All posts by Nick Warburton

Python Lee Jackson

Python Lee Jackson in 1966. Left to right: David Montgomery, Mick Liber, Malcolm McGee, Lloyd Hardy and David Bentley. Photo may be subject to copyright

Python Lee Jackson are best known for their association with singer Rod Stewart and the hit single “In a Broken Dream”, which reached #3 on the UK charts in September 1972. First released on the Young Blood label in late 1970, the song had been salvaged, mixed and re-mixed from a track that was originally recorded during April 1969 by the late DJ John Peel for his Dandelion label.

When Young Blood’s founder Miki Dallon re-issued the single for a third time on Young Blood International and it became a massive hit in late 1972, hardly anyone knew that the band behind it had once been one of Australia’s most revered underground groups.

Formed in December 1965, Python Lee Jackson went through numerous incarnations during their Australian period and recorded three impressive singles for CBS before disbanding prematurely in January 1968. The band probably would have been forgotten in the mists of time if hadn’t been for original members Mick Liber and David Montgomery, who decided to revive the group’s name in England in late 1968 with early member and song-writing talent David Bentley.

To understand how the connection with Stewart was forged, it is perhaps appropriate to start with the man who composed “In a Broken Dream” and ultimately brought the band the recognition that had eluded it during its early years down under.

Pianist, composer and singer David Bentley (b. 1943, Brisbane, Australia) started out playing at local school dances around his hometown before moving to Sydney in 1961. Classically trained, Bentley taught himself jazz piano and, shortly after relocating to Australia’s largest city, he hooked up with The Riverside Jazz Group, a Perth outfit that had gravitated east in search of fame.

“I joined when the previous piano player decided his true destiny lay in selling typewriters,” remembers Bentley.

“John Helman joined when the original bass player headed back to Perth [while] Don McCormack had replaced the drummer at an earlier stage. The remaining original members were cornet player, King Fisher, clarinettist Brett Lockyer and trombonist Don Thompson. It was a good band. Chicago-style jazz as distinct from the two-beat banjo/tuba-style then prevalent in Sydney.”

When accomplished English blues/gospel singer Paul Marks joined The Riverside Jazz Group, he brought with him a wealth of experience. Bentley maintains that Marks asserted an influence on those Riverside Jazz Group musicians who would later form The Id.

“Paul was a bearded bohemian whose idea of dressing up was to wear sandals instead of going barefoot,” he recalls.

“We once did a gig at the Trocadero Ballroom, a cavernous Sydney dance palace. The management took exception to Paul’s appearance and turned off the PA. Undaunted he sang acoustically, loud and clear above a six-piece band.”

After a couple of years in music, Bentley resumed his parallel career as a journalist. Joining the ABC in Melbourne, he spent his leisure hours carousing with the university/Carlton crowd who populated the neighbouring pubs. One night in early 1965, he was hitchhiking on a country road when he stepped into a car with The Rolling Stones’ “Not Fade Away” thumping on the radio.

“I thought, ‘I can do that’,” recalls the keyboard player. “Soon afterwards, I chucked in my job and headed to Sydney where Don McCormack and John Helman had formed a blues outfit with mouth harpist Shane Duckham and a raspy-voiced guitarist named Peter Anson.”

Provisionally known as The Syndicate and predominantly jazz influenced, the new group was lent street cred by Anson, who had been a member of well-known Sydney blues/grunge band, The Missing Links. The Syndicate’s line up proved short-lived, however, and around August 1965 Duckham was given the elbow.

“Shane was English, a bluesman to his bootstraps, and a great mouth harp player but he had a drug problem and, having been raised on country blues, adopted a laissez faire approach to bar lengths,” explains Bentley.

“He later died under mysterious circumstances while working on a prawn trawler in northern Queensland. He remained a friend to all of us. Later, when I was with Python Lee Jackson, he often joined the band on stage as our honoured guest.”

The group recruited disabled singer Jeffrey Leo Newton to fill Duckham’s shoes. “Jeff suffered from spina bifida but possessed great strength in his upper torso, moving with agility on sticks,” explains Bentley. “He had a powerful voice and, despite his handicap, a good stage presence.”

With Newton on board, folk impresario Jim Carter entered the picture as the band’s manager. Carter changed Jeff Newton’s name to Jeff St John and the band became Jeff St John & The Id (after a popular comic strip The Wizard of Id). When Carter opened Rhubarb’s disco in Neutral Bay on Sydney’s fashionable north shore in late 1965, The Id became house band. A couple of months later, the band signed to the Spin label and released its debut single, “Lindy Lou”, which barely dented the Sydney charts despite heavy rotation on radio.

The Id had begun to consolidate its reputation and establish a loyal following when the police closed Rhubarb’s in March 1966 – and, in the hiatus, Bentley looked around for a fresh challenge.

It was at this time that he met up with drummer David Montgomery (b. September 1945, Melbourne, Australia) and British expatriate guitarist Mick Liber (b. 1 March 1944, Peebles, Scotland) – laying the foundations for Python Lee Jackson’s most successful line-up.

A seasoned drummer, Montgomery would be the only member to stay the course throughout the band’s long and tangled history. Having started out playing in Melbourne’s jazz scene during the early 1960s, Montgomery moved to Sydney in early 1964 where he came under the wing of future Max Merritt drummer, Stewart Speer.

“He was a great jazz drummer and guided me in my youthful naivety,” says Montgomery from his home in Los Angeles.

Jazz may have been his passion but Montgomery was wise enough to know that it didn’t pay the bills and after answering a newspaper advert, he hooked up with an English rock band in a migrant hostel in the Sydney suburbs.

Led by London-born guitarist and singer David Burke and rhythm guitarist Ron Edwards, the band played the standard British rock/R&B repertoire of the day.

“We did only a few gigs in Sydney and then, for some reasons that were obscure to me at the time and remain so now, headed off to Newcastle for a season, playing in a very big, flashy local pub,” recalls Montgomery.

Faced with drunken crowds, each night descended into farce and after several months, the group decided to head further north to Cairns in Queensland.

“Cairns at the time was not the tourist hotspot it has since become. It was a rugged outback cow town, a recuperation spot for immigrant workers injured in mining accidents in the plants at Mount Isa and other places further inland,” notes Montgomery.

“I look back on my stay as a rich, not-to-be-missed experience, but at the time I regarded it as a sentence of exile. I knew I had to be in a big city if I hoped to achieve anything in music.”

It was at this stage that Burke decided to recruit a new singer. “He sent to Sydney for a certain legendary character and singer, one Frank Kennington, who had been with The Missing Links among others,” explains Montgomery.

“It was then that I was first made aware of Python Lee Jackson, a mysterious name that Frank had apparently taken over from Andre de Moller, another English immigrant to Sydney.”

