It's been a couple of days since my last post, been a bit busy with a few things. Not least sorting out my Charity auctions on Ebid. I'm very pleased to say I managed to raise £40 for NoRSACA'a Raines Avenue garden project.

Thanks to anyone who made bids, anyone not bidding this time there's always next month.

Also been catching up on some listening to a bunch of CD's I just got. These are a mixture of stuff picked up in charity shops and a couple ordered online.  One that I picked up in a charity shop is by Kevin Buxton & Chris Matthews called "Unusual Suspects" this is a pretty good album of blues/folk covers and original tracks, including a bloody good version of Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell", sadly I can't find any online recordings from this album, so I will post this Dylan recording.

If anyone know more about these two guys please feel free to let me know, I would love to hear more from them. Apart from "Blind Willie McTell" they also do a great version of "Across the Great Divide" written by Kate Wolf and also recorded by many American Roots singers including my favourite version by Nanci Griffith taken from her album "Other voices other rooms"

In complete contrast to "Unusual Suspects" an album that just arrived on my doorstep is by Lone Star, not the American country rock band, but a band from Wales in the 1970's. The CD is made up of their first two albums "Lone Star" & "Firing on all six" both albums have classic opening tracks, "She said, she said" (cover of the Beatles track) and "The Bells of Berlin"  for more about the band take a look here.

Just been looking at facebook and a mate of mine posted a clip of Aimee Mann, so thought it very apt to do the same here. A very underrated singer songwriter Aimee Mann formerly of the band Til Tuesday as had several albums the most recent this years "Charmer" available on Proper Records here in the UK.

Proper go from strength to strength and continue to put out first class releases by talented artists that for some reason major companies either drop or are just not interested in. Long may they continue to do so.

So here is the tune of the day, the title track from "Charmer"

I suppose that growing up in the sixties as a kid then a teenager I was lucky. This was the time when popular music was booming and sounds from all over were arriving. I remember going down to the youth club in Bilsthorpe, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, and hearing for the first time bluebeat and ska, great soul tracks from Stax, Chess & atlantic, and then the early Motown sounds. All these added to the homegrown pop made me want to get my hands on as much music as I could. One way was an early real to real tape recorder with the mike up against the radio, then my first cassette recorder and suddenly everything became portable.

My buying was still pretty restricted, so I started cleaning windows to earn some extra cash, most of which went on the latest singles.

Then in 1969, I was in the local scouts and a summer camp was being planned on the Isle of Wight for the following year. It was suggested that we scouts should help raise some funds for the camp and one idea was a one off disco in the scout hut. A bunch of us got together and using two old record players and a mike fed into a borrowed Vox AC30 amp with some very crude lighting effects and our pooled collection of records, one friday evening we opened the doors of the scout hut. The response was brilliant, nothing like it existed in the village and it was an instant success, so much so that a second followed and they soon became a regular event. It wasn't long before we got asked to do disco's for the church in the old church hall, wooden floor and all, then others wanted disco's in the village hall.

We carried on with them after the camp and for a couple of years, also going outside the village once transport was available in the shape of a moggy 1000 van.

Prior to this we had carted our gear around on a trolley.

This was also the time for parties, both in the village and the surrounding area. Some of the best parties were ones at Edwinstowe in the Church rooms on Mansfield Road. This was around the time of classic Led Zeppelin and other British Rock.

So it's a good excuse to have as tune of the day, Deep Purple "Black Night"

Been sorting through some boxes of old single 45's earlier today and found a few on the Embassy label. Embassy records were sold in Woolworth's stores here in the UK from 1954 - 1965 and was basically a budget label that produced cheap cover versions of popular hit singles of the day. I remember buying a few, one in particular was by Kay Barry which was a double A side of, "Bobby's Girl" and "James hold the ladder steady". 

                                    

"Bobby's girl" was a 1962 hit by Susan Maughn, and "James hold the ladder steady" was a hit for Carol Deene the same year.

