Where Was I When?

My buddy Big Rab of the excellent Ben Lomond Free Press has decided to wake me from my blog slumbers by tagging me with one of those ridiculous memes.  This one requires me to recall where I was and what I was doing on certain key historical dates.  This is rather funny as my memory has never been great and recently has developed more holes in it than than one of those holey things, I forget the name.  These days I can only tell if I have been to the toilet recently by the relative dampness of my trousers...

Anyway, here goes nothing...

Princess Diana’s death - 31 August 1997

Ah, I do remember this! Do I get a point?

Me and Mrs TK had travelled long and far to get to our holiday retreat, a waterside apartment in Falmouth, Cornwall.

The previous occupants had obviously been using the beside alarm clock radio to waken them bright and early in the morning - on holiday?  Numbskulls!

Anyway, the bloody thing went off and I couldn't find the off button without wakening myself up properly so I decided just to let the radio news guy witter on.

So I'm lying in a strange bed, in a strange room, in a strange flat, in that "not quite knowing where you are and is this a dream by the way?" state, listening to this bizarre news item about a car crash in a tunnel in Paris etc etc

One of the wierdest mornings I have ever experienced.

Coincidentally we drove back up the length of the country on the day of the funeral.  Great trip, hardly any traffic on the road, made it back home in half the time!

Margaret Thatcher’s resignation 22 November 1990

Can't recall and don't really care.

Has the old bitch died yet?

Is it time to help Elvis tramp the dirt down?

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001

I was at work and it was one of those occassions where all sorts of mixed messages where coming in, people phoning their loved ones at home to get the latest from the radio or television, all sorts of rumours flying around - kind of like the day Mo Johnstone signed for Rangers.

Finally someone managed to get hold of a telly that was used for showing presentations and set it up in one of the meeting rooms.  I cannot adequately describe the power of the images on that screen that day.  A bunch of us stood transfixed watching the planes flying into the towers over and over again, the repeating of the action never once diminishing the shock that everyone felt.

Something changed in the world that day and there's no going back.

I had been lucky enough to visit the Twin Towers on a visit to New York a couple of years before and the thought that the attack could just of easily happened then still sends a chill down my spine. 

England’s World Cup Semi Final v (West) Germany - 4 July 1990

Watched this at home, much as I watch any football that is available - on the box or in real life! Another glorious failure.  I think that most people in Scotland don't actually mind the majority of the players, its the arrogant, annoying, small minded, ignorant, feckwits that present and commentate on the matches for the EBC that get on everyone's thruppennies!

President Kennedy’s Assassination - 22 November 1963

I was three.  I lived in Nottingham.  I had a red tricycle.  I vaguely recall a "girlfriend" that lived round the corner.  I was once knocked unconscious when my Dad accidentally pulled me into a lamppost.  I almost sliced off the top of my thumb trying to peel an apple.  

I have absolutely no recollection of President Kennedy's assassination.

---

I have no intention of tagging anyone for this meme, if you read this and feel like taking part please do, and don't forget to point back down the chain like a good citizen...

Toodle pip.

Where's My Jet Pack?

Discovered a great blog, Paleo Future, which gives us a glimpse into previous years predictions of what our futures may look like. Weird and wacky alike are gathered here and though some of the predictions are remarkably accurate the context and presentation of the ideas raises a wry smile.

I love this film. The concepts presented are hardly groundbreaking in today's terms but the homely presentation is fantastic.

The Future is Now (1955)
Uploaded by donaldtheduckie

Must go and have my lunch...in tablet form of course.

'Is this me or Dead Shot Keen?'

Strange how things just pop into your head sometimes isn't it?

Today I was walking to a meeting in another building when out of nowhere I started thinking about the old football comic strip 'Billy's Boots' which originated in 'Scorcher' comic in 1970. This used to be a particular favourite of mine but I have no idea why it suddenly rose up out of the dim and distant past.

Anyway, doing some quick research on the interwebthingy turned up this old but fine article on the 10 best comic book footballers . How does this list compare to your top ten?

Speccy Speccy Four Eyes

Something strange happened this morning...

I was sitting having a wee ponder about what aspect of my high-flying, non-stop action life I could write a wee blog entry about when an email popped into my inbox. [What's strange about that ya plonker? That's what is supposed to happen...]

This email was from Friends Reunited, you know the site that everyone signed up to a few years ago, making its owners millionaires in the process. The site that put you back in contact with people you knew from school but had lost touch with. The site that let you to swap emails with said lost contacts, thus enabling you to realise why you hadn't bothered to keep in touch with them in the intervening years... You know, that one.

Anyhoo, the email was from Friends Reunited in conjunction with Optical Express, the opticians. They have clubbed together to bring me an offer I might like...

Now, I do wear glasses and have done since about primary 5. These days specs are pretty cool. There are lots of different designer styles from which to choose to help you obtain the right 'look'. Even the kids have wide range of styles to choose from.

Not in my day.

When I went to school the choice for boys, unless your parents were loaded, was National Health spectacle frames in brown "horn rimmed", or black. Neither of these choices made the young TK look cool. This problem became compounded when as part of the day to day rough and tumble of the Scottish Education system both spectacle legs became broken and had to be repaired with tape until it was time to get new ones (an annual occurrence). This was not a good look. At all. Ever.

Wearing specs at school in the 70's was most definitely not cool. The taunts of "Speccy Four Eyes" and "Speccy Speccy Spazz Face" were never too far away. These days there are no doubt rules to protect the occularly challenged from the slightest chance of ridicule, back in the pre-PC days you were fair game, even for the teachers.

Now Friends Reunited (all about schooldays) and Optical Express (all about glasses) are teaming up to send me emails because they think I might be interested...

Is this random, or is there a special section on the FR site where 'normal' kids can nominate speccy kids that they remember in order to drive a targetted marketing campaign?

I think we should be told...

Here We Go - 2, 3, 4...

This little ditty came on the iPod yesterday and brought a wide smile to my face.

Here's a little clip from back in the days when TOTP was guaranteed to have at least five minutes of anarchic chaos on it every week...



Jilted John was the creation of Graham Fellows whose later comic incarnation John Shuttleworth is featured below.



Link : The Official John Shuttleworth Interweb Drop-In Centre

Link : Graham Fellows entry in Wikipedia

Rock On

Heard on the radio this morning that David Essex turned 60 today.

Whilst we should desperately try and ignore his later years of Andrew Lloyd Webber-isms and general "musical theatre" leanings, his early years were pretty entertaining even if I can only bring myself to admit it now - he was saddled with too much of a teenybopper image for us boys to take seriously...

He starred in two cult classic films That'll Be The Day and Stardust both concerned with the rise and ultimate fall of rock star Jim MacLaine and his debut single Rock On remains to this day on of the bravest attempts at chart success ever. Bass driven with an echoey, dub-like production, Rock On was an unlikely but worthy success.

I understand his long standing fans are mounting a campaign to get Rock On back into the charts to celebrate the occassion. It would certainly rank head and shoulders above anything in there at the moment.

Embedding is disabled on YouTube but here is a link.

Recommended Reading

My Father and other Working-Class Football Heroes

by Gary Imlach

ISBN-10: 0224072684

Synopsis (with thanks to Amazon)

Stewart Imlach was an ordinary neighbourhood soccer star of his time. A brilliant winger who thrilled the crowd on Saturdays, then worked alongside them in the off-season; who represented Scotland in the 1958 World Cup and never received a cap for his efforts; who was Man of the Match for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final, and was rewarded with the standard offer - GBP20 a week, take it or leave it.

Gary Imlach grew up a privileged insider at Goodison Park when Stewart moved into coaching. He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him.

In this book, he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era. "My Father and Other Working-Class Heroes" brilliantly recaptures a lost world and the way it changed, blending the personal and the historical into a unique soccer story.

I recently finished reading this book and felt compelled to recommend it.

This book is about more than just football, it is also the story of a son's quest to get to know his father, through his playing history and the friendships he had forged within the game, after it was too late to do this directly.

Through the memories and the old match reports we build up a picture of a very different football environment from that of today, players on a maximum wage and being treated as disposable assets of the clubs - rather than the world of overpaid, overexposed, primadonnas that form a significant element of the sport nowadays.

The book also contains some amusing episodes including the revelation about Alan Ball's famous white boots contained in the following section:

For a nine-year-old newly arrived on Merseyside in 1969, though, there was more kudos in having a current member of the Everton coaching staff for a father than a cup-winner from before I was born. Formby is a small coastal town on the way north to Southport, still a popular spot for Everton and Liverpool players who don't fancy the posher parts of the Wirral. We'd been parachuted in that summer as marked men. Our footballing heritage was very much a sidebar to the big news that we were Goodison insiders; something our school friends could go home and ask their dads about, if they remembered.

Besides, our father's achievements were all safely in the record books. We took pride in them, but there was nothing we could do to influence the outcome of games already played and trophies long since held aloft on open-top buses. The '69-70 League Championship, though, was up for grabs, and we knew we had to do our bit. The same clothes every week, the scarf on the same way, the standing and shouting of exactly the same phrase of exhortation to the defence every time Everton conceded a corner: who knew what variables might affect the result one way or the other? Best to cover all the bases just to be on the safe side.

This was part of the responsibility that came with what, across the playground, must have looked like tremendous privilege. At school the only other football offspring our age were the children of the Liverpool centre-half Ron Yeats, and they were girls. So, alone among our peers, we had the secret knowledge. We knew what cars they drove, what their training numbers were, what they ate before matches. When Alan Ball signed a contract with a Danish company no one had heard of and became the first English player to wear white boots it was big news - all our mates were talking about it. But we knew something else: that Alan Ball didn't actually like his new boots and rarely wore them; that his highly visible Hummel were, in fact, usually a pair of Adidas 2000 with a fresh coat of Dulux. We'd seen them. Our dad had painted them. We had a pair of his stiff and creaky Hummel rejects hanging up in the garage for any friends who didn't believe us.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from both the historical football aspect and also that of the son's quest to really know his father. The book is very engaging and you find yourself being drawn into both the son's quest and the father's football career that took him from playing on the town square in Lossiemouth to representing his country in the World Cup finals then back down through the lower leagues.

Treat yourself, read it and enjoy.

Fish Heads

I first saw this Barnes and Barnes video on the Old Grey Whistle Test many many years ago. Seeing it again was a real joy.

It is one of the most bizarre videos I have ever seen but the catchy refrain will sink into your subconcious mind and lodge itself there for years...

All together now...."fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads..."

(Rab, if Mr W is round your way play him this. He'll love it!)

Just Like Paradise

Here's Diamond Dave giving Axl a run for his money in the OTT video stakes (see previous post).

You just can't beat a video with someone swinging about at the end of a rope half way up a giant rock face, huge drum kit, a three necked heart shaped guitar, and an ego the size of a small South American country.

I saw this version of the DLR band live in Edinburgh when they toured the Skyscraper album.

Great guitar playing (Steve Vai is sooo much better when he has to operate within the confines of a band), great front man, great show.

Does It Chook!

Started reading Christopher Brookmyre's Etched In Blood And Hard Black Pencil which combines a modern day murder with the main protagonist's memories of school. The following passage fleetingly drew back the mists of time for me.

'We're gettin split up,' announces Joanne. 'The brainy wans are goin in wi the Primary Fours an the rest are gettin took tae the Church Hall.'

This gives Martin a moment's discomfort as he considers how little he fancies the idea of being thrown in - physically or academically - with the bigger ones currently lining up alongside. Then he remembers that it's Joanne who is saying it.

'Are we chook,' says Colin, voicing Martin's thoughts for him.

Chook is the latest word to come into regular usage, exclusively to express disbelief. Is it chook, did ye chook, will I chook. He doesn't know what the word itself means or its derivation; and nor, he is sure, does anyone else. Martin has no problem comprehending the playground's neologisms, but is frustrated by how they can be unheard of one week and then common coinage to all but him the next. He suspects it must be because lots of the other boys play together away from school. Most of them live in the Braeview scheme, in the council houses where Martin's grandparents stay. Martin lives in the new houses up the hill towards the Carnock Brae.

I remember the word 'chook' suddenly coming into use at my secondary school, I can't recall where it came from, just that for a while it became part of the common language at school.

This and other phrases such as 'To the side...' and 'Don't mess with the best or you'll end up like the rest' just seemed to appear out of the ether.

Brookmyre always provides an entertaining read. His recollection of the details of everyday life in Scotland, his colourful use of language, and his completely over the top plot lines combined with biting satire make every book a must read.

Anyone who can write a novel featuring a bank robbery carried out by five people dressed up as Zal Cleminson to the soundtrack of Faith Healer by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band deserves a medal. It's almost enough to make you forgive him for supporting St Mirren...

Does anyone recall any other strange words or phrases from their schooldays?

Link : Christopher Brookmyre's site

No Direction, Period

Everyone knows that Bob Dylan has been, and continues to be, a prolific writer of some of the best songs that have ever been written.

This video demonstrates that Bob has been even more prolific than perhaps we realised and has in fact been responsible for almost every popular song written in the past 30 years...

Amazing Face(s)

Great clip of The Faces covering Macca's "Maybe I'm Amazed" from the days when Rod Stewart was just a great singer, rather than an ageing media darling, and the band looked like they were "having a good time, all the time".



As a side note, Ian 'Mac' McLagan's book "All The Rage" is a very entertaining read filled with stories about his time with the Small Faces, Faces, and the Rolling Stones.

Until The Razor Cuts...

1 minute 42 seconds of pure punk poptasticness.

Yes its those loveable Buzzcocks with a singalong ode to love that takes a disturbing twist at the end.

The band are still recording and touring and I had the good fortune to see them live a couple of years ago - it was a brilliant chantalongabouncealongabuzzcocks evening.

Why We Needed Punk #3

Once More Into The Tube Dear Friends

A real 80's throwback for you today.

As Scottish as a tin of shortbread, looking like the work of some crazed doll designer, and obviously as mad as a box of frogs...

Strawberry Switchblade

Where are they now? And what do they look like?

I did a quick Google and found a site that answered my questions. Link : Strawberry Switchblade

Shakey At The Station

A real curio this one.