“This may be myth but the story I heard was that an English barrister and part-time blues guitarist named Andre de Moller dreamed up the name while gazing at the chalkboard at Suzie Wong’s in Sydney,” reflects David Bentley on the origins of the Python Lee Jackson name.

“Suzie Wong’s was a Chinese restaurant that, bizarrely, employed jazz and R&B groups. When someone complained that attendances were down, de Moller wrote Python Lee Jackson on the blackboard – and a big crowd turned up.”

Before travelling to Australia in the early 1960s, de Moller had led Ealing, west London R&B band, Clay Alison & The Searchers who included future Python Lee Jackson guitarist Mick Liber.

On de Moller’s return home to the UK, recalls Montgomery, Frank Kennington, “inherited the mantle, the name, the legend, the mystique, everything.”

Kennington arrived in Cairns around November 1965 but quickly realised that the move was a mistake.

“I was hot to blow out of Cairns and the band, and so was Frank,” remembers Montgomery.

“He told me about his friend Mick Liber, a great guitarist, and suggested that we head back to Sydney, put something together, and give it a shot.”

Back in Sydney, they enlisted Liber for the original Python Lee Jackson. A brilliant guitarist, Liber had an intriguing past.

Having moved to west London from Scotland with his family at an early age, he joined a local skiffle band in the late 1950s.

From there he graduated to playing in various rock groups around the Ealing area, including Clay Alison & The Searchers (with Andre de Moller) and Frankie Read & The Casuals, whose personnel over the years included future Jimi Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell and future New Animals bass player Danny McCulloch (both before Liber’s time).

In an interesting side note, Liber became friendly with Keith Moon and Pete Townshend when they were members of The Detours. Townshend lived in Liber’s dad’s house in Sunnyside Road when he was studying at Ealing Tech.

Having first met Frank Kennington (b. 1945, Ealing, Middlesex) during his school days, Mick Liber decided to try his luck down under in January 1965 after Kennington’s father arranged for his travel to Sydney.

Only 19 years old, Kennington had arrived in Australia around October 1964 after briefly fronting west London band The Unit 4 with future Brinsley Schwarz guitarist Ian Gomm.

The singer invited Liber to join him in Sydney and, on his arrival, they briefly revived the Unit 4 name with future Python Lee Jackson bass player, Lloyd Hardy plus rhythm guitarist Roger Homan, drummer John Webber and the aforementioned Shane Duckham guesting on harmonica.

Unit 4 with Frank Kennington (second left) and Mick Liber (far right). Photo may be subject to copyright

However, Kennington soon moved on to join a transitional line up of The Missing Links in mid-1965. Liber, meanwhile, hooked up with The Denvermen for six months, appearing on the band’s final single Bo Diddley’s “I Can Tell” c/w Gene Vincent’s “Time Will Bring Everything”.

The single, incidentally, also featured Kennington, who had joined the band in its death throes. With The Denvermen on their last legs, however, Kennington soon took up David Burke’s offer to join his group in Cairns.

Looking around for a bass player, Kennington, Liber and Montgomery added Roy James in December 1965 and the original Python Lee Jackson was born.

Initially, the group found work playing in a discotheque in an old, disused hotel in Surry Hills before word spread.

“We did the usual ‘underground’ gigs – parties for Oz Magazine, university functions – and probably the odd surf club,” remembers Montgomery.

“We were an underground band, though, which was a prestigious epithet in some minds, particularly ours, as I recall. We were the darlings of the smart young set.”

One of the most notable events during this period took place when the band was engaged to play The Rolling Stones’ post-concert party at a harbour side mansion in Sydney, which is where Brian Jones and David Montgomery first met and struck up a rapport. When Python Lee Jackson later moved to England, the two musicians crossed paths again in an “odd way” (more of that later).

Judging by some of the members’ exploits, it appears that the original Python Lee Jackson line up was brim-full of colourful personalities.

“Roy James was a rather enterprising character,” recalls Montgomery. “I was given to understand that he made his living by housebreaking. On one memorable occasion, according to Roy, he equipped himself with a hand trolley, a clipboard, and an official-looking grey dustcoat. Arriving at the side door of Sydney stadium, he rapped authoritatively on the door, which was eventually opened by the elderly caretaker/watchman.”

Apparently, one of the big British bands had been completing a sound check earlier that day and the bass player coolly informed the caretaker that he had “come to pick up the amps”.

According to Montgomery, the poor man didn’t know anything about this but the band’s bass player did look all official and the mid-1960s were, after all, more trusting times.

“Roy calmly proceeded to load two beautiful Vox amps from the stage on to the trolley, which he then wheeled back up the aisle to the door, obligingly held open by the caretaker for Roy’s convenient egress,” continues Montgomery. “Handing the man his official receipt, Roy departed the premises and we had new amps.”

However, the escapades weren’t always so innocent. After only a few months together, Frank Kennington, who was partial to stealing cars, got busted in Melbourne for marijuana possession and after spending several months in Pentridge prison in the suburb of Coburg, was deported as an undesirable alien.

Kennington would later work as a roadie for The Who and eventually moved into rock management. He was Motorhead’s first road manager and moved out to California in the 1970 but died in 1998.

“The irony of being shamefully ejected from Britannia’s erstwhile convict colony may have occurred to Frank during those long, dreary months of confinement, but who can say?” reflects Montgomery.

The group had no time for sentimental ruminations. With stacks of gigs lined up, Python Lee Jackson recruited Bob Brady from The Missing Links to help honour the engagements. Montgomery also recalls that another Missing Links member, keyboard player Chris Gray helped out on several gigs as well, as did future Id member Ian Walsh.

According to Iain McIntyre in his excellent book, Tomorrow is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era 1966-1970, the band linked up with Sydney film makers’ co-operative Ubu in March 1966 to provide the soundtrack to the pop art James Bond spoof, Blunderball alongside The Id, which may have been how the Bentley connection was originally made.

Whatever the truth is, it wasn’t the band’s last dealings with the co-operative. A few months later, Mick Liber was on hand to record the soundtrack to Ubu film maker Albie Thoms’ successful entry to Canada’s Expo ‘67 film, Man and His World. Both films, incidentally, have since become cult classics.

But we’re jumping ahead of ourselves. David Bentley could see potential in what Mick Liber and David Montgomery were doing. “Bentley and Mick and I talked about putting something new together, using the name Python Lee Jackson,” explains Montgomery.

With former Unit 4 bass player Lloyd Hardy completing the formation, impresario Jim Carter, whose club Rhubarb’s on Sydney’s exclusive North Shore had been a big success with The Id as resident band, now approached Python Lee Jackson to appear in a new version of the club in inner Sydney’s Liverpool Street, playing five nights a week.

