Dave's 56th

DATA had been booked but was icy so we decided to cross the road to King George V playing fields - scene of former triumphs in the distant past. Initially, it was jackets down, but Steve got his son to come down with some traffic cones and poles which we used as improvised goals and corner flags. Of course, you can imagine the arguments about whether it was over or under the bar - just like old times! Ah happy days!

Dave's team were distinguished by the Santa hats - although the birthday boy himself threw a bit of a strop and flung his hat down, saying "I'm not wearing that!"

The pitch was OK at the start but started to ice up towards the end. John Moir, in particular, couldn't keep his feet at all and must have been grateful for the comparatively soft landing on grass, rather than the hard surface of DATA. The sides were uneven in number but Dave tried his best to even things up, scoring 2 early own goals, before replying with another 3 at the other (correct) end. It was entirely appropriate then that he sat under the old Guinness advert in the Douglas, proclaiming "Another Great Hat-trick":

Dave was also sporting an interesting line in socks and footwear - Xmas gifts perhaps?:

The soup and sannies were excellent and I passed round some old photos of BVFG over the last couple of decades. We were joined by Jeb's brother and his wife:

Dundee v PTFC 20th December 2008

It was a glorious day as we travelled down to Dens Park to see the Jags for the first time this season. We decided to have lunch at the Fishermen's Tavern, Broughty Ferry. Dave was snapping away on the shore front before we went in for lunch:



Inside, Black Sheep and Schiehallion helped wash down the Smokie Fishermen's Pie and Fish Cakes:



Having got caught out at the same fixture last year, we made sure we were in plenty of time this year. We even paid a visit to the Dundee FC shop - prominently featured was the front page of the local sports paper from 1962, when Dundee won the top league for the first (and last) time. Equal billing on the headlines was the news that local rivals St Johnstone were relegated the same day! Dave and Malcolm found their respective teams towards the lower end of England's top division.

Of course, Tannadice Street is the only street in the UK where you can tick off two grounds at once. First of all, the home of DUFC:

Then, just turn around, and it's Dens Park:

How did we manage to get all 4 of us in the photo? - the cop with the beard volunteered:

Inside the ground, we were the very first spectators in the main stand, so we picked our seats carefully:

The match itself was a bit of a travesty - Thistle walked all over a poor Dundee team, but just couldn't score, and there was always the fear that Dundee might nick something on one of their infrequent attacks. It ended up as a goal-less draw - a missed opportunity for the Jags with both St Johnstone and Dunfermline also only drawing that afternoon.

Headbang omission

I forgot to mention that we also had another special feature on Friday, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Beatles White Album. We watched a brilliant pastiche by Steve Riks, a UK impersonator who has lots of other stuff on You Tube - he plays through each song of the first two sides of the Beatles' classic in one minute snippets.

Check it out at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iF74bk3oxds and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oVS0UV-9CnU

Headbang 5th December 2008

It was the second of our winter 2008/09 headbangs last night. Having sorted out some logistical difficulties we finally all convened at Dave’s a little after 8:00 pm. First up was curry and beer and then we settled down to the show, which started with the usual Obituary section – this time featuring recently departed Levi Stubbs (Four Tops), Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer) and Odetta – who she, I hear some of you ask? – Just check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odetta to discover her wide sphere of influence.

Next up were the "Original and Cover" and "Then and Now" sections, followed for the first time by the completion of voting slips. This seemed to go OK - there were 7 of the former and 6 of the latter to vote on.

The overall votes were 17 in favour of the Originals and 24 for the Covers. Two of the Covers received unanimous votes - the Faces version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" was voted to be far superior to composer Paul McCartney's original, and, likewise the White Stripes version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" got the nod over the original version.

When it came to "Then and Now" the overall vote was a narrow 19-17 "win" for the past over the present. Again two songs got a full house of 6 votes - Cat Steven's 1976 rendition of "Peace Train" was deemed superior to him reprising it (as Yusuf Islam) in 2006. Conversely, Jimmy Cliff's recent rendition of "Many Rivers to Cross" on Jools Holland's Later programme was admired by all - at the age of 60 his voice seems even stronger than it was when the song first featured in 1972's film "The Harder They Come" (although the "Then" version we saw was from 1984).

The main feature of the evening, however, was a "Rock Chicks" category - 65 videos featuring female artistes were shown, followed by another vote - this time everyone was asked to award 10 points to their favourite, down to 1 point for their 10th most popular. I have to say that, by this late stage of the evening, much alcohol had been consumed and, as a result, there were several spoiled papers - I won't go in to details here, but I finally managed to interpret the votes this morning. There were 23 artistes who scored points and the final outcome was (drum roll):

1 Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl
2 K T Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
3= Janis Joplin - Maybe
3= Debbie Harry (Blondie) - Picture This
5 Patti Smith - Gloria
6 Julie Driscoll (+ Brian Auger & the Trinity) - This Wheel's On Fire
7 Duffy - Mercy

8= Bobbie Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe

8= Labelle - Lady Marmalade (suspect voting error here by Dave - perhaps meant to be the 2001 version by Pink/Christina Aguilera/Lil' Kim/Mya?)
10= Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer

10= Siouxsie (& the Banshees) - Spellbound

The team photo from last night didn't quite come out - it was supposed to have a backdrop of classic "Rock Chick" Debbie Harry: