Only Jeb was missing from our regular crowd as we gathered at Chapel House for the 3rd of the 2008/09 winter headbangs. It was another themed evening and the line-up was:
1. Obituary
2. Buddy Holly RiP
3. Producers
4. Then & Now
5. Original & Cover
6. Celtic Rock Challenge
7. Prog v Punk
8. Father & Son
Voting slips were abundant and, this time, there were far fewer spoiled papers than before, so hopefully, the votes were fairly representative of the group's musical taste. There had been 8 significant departures since the last headbang on 5th December and we voted on who would be most missed and who least. The outstanding and intimate performance of his classic "May You Never", with support from Kathy Mattea, made John Martyn clear winner of the Most Missed vote with a total points score of 47 - Gary was the only one who didn't give him full marks, somewhat bizarrely deeming Eartha Kitt as more missed than John Martyn!
At the other end of the scale, Lux Interior of the Cramps was clearly the least missed, amassing just 10 votes - just above the minimum of 8.
Continuing briefly on the morbid theme, we watched a couple of quick clips of Buddy Holly to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Day The Music Died, whilst we gathered in the voting papers.
It was Malcolm's suggested theme of Producers next - we had a face off between 5 of the best known. There was a little bit of a shock result here with Kit Lambert edging out the legend that is Phil Spector. The 3 clips of Arthur Brown, the Who and Labelle beat the Righteous Brothers, Ike & Tina Turner and John Lennon by just 3 votes - 131 v 128. The Producer deemed the poorest was Joe Meek with just 73 points, but the age of his 3 clips and the sound quality obviously affected the votes here.
It was then on to the Then & Now section - the 3rd time we had featured this theme. Both Martha & the Vandellas and the Who garnered unanimous votes for the Then clips, and the overall vote was 18 to 12 for the older and original versions.
In the Original & Cover section, Elvis' 1956 version of Hound Dog was deemed far superior to John Lennon's 1972 cover from his Live in New York concert - perhaps partly due to Yoko caterwauling in the background! Conversely, Jeff Buckley's 1994 cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah was undoubtedly superior - and even the clips of Dan Corbett's unique version made on the golf trip to Florida could not knock it off its perch! The overall vote was 20 votes to 16 in favour of the Covers.
Round about this time in the evening, I keep my eyes open for anyone whose attention is wandering and I spotted the youngest headbanger with his eyes drifting to a close - Andy must have had a 6th sense, however, as he managed to re-open them just in time:
The first of the 2 main themes of the evening was the Celtic Rock Challenge and it was perhaps a little bit of a surprise that Jock Rock came out on top - the main reason for this was undoubtedly the astonishing theatrical interpretation of Jacques Brel's Next by Alex Harvey:
This clip alone got 58 points out of Scotland's total of 192, which relegated favourites Ireland in to 2nd place with 184 points, with Wales 3rd on 177.
Prog v Punk was the second of the main themes and there were 9 clips from each category, some of them pretty rare - and weird! Lightweight Grant made his customary early departure not long after midnight and didn't see any of the Punk clips, but he definitely preferred the more upbeat and more recent music to its dinosaur rivals, as did the rest of us - with one exception - Dave gave 58 votes to Prog and just 55 to Punk, but, overall, Punk came out a very clear winner with 344 votes to 251.
As the final voting papers were gathered, we played out with a brief Father & Son section, but there was no need for a vote - Bob and John obviously outshone the offsprings of the Dylan and Lennon families, but Jakob and Julian put up a good fight!
Time just for a traditional team photo - Gary was gone but his hero formed the backdrop:
