AirGuitar

Blossom Toes

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:54:15 GMT

Okay, with a name like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking this band is a product of my imagination. But no ... there was a band called the Blossom Toes.

I was introduced to them by Pete Swales, son of a Haverfordwest music shop owner who had headed for the glamour of the Big City (he soon became the Stones' personal assistant.) He invited me to their Holmead Road, Chelsea, house to write about the band. They were under the tutilage of and signed to the label owned by Giorgio Gomelsky, who signed Julie Driscoll and the Brian Augur Trinity at the same time.

It was the strangest of weekends, with people like Alan Price showing up out of the blue for a smoke and a chat; plus my first encounter with a real Lambourgini. I think this was the moment I discovered how unimpressed I was by halucinogenic substances (or perhaps how I maybe missed the point of them.)

Julie Driscoll made it with "Wheels On Fire." The Blossom Toes didn't quite hack it. However, Kevin and Jim from the Toes went on to join Rod Stewart's band - check his album notes for Westlake and Ceegan. And Googling for Peter J. Swales produces a result that just goes to show how people's lives can change dramatically.

Just a couple of years later, another band emerged with a very similar style to the Blossom Toes and the rest is legend.

They have been found again ... check here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj_sYxk-Bks

Tags: Blossom Toes, Rod Stewart, Pink Wafers

Pink Wafers

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:45:29 GMT

Probably the band with the best van I've ever been in. Most bands had Transits. Some had long wheelbase transits. An elite had Mercs. But the Pink Wafers' removal van with ex-British Airways Business Class seats, reading lights and folding mattress was a palace on rubber. Follow them here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08657RUcS9A

Tags: Pink Wafers, Ford Transit, roadies

Crispian St Peters

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 20:38:33 GMT

My first celebrity interview. So I leapt onto my Triumph T10 scooter and went like the wind.

Just an hour away, I passed through the village of Kidwelly. Tired and distracted, I wasn't concentrating. Suddenly the back of a car was all I could see. Bang. I had hit the back of the local vicar's wife. Well, her Morris 1100, anyway.

Bust nose, scraped leg, banged-up arm, ex-scooter.

A few stitches later, I was under the care of my Mum. Being just 16 and therefore beyond logic, I absolutely insisted that she drive me to my interview.

Crispian St Peters was confronted by this mess of a teenager, shirt covered in blood, arm in a sling, nose all dressed, torn jeans revealing recent stitches, no doubt some interesting bruises. He gave me a great interview (given that I hardly knew what to ask a pop star) and then posed for a picture.

I've still got it somewhere. Must try to dig it out.
Tags: Crispian St Peters

Roger McGough

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 21:18:43 GMT

Readers of this blog who have trudged all the way from the first entry in the Archives will recognise how, in my teenage search to get laid, my main technique was to use the celebrity of others. One man loomed large in this and I had never met him.

You see, most 17/18/19 year olds getting a girl back to their bedsit would stick the latest Stones or Beatles album onto their Dansette. I, however, took a different angle. I'd put on poetry. Really ... off-the-wall poetry, to be "different." It sort-of worked sometimes.

I had only the one album of two poets, sent to me, an embryonic rock writer, as a review copy by CBS. But I fell in thrawl to one of the poets on it: funny, real, acerbic, with a voice that beguiled. Lines like "Come live with me and be my love, I keep a flat for mating. There's half an hour before the bus; shall we do it while we're waiting?" The other feller seemed too old to write poems about dating 16 year old girls so made me feel a tad uncomfortable - I skipped his tracks. Both were backed by delicious accoustic guitar from someone named Andy Roberts. The album was called the "Incredible New Liverpool Scene." It was well used, well worn. I have it still, although it's rather beaten up.

Today, I was in the same room as that poet I felt so attuned to 40 years ago. The setting was Dylan Thomas' boathouse in the heart of Laugharne Weekend. In fact, with my wife and our friends Doug and Rosemarie making up around a sixth of the audience, it was pretty inevitable that I'd sit right next to Roger McGough.

Awkward, really, sitting next to a poet reading his work. No, never sit next to a poet, you might just mess up his art; never sit next to a poet, you cannot let out a fart. Your stomach mustn't grumble and even when he makes you laugh so much that your sides want to split, you'll be too polite to let rip with a proper guffaw (especially if you weren't supposed to roar but should have nodded sagely.) And then he does a sombre poem just when your hayfever demands a loud but probably over-dramatic sounding sniff. Never sit next to a poet.

I couldn't resist pulling out the battered old album during the questions. What you see inthe picture is Roger displaying it to the crowd - well, the other 23 - with me in my dotage suddenly remembering all the sex I'd hoped to get from this vinyl and cardboard object, finally in the hands of its creator.

According to the sleeve notes, this album will be a collector's item one day. So I thought I'd try to get Roger McGough to autograph it. He agreed ... but I added the warning: "Careful, it's a bit fragile. I used it to get girls." A brief puzzled look crossed his face. Did he think: this old bloke's some kind of perv? Still, Mr. McGough let the remark go and found a blank spot above his words to sign.

We were honoured to be in the presence of this warm, entertaining genius who must end up as Poet Laureate when Her Madge realises it's okay to be funny and a poet at the same time. Will my album end up on e-bay as a collector's item? Over my dead body.

Mr. McGough, if you are passing, there must be a couplet in this!

Tags: Roger McGough, Laugharne, Liverpool Scene

Be there

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:38:19 GMT

Hey, just realised that some of the folks who visit this site might enjoy a holiday in Wales from time to time. Ol' AirGuitar runs a rather nice vacation rental home in the village of Pembrey, near an amazing beach and great for touring. Okay, okay, readers of this blog can get a deal on account of being grumpy and stuck in the past. What, you want a whole 20 per cent off in June? Cheeky blighter. And again in October? Outrageous. Okay then, you twisted my arm but you've got to book by April 30, 2008. Visit www.welshabroad.com and mention this blog when you enquire. I promise you I will not be happy with the discount but, hey, reading all this stuff means you will have deserved it.

Plug over. Read the rest.

Tags: Wales, holiday, rental, Pembrey

Love Sculpture inc. Dave Edmunds

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:51:44 GMT

This was posted as a comment to The Twins by Marie. However, you might not have noticed it so here it is as a main item, author Marie Drape in California:

There was plenty of excellent talent in Wales back in the late 60's and onward, pity none of them actually made anything of themselves, close but no cigar, well with one or two exceptions! I saw Dave Edmunds in California years ago, he looked well and Terry Williams was drumming for him - what an excellent drummer he is, always wondered what happened to him? (Joined Dire Straits, now running a blues club in Swansea. Ed.)They all remembered me from jayVee Ents, we used to have some good laughs those days. Remember one event in particular with regard to Langland Bay hotel, an evening when the local constabulary came to visit, I think it was the CID squad. Members of Love Sculpture were in their dressing room smoking and who knows what else, so I sent someone back there to give them a heads up. I actually got a call the following day to thank me for that one.

Talking about riding in an old van. Returning from a gig down in Pembroke with Love Sculpture, their van broke down, they managed to fix it but were unable to drive all the way back to Cardiff, they actually spent the night in the living room of my parents house so that first thing in the morning they could go and ask Verney (Ley, md of JayVee. Ed.) for funds to purchase a new one. They owe me!!!!

The Twins

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:50:50 GMT

If you've been following this blog, then you've heard of Marie and maybe her twin Steff Benham, Tremeloes' Bob's missus. And, of course, seen a pic of Marie in her nearly altogether.

Steff found the blog on-line last week and let Marie know. So we are back in touch after ... what ... 35 years? Amazing.

Now, Twins, you knew more rock people than I did back in the Sixties. So let's have a few memories posted as comments to this entry. How about Vanity Fayre? More about Andy Fairweather Lowe? Spencer Davis? Who else.

Over to the two of you ...

Where this starts from

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:00:00 GMT

There was a time when I wrote music columns, did a bit of deejaying, managed some bands, worked for artists agencies and soforth. Then I went into PR.

What you see in the album is the before and after! Oh, I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

I guess, if you are reading this, you enjoy a bit of recent history. My recollections are unreliable snapshots. Hope you enjoy them!

Tags: name dropping, Peter Phillips Wales, rock star blog, Peter Phillips Pembrey

Bonnie Tyler

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:31:19 GMT

People in the music business sometimes re-write their history. Here are a couple of linked examples.

To start, Google for Sandy Duskey. It will produce a biography of Irish star Sandy Kelly. This begins by claiming she was born in Wales. But, before she headed back to Ireland and we were an item, Sandy/Philomena was already very Irish. We were together while she was in a band called the Bunnies (which is probably why history was re-written!) just a few years before she did Eurovision and morphed into a country singer under the guidance of Johnny Cash. My little lady did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjJ-K7emTa4. Sooo sweet.

I met this smashing lady again about eight years ago when she was touring her Patsy Cline show with George Hamilton IV. Sandy reminded me that there was another singer in the Bunnies called Gaynor. What I hadn't realised and Sandy pointed out was that Gaynor became Bonnie Tyler.

Three Christmases ago, my brother, Narva and I were in the bar that the stunning Bonnie owns in the Mumbles, Swansea and we bumped into her. She denied ever having been in the Bunnies ... and yet she remembered everything surrounding them, including their rather unconventional manager. Her Wikipedia biog refers to Bobby Wayne and the Dixies - this was actually the short-lived Ron Williams and the Dixies that became Ron Williams and the Bunnies.

Frankly, in the girls' places, I wouldn't admit to it either.

Tags: Eurovision, Sandy Kelly, Bonnie Tyler, Johnny Cash

Tom Jones

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 20:07:36 GMT

Two encounters with the King of Wales.

The last one was hardly an encounter, really. When we lived in Brisbane, Oz, I picked up three tickets for a Tom Jones concert - my wife Narva, her friend Michelle and I went along. I'd left it rather late so the seats were somewhere near Cairns.

However, we settled in and chatted happily with the people around us. I was rather pleased at the way Narva seemed to be looking forward to the event - after all, Tom's Welsh and she is steeped in Jamaican culture.

A few guitar licks and the great man walked on stage.

Look, she's a grown woman but Narva completely lost it. She stood on the seatback, screaming at the top of her voice, waving, yelling, jumping up and down. I hardly heard a note of Tom's performance. Soooo wierd. After the show, my wife insisted on trailing around all over the city, trying to find Tom's after-show party. The one place we didn't try - the Treasury Casino - was where he turned out to be.

The first encounter was when I was a cub journalist and Tom had managed just one hit - "It's Not Unusual." I interviewed him backstage at a gig. He wore a kind of catsuit, with a rabbit's foot hanging from his belt. Into the bargain, he was so unused to being interviewed that Tom was rather monosyllabic and un-interesting.

I'm afraid I concluded that he would be a one-hit wonder. See what I saw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGf0sZEB6Pc

Tags: Tom Jones, Treasury Casino, Brisbane, It's Not Unusual