Here is the full version of the Video for ‘Blue Dansette’ – it took a lot of planning and was a lot of fun to film and edit!
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Here is the full version of the Video for ‘Blue Dansette’ – it took a lot of planning and was a lot of fun to film and edit!
>>
This is a photo from 1979 outside my folks house in Blackheath, London with my 1969 Mini & 1975 Rickenbacker 480 – can you tell which bands I might have liked?
The Mini was bought for me to learn to drive with in 1976 and I passed my test at the 3rd attempt on 16th November of that year. For my tuition I drove to school from Blackheath to Dulwich with my mum every rush hour morning and she then continued on to work in New Covent Garden, Battersea.
After I passed I was able to drive myself to school for the remaining year.
Actually, one week after I passed I almost crashed it big time. I’d driven to see a gig with a friend and we came back via Vauxhall from Battersea. Several sets of traffic lights are staggered and I moved forward across diagonal traffic having seen the wrong set turn green by Vauxhall Bridge.
Amid lots of horn beeping we made it across but a police car was following behind within 5 seconds. He let me go, admitting that the lights were highly confusing.
An early warning to drive carefully!
It broke down fairly regularly, once in Piccadilly, once in Clapham, once in Birmingham and the heating was non-existent in the cold – I remember a deeply uncomfortable end of term journey down the M1 from Birmingham University one December.
The car met its demise in about 1982 when the handbrake failed from its parked position in the above photo and crashed into a wall, writing off the engine.
RIP
…to quote another famous song!
The full EP ‘Blue Dansette‘ is out today on London Songwriters Recordings!
The EP tells a musical story from 60s pop (Blue Dansette) through to 80s Rock (Whiskey A-Go-Go) via 70s New Wave Punk (Summer’s Day!) with a Beatles pastiche in there too (Tell Me It’s You).
All accompanied by an ongoing Autoblography.
Bandcamp Friday is a good day to support independent artists!
Summer’s Day! is the 2nd single from the EP ‘Blue Dansette’ and is out now as a free download on Bandcamp:
Click here to listen and download.
It’s a Pop/Punk Haiku – an entire anthemic Pop structure inside the first 40 seconds.
It’s also a paean to love, music and immortality!
There is an extended mix on the EP ☺
In my previous blog Something In The Air I spoke about walking to school across Blackheath in London and listening to songs on the radio in 1969.
Another song I remember vividly is In The Summertime by Mungo Jerry which was actually released in 1970 but my song Blue Dansette didn’t make it clear in its draft version.
In one of my last music world networking engagements before the 2020 Covid lockdown I was talking to DJ and Quiz Host Larry Foster about the song. He immediately corrected the year, so I knew I had to change it. Eventually, the line became ‘A new decade arrived In The Summertime glare’ which was tricky to fit into the melody but it worked fine in the end (Verses can be more forgiving than Choruses when fitting in rhythmic Lyric variations).
I met Ray Dorset from Mungo Jerry in 2015 in the now defunkt Alleycat venue in Denmark St. I was able to thank him personally for the pleasure his song gave me in my formative years and that goes for countless others too.
I’ll blog more about the 60s but the next single from the EP is the punky 1970s Summer’s Day (Radio Edit) which is available as a free download on Bandcamp. There is an extended version on the EP too.
The song Blue Dansette and this blog entry are dedicated to Larry Foster, universally known as one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet. He sadly succumbed to Covid in the Spring of 2020 and is sorely missed.
The first stereo single from the EP ‘Blue Dansette’ is out today!
The first track of a musical trilogy covering the 60s, 70s & 80s this song reflects the music of the Sixties and is also available on 7” Vinyl with authentic Mono Mixes b/w ‘Tell Me It’s You’
It is available to stream or download on Bandcamp & is also included in an EP pre-order as a bonus track.
Very proud to pull something this complex together after years of being too busy to complete my own music
Do Wah Diddy by Manfred Mann was released in July 1964 and was No. 1 for 2 weeks in the UK. It was one of the first LPs I was ever given, Mann Made Hits.
With only two LPs in my possession initially it got an awful lot of plays and embedded a melodic pop sensibility inside my head from a very early age.
Sometimes these influences come out subconsciously many many years later.
The single Blue Dansette is released on Bandcamp tomorrow 30th July 2021!
In 1964 when Beatlemania was at its absolute height my mum figured she should see what all the fuss was about in a live concert setting. She applied for tickets, thinking there was no chance, but to her surprise received 6 of them. So, I got to see The Beatles live!
Apart from my mum, my best friend Peter’s older sister Barbara went too and screamed with the best of them. Sadly Peter was at home with the measles.
The band were due to play at The Hammersmith Odeon for a second annual series of Christmas shows from 24th December through to the 16th January 1965.
‘The guest performers including Freddie And The Dreamers, Sounds Incorporated, Elkie Brooks, The Yardbirds, Michael Haslam, The Mike Cotton Sound and Ray Fell.
The Beatles appeared in sketches, one with Freddie Garrity of Freddie And The Dreamers. They closed the shows with an 11-song set: Twist And Shout, I’m A Loser, Baby’s In Black, Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby, Can’t Buy Me Love, Honey Don’t, I Feel Fine, She’s A Woman, A Hard Day’s Night, Rock And Roll Music and Long Tall Sally.’
I’d like to say I remember them vividly but the teenage girls standing up and screaming meant that I ‘couldn’t see or hear for all the screaming beehives’ as my song Blue Dansette says. Likewise for most who ever saw the Beatles it seems and they couldn’t hear themselves play either. I have always had a more vivid recollection of Freddie and The Dreamers!
PS At least two musician mates attended the same series of concerts, namely Dzal Martin and David Stark of the tribute band The Trembling Wilburys – David has written a great book about his Beatles encounters over the years called It’s All Too Much
Here I am aged 9 on holiday in South Molton, Devon, affording my parents some much needed respite (Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah). It was a kids residential ‘Summer Camp, which also involved horse riding nearby. I can remember a few things about it.
The garden was huge and there was a tent underneath a beautiful weeping willow tree. I made friends with one particular boy but his name does escape me. We would go down the high street and I remember there was a hunting shop. They were allowed to sell knives to 9 year olds and so lots of carving of tree branches took place.
Around the corner was a cinema and I think the films featuring were The Greatest Story Ever Told and She. I don’t think we went to see those.
I’m pretty sure I had a good time in Devon but a surprise certainly awaited me when I got home to London, the story of which is the subject of the first single from the EP Blue Dansette.
This is my Harmony H22 bass. I inherited it from a previous band in the 1970s but it’s the model used extensively in the 1960s by the likes of Ronnie Lane of The Small Faces and Muff Winwood from The Spencer Davis Group.
Their songs and the others I grew up with eventually inspired me to write and record music of my own.
I love it – ideal short-scale for a guitarist, very woody, semi-acoustic sound. I’ve always taken it along to my songwriting retreats and its stylish looks featur heavily in the video for Blue Dansette, having recently refurbished it with the distinctive ‘batwing’ pickguard.