ISSUE TWO
The first issue to feature a picture on the cover! (It was of Chekov from Star Trek, despite the fact that is nothing about him in the mag!)
Jerome John Garcia,(by Whichway)
born August 1st 1942,died August 9th 1995.
It's hard to write a tribute to someone I didn't know and never met in person. I do however see him every day, he's sat on top of my Grateful Dead CD's. For me Jerry Garcia will always be a purple fluffy teddy bear with a manic "I know something you don't" grin, star of many a tie-dye T-shirt and other assorted Grateful Dead merchandise.
I'm not going to write about the history of the Dead as founded by Garcia as, well, that doesn't say anything about the man just what he did. Instead I'll remember one night, what now seems along time ago. A death has now sort of made them history and as we all know history all happens along time ago.
The night is the one and only time I ever got to see them live, 30 October 1990, the first night of what was a three night stay at Wembley. It was far from being the best seats in the house right at the back of the hall, and I really do mean last row. So what do I remember from one night over five years ago? I had my first ever taste of moonshine (also I can assure you my last ever taste of it). I also had a hash butty, both supplied by joyous Americans only to happy to share with a fellow Deadhead. Maybe it was the best seat to watch the show from, if not the band then at least it's fans dancing up and down the aisles swinging and swooping their arms. You could get mellow even when the band was just meandering through their back catalogue. Then, I don't know, a note would hit you and just take you away to another plane, you could soar through the sky in your own mind, sailing that note, that riff as if it was a current of air set free from Jerry's guitar to live oh! such a sweet life. Then slowly taking you back down to earth to lay in the meadow of the music. I have never wanted a tape of that night unlike other concerts when you might want a souvenir to remember it by, I have always preferred that concert to live in my dreams.
I got my Dead Ted a few years ago at a shop in Pennsylvania called Tie-Dye Dave's my girlfriend got one too. Hers is green and called Garcia and mine is purple and called Jerry. While he lives on top of my Grateful Dead CD's then so does a little bit of Jerry.
Let Me Tell You About The Manfreds...... by Anne-Marie and Jean Catharell.
After nearly not going, the anticipation of seeing the Manfreds live on stage grew daily until finally Friday arrived. We hadn't bought our tickets in advance so we dutiful trotted off to the box office and forked out our £12.50 each for seats on Row F. Mmmn Row F, pretty good seats, and the concert was due to start in half an hour, was no-one else coming? As we took our seats, after purchasing the obligatory programme (a snip at £4.00!) and a bag of chocolate nuts and raisins, the place did seem fairly erm, empty really! Time to flick through the programme, not to read the information, just to gaze idly at the piccies, and chomp some sweeties! The information on fire exits came as a bit of a surprise, as a diagram of the theatre appeared on a screen, where was the woman in the air stewardess uniform pointing the various escape routes and how to use oxygen masks and things?
The tickets said eight o'clock and sure enough spot on time the lights dimmed slightly and these two chaps wandered casually on stage, no announcement, no nothing, and waited for the audience to realise they were there. (It must have been the longest twenty seconds or so in their career!) The support was Peter Sarstedt and his brother Robin. Peter looked exactly the same as he did on the footage from Sounds Of The Sixties! They told the story of the brothers' rise to fame, and to be honest it was a little disappointing. The highlights of the set were the Eden Kane medley (Eden Kane being brother, Richard) Robin's cheekbones and his rendition of the Hoagy Carmichael song, "My Resistance Is Low." The less said about the song mentioning John Lennon the better, and as for "Where Did You Go To My Lovely," something was missing. Perhaps it's one of those songs encased in a time and place which although beautiful, is best left where it is. Still they seemed to enjoy being up on stage.
Next came a twenty minute interval, complete with adverts and, PEARL AND DEAN!!!!!! All together now - Pah pah pah pah pah pah papah pah papah pah pah pah papah pah!!! Yet another opportunity to flick through the programme, still not actually reading it though, just checking out how good Paul was looking nowadays! As the hour approached nine the lights once again faded and shadowy figures moved onto the darkened stage. Voices inquired as to the whereabouts of the audience as the stage lights illuminated the bodies that belonged to the voices, and there in front of stood the Manfreds! Awesome!
Amusingly they opened with "The One In The Middle." Amusing because the lyrics introduce the original line up of Manfred Mann and Paul Jones was the only person who was still doing their original "job" as it were. The lyrics say - "Mike Hugg plays the drums yeah / Tom McGuinness lays it down on bass" then later, "Manfred Mann plays the organ / Mike Vickers plays guitar." The actual line up was - Mike Hugg on Keyboards, Tom McGuinness on guitar, Mike Vickers on Saxophone / Flute / Recorders, Mike D'abo on Keyboards, Paul Jones on harmonica, Benny Gallagher (from Gallagher & Lyle and McGuinness Flint) on Bass and Rob Townsend (from Family and The Blues Band) on Drums, and vocals provided by everyone, as and when appropriate!
Obviously everyone had a similar idea to us and bought their tickets on the night because by the time the band took to the stage the place was filled right to the back! The band looked pretty pleased with the turnout and Paul Jones began to explain that originally the band did a lot of jazz based stuff. Cue a Dizzy Gillespie number that provided the "bread" between which "54321" was sandwiched! Now, any classical studies students out there will be aware that the second verse of "54321" contains a glaring error, which is, thankfully, corrected in the programme. (Hey, the Manfreds were good, but single handedly changing Greek history is going a little too far chaps!)
Although we were enjoying ourselves far too much to recall the exact order in which the songs were performed, we were treated to all the band's hits and more.
It's hard to pick out highlights when it was all so good. Mike D'abo belted out a wonderful version of "Just Like A Woman" with much more guts than the Manfreds original recorded version (though the Dylan original is still the best!) Other D'abo highlights were "Fox On The Run," "My Name is Jack" and "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James" plus marvelous version of two of his more well known non- Manfred compositions "Build Me Up Buttercup" and "Handbags And Gladrags." Let's just say that the editor of this magazine was extremely happy to hear the latter of those two, but would have gladly done somersaults to hear him perform his most famous tune - "A finger of fudge...", yes folks, that was him!! Other non-Manfred songs we were treated to were, "Heart On My Sleeve" (Gallagher & Lyle), "I've Been A Bad, Bad Boy" (Paul Jones from the film Privilege) sandwiched between a stunning "Water Melon Man" (in a similar way to "54321" and the Dizzy Gillespie number) and "When I'm Dead And Gone" (McGuinness Flint), plus a snippet of the Mike Hugg penned theme to The Likely Lads during the final song.
Perhaps the biggest thrill of the evening was being able to see Paul Jones there on stage in front of us. Boy, did he look good, (not that the others looked bad, far from it, in fact Tom McGuinness looked very reminiscent of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird,) and his voice! Words fail! This boy can wail, and not just vocally, his harmonica playing was brilliant. Paul highlights included a slower, but gutsy rendition of "Come Tomorrow" (sans trouser puller of TOTP fame!), a magnificent flamingo impression during, surprisingly, "Pretty Flamingo" and an extremely cute little wiggle while Mike D'abo performed "Ha! Ha! Said The Clown" and we thought Mike was the stylish dancer in the group!
Manfred songs cry out for massive audience participation, and it was there in abundance. "Sha La La" provided a good opportunity for the fans to find their voices, (and to show how adaptable they were as the rhythm altered to swingbeat). However the ultimate participation song has to be "Do Wah Diddy Diddy." (Blimey they don't write songs like they used to do they?!) Everyone had a whale of a time attempting to hit the notes Paul was asking us to, but there is a complaint that has to made at this point. Where were his maracas? (No making up your own rude jokes out there!) He'd provided some percussion earlier on, but now the maracas were sadly absent. (Perhaps it wouldn't have worked with his groovy green shirt and loose bow tie instead of his stripey sweater anyway, still we can only dream!)
We are hoping that the encore ended with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" because we did, so we went! (Not before hearing them break into the Likely Lads though!) Dashing for the last train back to Liverpool, we didn't have much time or energy to discuss our experience, however the train journey and the hours before we parted company next day gave us plenty of opportunity to talk about it and work out what to include in this article, although when it came down to it, we haven't mentioned Paul Jones' rear end anywhere near as much as we did at the time!
