Bruce MacDonald Lowes

One of my most enjoyable periods in North East bands was the stint with Jazzboard between 1965 and 1967. Jazzboard was fronted by the talented Bruce MacDonald Lowes, a vocalist…

Bryan Ferry

The first twenty three years of Bryan Ferry’s life were spent in the north east of England. For three of those years he was busy gigging in local north east…

Geoff Docherty

In the second half of 1968, four elements came together and changed the face of live music in the northeast for at least the next four years. This amalgamation would…

Ivan Birchall

Some time ago I had the idea of including some pages on Ready Steady Gone about non-musicians who were part of the sixties north east music scene; managers, promoters, agents,…

Jimmy Hall

I learned of the death of ex-Jazzboard organist, Jimmy Hall just after Christmas 2005. A news article on Sky News reported that a 57 year old Sunderland businessman named James…

Jimmy Nail

Not long ago, an old friend recommended that I should read Jimmy Nail’s autobiography suggesting that I may find some interesting stuff about local north east bands at the beginning…

Keith Fisher

One of the most gifted young drummers on the scene in Newcastle in the late sixties and early seventies was Keith Fisher. I got to know Keith in 1969 when…

Kim Davis

If you are a performer with an ambition to become famous, for the past 10 years or so you will have had the opportunity to take a fast track to…

Michael Meade

Michael Meade burst onto the Newcastle music scene in 1969 with a driving ambition to be a successful band manager. After running a small studio in Sunderland named Torino Sound,…

Mike Jeffery – part 1

If you’ve landed on this page via Google or the Ready Steady Gone menu, you probably already know something about Mike Jeffery. For the uninitiated, he was the man who…