Noosha Fox: Georgina Bailey

A little bit of Continental sophistication from 1977 which reached no. 31 in the British charts.

Some sources claim it was banned by the BBC, but as this video comes from an episode of Top of the Pops that seems unlikely.

Noosha Fox was originally the singer with the band Fox. They had three top 20 hits, but she was less successful as a solo artist.

She is also the mother of the doctor and science journalist Ben Goldacre. Sadly, she was to busy with her music career to teach him to comb his hair.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: An alternative chameleon

Our latest visit to Bonkers Hall ends with an outing to Oakham Zoo.

An alternative chameleon

A sombre day: the moving television brings news of the deaths of both Pierre Boulez and Christy O’Connor Jnr. I am confident that they will go down in the annals of the game as one of the great Ryder Cup pairings.

To cheer myself up, I take a party of particularly Well-Behaved Orphans to Oakham Zoo. The consensus on the charabanc is that we want to see the chameleons.

As is the way with such creatures, they rather blend into the background. I am struck, however, by one that spends its time ranting about how much it hates “Thatcher”. I ask the keeper why it does this. “Oh,” comes the reply, “it’s an alternative chameleon”.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

A shadow cabinet maker

Giving Isis one up the snoot

Andrew Neil's press gang

Corbyn sends for Christopher Robin Milne

Cooking hedgehogs for Nick Clegg

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Six of the Best 571

Andrew Hickey is not impressed by the Stronger In campaign.

"Orwell was far more interested, as Corbyn has been far more interested, in speaking truth to power than in holding office. His loyalty was to the movement, or at least the idea of the movement, not to MPs or the front bench, which he rarely mentioned." Robert Colls (who taught me on my Masters course many years ago) on what Jeremy Corbyn can learn from George Orwell.

David Hencke explains how Chris Grayling's attempt to sell prison expertise to regimes with appalling judicial systems like Saudi Arabia and Oman cost the taxpayer over £1m. If he were a councillor he would be surcharged.

Mad to be Normal is a film on the radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing currently in production. Caron Lindsay finds a Lib Dem connection.

Peter Bebergal is interviewed by Dangerous Minds about his new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.

"“And Ukraine just wanted to be absolutely sure that the oil and the electricity rolls through." BuzzFeed remembers 19 Eurovision moments from Terry Wogan.

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Eric Clapton and Ronnie Lane in the Shropshire hills

Abel's Harp - once the Drum &; Monkey

I have blogged before about the stories that it used to be possible to wander into pubs in the Shropshire hills and find the likes of Eric Clapton and Ronnie Lane giving unadvertised concerts.

The journalist Johnty O’Donnell, with whom I have recently swapped emails on the subject, has pinned down the truth of these stories.

As, of course, the Shropshire Star tells it:

God, Slowhand . . . all nicknames for the guitar legend Eric Clapton. 

And indeed he did appear, playing along with Ronnie Lane, previously of The Faces, to a packed house at a country pub in a night which has gone down in pop folklore. And all for just £1 on the door. 

Some fans were turned away. Others were rumoured to have climbed in through the toilet windows at the Drum & Monkey at Bromlow. 

The date was Friday, March 4, 1977.

Memories of that night will be recalled in a special programme on BBC Radio Shropshire on Sunday 7 February from noon to 1pm,

It is called The People’s History of Pop and forms part of a BBC project collecting people’s pop memories and memorabilia from the 1950s to the 1980s. Johnty O’Donnell has been overseeing the project for Shropshire.

The Star reports ends by saying "the Drum & Monkey ... has passed into history".

Yes and no. When I first went there, more than a decade after this concert, it was the Callow Inn and resembled a little bit of suburban Birmingham set down in the Shropshire hills.

Last time I was there it had turned into a boutique hotel - Abel's Harp - which I am told is currently closed for refurbishment.

Later. According to its Facebook page, Abel's Harp reopened on Saturday 13 February:

Pop in for a drink with Vicky, stay awhile and sample Jude's delicious food or cosy up for one of our vintage afternoon teas!

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Wellington Womble: Rainmaker

On I promised a Sunday music choice inspired by the great drought of 1976. And here it is.

The other day I was followed on Twitter by Mike Batt, the man behind The Wombles. They were the biggest selling British band of 1974 - and if you look at what else was in the charts that year, you can see why.

By 1976 drugs, Bungo's relationship with a Japanese conceptual artist and the inevitable differences over musical direction had caused the furry creatures to fall out with one another.