The Id, meanwhile, had re-established at another club, Here, in North Sydney. Bentley played the first couple of weeks at Here with his old band but bailed out to join Python Lee Jackson when the new Rhubarb’s opened in late May 1966.

First, however, the new Python Lee Jackson line-up had to find a singer. “It was decided that we would need a strong presence to front the band,” explains Montgomery. “Frank had a certain charisma, but he wasn’t exactly a singer’s singer. We wanted to get someone who could handle that end of it as well.”

The band’s first choice was Danny Robinson, who later became front man and singer for The Wild Cherries, but at the time was playing bass and singing with Melbourne group, The Weird Mob. Hitchhiking down to Melbourne, Bentley and Montgomery scoured the local club scene but were unable to persuade Robinson to relocate to Sydney. Their attention was then drawn to another talented musician playing with local group (the original) Wild Cherries.

With his good looks and bluesy baritone voice, Malcolm McGee (b. 1 November 1945, Melbourne) was, according to Montgomery, “definitely the right choice”.

An established blues guitarist, McGee had been playing on Melbourne’s live circuit since the age of 15, performing Josh White, Blind Willie Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy covers. (Incidentally, he was also a childhood friend of the late Trevor Lucas, who later found fame with English folk-rock band, Fairport Convention).

One of only a handful of accomplished blues players, McGee was an obvious choice for The Wild Cherries when they decided to move into R&B at the end of 1965. While with the group, McGee made some tentative recordings, which though unreleased at the time, have since been issued as part of Half a Cow Records’ comprehensive CD, That’s Life and also appear on Groovie Records’ LP compilation, The Wild Cherries – 16 Pounds of R&B.

McGee remembers the fateful meeting that led to his joining Python Lee Jackson. “[The Wild Cherries] had a Sunday afternoon gig in the middle of Melbourne and Bentley came and sat in. I had never heard anyone play so well. It was sort of like having Ray Charles sit in.”

At the show, McGee only sang a couple of vocal lines but as he was putting his guitar away, Bentley approached him and asked for his contact number. As McGee recalls, Bentley wanted to discuss an offer to join Python Lee Jackson. “I think he came round the next day and I said, ‘Right-o, I’ll be there in a week’s time’.”

After McGee arrived in Sydney in mid-May, the new line up had only a few days to rehearse a set list before Rhubarb’s opened and, according to Montgomery, the repertoire was basic and bluesy. Even so, “the whole thing, club and band, was a huge success, quite unanticipated from my point of view.”

On 22 May, Sydney newspaper The Sun-Herald informed its readers in the “Glitter” column that Rhubarb’s had opened that week in “a cellar at the bottom end of Liverpool Street” and that the band there was Python Lee Jackson. Three weeks later, in its 12 June issue, the newspaper’s “Young World” section ran an expose on the band under the header “Just who is Python Lee Jackson?”

The article offers an interesting insight in the band’s first six months and reveals that during its brief life it had survived four singers, two organists and five bass guitarists! Singer Malcolm McGee, David Bentley (who is named as Bentley Rigg) and “Cadillac” Lloyd Hardy had joined three weeks ago.

“Responsibility for much of the group’s impact is guitarist Mick Liber, who is the first man in Australia to use feedback effectively,” the article notes. “Mick, who came from London 18 months ago, learnt this technique from Peter Townshend, guitarist with the Who.”

While the group would build up a steady following along the Australian east coast throughout the latter half of 1966, Rhubarb’s would provide a handy base and enable the musicians to develop a unique sound.

“Initially the band was for gigging. The idea was to develop the music,” states McGee. “We didn’t really want to record. In fact, we didn’t even see ourselves as a pop act although we had to compete in that world.”

Photo: Go-Set. Image may be subject to copyright. Python Lee Jackson at Rhubarb’s in July 1966

Python Lee Jackson’s live reputation quickly paid dividends. In the first few months of its existence, the group was invited to appear on the late singer Billy Thorpe’s TV show It’s All Happening where they would become regular guests.

According to Ben Whitten, who later compiled the 2009 Half a Cow Records CD Python Lee Jackson: Sweet Consolation 1966-1973, one of the band’s most memorable TV appearances was on the ABC show, Be Our Guest, where the musicians performed Ike Turner’s “I Idolize you” and another whose title has been long forgotten by those involved.

Python’s Lee Jackson’s studio debut was as backing band for top rating Sydney DJ Austin Ward’s single “Emergency Ward” c/w “Who Do You Love?” Issued on Parlophone Records that November, the record sank without a trace. (Ed – it did establish a radio connection that would stand the band in good stead, however.)

Sometime in September 1966, however, David Bentley left the band and returned to Brisbane.

“I left because it turned out to be grind and I had strong ideas about music,” he says.

Back home, the keyboard player spent the next couple of months picking up work with various groups, including sitting in with The Purple Hearts for their farewell gig at the Red Orb club in February 1967. Later that year, he returned to Melbourne where he worked as a journalist for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. In his place, Python Lee Jackson recruited pianist Bob Welsh.

“Bob was a fine player, but he had something of a narcotic habit at the time, and on one notable occasion actually fell asleep at the keyboard in the middle of a song,” recalls Montgomery.

“Fortunately, his fingers had locked on to the tonic chord, so nobody noticed until the tune ended and Bob kept right on playing and sleeping.”

Within weeks, Python Lee Jackson had signed to CBS and returned to the studio to cut their first single. Recorded at Ossie Byrne’s studio in Hurstville, just outside Sydney, and with Spin Records’ founder Nat Kipner in the producer’s chair and with Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees engineering, the band’s first outing coupled a catchy version of Major Lance’s “Um-Um-Um-Um” with a cover of Stan Kesler and Stacey Davidson’s “Big City Lights”.

“[The single] was really my first recording with the band,” explains McGee. “We were very fond of that sort of Chicago sound, that Major Lance thing. It’s a Curtis Mayfield tune”.

Released in December 1966, “Um-Um-Um-Um” was a minor national hit and, according to David Kent in his Australian chart book, peaked at #79 on 7 January 1967. Exceedingly rare now, the A-side has since turned up on Raven’s excellent compilation series, Sixties Downunder.

As “Um-Um-Um-Um” was taking off, Python Lee Jackson joined a number of bands to support The Bee Gees at their final Australian show, held at the Trocadero Ballroom in Sydney, before heading to the UK and international stardom.

“We were set up on the back end of a rotating stage,” recalls Montgomery. “As the other act finished up, the stage started to revolve and we came into the audience’s view. We kicked off with ‘Hold On (I’m Coming)’, and for some reason I couldn’t hear anything anyone was playing, including myself. It took me a few seconds to figure out that the sound of seven or eight thousand people screaming was drowning everything out. I was stunned. It was the biggest thrill I had experienced in music up until then.”

