Hi I'm Allan, living in Oxford, though I hail from Durham in the NorthEast. I first heard RH on 'The Rock Machine Turns You On' which I bought in 1968, and immediately saved up(!) to buy 'Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith', so that I could hear more. It was then I realised that John Peel regularly featured Roy on his Radio One 'Top Gear' programme, so I got to hear a lot of the 'BBC Tapes' first time around! Whenever I could, I would see RH live, usually at Newcastle City Hall, but also one particularly disappointing gig at the Locarno Ballroom, Sunderland, when the audience wouldn't shut up. (I think the support act was Bridget St John, and John Peel was hosting that night). I loved the long chats between songs, the anarchic banter, and the maniacal laughter, I lapped it all up. I did manage to make (very poor - by today's standards) mono-cassette recordings of a couple of the City Hall concerts, one of which included, according to Roy, one of the first performances of 'Me and My Woman', which included an extra verse, long since deleted, (note to self - I'll dig out the words and add them here). Over the years I dragged as many friends, enemies, future wife! to his concerts as I could and listened to the slowly evolution of not one, but two fantastic musicians/wordsmiths!... which leads me on to Nick... I was first aware of Nick's presence from the lyrics to McGoohan's Blues, which I shamelessly altered to suit my daughter, 'Vicki my child, she stands there with the wind in her hair' whenever I sang it in the folk clubs in the Northeast. I first got to meet and chat with Nick when he was a jack-booted skinhead selling the 'Born in Captivity' albums during Roy's interval at the 'Room at the Top' - Newcastle in 1984. I don't think he was playing publicly yet, but I got him to sign the album cover of 'BiC' anyway, wishing I had my copy of FJO with me so he could sign that - how sad am I? Last saw R & N together at the Wycombe Town Hall, and N at Oxford, (I've got some good (IMHO) pictures of that gig if anyone is interested) and was looking forward to seeing N again at Abingdon on March 8th, until I read that it is no more There's probably a load I've forgotten, and a load more I'll never remember. Allan
Welcome Hi Allan, Welcome to the site, and what a great introductory post! I'd love to read a transcription of your extra M&MW lyrics if you get time to dig the recording out sometime and write them down. All the best Paul.
Hi Allan! Lovely to e-meet you, great post... and I was intrigued by the following: Photographic evidence gratefully accepted
None available I'm afraid, but on the NH special podcast he did say he was a 'jack-booted spiky haired adolescent' IIRC :biggrin:
Hi Allan, welcome! I enjoyed reading your post. I too remember Nick in his skinhead days, he was at the Lytham St Ives Hotel gig, also in '84, when Jimmy Page & Tony Franklin guested with Roy. I got him to sign a poster (well, my wife did really), on which he wrote "One day my name will be on a poster like this". The poster has since, sadly, gone missing.
that is very sad - but the good news is I still have my (double signed N & "oy"** 12" of BiC ** the cover-notes of BiC end with a single 'R' - to which Roy added the 'oy' - ink was of course in world-wide short supply at the time.
OK - after much scratching about in the attic, I have the cassette... Me and My Woman: (it's not a brilliant recording but as good as I can make it out the extra verse goes: ) ........ The devil rides out and the heavens yawn And he knows me well Ah but what the hell Only time can tell, where we're going to And we try not to lose him 'Cos we need to despise And he swallows our children And he hollows our eyes .. and he hollows our eyes What a lovely day What a day to play, at living What a mess we make What a trust we break ..... etc... I'm going to attempt to clean up the recording, but with the quality as it is, it will remain, at best, of historical interest. The tape also has the tracks: Hors d'Oeuvres North Country Blackpool I Hate the White Man Feeling All the Saturday Me and My Woman Tom Tiddler's Ground btw it was recorded on one of these:
Hi, If you have any old recording I may well be able to work some magic on them and tidy them up a bit. If you already have them on your pooter even better, if you can send them to me i'll see if I can clean them up and maybe paul might be able to use them in some of the podcasts.
I have a couple of mono-cassettes of Newcastle City Hall concerts, (inc the one above), which I just transferred last night to my 16 track hard-disk recorder. I will have to edit out the 'chat', as it is inaudible and that old Philips m/c used to pause by simply cutting the power, so there are some nasty noises. I can export out wavs no bother, and can compress, EQ, & etc on the DR, I also have Waves Gold on my PC, but no real experience in using it :blushing: I also have a couple of programs - one from the Lifemask tour and the other from the Bullinamingvase tour, which I can scan if there is any interest. Allan