The result was that Wellington Womble tried a solo career with a song called Rainmaker. It turns out not be a cover of the Traffic song but a topical song inspired by the drought.

Sadly, it was not a hit.

But the exciting news is that The Wombles are coming back.

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Six of the Best 570

Ed Miliband has an article on inequality in the London Review of Books.

"If you criticise the party of government, you become a pariah - all of a sudden, you're faced with a deluge of SNP warriors to defend yourself against. What is becoming of democracy in Scotland if this is the situation that we have been left in?" Jordan Daly on life in post-referendum Scotland.

David Brindle talks to Brian Rix, who was 92 this week, about his two careers: farceur and activist for people with learning disabilities.

Labour peer Lord Berkeley warns against a pause in Network Rail's work to protect and improve the route to the South West.

Roger Mills introduces us Lilian Bowes Lyon, the Queen Mother's rebel cousin.

The Liverbirds were Britain's first all-female rock band. Paul Fitzgerald describes how they found fame in Hamburg.

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Mott the Hoople: Roll Away the Stone

When the deaths of Dale Griffin from Mott the Hoople and Glenn Frey from the Eagles followed that of David Bowie, people tweeted things like "I wonder if God is starting a band in Heaven, he's collecting awesome talent from us."

The truth is more mundane. Rock's Golden Age in the 1960s and 1970s was a long time ago and figures from that era have been dying off pretty regularly for a good while now.

My own favourites, the Spencer Davis Group, appear to be the only important British group of the Sixties where all the original members are still alive.

It's just that the extraordinary media attention given to Bowie's passing has made us notice these deaths in the past few weeks.

Anyway, today's choice was going to be a tribute to both Bowie and Dale Griffin - Mott the Hoople singing All the Young Dudes.

But after posting that song I  noticed that it had already appeared as a Sunday music video. So here is a different Mott the Hoople song

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Six of the Best 568

"There is only one conclusion that we can possibly draw ... if nothing changes radically between now and 2020, Labour is headed for disaster." Public Policy and the Past tells it like it is.

Zaid Jilani argues that our celebration of Martin Luther King today is based on a simplistic view of him that passes over his more challenging views.

"David Litvinoff was, by nature and temperament, a wanderer between worlds: between the Chelsea set and hardcore criminals, between Soho and the East End, between the Scene and Esmeralda’s Barn, between Lucian Freud, George Melly, Peter Rachman, the Krays, John Bindon, Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger." Jon Savage reviews a biography of a central but elusive Sixties figure.

What makes music sad? Ben Ratliff tells us, with particular reference to the songs of Nick Drake.

Lynne About Loughborough selflessly investigates the Leicestershire town's pubs.

"Not far from London’s Euston station is a slightly spooky old derelict building. The former London Temperance Hospital on Hampstead Road." Flickering Lamps takes us there.

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Six of the Best 567

Are you sure about this? Ed.

Gareth Epps reports that Liberal Democrat Conference has lost a day.

"Contemporary advocates of No-Platforming have so far failed to provide any convincing, rigorous definition of ‘harm’ to justify their practice." Monica Richter argues that only the most noxious of speakers should be banned from university campuses.

Robbie Simpson has been to Tbilisi to visit our liberal colleagues, the Republican Party of Georgia.

"Imagine if Neil Young needed Simon Cowell’s approval in order to get the label backing necessary to become a known musician." POWERevolution thinks many millenials are uncool and think it knows why.

Cal Flyn writes on afforestation and clearance in the Flow Country in the far North of Scotland.

Teenagerdom was a result of jobs and trades requiring training and education, which cast UK society into a bit of uncertainty. Hence the title; the first generation where this phase of ambiguity – no longer a child, yet not quite an adult – existed." Kyle Turner has been watching Absolute Beginners - an unsuccessful Eighties film about the Fifties with a Bowie theme song.

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The Yardbirds: I'm a Man

When David Bowie died local newspapers scrambled to find a local angle on the story.

The Leicester Mercury did rather better, reprinting a rather sniffy review from 1973 of a concert he gave at De Montfort Hall:

He's become the figurehead of a new phase of rock sub-culture with its transvestitism and glitter trappings. There are those who have dubbed the Bowie-Roxy-Cooper glam-rock as the decadence preceding the demise of rock. 

But I can't believe that Bowie or his followers really take the Gay Liberation bit seriously. 

Certainly the man himself seemed to have his tongue firmly placed in cheek throughout last night's performance as he pouted and minced his way through all the best numbers from his exceptionally fine last four albums. 