“Um-Um-Um-Um” helped raise Python Lee Jackson’s profile and around this time, the band made a cameo appearance in the film, The Surfing Years where the musicians can be seen performing at Rhubarb’s.

Ever since joining Python Lee Jackson in late May 1966, Lloyd Hardy had used the nickname “Cadillac” because of his love for fast American cars but it was later that he adopted a new stage persona to conceal his real identity.

“Because he had to hide from his wife now and then and from legal matters pertaining to such, he was [also] Cadillac Lloyd Hudson,” recalls McGee.

So bad was Hudson’s situation that he had to leave the band at one stage.

“He was a wild man himself. He wasn’t short of ways of causing trouble,” remembers McGee on his former band mate.

“On a night when he was behaving, there was this boxer from Newcastle swinging himself about fairly drunk. He just kicked Lloyd’s hand as Lloyd was going past. We were going towards the stage and Lloyd looked round quite innocently and the guy’s gone, ‘What are you looking at?’ Whoosh and knocked him out cold. I can still hear Lloyd’s heels hit the ground after the rest of him.”

Someone in the club called the cops and the boxer was restrained but the fun and games didn’t end there.

“Eight of them were surrounding Lloyd and going, ‘What are we going to do? Call an ambulance or what?’ and he’s woken up and seen eight police uniforms and gone berserk,” continues McGee. “They ended up throwing him in jail as well!”

While Lloyd cooled his heels in Brisbane for a couple of weeks, Python Lee Jackson substituted Duncan McGuire, the bass player from Doug Parkinson’s group, The Questions, and returned to the studio to record further material. The fruits of these sessions turned up on the band’s second (and most successful) single, a cover of Sam and Dave’s “Hold On (I’m Coming)” backed by Bob Welsh and David Montgomery’s “You’re Mother Should Have Told You”.

“I never liked our version of [’Hold On’] myself. I used to hate it every time we had to do anything of Sam and Dave’s because I’m a baritone,” laughs McGee.

“Actually, all the tops on ‘Hold On (I’m Coming)’ are sung by Doug Parkinson. You know, because we recorded it at nine in the morning and after you’ve done 45 songs the night before, you’re not ready. So Dougie did the top harmony for me on that one.”

With an extended stay in Melbourne lined up, the group made plans to head south. However, Duncan McGuire had to stay behind to mix the single so the group asked Cadillac Lloyd Hudson (now going by the name Virgil East) to undertake the tour. (Ed. Hudson would die in the 1980s.)

“Duncan mixed that track in his own studio,” remembers Montgomery. “Fine musician, lovely man, but inexplicably he omitted the bass from the final mix! Duncan could never explain this satisfactorily, and I always found it difficult to accept that the engineer/bass player could neglect to ensure that his own instrument was audible on the finished record.”

“I don’t know what he was on that night but by the morning I think he might have sped it up a bit and also almost completely left the bass out,” adds McGee. “There are bass lines in there but you can’t hear them.”

It didn’t matter as far as record sales went. Released in March 1967, “Hold On (I’m Coming)” was a sizeable hit, peaking at #42 on the national charts on 29 April. Interestingly, for some inexplicable reason, it was banned in Tasmania!

Photo: Go-Set. Image may be subject to copyright

Based in Melbourne during the first two weeks of April, Python Lee Jackson was inundated with work.

“We were usually sort of flogged right into the ground by the amount of work we had to do,” recalls McGee.

“On a Friday or a Saturday night, we would do four gigs one after the other. That was why we got into the recording because if you didn’t get airplay, you didn’t get booked for all of those spots. Getting airplay is like free advertising. That pushes your price up.”

As an indication of the band’s heavy workload, Melbourne’s teen magazine, Go Set, advertised at least three shows for Saturday, 8 April, including an appearance at The Scene with, among others, The Twilights; a show at the Catcher with the likes of The Clefs and The Wild Cherries; and a late show at Sebastians with The Third Party.

Heading back to Sydney, Duncan McGuire re-joined the band for a brief spell before Dave MacTaggart from Adelaide group, The Black Pearls took over. Like Lloyd Hardy, MacTaggart would cause some confusion in the Python history as he also used another stage name, Dave Curtis.

Photo: Go-Set. Image may be subject to copyright. Bob Welsh (far left) and Dave MacTaggart (centre)

Buoyed by the public’s reception to their previous release, Python Lee Jackson returned with a third single in August, a cover of Sam and Dave’s “It’s a Wonder” backed by Lieber and Stoller’s “I Keep Forgetting”, which had first been covered by Chicago bluesman Chuck Jackson.

It should have been another hit but the single’s chances of making the charts were hampered by the refusal of some Australian radio stations to give it airplay. According to Go-Set magazine, “There has been no apparent reason given, so one is led to believe that the recording is not up to standard.”

Interestingly, both sides of the single were given considerable airplay in Tasmania, which, as mentioned previously, had banned the band’s previous release. This was no doubt due to Python Lee Jackson’s recent visit, which apparently was met with hysterical crowds.

The single’s release coincided with the band’s return to Sydney where it held down a 13-week residency at Here Disco, kicking off on 16 August. Sometime during the band’s stint at Here, Bob Welsh left the band and bebop alto sax player Bernie McGann (b. 22 June 1937, Granville, New South Wales, Australia) was recruited in his place.

Despite the regular work, however, Python Lee Jackson were slowly unravelling. As Malcolm McGee had hinted to Go-Set months earlier, the constant touring was taking its toll on the band members and their ability to progress musically.

“Our next single will definitely be an original composition, and we hope it will be to everyone’s liking,” he told the teen magazine. “It has been hard for us to find the time to write material due to heavy commitments, but we realise now it is a must.”

Speaking to this writer in 2007, McGee recalls one occasion that illustrates how much distance that the band was expected to cover to play gigs.

“I remember once in the 90-mile desert between Melbourne and Adelaide, Mick Liber was saying, ‘This is scary man. In England there’s a village over every hill’. He said, “Out here we’ve got to walk 60 miles if we break down. I don’t like it, it’s too empty’.”

The heavy touring meant that the promised “original material” never materialised and any big money the group made seemed to be going to someone else. Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, Mick Liber departed during November 1967.

“We were down in Melbourne doing some TV show and I just decided to quit,” recalls Liber from his home in New South Wales. “I’d had enough and came back to Sydney.”

Former Strangers’ guitarist Laurie Arthur took over for the last few months of the band’s existence. A highly experienced guitarist, Arthur had been playing on the Melbourne scene since the late 1950s.

“He wasn’t flash like Mick but he was a good journeyman player,” explains McGee. “He had a vast history of rock ‘n’ roll behind him when he came to us.”

While playing in Melbourne, Python Lee Jackson played at Berties on 29 November, followed by a performance at Sebastian’s the next evening.

