Hey kids, it's been a bit tricky keeping this blog page updated when all the music club is really happening on the facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/RegalMusicClub

So sorry if anyone is following this page, there's been a bucketful of meetings since the last posts.

The next meeting is on Wed 25th September, theme is Paul Weller in all his incarnations. Angry Young Jam, friend of the Cappuccino Kid and now the Modfather.

5th June 2013 at 7.30 pm for a night of protest songs. Protest and popular song have always gone hand in hand - whether an attack on parliament such as the 17th Century "The World Turned Upside Down", the subversive silk of Sam Cook singing "A Change is Going To Come" or Jessie J's upfront attack on materialistic music culture in "Price Tag". What are you rebelling against, Johnny? "Whaddaya got?".

Laura Lee's "Womens Love Rights" album in 1972 was a strident blast across the bows of all the Superflys, Shafts, and Black Moses Isaac Hayes-esque performers who were dominating funk and soul at the time. Tracks such as "Wedlock is a Padlo...ck", "Crumbs Off the Table" and "Womens Love Rghts" might sound a little lyrically clunky today but at the time were very influencial in the US feminist movement. This track, "Rip Off", is on the one hand less dogmatic and more a remedy against the doggish (as the original poster notes below) but gives a good idea of her style.

Laura Lee "Rip Off"

22nd May for best/worst album cover night. This is guaranteed to be a lot of laughs, with room for debate. What is the best sleeve of all time? How do you define "best" anyway? Huh?

Next meeting: 8 May 2013

Spies, lies, and the rest at James Bond/Secret Agent songs night on the 8th May. Pick your favourite Bond theme or go undercover and steal a song from somewhere else. Meanwhile check out the seriously cool Johnny Rivers blasting through the theme to "Secret Agent" which is what the Patrick McGoohan series "Danger Man" was called in the USA. Now, does anyone want a fight over whether John Drake was Number Six?

Next Meeting: 24th April

On the 24th April the music club welcomes author and singer/songwriter James Allan to talk about his book "Musicians Eat Cakes - Connections, Coincidences and Similarities in the lives and deaths of pop and rock musicians". I think you will agree that sounds right up our street (we also eat cakes). To supplement his talk I thought we could have a think about songs which mention other musicians, there might be time to play a couple. "American Pie" is a good example of what I have in mind, but there are quite a few others out there, further thoughts to follow.

Wednesday 27th March for best concert/worst concert night. What makes a great concert? Intimate setting or stadium? Faithful reproduction or radical interpetation of material? What is the best gig you've seen? And the worst? What was the concert in history you wished you had been at? Pitch in with your stories, hear others, maybe perform a song that brings it all back. Lots of opportunities for chat, bit of a laugh, bit of debate. Doors open at half seven, no support, £2 including refreshments.

It's Kate Bush night at the Regal Music Club on the 13th March. Rolling the ball to you.

In 1986 Kate Bush released a new single to promote her Whole Story greatest hits album. I say promote, what she presented was a brilliant but extremely unsettling song with an even more unsettling video which was only shown in full on late night TV and in which she appears for a few seconds. Number 23 with a bullet.
 

 
Possibly stung by the failure of TOTP to play her terrifying video for Experiment 4, Kate then made an appearance on the otherwise grim early evening Wogan chat show on BBC 1 with a fantastic and semi theatrical mimed performance.

"The Whole Story" album in itself has to be one of the most poorly named albums in pop history, containing as it does a total of 12 singles, one of which is the above, and another is "new vocal" version of Wuthering Heights, thereby removing the actual track which first made such an impact on the nation's conciousness. No room for the hit singles "Hammer Horror", "Them Heavy People", "December Will Be Magic Again", "The Big Sky" or any album tracks at all. being released right on the cusp of CDs beginning their ascent perhaps makes it look more stingy than it was. Then again, it is still the only best of collection, or indeed any kind of complilation, available which is a bit of a crime, and that goes doubly so for video and film releases, nothing since the video casette which doubled the Whole Story album.

This is mere conjecture, but it seems to me that the more open Freddie Mercury became about his homosexuality, the more the Queen touring imagery went into panicky hetro cartoon overdrive. See if you can spot the subtle differences between the pre-moustache 1977 stage pass and the post-moustache 1979 onwards tours.

Check out the original cover of Astounding Stories from October 1953. The artist, Frank Kelly Freas, redrew the image in 1977 for the Queen News Of The World album, and whilst it is a great shame he died in 2005, I hope he was spared the sight of what a colossal balls up Parlophone made of the album cover for the CD re-release, whereby what had been a beautiful gatefold image of the full figure of the robot ended up chopped in two with the lower half rotated 90%.

