He had played on Seasons as a session musician). I went to see them at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester as this album was coming out and they were absolutely superb.

Burscough Priory

The other day I was at Edge Hill University and stayed the night before in Burscough. I remembered a visit way back in 1983 when I went to find the scant remains of Burscough Priory.

More or less all that's left is a couple of stone pillars one of which holds the start of an archway and a few other scattered stones at their feet. Buried somewhere amongst these ruins are the remains of one of the Stanley family, the Earl of Derby who plucked the Crown of England from a hedge where it had fallen from King Richard III's head at the Battle of Bosworth and he placed it on Henry's head, starting the Tudor dynasty that would lead on to Henry VIII who brought about the dissolution and breaking up of the great religious houses and then onto Queen Elizabeth I whose astrologer, John Dee, is said to have performed Black Magic rites here to conjure up spirits.

When I was there in 1983 it was quite easy to find. Now though the ruins are behind a wall and then a very thick hedge and as it's summer (it is???) the hedges were so full of leaves that it was impossible to get a good view through them and the best view was from quite a way away. The priory is now on private grounds and there is a caravan site there. It has grown over the years and it is no longer possible to get as close as I did twenty some years ago. One chap I spoke to said they got lots of people trying to find the ruins "...as they're mentioned in lots of books and local guide books".

By the time I managed to find them and take the photos it was starting to go dark and I didn't hang about as finding my way back across the fields and footpaths over the railway line may have been a trifle difficult in the pitch dark of the countryside. Happily when I got back to the hotel - the Beaufort - I found there was a music night there, it being the first Monday of the month and we had a great night listening to a succession of very talented musicians and singers playing what they called Gypsy Jazz. This included Django Reinhart type stuff and standards such as Caravan.

And finally here's one of the photos from 1983. It looks as though it was taken from the other side of the pillars so perhaps there's a view from the road that runs that way. Another visit may be called for. Perhaps on the first Monday of the month...!

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Crazy

It's a solo effort on the Billy Fury web site for the month of June.

I've done a laid back version of Patsy Cline's Crazy, one of a number of recordings I've made for a potential new solo album.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Billy Fury was billed as England's answer to Elvis. Born Ronald Wycherley on 17 April 1940 in Liverpool, he became one of the Larry Parnes stable of artists, appearing on TV shows such as "Oh Boy". During the 1960s he had 24 chart entries, clocking up an impressive 258 weeks on the Top 50.

The website keeps Billy's name and music alive through an excellent collection of sound and video resources, interactive forums and the monthly "Sounds Special" feature which contains an free album's worth of music recorded by artists from all around the world. There are some superb artists amongst the regulars and you can comment on the "Sounds Special" songs using one of the forum topics.