The bare bones of the "plot" to this movie read like a trash sci-fi novel. On Earth in the future, man is divided over music, if you prefer beat music you can't mix with those who like ballads. Each year the two factions compete in a musical battle, and in order to get the upper hand they spy on each other, trying to avoid being caught by patrols. Sounds good eh?
This film could have been about so many things: the futility of war over silly reasons (c.f. the Lilliputians and the egg fiasco in Gulliver's Travels), a bizarre musical remake of Romeo and Juliet (c.f. West Side Story), the future of mankind if one social aspect is made more important than anything else (in this case music). However, although it makes a valiant attempt, it fails on all counts and remains a blissful little folly of a film in which Kenneth Connor's face out acts the entire cast!
Wilco Roger (Connor) must reconcile the inhabitants of Beatland and Balladisle or face exile on the planet Gonk. Erm, in essence that's it! In order to do this he enlists the help of Mr. A&R (Frank Thornton) who helps him find two people (one from each side) to fall in love with each other. The lucky pair are Helen from Balladisle and Steve from Beatland. They discover a mutual admiration for each other's music (and each other in general)! The grand finale takes place at the annual music competition where Mr. A&R and Wilco get the pair to perform a song that is christened the Beat-ballad! (Honest!)
Watch out for appearances from the world and his wife, including Lulu, Arthur Mullard, Terry Scott and The Nashville Teens!
I've only ever seen one, possibly two, episodes of this classic series, but am eager to see more, perhaps one of the satellite networks will acquire it soon! It's a time travel tale with a twist - Adam Llewellyn De Vere Adamant was an Edwardian adventurer who was injected with an eternal life drug in 1902 and condemned to "die forever" by his arch enemy, The Face, who sealed him in a block of ice. 64 years later he is found by workmen and revived in hospital. Now Adamant must face his most daring adventure yet - life in the swinging London of 1966. Luckily he finds a couple of companions to help him navigate this strange, alien environment; Georgina Jones, whose grandfather used to tell her stories about Adamant, and William E. Simms, a former music hall artist.
The show ran for two seasons, and due to the bizarre nature of some of the villians/plots foiled by the trio, comparisons were drawn with the more famous Cult TV classic - The Avengers, (mind you it had some of the same writers!) Adam Adamant Lives! was a BBC production, so there's always a chance that at some point UK Gold may obtain the rights (fingers crossed!)
Regular Cast -
Adam Adamant Gerald Harper
Georgina Jones Juliet Harmer
William E. Simms Jack May
The Face Peter Ducrow
Script Consultant Tony Williamson
Producer Verity Lambert
Theme sung by Kathy Kirby
Guest Stars included-
Geoffrey Hinsliff, Charles Tingwell, William Hurndell, Deryck Guyler, John Le Mesurier, Kenneth Kendall, Annette Andre, Patrick Troughton, Iain Cuthbertson, Kate O'Mara, Jean Marsh, Peter Bowles, Windsor Davies, T.P. McKenna plus many more!!
CD REVIEW - Ages Of Mann - Manfred Mann
Although it was released two years ago, the Manfreds are still plugging this compilation on their tour, and why not? It's an excellent collection of 22 Manfred hits from the 60s. The songs, thankfully, are not in chronological order, (do you know I discovered a compilation album the other day that listed the tracks alphabetically by artist!) which helps to show how consistent the band was quality-wise, even with a constantly changing line-up! It's odd that as the Manfreds go, I'm a Paul Jones fan, but the tracks I play the most from this CD mainly feature Mike D'abo on lead vocals - "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James", "My Name Is Jack", and especially, "Fox On The Run." (Can you wear out tracks on a CD?) However, more recently, I have been giving the Jones-sung track "Poison Ivy" a heck of bashing!
The actual CD packaging is very simple. No booklet chronicling the historical comings and goings of the band, just a couple of heartfelt paragraphs from Tom McGuinness and a cover to put Ready Steady Go! to shame (Swinging!)
I think this CD may still be at full price, but it is good value. This is one of those compilations you could stick in your multiplay CD system at a 60s party and not have to worry about a duff track. The only track you couldn't really dance to is "With God On Our Side," and let's face it we all need to go to the bathroom at some point