Photo: Go-Set. Image may be subject to copyright

During the first week of December, the musicians performed at several clubs, including the Trip and the Mod Tavern before heading back to Sydney to play at the Flower Pot with The Wright of Waye on 7 December. While here, the musicians recognised the end was in sight.

McGee doesn’t recall the date but if it indeed did happen, it was a fitting end to the band’s Australian incarnation as the club had previously been the legendary Suzie Wong’s – the same venue where the Python Lee Jackson name had first appeared on the chalkboard! (Ed – Python Lee Jackson did in fact return to Melbourne after this show for a string of dates, including one at Opus on 16 December with Lynne Randell, The Dream and The Sounds of Silence and an appearance at Highway 31 with The Mixtures the following night.)

In January 1968, the band members called it a day and immediately found work in separate projects.

“Mick had left a couple of months before [and] we weren’t getting airplay, so it was a diminishing return,” recalls McGee on the decision to finally dissolve the group.

“I remember at one stage, we came back from Adelaide having gone to Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide and back to Melbourne. We’d done 69 gigs in 28 days and there wasn’t much money over at the end of it and we just said, ‘Fuck, what are we doing?’”

Malcolm McGee re-joined his former cohort in The Wild Cherries, Rob Lovett and initially ex-Purple Hearts singer Mick Hadley in the Walker Brothers-style trio, The Virgil Brothers that same month.

The line-up lasted one rehearsal before former solo singer the late Peter Doyle took over from Hadley. After rehearsing for six hours, five-six days a week for five months, The Virgil Brothers made their public debut on 4 June at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne, followed by a national debut on the top evening news programme, This Day Tonight.

Photo: Go-Set. Image may be subject to copyright

That same month The Virgil Brothers released their debut single, a cover The Knight Brothers’ “Temptation ‘Bout To Get Me” on Parlophone Records, which was quickly followed by a second single “Here I Am” before heading off for the UK in January 1969 to try their luck. (Doyle later joined The New Seekers).

McGee left the band before their move overseas and later worked with the short-lived group, Rush where he reunited with Duncan McGuire, fresh from a stint in Southern Comfort, and former Wild Cherries cohort, drummer Kevin Murphy. Rush, which also featured guitarist Billy Green from Doug Parkinson’s band The Questions and pianist Steve Yates, never recorded.

“It was a fairly drugged out kind of band,” McGee recalls. “Everyone was dropping acid all the time.”

By the early 1970s, McGee had dropped out of the music scene, disillusioned with the current trends.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with all these people sitting around singing with their gentle voices about love and brown rice,” he reflects.

Living in the country, the singer only returned to the limelight in 1980s when he began to find work singing on adverts. Ironically, it was the most money he ever made from the business.

“I sung on almost every beer ad in Australia,” he laughed when interviewed for the original article. At the time McGee had started to record new material with a friend, which he described as a mix between chill lounge music and Motown and hoped to release it in the near future. Sadly the singer passed away on 17 May 2012.

“I phoned Malcolm when I heard he was ill with cancer but the hospital could find no record of him,” says Bentley. “I later learned that he had booked in as ‘Bobby McGee’. A joker to the end.”

Although Python Lee Jackson’s Australian saga was over, that wasn’t the end of the story. As events transpired, guitarist Mick Liber would subsequently revive the name in the UK later that year.

Since leaving the band in late ‘67, Liber had kept busy. Initially he joined a reformed Id, who’d split from singer Jeff St John that summer. He then worked with Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs for six months, “playing a regular six nights a week gig” at the Whisky in Sydney’s King’s Cross, alongside bass player Paul Wheeler and drummer Johnny Dick.

Sometime around August 1968, however, Thorpe decided to relocate to Melbourne and Liber briefly gigged with Gulliver Smith in The Noyes. His involvement proved short-lived. Within a month he found out about a boat trip to England, which required a ship band.

“There was no money but [it] was a free trip back to England and we thought we’d go on that,” he says.

With this thought in mind, Liber enlisted former Id bass player John Helman, who’d recently been working with Levi Smith’s Clefs, together with singer Phil Jones from The Unknown Blues and sax player Mal Capewell.

More importantly he coaxed back original member David Montgomery and creative force David Bentley, both of whom had been working together in funk/jazz trio The David Bentley Trio with bass player Hamish Hughes. (Ed: Dave Montgomery had initially worked with Doug Parkinson In Focus from January-late April 1968 before hooking up with Bentley.)

David Bentley Trio. Photo may be subject to copyright

This ambitious jazz project had been performing in discos around Melbourne for about four months, most notably at the Thumpin’ Tum, where the group made its debut on 5 June and held the late night residency at weekends and at a weekly disco held in Lilys, a dance hall at St Kilda.

“The trio was loosely based on Ramsay Lewis/Les McCann style,” recalls Bentley. “Sometimes it worked spectacularly; sometimes we attracted blank stares. My girlfriend at the time was a talented actress who, with her friends, helped stir up the crowd by dancing and generally demonstrating how to enjoy our stuff. We also benefited from a young drummer who came to all the gigs and clapped the offbeat so loudly and with such impeccable rhythm that the entire room would join in.”

For each gig, Bentley had to bring in an acoustic grand piano and mike it up. While it was undoubtedly a novel idea, the keyboard player soon realised that the project could not be sustained and accepted Liber’s offer to re-join his former band.

“We enjoyed a certain following among Melbourne’s bright young professionals but, in the end, we realised that it was foolish to swim against the tide,” he recalls.

“The David Bentley Trio was a really enjoyable project,” adds Montgomery. “It was a chance for me to get back to the jazz idiom that I had started out in. We packed it in only when the opportunity of a free trip to Europe came up in September 1968.”

As Bentley recalls Mick Liber and John Helman had already been booked on a Greek cruise ship (called “The Patris” which was making its final voyage to London) and persuaded the booker to also include David Montgomery. Bentley opted to fly instead.

“Airfares were cheap and I’d been corresponding with a Melbourne girl who was then living in London,” he recalls. “I met up with the other guys in Athens, and headed to London soon afterwards.”

John Helman has hazy memories of his brief stint with Python Lee Jackson but remembers the voyage to England clearly.

“The moment we set foot on the ship, the Greek entertainment officer threw up his hands and exclaimed, ‘But I told them in the office that I already had a band for this trip’,” he recalls.

The problem was soon sorted out. However, the musicians realised that Mal Capewell was missing.

“Mal was late for everything,” continues Helman. “At departure time in Sydney Mal hadn’t turned up so the ship set sail without him. As we cruised down the harbour the ship stopped and a small boat approached. A ladder was lowered from a doorway in the side of the ship and up clambered Mal. The same thing happened as the ship left Fremantle.”

