Headbang - Friday the 13th

There must be something about Friday the 13th - our last headbang in February was also held on this date. We had a full attendance from the headbangers section - plus our youngest ever new recruit - Jeb's son, whose name is, appropriately, Dylan. It's always the youngsters who flag first at our headbangs - Dylan was spotted dozing off on his Dad's shoulder pretty early on in the evening - although he just managed to prise his eyelids open in time for this shot:


As usual, we started with our obituary section - and there has been a total of 12 relatively significant artistes who had passed away since our last gathering - one of whom, Ellie Greenwich, was a writer rather than a performer, but her place in the pantheon of rock and roll history is so assured that we had to include a couple of clips of her famous songs - from the Ronettes and the Crystals.

After playing all 12 clips, we each voted on who would be the most and the least missed amongst them. The clear winner was Les Paul, and the top 6 finished up this way:

1. Les Paul - 74
2. Koko Taylor - 69
3. Michael Jackson - 65
4. Willy de Ville - 64
5. Ellie Greenwich & Mary Travers - 54 each

Stephen Gateley barely mustered the minimum number of votes - although, despite issuing detailed voting instructions earlier in the day, our host seemed to struggle with the concept of ranking the artistes from 1-12!

Next up was a brief celebration of the 40th anniversaries of 3 significant events that occurred in 1969:

• The release of the Beatles final recording - Abbey Road
• The Stones in the Park gig - their first with Mick Taylor, just a few days after the death of Brian Jones.
• Woodstock

The first and last named were clearly the most significant and the voting was almost evenly split, with Colin, Gary and I opting for the Beatles, but we were out-numbered by the rest who voted for Woodstock.

The main theme of the evening was old favourites - and Andy and Colin had taken the lead here by pre-selecting their favourite clips from my archive of over 1,000 individual music video files.

Andy had selected 17 clips, which were voted for on a scale of 1-10. There was a tie at the top between Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry and Squeeze's Up the Junction - both with 74 points out of a possible maximum of 80. Seasick Steve's Doghouse Blues came in a close 3rd with 72.

Colin's favourites were more extensive - 36 in all, which meant the taxi back to Drumoak and Culter arrived before we got through all the video clips, forcing Jeb, Dylan and Malcolm to miss the last 7 of CK's selections - and Gary also took the opportunity to slope off at this time.

The hard core of Colin, Andy and I stayed on at Dave's, playing more of the videos, and we asked Malcolm and Jeb to order a taxi to come out and pick us up. We were a little surprised that it was the same taxi who came to pick us up an hour later - especially when we discovered that it was a Davro 6 seater, which could have taken us all at the same time!

The team photo was therefore a bit short in numbers:

Nonetheless, we managed to garner sufficient votes to declare a result on Colin's favourites. The clear winner here was the Who's Won't Get Fooled Again with an amazing 69 out of a possible 70 maximum (Dylan didn't vote as he was asleep during most of it!). The rest of the top 10 scored pretty well with Cream, Dylan, Animals, Stones, Blockheads, Dr. Feelgood, Fleetwood Mac, Hendrix and the Faces trailing in behind the Who.

Another great night - bring on the next one!

Maximum Rhythm 'n' Blues

It was billed as a Night at the Flamingo, featuring the Alan Price Set and guests. Our host and droll raconteur was first to feature:





He then gave the spotlight to Zoot Money, whose Big Roll Band (alternating with Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames) used to be one of the house bands at the Flamingo in the 60's:





For many of us, the star of the show, and one of the main reasons we came along, was to see Maggie Bell in full flow again:

Chris Farlowe, complete with strange, rotund upper body shape was next to feature:

Of course, some of the Animals music was featured - Alan Price opened with I'm Crying - but next up was Bobby Tench (check him out on Wikipedia) with Black Magic Woman:

Then Chris Farlowe and Maggie Bell duetted on William Bell and Judy Clay's Private Number:

After the break, Chris Farlowe did T-Bone Walker's Stormy Monday Blues, with Bobby Tench wailing away on lead guitar:

Hibs v Aberdeen 31 Oct 09

Our second footy trip this season took us down to Easter Road, where Dave wanted to do some box-ticking, never having been there before.

We caught an early morning train down from Stonehaven, which gave us a chance to relax, read the papers and still get to Edinburgh in time for a Costa Coffee stop (no buffet service on the train!):



We then headed down Broughton St to CK's favourite pub - the Cask & Barrel, where we watched the Arsenal - Spurs match:



With Ken (a Hibee) with us, and me supporting the Reds, we had to sit in the relatively neutral ground of the main stand, but just before we got there, CK posed in front of the Famous 5 stand:



Now - without Googling - can you name the members of the Famous 5? I managed it OK, but the rest of the crew failed with one of the names.

This is a view of the Hibs end at the foot of the famous Easter Road slope, taken from our seats at the far end of the main stand:



The Dons fans had turned out in good numbers - many of them in fancy dress, as we were to discover later on the journey home:


Hibs finally beat 9 man Aberdeen with two late, late goals. Ken stayed down in Edinburgh with family and the rest of us headed back on the train. Fortunately, we caught a slightly later one than most of the Dons fans, but we were delayed a couple of hours outside Kirkcaldy by what was described by the guard, in increasingly hysterical language, as a major riot on the train in front of us. It transpired to be no such thing, although it did have fairly serious repercussions for one or two individuals involved in what was probably initially a prank involving fireworks and a fan in sheep's clothing - check http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8336485.stm