It’s a chilly Winter’s night in January 1966 – Saturday the 29th to be precise. My band, Jazzboard, have just finished performing at the West End Club in the Fenham…
Author: Roger
As Long As I Have You
Whilst driving home last week after a short trip to the northeast I turned on the car radio and caught the end of a very familiar song. It took a…
Lost Northeast Venues
I recently bought the February 2018 edition of Uncut Magazine, which includes an article about ‘The Great Lost Venues of Britain’. Uncut has written about 50 of the UK’s greatest…
Summer of Love
This year is the 50th anniversary of the ‘Summer of Love’. The ‘Hippy’ phenomenon had been around in the USA and Europe since the mid sixties but 1967 was the…
What Goes Around Comes Around – 1966 to 2016
Some time ago, I posted a blog on this site about my favourite year – 1966. If you are familiar with Ready Steady Gone you will be aware that the…
The Geordie Jazz Man
In 2011 I was present at a reunion of people involved in Newcastle’s club scene in the 1960s. The rendezvous took place at the Jazz Café on Pink Lane, a…
Free Mania In The Northeast
“DEE THE HUNTAH! DEE THE HUNTAH!” If you were in a northeast band for a couple of years between 1970 and 1971 or you went to gigs where local bands…
Sunderland in the Swinging Sixties
I wasn’t born in Sunderland but I lived there all through the ‘swinging sixties’, long before the town was granted its city status. I’m always fascinated by pictures and stories…
Pirates
Everyone knows that unauthorised downloading or copying of mp3s and other forms of digital music is illegal. Music piracy is nothing new, though – it actually predates the digital age…
The People’s History Of Pop
In 2016 BBC Four are to broadcast a series of documentaries entitled ‘The People’s History Of Pop’. The programmes will be about pop music from the 1950s through to the…