Once away, Python Lee Jackson entertained the crowds alongside two other bands, including a Greek ensemble that had bazoukis and a clarinet and packed the main room.

“We shared the gig in a bar with a trio – piano, drums and sax whose repertoire consisted of unknown eastern European nightclub music,” remembers Helman.

“We played our versions of western nightclub music for an hour a night and we struggled to find an audience as I’m sure none of the passengers had ever heard of Python Lee Jackson.”

After six weeks of sailing, the ship finally docked in Djibouti in French Somaliland where the musicians disembarked.

“The cruise ship paid for our flight to Athens, whereupon we all travelled overland through Greece to Italy, and then up through Europe to England,” Phil Jones told American journalist Chris Walsh on the final leg of the voyage.

“When we reached our final destination in London, everyone dispersed and began pursuing their own thing.”

While Phil Jones subsequently became Shiva in the English progressive band Quintessence, Capewell would record with Robert Palmer and Elkie Brooks in Dada among others before returning back to Australia.

On his first night in London, Bentley remembers Python Lee Jackson’s former front man, Frank Kennington taking everyone to see Pink Floyd perform at the Roundhouse (the date appears to have been 26 October).

The other significant person he met during his first few days in town was Speedy Keen, who’d hung around in the same social circle in Ealing that Liber had frequented before moving to Australia.

“Frank was one of the first people to welcome us when the band arrived in London and appeared to be on first name terms with Pete Townshend who had been a contemporary of Mick Liber’s when both guitarists were teenagers in Ealing. He also appeared to be on friendly terms with Speedy Keen,” says Bentley.

By late 1968, Keen had come under Pete Townshend’s wing and would subsequently become part of Thunderclap Newman, famous for the UK #1 “Something In the Air”.

As 1968 drew to a close, Bentley remembers Python Lee Jackson, now comprising himself on keyboards and vocals, John Helman on bass and original members Mick Liber and David Montgomery, performing at the Vesuvio Club in Tottenham Court Road for six weeks.

“The place had been set up by The Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones’s gofer Spanish Tony and was in decline by the time we got there. The bar was never replenished. The light bulbs were never replaced. Mick Liber found the remains of Brian Jones’s Vox AC/30 amid the debris behind the stage. He replaced the speakers and used it to good effect for many years afterwards.”

The Rolling Stones connection did not end there. During the spring of 1969, Bentley remembers participating in a session with The Rolling Stones at Olympic Studios in Barnes, although the track was never released.

Later that summer, Montgomery found an opportunity to rekindle his relationship with Brian Jones, whom he first met during aforementioned Rolling Stones tour of Australia in February 1966.

“I had a call from my friend Craig Collinge, drummer with Manfred Mann [Chapter Three], telling me that, although it was still very hush-hush, Brian had been fired from The Stones and would soon be looking to put a new group together [and] would I be interested?” explains Montgomery.

“In order to speak to Brian, I first had (for security reasons) to call John Mayall’s wife, who convinced of my bona fides, passed my number along to Brian himself. All very cloak and dagger.”

Montgomery says that all communication with the former Rolling Stone was done by phone and as fate would have it, he was set to go down to Jones’s East Grinstead house on 3 July, the day that the news broke of his death.

“I had spoken to him on the phone at about 1pm the previous afternoon, and he was to meet me at East Grinstead train station the next morning. He sounded unusually vague and very stoned. Early the next morning, my girlfriend got up first to go to work, but ten minutes later she returned with an armful of the morning’s papers all announcing the death, late on the previous day, of Brian Jones. Something of a pall fell over the proceedings after that.”

Things were still touch and go for the band. During the first months of the year, Python Lee Jackson had moved on from the Vesuvio club to work at the Arts Lab on Drury Lane. With funds dwindling, Bentley resumed his journalism career with a magazine group in Fleet Street.

Mick Liber, meanwhile, played some additional gigs with some pub bands around the Ealing area, including his old group, Frankie Reid & The Casuals. He also started to pick up some session work thanks to the bass player in The Jeff Beck Group.

“It was Ronnie Wood who phoned me up and got me my first session, which was pretty amazing,” recalls Liber.

“It was a strange session. I had to go to this studio ’cause Ronnie couldn’t make it and they played me a basic track and said, ‘Can you play some fills?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s no vocals so I don’t know where the fills go’. And they said, ‘Just imagine where the vocals go and play some fills like that!’”

However, in April 1969, the band’s prospects appeared to improve. Mick Liber scored a deal with CBS, thanks in part to the band’s previous connection with Richard Neville, who would become notorious as a central figure in the OZ obscenity trial.

As a result, Python Lee Jackson recorded a couple of demos for CBS A&R man Clive Selwood with a mystery singer. Young Blood Records producer, Miki Dallon owns three Python Lee Jackson titles from this period – “It’s A Groove to Be Dead”, “I Wonder Who” and “Big Fat Momma” and it’s quite possible that these are those very same tracks. The sound quality may not be great but all of the songs are impressive.

“Really Tried to Love You” with Bentley singing was recorded around this time with a line up featuring Liber, Helman and Montgomery. The track was picked up for the Half a Cow Records CD.

With the recordings done, John Helman bowed out. “Although I did those gigs as well as a recording session with the guys I can’t recall much as I was drifting away from the guys and them from me,” he explains.

Helman returned to Australia in late 1970 and was last heard living in Byron Bay on Australia’s east coast.

Despite Helman’s departure, Clive Selwood was impressed by the rough demo and suggested that the band try for a hit single. A session was hastily scheduled and bass player Jamie Byrne was drafted in from recently arrived Australian band, The Groove.

“That afternoon, while I was waiting for my girlfriend to turn up for after-work drinks, I tapped out some random feeling-sorry-myself lyrics and, in the evening I put some chords and a melody to the words,” says Bentley. “The song was ‘In a Broken Dream’.

“[The] next day, as I was walking past a record shop, I heard Joe Cocker singing ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ and decided that I wasn’t the right guy to sing my song. When I told the other members of the band that I wouldn’t be singing, they were very pissed off. Next thing I remember, I’m in Montgomery’s Chelsea flat teaching the lyrics to Rod Stewart who had been recruited by an acquaintance of Mick’s.”

Montgomery continues the story: “We had a ‘manager’, a slick car salesman with pretensions to become Andrew Loog Oldham or Brian Epstein. He told us he knew Rod Stewart very well, having sold him a Lotus or Ferrari or something, and he was sure he could get him to join the group or at least sing on the recording date.”

Bentley, who recalls hearing that the band’s erstwhile manager had persuaded Stewart to sing the song in exchange for a set of car mats, says the session went badly at first.

“The band hadn’t done much playing in London. Everyone was feeling uptight and the first run-throughs of ‘In a Broken Dream’ were less than promising,” he explains.