Neil Young busking outside Glasgow Central Station in 1976. This clip of Shakey performing The Old Laughing Lady on the banjo was apparently part of a larger film project.

Terrible picture quality but an interesting video nonetheless.

Dutch Prog Rock Madness

Many years ago, in the years b.c. (before Clash), say around 1974/75, a good friend of mine bought an album by the Dutch prog rock band Alquin. This was back in the time when the more obscure the album you had the cooler you were.

The album was called The Mountain Queen and as I recall I only ever listened to it once, just after Iain had brought it home.

I remember that I wasn't too impressed with the music, and wasn't too keen on the vocals, but to this day clearly recall joking about a lyric that I found bizarre.

The line went :
"I thought I saw a coloured leaf,
floating upwards to the tree,
but no,
................it was a butterfly".

Yesterday I managed to get hold of a download of this album and I have listened to it all the way through, twice.

I actually found the music to have stood up quite well. It is very much of its time, lots of keyboards, saxophone, clattering drums, strange time signatures, and a couple of tracks running about the 20 minute mark - however the guitar playing on it is very good and the overall sound is quite enjoyable.

There is one slight problem.

I haven't heard the line about the butterfly...

I am going to have to listen to the whole thing all the way through again in case I missed it, but I am now starting to think that it may just have been a line on the album sleeve.

I have had this lyric in my head for over 30 years and now it seems to have vanished, or maybe it never existed in the first place and I am just a bit of a maddie...

Are there any passing Dutch Prog Rock experts reading this that could help put me out of my misery???

Alsjeblieft!

Local Colour

Found a great blog that features all the "Weel Kent Fowk" of Aberdeen.

A cast of characters familiar to anyone who has spent any time in the city, including The Kilt, The Gilcomston Tramp, The Braveheart Guy, Squeak (gone but never to be forgotten), and The Markies Street Preachers.

Another worthy of note is Big Aggie. The mp3 of Aggie's voicemail messages is comedy gold, if not for the easily offended amongst you.

One of the other human landmarks is the one and only Peter Dow, political activist, Scottish National Standard Bearer, and not at all a complete fruit loop. Peter has been a bit quiet of late but often used to be seen around town with his placards, or towing a giant billboard, railing about this, that, or the next thing. Peter is looking for love and uses a page on his website to try and attract the right woman - given his list of instructions and demands I find it really hard to understand why likely candidates have not been beating his door down...

Link : Aberdeen Tramps And Ither Weel Kent Fowk

Link : Peter Dow is single and looking for a woman

Now Luka Here

Coming back from the football game today, which the boys narrowly lost, this tune came on the magic tune box.

Released as a single almost 20 years ago now, Luka by Suzanne Vega is a fantastically moving song about an abused boy who lives upstairs in her apartment block. She explained in interviews that she based the song on a boy called Luka who "just seemed set apart from these other children that I would see playing", however she had no reason to believe that the boy was abused in real life.

I have loved this song from the time it was released, something about the combination of the voice and the guitar breaks brings me close to tears every time I hear it (yes, I know I am a big softy...).

I went to see Suzanne Vega in concert in Glasgow when she toured to promote the Solitude Standing album that this track features on. I remember that she seemed to be a bit introverted and uptight when she initially came on stage but as the concert progressed she seemed to warm to the audience and it turned into a very good gig.

The video for the song is interesting, mixing stark black and white footage with some unexpected, impressionistic interludes.

Enjoy, but don't forget the Luka's out there...

Apollo Memories

Took a look over at the fine Apollomemories site today.

I remember going to loads of concerts at the Glasgow Apollo in my youth. The tatty old playhouse was a fantastic rock venue with its 'mile high' stage, sticky carpets, and bouncers that were just the wrong side of psychopathic...

The sight gathers together memorabilia and memories from the Apollo's heyday and is a great place to visit even if you never managed to see a gig there.

The power of coincidence? One thing I did notice today, the site features a widget on its home page telling you who played on this day in various years. Today in 1975 10cc played. Except, I seem to remember, they didn't. When you click through to the 10cc page there is a concert ticket with 16th March 1975 on it. This is the correct ticket [I can verify this because it is mine] but I remember that the original concert was cut short and cancelled because various band members were ill and could not sing. The concert was rescheduled for the end of the tour when the band returned to play a storming set livened up by the various booby traps that the roadies had set to liven up the atmosphere on this final date; porn pics on Eric Stewart's wah wah pedal, a flash bomb in the piano, etc etc.

The best concert I ever saw at the Apollo? I just have to give this honour to The Sensational Alex Harvey Band Christmas Show, one of three nights in December 1975. An absolutely fantastic show from start to finish saw Alex and the band at the height of their powers playing in front of a home town audience who loved them. It is amazing to think that it was over 30 years ago now.

Link : Apollomemories