Woolworths didn't sell official release records at this time and so they had many different session singers and musicians record the various hits. All releases came in printed sleeves with the Embassy logo, and the legend "Top in Pops" The one above is by the Typhoons and is a cover of The Beatles, "From me to you"

Aside from the singles they also issued E.P.s. and L.P.s. again featuring cover versions of current hits.

                           

Many of these releases have now become collectors items in their own rights.


In keeping with today's blog and talking about cover versions, the tune of the day is one of my all time favourite cover versions is, Frijid Pink's version of "House of the rising sun" This came out in 1970 and was a heavy version based on the hit by the Animals.


                                                                         

I suppose it's time to confess that the very first record I purchased with my own money was "A Scottish Soldier" by Andy Stewart back in 1960. Don't ask me why, I have no reasonable answer. Though I do remember playing the flip side just as much "Muckin' O" Geordie's Byre" This despite the fact I couldn't understand a word he was singing. I suspect that most of us have such tracks as their first purchase.

Not long after this I saw Lonnie Donegan on The Palladium and was soon listening to the sound of "My old man's a dustman" and delving into his already growing back catalogue. Still love "Cumberland Gap"

Then as I said in earlier post along came the Beatles, Stones etc.  I also started hearing a guy called Donovan and I finally had my first real musical hero, sadly I have never mastered any kind of musical instrument, though I did have a washboard for awhile. Donovan had this strange voice and that high pitched mouth organ that fairly whistled through the air waves. Far too many of his songs to list that I love, but I have chosen as my tune of the day, my all-time favourite, which actually was written by Micky Softley, (who also wrote another of Donovan's hits, War drags on") but Donovan's version is in my mind the best.

   Donovan "Goldwatch Blues"

Following on from an idea I had yesterday, I thought it would be nice to share some of the songs from my collection that maybe some folks may not have heard before.  Or if you have heard of them you will hopefully still enjoy them.

My musical tastes are great and varied, so anything may crop up from time to time.

So anyway, first up Jackie Leven "Birds leave Shadows" from his brilliant album "Forbidden songs from the dying west". I can't believe this came out in 1985, it only seems like last year. Sadly Jackie is no longer with us, but for those of you who never got to see him live there are lots of excellent live clips on youtube.

  "Birds leave shadows"

I've been looking for a picture of the Phillips record player I had and finally found one, mine was green and cream in colour. You could only play one single and then had to flip it over to listen to the other side or put on another disc. Also the arm did not return to starting position.



After a while when I was around seven or eight I was given a Dansette record player which was to me the best thing ever. I could now put on a "stack" of singles and they would automatically play one after the other. What Hi-tech stuff was this, with the Dansette and a little portable radio I could now listen to more music than ever.

   I had this Dansette for years before updating to a newer model although the old player was eventually incorporated into what would become my first DJ console (but that's another story)

Musings from the grey cells.

Music has been a huge part of my life since I got my first little Phillips record player for my fifth birthday. It was a second hand one from the son of one of my mum's friends, and along with the player came one E.P. Mantovani with Rawwicz & Landauer on pianos. It featured the Legend of the Glass Mountain. 

Within a short space of time I was given a few more singles by an older cousin, some of which were "Rocking Goose" by Johnny and the Hurricanes and "Lonely Pup" by Adam Faith, the B side of which was a track called "Green Finger" that I liked better than the A side. It was all about a guy who buys what he thinks is a gold ring, but really wasn't and the end result is his girl gets a green finger and things just don't work out!!

Then almost , to me anyway, there was The Beatles, then The Stones, Kinks, Small Faces and what seemed like hundreds of pop bands and singers all crying out to me, buy our singles. It was a constant battle to persuade mum or dad to take me into Mansfield to spend what must have been hours in Syd Booth's record shop trying to decide which single to buy that week.

      

Then there was all the great stuff coming from America, which back in the early sixties was to a young lad, a million miles away, and I remember seeing The Nashville Teens on the TV and thinking these are amazing Singing "Tobacco Road" and only finding out weeks later, they were British after all !!