“In upshot, [the late] radio presenter John Peel, who was producing the track for his Dandelion label, sent out for beer – and we drank quite a lot of this stuff in the interests of heightened relaxation. Rod, as always, sang well but, because the lights had been doused, he missed the last verse, repeating the first one instead, filling in at one point with a hummed mmm mmm mmm which subsequent cover versions have faithfully copied.”

To kick off the session, Stewart and the group had begun jamming on a track that would later turned up on the B-side of the first pressing of “In a Broken Dream” under the title, “Doin’ Fine”. As the band’s keyboard player explains, the track was a spirited one-chord groove that harked back to the band’s glory days at Sydney’s Rhubarb’s club when he occasionally took over the microphone to deliver an impromptu stream-of-consciousness monologue over a repetitive riff. Stewart for his part used the same groove to accompany lyrics loosely based on The Temptations’ “Cloud Nine”.

It was spur of the moment stuff. Still, the track delivered raw energy and crackling power. Montgomery’s insistent drums and Byrne’s pumping bass provided a framework for Liber’s soaring and impassioned guitar, mingled with Bentley’s funky Hammond licks – and Rod Stewart’s gravelly voice topping off the groove. (Ed – at the same session, Stewart and Python Lee Jackson also recorded another loose number called “The Blues”.)

Everyone liked the track “In a Broken Dream” but, for some reason, nothing happened.

“The word ‘hype’ had an ominous resonance at the time and I think John Peel, who was the guru of anti-hype, felt ambivalent about a well-known singer performing anonymously on the recording,” explains Bentley.

As a result, the track languished in the vaults for the next year – and Bentley resumed his career as a journalist. That is until early 1970 when producer Miki Dallon, who had gained possession of the tapes of “In a Broken Dream”, contacted him.

“[Clive Selwood] came to my office and played three titles: “In a Broken Dream’, ‘Doin’ Fine’ and ‘The Blues’, which although featuring the distinctive voice of Rod Stewart, I wasn’t all that impressed with at first,” recalls Dallon. “They hadn’t been professionally produced – more thrown together in my opinion – a bit of a shambles really.”

Despite his initial reservations, Dallon asked Selwood to leave him with a copy of the tape and after a few more listens began to get ideas about how he might turn “In a Broken Dream” into a far more commercial track.

As Dallon admits, it was only after meeting David Bentley that he was convinced the project was worth pursuing and instructed his lawyer to make the deal. A few days later the multi tracks were dumped on Dallon’s desk.

Over the next couple of months Dallon drifted in and out of Pye Studios mixing, re-mixing, adding, subtracting, over-dubbing and adding backing vocals in the chorus before setting a release date for October 1970.

While all of this was going on, Python Lee Jackson hired multi-instrumentalist Tony Cahill (b. 20 December 1941, South Camberwell, Melbourne, Australia) to replace Jamie Byrne, who had returned to The Groove. Cahill had played drums with The Purple Hearts in Australia before moving to Britain and joining The Easybeats in mid-1967.

With Cahill on bass and with Gary Moberly replacing Bentley on keyboards, the musicians who had once formed the nucleus of Python Lee Jackson spent the best part of 1969-1970 on the road, abetted by a succession of “crackpot singers” as Montgomery puts it.

According to Time Out magazine, Python Lee Jackson played one show at the Bottleneck Club in the Railway Tavern, Stratford, east London during June 1969.

Using the name The Memphis Soul Band, they provided support for The Virgil Brothers, which by now was stripped down to a duo comprising Peter Doyle and Malcolm McGee’s replacement Danny Robinson.

“This was a pretty good group,” notes Montgomery. “The singers were sensational but we were contracted (by a notoriously shady booking agency) to play a series of working men’s clubs in the north of England and never really found our audience. The tour was a bizarre and somewhat depressing experience.”

Things looked promising when Miki Dallon released “In a Broken Dream” on his Young Blood label in October 1970. However, the disc sank with barely a ripple.

Undeterred by this setback, Dallon encouraged Bentley to write more material (the superb “Sweet Consolation” dates from this period) and began producing an album featuring, as far as possible, members of the original Python Lee Jackson line up in early 1972.

A notable ring-in was the talented English jazz guitarist Gary Boyle, who’d previously been part of The Brian Auger Trinity. Tony Cahill came in on bass for the new sessions and the album also featured the backup singers from Joe Cocker’s band and a complete string section.

David Bentley and Tony Cahill. Image may be subject to copyright

Mick Liber participated when he could but was busy with his ongoing commitment to rock group Ashton, Gardner and Dyke (with whom he recorded the hit, “Resurrection Shuffle” and toured for about three years).

In September 1970, he also recorded with lesser-known London band, Third World War and played a gig with Rod Stewart at the Roundhouse during this time when Jeff Beck failed to turn up.

Bentley, meanwhile, had resigned his job as a London correspondent for the Fairfax chain in Australia and was struggling financially – until, miraculously, “In a Broken Dream” surfaced in the US Hot 100.

The US release of “In a Broken Dream” backed by “Boogie Woogie Joe” (featuring Bentley on vocals) ascended to a modest #56 in the charts, but the exposure was enough to convince BBC radio to select the single for airplay and it soon received its third UK release.

On 23 September 1972, Melody Maker’s Chris Welch reviewed “In a Broken Dream” in the magazine’s singles of the week section. On the subject of the band’s unusual name, Chris Welch first asks whether the release had anything to do with Lee Jackson of the Nice or Snake Hips Johnson before clearing up any confusion by name checking Rod Stewart.

“They do say this is the song Rod cut years ago and was paid in car seats for the session,” he reports. “At least it shows he was singing well all those years ago, and it’s a nice enough tune to be a hit. A weird situation for one and all.”

Rod Stewart’s fame may well have been a factor behind the single’s success as it rocketed up the UK charts to #3. The single also became a huge hit on the European continent and has since been used as the soundtrack to numerous documentaries and films, including Breaking The Waves. (Ed – in Australia, the single was a minor national hit, climbing to #84.)

“When “In a Broken Dream” broke in the United States, Young Blood finally came good with an advance on royalties,” says Bentley. “I remember it vividly because it happened on the day my son Zeke was born.

“Six weeks later, when he was old enough to travel, I bought an old VW sedan, bundled up my wife and baby boy and followed the sun to Fornalutz, a small village in Majorca where I wrote songs every day.”

Amid olive groves and wild seascape, Bentley barely registered the pop chart success that he had worked so hard to achieve.

“I remained in Spain for almost a year, missing all of the fun and business that went with having a hit,” he says. “Truth to tell, I was simply grateful for a place in the sun, happy to be out of the public eye.”