Bowie has brought show-biz back to rock with a vengeance, and judging from last night's hysterical response, the younger fans are only too eager to accept the theatrical trappings that their elder brothers and sisters once rejected. 

But the Larry Grayson aspect is just a pose - albeit a highly successful one. Bowie has become Ziggy Stardust - the focal character of one of his songs. 

'The music' I can hear some of you saying. What about the music? Good point. Well to be frank, there's nothing new about that. It's mostly rough and raucous rock, power-pop as Pete Townsend calls it. The sound is based on Mick Ronson's strident rasping chord work with bass Trev Bolder and drummer Woody Woodmansey providing perfect support for Bowie's strong Anthony Newleyish vocals. 

Bowie's biggest recent hit for example, "Jean Genie" is a straight rip-off of the Yardbirds' 'I'm a Man', and last night Bowie performed the song with even more of an R and B flavour, swapping harmonica with Ronson's lead work just like Keith Relf and Becky used to do. 

But the music's not important. Presentation is what today's rock is all about, and no-one could complain about that last night.

I'm not sure you would get such an opinionated review in a local paper today, and that is a shame.

There was also a good letter published in the paper yesterday from someone who attended this concert as a 15-year-old:

I am sure if you talk to anyone present on that night they will have the same opinion: it was the gig of a lifetime. Those of us who loved Bowie are gutted at his passing in a way that non-believers can never understand. He, for me, was the man that opened my eyes to all art in a way my teachers never could. 

It is true to say that every book I have chosen to read, every painting admired, every play, show, ballet and gig that I have attended since that June evening in 1973 owe something to it for the beautiful spark it ignited. 

Thank you, David, your show was life-changing and life-enhancing and it took place in the city I love.

Anyway, thanks to that 1973 reviewer, here are The Yardbirds with "I'm a Man".

There is an earlier, live version with Eric Clapton, but I can't find it online, so here is Becky (as I have never heard Jeff Beck called before). The link with "Jean Genie" is obvious.

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Six of the Best 566

MediaMasters has a cracking interview on Labour and political communication with Gordon Brown's former spin doctor Damian McBride.

"Recess is a lot more than just a free break for kids to play after lunch period. That free, unstructured play time allows kids to exercise and helps them focus better when they are in class. Now a school in Texas says it took a risk by giving students four recess periods a day, but the risk has paid off beautifully." Elizabeth Licata brings news from Fort Worth.

Lion & Unicorn on cautious welcomes.

"It’s time we authors were paid, not in promises of better sales and high profiles, but in money. Yes, actual cash. Is that too much to ask?" Guy Walters complains that literary festivals expect writers to work for nothing.

Andrew Hickey pays tribute to the great Roy Wood and in particular his LP Boulders, which was recorded earlier but released in 1973.

The names proposed for Crossrail's stations are all wrong, argues John Elledge.

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David Bowie, economics and education

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I have come across two reactions to the death of David Bowie that take us well beyond the world of music.

Stumbling and Mumbling - written by Chris Dillow and always interesting - quotes Danny Finkelstein before rightly taking issue with him:

He [Finkelstein] writes: 

David Bowie – undoubtedly one of the artistic geniuses of the past 50 years – was the great product and great producer of consumer capitalism…He was subversive because capitalism is subversive, overturning the status quo, restless, and profoundly democratic. 

I disagree. It is markets that are subversive; capitalists would much rather keep the status quo and the profits rolling in. Danny says that Bowie “was possible because in a consumer capitalist society nobody can ultimately stop anybody doing anything.” But surely the word “capitalist” is superfluous in that sentence?

Chris goes on to draw a very different moral from Bowie's career:

He only became wealthy after setting up his own management company. This tells us a lot. People don’t become rich by merely by being creative. They get rich from ownership rights: in was only when Bowie claimed these that he prospered. In this sense, capitalism is a means of exploitation. 

The conflation of capitalism with markets irritates me because I suspect it is a means whereby the right smuggles in support for inequality. Many of the virtues it claims for capitalism are in fact the virtues of markets, and in conflating the two the right thus gives the impression that the case for capitalism is stronger than it in fact is.

Kevin Maguire, writing on Politics Home, also questions modern pieties (and incidentally introduces our Trivial Fact of the Day):

There’s a lesson in the likelihood that a young David Bowie would today be considered an unfortunate teenager failed by his school, with Bromley Technical High’s staff fearing a dreaded visit from Ofsted’s inspectors. 