When muppets attack

The muppets specialise in simultaneously satirising and celebrating their targets, and although I feel they slightly over egg the pudding with the manamahs etc, they hit numerous high points here. "I see a little silhuetto of a clam", heh.

The legendary drummer of Cornwall and...

I want to go back to 1971 and go to this weeks gigs at the Driftwood Spars in Cornwall. Especially Hairy Magpie and Monty on the wurlitzer. I detect a slight dismissiveness about Tuesdays "It's folk, with Ian" but you can see who the big draw is. Do you think that every time over the next forty three years that an announcer has gone "Now welcome...Queen!" Roger Taylor has muttered under his breath, "That's Roger Taylor AND Queen...".

Queen night on 27th February so let's go right back to the beginning. Believe it or not this is a pre first Queen album Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor moonlighting on producer Robin Cable's attempt to recreate Phil Spector's wall of sound with a cover of a Beach Boys track. Recorded in 1972 and released in April 1972 it wasn't a hit anywhere and was pretty much a rumour until appearing again on solo Freddie best of CDs. I think it's fairly clear from the nom de plume how seriously this was being taken.
 

Who is the most banned Beatle? Lennon, you would think, with his naked album covers and occasional sweary songs, but for most blanket bans across media groups the winner is, surprisingly, wacky baccy thumbs aloft cheery chappie Paul McCartney. In 1972 his Wings single "Give Ireland Back to The Irish" was completely banned from airplay by all UK media, as well as on Radio Luxemborg. Rush written and released as a response to the Bloody Sunday Shootings, this is as political as pop music can get. With no inference either way on the views expressed in the lyric to be taken from these statements, the track itself is a bit of a sonic soft seventies mush. Lyrically and musically it is pretty thin stuff, and unlikely to have got a crowd going. The title probably conveyed all McCartney intended by itself. Number one in Eire and Spain, number 21 in the USA and number 16 in the UK, so "banned" but not prohibited, although generally overlooked in most retrospectives. NB - despite the title of the you tube link, this single did not appear on any McCartney LP until bonus tracks were added to CD re-issues in the late nineties.

 

 

Wednesday 13th February for banned and censored songs night at the music club. Banned by whom, by what method, and for what purpose?

 

These are the lyrics to Song in Contravention by Momus, an artist who himself has been on the receiving end of censure since the outset (and not without good reason in the opinion of many). The brilliant album from which it is taken, Hippopotamomus, is still banned in it's original form for two entirely separate reasons, both of which will be explained on 13th at the Music Club banned songs night,... since I own both the original and revised versions. "This love outside the law, is strongest of them all - pass it on".

Song giving descriptions of an unnamed act of love
The court will call this song Exhibit A
Song including details of the persons taking part
And the actual words these persons say

Song in contravention of sections of the law
Members of the jury take your time
Remember even listening if only this far in
Already makes you guilty of a crime

This love in contravention
They see fit to ban
That woman feels for woman, man for man
This love outside the law is the strongest love of all
Pass it on (pass it on)
To sing this song is a crime of love
Sing this song (sing this song)

Song giving descriptions of an unnamed act of love
Outlawed by the government this year
A song giving descriptions of forbidden forms of love
Is passing at this moment through your ear

Song in contravention of sections of the law
That deal with making public private thoughts
With lyrics so explicit and descriptions so perverse
They constitute the crime that it reports

This love in contravention
They see fit to ban
That woman feels for woman, man for man
This love outside the law is the strongest love of all
Pass it on (pass it on)
To sing this song is a crime of love
Sing this song (sing this song)

In the perfumed garden the apprentice sits alone
Like a Persian miniature in stone
The jury and the witnesses are kneeling at the throne
Waiting for the judgement to come down

Song giving descriptions of an unnamed act of love
An act of love is taking place
Sung with your consent, the song has reached its very end
The prosecution rests its case

(The prosecution rests its case)

I'm going down to Alphabet Street to the Regal Music Club Prince night, tonight at 7.30. I will also, incidentally, be talking so sexy that you will want me from my head to my feet.

Wed 30th January for Prince night. This is a man who can release a 3CD hits compliation and still not have room for everything you remember. 7.30 pm. Rasperry Beret Optional.

Some Prince tracks/videos are surprisingly hard to find evidence of online. This is one of my favourites, a song completely obliterated from any compilations by the screeds of other hits. I bought all those double albums when he churned them out in the early nineties and something like this stood out inamongst all the generic funkathons

Prince - The Morning Papers video

This is, by some distance, the most honest and accurate song about the early seventies. Yes, it takes in the Chopper bikes and flares etc but it also moves through the IRA bombing of Birmingham, the bizarre one hit wonders, and the importance of reggae to large swathes of the population. In one verse alone you get Jeremy Thorpe, The Black Panthers and 1000 volts of Holt.

