1969 - Uncle Meat, The Mothers of Invention

I had always thought that when we went to see the Mothers of Invention (that's Steve and I) in Manchester in 1969 it was at the Free Trade Hall. I've just discovered, through the delights of google, that they actually played at the Palace Theatre in 1969 and didn't play the Free Trade Hall until 1970. I know it was 1969 because of the lineup - Frank Zappa, Jimmy Carl Black, Don Preston, Roy Estrada, Euclid James Motorhead Sherwood, "Bunk" and "Buzz" Gardner, Ian Underwood and Art Tripp.

It was my first 'big' concert (I was 20, a slow starter) and Steve smuggled a tape recorder in and recorded the concert - it's okay, statute of limitations and all that; anyway the tape, sadly, is long lost. They were on tour to publicise Uncle Meat, which had come out earlier that year.

I had been a fan since buying their first album, Freak Out, in Morecambe in 1967. I'd never heard of them - who had in Morecambe in 1967 - but the title, the band name and the sleeve shouted New! Strange! Different! - all magnets to me at 18 when any music that was unlike any I had heard before was, by default, worth a listen (just as an aside I remember my sister Jackie, who had moved to London, telling me about a record she had by the Stan Kenton Orchestra that was 'really weird' and promising to bring it up to Heysham for me. She eventually did bring it and it was weird and I didn't like it).

But The Mothers were different; they had songs 'You Didn't Try to Call Me', social comment 'Who Are the Brain Police', and pieces which were unlike anything I had heard 'Help I'm a Rock'. They also had Suzy Creamcheese who, by the way, lives in Lancaster and is really nice.

By the time of the Palace Theatre concert we were also listening to Absolutely Free and We're Only in it for the Money, Zappa's satirical attack on the whole hippie subculture and, in particular, The Beatles' Sergeant Peppers, even down to the sleeve artwork, with the members of the group dressed in drag and the band name spelled out in vegetables - 'Call Any Vegetable' - rather than flowers. Sadly the record company made them put this image on the inside fold-out sleeve and front cover was, again, a parody of the Beatles' album's inner sleeve. Anyway, a great record.

So, by the time of the concert I had this image of the band as this bunch of very strange, probably stoned individuals who would come out on stage and deliver an anarchic set full of weird images and strange music. Well, the reality was very different. Okay the music was strange, a mix of orchestral (alto, baritone and tenor sax, trumpet) and rock instruments (electric guitar, drums, keyboards) but played by musicians who knew exactly what they were doing, and presided over by Frank Zappa who, with small gestures, stopped, started, slowed down, sped up and otherwise seemed to have a precise, almost military, control over the band.

So what do I remember? Well, there weren't many people there (a few hundred) so Zappa asked everyone to come down to the front. Then there was the dancing - or the lack of dancing. Every so often Zappa would start to dance - stop - then announce, as though he had only just remembered that, according to the local bylaws, you weren't allowed to dance on stage on a Sunday. I also remember 'Motorhead' doing an extended riff about cars and, after the concert, Steve and I going across the road to a cafe and bumping into Jimmy Carl Black and Don Preston, who were really nice, chatted to two overawed and shy teenagers, and autographed our programmes - these were actually album-sized booklets about Uncle Meat and I still have mine somewhere (I hope).

All in all a great concert, even if it wasn't at the Free Trade Hall. I'll probably find out I was wrong about the other group I saw at the Free Trade Hall around the same time, The Incredible String Band. That's the strange thing about reality, it's never what you think it is.

1968 - Hurdy Gurdy Man, Donovan

In the Nineteen Sixties Morecambe had two piers, West End Pier and Central Pier; now there are none. Central Pier was one of the two venues in Morecambe where young people went dancing - the other was the Floral Hall (The Beatles played here twice, in 1962 and 1963; sadly I didn't know about it and anyway I was only 13 so probably wouldn't have been able to go). The West End Pier was wrecked by storms in 1977 and Central Pier suffered several fires in the 1980s and was finally demolished in 1992 after a further fire destroyed the ballroom a year earlier.

The Undertakers

So, to the music. I have a vague memory of going the Central Pier ballroom when I was about 16 to see The Undertakers, a sixties Liverpool band. I can't remember much about it (this is a constant refrain, probably due to an excess of alcohol consumed over the years - but not for over 30 years and something I intend to blog about at some point), but I do know that I was very nervous being there, surrounded by older boys and men who were probably planning to beat me up. Just as an aside, I spend much of my adolescence and early adulthood afraid of violence; I had been bullied as a kid and tended to roll over and show my belly when threatened. There, mini-confession over and again, back to the music.

This is the West End Pier, obviously not in the best of health. At the end of the pier, the bit at the right of the picture, was an open-air skating rink where Steve and I, and a bunch of people we knew, used to go roller-skating several times a week in the Summer. We would walk or skate from Heysham Village to Morecambe along Sandylands Promenade, skate for the evening, then back to Heysham. One thing that made the skating a must-do was the music - over speakers whoever was selecting the records was playing all the latest hits and, particularly, Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. The first place I heard it was on the pier and it floored me. There's something about particular records that  when I hear them for the first time they create a feeling of excitement and dizziness, almost as though they are giving me a glimpse of some other world, a world which is stranger and more magical than the one I inhabit. It happened with Bo Diddley (Pretty Thing), The Beatles (Strawberry Fields Forever), The Yardbirds (Shapes of Things), and it happened with Donovan.

One thing which hit me about this song, and is true of most of Donovan's records, is the quality of the production; he gets a great guitar sound, and particularly the sound of acoustic guitars. I've played guitar for most of my life - well, since I was fourteen, and I've been obsessed with getting that guitar sound for most of that time. The only guitar I've played that came close was a little Epiphone acoustic that I borrowed from a music shop in Morecambe in about 1967 that had a beautiful full, rich sound. I could have bought it for fifty quid, but it had a small crack in the body so I didn't..... regrets.

Another quality I love is the voice - strange, otherworldly. Again, Donovan's voice is always focused and well articulated. But on top of this is that weird tremelo effect giving it a pulsing, vibrating feel. And then the electric guitar, drums and tambura come in and lifts it to another level. I always thought that the electric guitarist was Jimmy Page and Donovan seems to believe it was him; in fact he credits the recording session for Hurdy Gurdy Man with possibly leading to the formation of Led Zepplin. But there are other claims - that it was Alan Parker who played lead.

I still love it and pick up my acoustic occasionally and play it (it's dead simple, a few repeated chords, nothing fancy).

Have a listen and see if you agree. Hurdy Gurdy Man