I’m not fit, which isn’t really affecting Pompey Pop but for two days now neither is my internet/Wi Fi access. It’s come out in sympathy with me and I’m struggling to keep up with comments, approve comments from new respondents, add new posts. I’ll hope to keep going but it’s a bit Juke Box Jury at present
(Hit and Miss)
Goodnight
Saturday next week (7 June) is the next Dock Soul Club night but I’ve also had notification of an extra night – Saturday 19 July. I’ll confirm and let you know more. Mind you, unless there’s a dramatic and fairly rapid improvement in the state of my leg I may have to sit out next week – here’s hoping.
In the meantime as Georgie Fame once said, one of the greatest of all the soul vocal groups and a little thing in waltz time – pop needs more waltzes:
Nobody ever formed a group called the Portsmouths but in South Yorkshire there was an R&B group called the Sheffields. Exactly 50 years ago they appeared at Kimbells R&B Club and I think they released three singles: “It must be Love” and “Got my Mojo working” in 1964 and a vocal version of MJQ/Milt Jackson’s “Bags Groove” in 1965. I can tell you no more, but here’s the first one:
This picture appears in ‘Smiler’s’ new book but I have an original in one of my scrapbooks. Jim Lawrence was asking whether the previous pic of the three mods came from a Sunday ‘paper magazine and I think it was in this one from August 1964.
Europe that is – note the ‘logo’!! (from Mick – thanks)
See Mick’s question (Comment below). Was W Keast related to Dave Keast? NB Not only records, but replacement rollers for your mangle. Those were the days!
More from Alan Fulford who mentioned to me about the Centre Hotel. I recall playing there at the Sunday Folk Club (run by Dave Keast) in 1975 0r ’76 supporting the Watersons and I’m sure I saw Richard Thompson play a solo set there. Alan has sent the Programme from almost exactly 40 years ago. Anyone remember this?
Alan sent me this pic from the Tricorn. It’s the lead singer of a band called Hackensack
Around the same time I guess, I was running entertainments for the old Milton College of Education including this Hackensack gig (below), Christmas 1971. I’ve only a vague memory of it/them and I wonder what happened to them. I can’t recall anything about Gandolf who must have been a local band. That’s a typical promoter for you!
From Rod:
I’m posting this with a certain amount of trepidation. It’s about politics and the recent election results but I’m not interesting in stirring up any political controversies here – I promise.
I am very interested in politics and I follow these events in detail through the media but here, my interest in what happened last week is in understanding Portsmouth even better. I don’t care here how you voted, why you voted or what you think about politics per se.
Yesterday the main letter published in the Guardian was about UKIP’s successes and it probably won’t surprise you that this was not generally popular with that newspaper’s constituency. The main letter pointed out that while there is a view that UKIP did very well in the Council elections, it did not return a single councillor in most of our “major towns and cities”. There are for example, none in Birmingham, Coventry, Exeter, Ipswich, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle Norwich, Preston, Southampton or Sunderland and only one in Bradford, Bristol and Wolverhampton.
Then the correspondent pointed out “the major exception” which was of course Portsmouth with six councillors returned.
It intrigues me. Like I say, I don’t want to hear that we’re the exception because we’re more politically astute than other cities or that we’re a bunch of raging fascists because I think the answer is far more complex than either of those explanations but it may be that the answer reveals particular things about Pompey. A second letter confirmed the growing view that UKIP flourishes “often in declining seaside resorts” which – if you think Savoy/South Parade Pier – is at least partly Pompey.
Otherwise it strikes me that there are at least four other specific possible explanations:
1. The Hancock factor which lost him and Mrs Hancock their seats and maybe rebounded further on the Lib Dems overall
2. The Ship-building factor. The heart has been ripped out of the city’s industrial culture in the past few months and the coalition parties (which happen to be the dominant two in Pompey) have failed to prevent it/solve it
3. The Island mentality which has plusses and minuses but which often makes us a “major exception”
4. Portsmouth FC. It is the biggest fan-owned club in the country and over the past two years local people have learned to say “f**k off” to incoming entrepreneurs on the make, and take matters into their own hands. It’s not a million miles from the UKIP image is it? The so called Professional Political Class at Westminster is another version of power-hungry blokes who ‘know best’. Voting UKIP gave them a bloody nose. PFC supporters have shown there’s another way.
I’ll be interested to hear what you think. For what it’s worth, I didn’t vote UKIP and I never will but I’m not at all surprised by what happened and if the main parties are brought to their senses and the political system in the UK changes, so much the better in my book.
POMPEY POP 