In the seventies I was just a kid, still knew what it was all about. I soaked it in and now it's all dripping out

Also here if video doesn't play: Denim - The Osmonds

Gearing up for our 1972 night on 16th January. For a little context, here is the scehdule of BBC 1 and 2 TV programmes from 28 July 1972. This would be smack in the middle of the school holidays, which accounts for the childrens shows in the morning, not a typical occurance, hence the weird situation where BBC 1 closed down for half an hour at 11 am. Note the Monkees at 5pm in the normal after school slot, nice. 

09:45 Camberwick Green
10:00 Casey Jones*
10:25 Play Tennis
10:50 Adventures of Tin Tin*
10:55 Magic Roundabout*
11:00 Closedown
11:25 Cricket: 4th Test
13:30 Fingerbobs
13:45 News. Weatherman Bert Foord
13:55 Telewele (First shown on BBC Wales)
14:20 Racing From Goodwood/Cricket: 4th Test
16:20 Play School
16:45 Jackanory
17:00 The Monkees
17:25 Ask Aspel
17:50 National News and Weather
18:00 Your Region Tonight*
18:20 Tom and Jerry
18:30 The Virginian
19:45 It's a Knock-Out! (Jeux sans Frontiéres)
21:00 News with Robert Dougall
21:25 The Man Outside
22:15 Dave Allen at Large
23:00 Late Night news
23:05 Summer Talk with Robin Day
23:50 Weatherman followed by Regional News and Weather (except London): Closedown

BBC2

11:00 Play School with Carol Chell, Johnny Ball
11:25 Closedown
16:30 Cricket: 4th Test
18:35 Open University*
19:30 Newsroom with Richard Whitmore
20:00 Gardeners' World
20:25 The Entertainers: The Klondyke Brothers
21:15 The Beethoven Symphonies (No. 3, Eroica)
20:15 Sport Two with Colin Welland, Ian Wooldrige
23:30 News on Two, Weather
23:35 Late Night Line-Up

Much more difficult finding ITV listings for 1972. Here is boxing day 1971 and 1972 which should give some idea of the horror of there only being three channels. A variety of Reg Varney anyone?

ITV Boxing Day 1971
8:15am Carols from Kirkare from the Castle Museum, York
9am Cartons
9:15am United Free Church Service from Princes Street Congregational Church, Norwich
10:15am A Merry Morning, with John Alderton, Daisy May
10:45am Children's Christmas Cinema
11:30am Captain Sinbad (film) starring Guy Williams
1:00pm Christmas Singalong, with The Bachelors, Moira Anderson, Sacha Distel, Howard Keel, Andee Silver
2:00pm The Kelvin Hall Circus
3:00pm The Queen speaks to the Commonwealth
3:10pm King Solomon's Mines (1950 film) starring Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger
5:00pm A Variety of Reg Varney
6:00pm News
6:05pm Mike and Bernie Winters' All Star Christmas Comedy Carnival
8:35pm Around the World in Eighty Days (film) starring David Niven, Robert Newton, Cantinflas, Shirley MaClaine
10:00pm News
10:10pm Around the World in Eighty Days (film continued)
11:40pm It Matters to Me, with Leonard Parkin and Anne Allen

ITV Boxing Day 1972

9:00am Cliff's Kids
9:15am Mountain Rescue
9:35am Bugs Bunny
10:00am Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950 film) starring Lex Barker, Vanessa Brown (b-w)
11:20am Professional Wrestling
12:20-2:40pm Horse Racing from Wincanton
2:40pm Dear Octopus (play)
with Peter Barkworth, Lally Bowers, Hannah Gordon, Cyril Luckham, Anna Massey, Nora Swinburne
4:10pm Cinderella, Junior Showtime Pantomime
5:00pm News
5:15pm All The Jokers - Full House
6:15pm Press for Time (1967 film) starring Norman Wisdom, Derek Bond
8:00pm Big Bad Mouse (play) with Eric Sykes, Jimmy Edwards
9:30pm The Val Doonican Show
10:30pm News
10:45pm The Mummy (1959 film) starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee
12:20pm Reconciliation

Hey kids, here is a lovely new blog for those who prefer not to have to sign up to anti-social media to get the club updates. Tell your friends, tell all your friends.

Next music club meeting is at 7.30pm on 16th January when we will be looking at the wild world of the 1972 music scene. Forget your David Bowie and his arm draped around Mick Ronson, the whole country was going quietly mad. Exhibit A: Lieutenant Pigeon.

 

If you can't see the video displayed, click here to view.