His single O Level, in art – a subject taught by fellow rocker Peter Frampton’s father, Owen, self-evidently an inspirational schoolmaster – fell a long way short of the five good GCSEs, including English and Maths, or its equivalent, that is considered by many of us, never mind officialdom, as a pretty good yardstick ...

I raise Bowie’s less than sparkling academic qualifications not to dismiss the importance of GCSEs, NVQs, Baccalaureates, Highers, A Levels, Degrees or A N Other certificate you care to name if it signifies achievement. Everybody, from pupils and parents to teachers and Education Secretaries, deserves applause if they’re striving to raise standards and, especially, improve the prospects of kids from poorer homes who too often are left behind. 

But Bowie, the boy from Brixton born into a working class home who finished school with that single O Level, is a reminder that passing exams isn’t everything; a dearth of formal qualifications is not the end of the world.

I do wonder how many of today's IT millionaires were chided for "messing about with computers" by their teachers in the 1980s.

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How to pronounce 'Bowie': A definitive guide

The great man told us in an interview with Jeremy Paxman in 1999...

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Six of the Best 565

Peter Kelner, interviewed in a podcast, looks at how Labour MPs might depose Jeremy Corbyn - something they will have to do if the party is to stand any chance at the next election.

Suddenly Basic Income is fashionable. Tom Streithorst asks if it could work.

April Peavey remembers when Pierre Boulez met Frank Zappa.

"Replacing the aggressive Irishmen in pubs and stoned out drug dealers, the countryside instead provides aggressive farmers and 'country folk' who have no wish to deal with 'London types'." Adam Scovell points out the importance of landscape in Withnail and I.

The Cottonopolis has some amazing pictures of Manchester's abandoned buildings.

"When I saw the rusted redundant railing on a forgotten walkway above the Ouse I thought about how you can live in a place for so long and still have new things to find, when forced from the usual ways and the beaten track." York Stories encounters a flooded river.

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David Bowie: Sound and Vision

A live performance from 2002.

Moon dust will cover you.

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Paul Young: Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)

I love blue-eyed soul, but you have to admit there is something silly about it.

Steve Winwood has said in interviews that when he was making his wonderful covers of Black American records as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group he did not always understand the words he was singing.

This record from Paul Young, a cover of a Marvin Gaye song, turns the silliness up to 11. Far from being the sort you cannot rely on to be there when you get home, he is such a sweet boy that he will have put the hoover round and have supper in the oven.

I suppose Young is a bit of a guilty pleasure - it was his misfortune to be at his peak in the naff Eighties - but he has a lovely voice.

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Calexico: Splitter

Calexico, says the band's website

is no stranger to negotiating borders. For the better part of two decades, eight albums, and countless trips around the globe, Joey Burns and John Convertino have crossed musical barriers with their band, embracing a multitude of diverse styles, variety in instrumentation, and well-cultivated signature sounds. 

Under fences it digs and over mountains it climbs, sometimes into untrodden terrain, sometimes towards a more familiar landscape, and sometimes simply walking that fine line to soak up sustenance from all sides.

Splitter is a track from their 2012 album Algiers.

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The opening night of Oliver!

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9 July 1968 - Many belong to a species of stage boy, only related to childhood by their small size. All the other attributes of boyhood - youth, gaiety, innocence - have long since gone. Squat creatures, seemingly weaned on Woodbines, they are the boys who have been in Oliver! Lionel Bart has cut a swathe through the nation's youth like the 1914-18 war. They are the new Lost Generation.
Alan Bennett Writing Home (1994)

There is at present a good documentary from 2002 on the BBC iPlayer about the opening night of Lionel Bart's 'Oliver!' It includes interviews with the late Ron Moody and Tony Robinson, who was one of Fagin's gang.

I suspect a young Robinson is second from left in the photograph above. Holding the cake is Keith Hamshere, the original Oliver, who want on to become one of the leading stills photographers in the film industry.

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The Byrds: Chestnut Mare

This has the Byrds' characteristic jingle-jangle sound and there turns out to be an interesting history behind it.

Chestnut Mare was written by Roger McGuinn and Jacques Levy for Gene Tryp, a proposed country rock musical based on Peer Gynt. That show never materialised and the song was included on the Byrds' Untitled album.

A shorter version made no. 19 in the UK singles chart early in 1971, though I am not convinced I remember hearing it from then,

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Merry Christmas to all our readers

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is an anonymous 18th-century poem and this setting is by the 20th-century British composer Elizabeth Poston.

Between them they manage that combination of the sacred and the pagan that makes Christmas work.

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