In the music press at the time, Rod Stewart had complained that he had not been given a mention on the single, suggesting that the singer hadn’t been told his vocal would appear on the release.

“Miki Dallon may not have mentioned it to him but I know that I did,” confirms Bentley. “In fact, I once spent half a day tracking him down via his then manager Billy Gaff, and finally reaching him by phone.

“At the time, Rod didn’t seem particularly interested. Still he must have liked the song because he has since released “In a Broken Dream” twice under his own name.”

Meanwhile, the GNP Crescendo label released the Python Lee Jackson tracks featuring Rod Stewart from 1969 along with the new material produced by Dallon on an album, aptly titled In a Broken Dream. One track from the session, “Nightclub in the Day” was not used at the time and later appeared on the Half a Cow Records CD Python Lee Jackson: Sweet Consolation 1966-1973.

When the album failed to chart, The Python Lee Jackson saga appeared to be at an end. Well, almost. Armed with a cache of fresh songs, Bentley returned to the UK from Spain to record a second album, abetted by New Zealand musicians, Dave McRae (keyboards and Moog bass) and Bruce Johnstone (baritone sax), Sydney percussionist Richard Miller and Chris Bonnet on vocal harmonies.

“I remember we recorded during a very hectic time for me,” says Bruce Johnstone.

“I was back from a US tour as a member of Maynard Ferguson’s band and in the middle of recording M.F Horn 3 with Maynard. During breaks in the sessions, I would grab a cab across town to overdub things for David’s project, then back to the Maynard Ferguson project.”

Titled Piano Players Ball, the album was, Bentley says, a more spirited project than the first album, but there were differences of musical opinion and the project was still born.

According to Miki Dallon, a number of tracks were completed to his satisfaction – “Turn The Music Down”, “Get Back On Your Feet Again”, “When You Do Your Thing”, “Thin Armed Hairless Man” and “Piano Players Ball”. (Ed – one of Bentley’s songs, “Sweet Lady Zelda” was re-recorded and produced by Miki Dallon as “Lady Zelda” for a single by Don Fardon, but without success.)

As Bentley later told Ben Whitten for the Half a Cow CD release: “Miki Dallon and I could not reach agreement as to the direction the album should take. The project went into hiatus soon after the bed tracks and rough vocals went down.”

The Piano Players Ball tracks were later picked up and released for the first time, albeit it an unfinished state, on the Half a Cow CD, Python Lee Jackson: Sweet Consolation 1966-1973.

As for the other Python Lee Jackson members Tony Cahill and David Montgomery moved to Paris where they hooked up with musicians from New York band, King Harvest, touring the US in support of the hit single “Dancin’ in the Moonlight”.

After returning briefly to the UK, both musicians travelled to Los Angeles to record an album with Peter Doyle, which was never released. Montgomery has since taken up residency in the US and currently live in Los Angeles. Cahill meanwhile headed back to Australia briefly but sadly died in Los Angeles on 13 August 2014.

Mick Liber remained in the UK until 1973 (working mainly with Dana Gillespie) when he returned to Australia. While in the UK, he also recorded with Medicine Head, Chris Barber and Ashton, Gardner & Dyke among others.

Back down under, he did numerous sessions for EMI before providing the music for the classic surf movie, Crystal Voyager.

In later years, Liber played with a band called Blerta in New Zealand, toured and recorded with singer Wendy Saddington and had his own group, Rocket Pilots. He also recorded with Peggy Zelm and continues to perform live on the Australian rock circuit.

Bentley returned to Australia in the mid-1970s. He continues to record and perform original material as well as pursuing a parallel career as journalist, columnist, food critic and travel writer. In 2005, he released his first album in a decade, Last Man Standing on Hot City Records.

Since the original version of this article appeared, he has recorded two further CDs and continues to play in and around southeast Queensland with his trio and various guests.

Python Lee Jackson’s best known song, “In a Broken Dream” meanwhile has continued to go from strength to strength.

Bentley explains that John Fogarty of Minder Music acquired the publishing from Miki Dallon’s YoungBlood many years ago. His promotion of the song has led to an unexpected resurgence in recent years.

One of the most surprising covers was Harlem rapper Rocky A$ap’s remix, retitled “Every Day”, which was featured on the soundtrack of the Baywatch film. Much of the original recording was used in the remix, says Bentley, who heard that when it hit the charts, Rod Stewart sang it to a huge crowd in Hyde Park and everybody sang along.

“There have literally been dozen of cover versions,” says Bentley. “I understand that Amy Winehouse was set to do a version of the song shortly before her death”.

Thank you to David Bentley for his considerable input. Also, many thanks to David Montgomery, Malcolm McGee, Mick Liber, Tony Cahill, John Helman, Chris Walsh, Ben Whitten, Barry McKay, David Kent, Bruce Johnstone, Miki Dallon and Mike Paxman.

Mick Liber can be reached at: https://mickliber.net 

David Bentley can be reached at: http://www.davidbentleymusic.com.au/

Copyright © Nick Warburton. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, without prior permission from the author

The original version of this article was published on the Nick Warburton website on 5 February 2008. This is an updated version.

 

 

The 2 ‘B’s Club, Ashford, Kent

The 2 ‘B’s Club, located at 2B Bank Street in Ashford, Kent, was a short-lived music venue that had previously hosted local bands when it was known as the Beat House.

However, in July 1966 it changed name and began advertising better known visiting groups such as The Birds (with Ron Wood on guitar) who opened the new venue, David Bowie & The Buzz, Bluesology (featuring future solo star Elton John) and The Gods (with Mick Taylor on guitar) among others.

I’ve started a list of acts, taken from the Kentish Express newspaper, which advertised gigs for Saturdays and Sundays, from its opening night on 16 July until its closure; the exact date is unclear, but the newspaper stopped advertising the venue around early May 1967.

Please leave comments with any memories and missing acts.

Photo may be subject to copyright

16 July 1966 – The Birds and The Oscar Brooke Bluesette

17 July 1966 – The Bo Street Runners and The Noyse

23 July 1966 – The Noyse

24 July 1966 – The Riot Squad and The Oscar Brooke Bluesette

Photo may be subject to copyright

30 July 1966 – The Stormsville Shakers and The Noyse

31 July 1966 – The Herd and The Noyse

Photo may be subject to copyright

6 August 1966 – The Downliners Sect and support

7 August 1966 – The Shades of Black

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

27 August 1966 – The Fingers and The Pastel Shades

28 August 1966 – The Shades of Black

29 August 1966 – The Noblemen and The End (this is a Monday)

Photo may be subject to copyright

3 September 1966 – Cops ‘N’ Robbers

4 September 1966 – Chaos

10 September 1966 – Steve Darbyshire & The Yum Yum Band and Bobby Gibson & The 004s

11 September 1966 – The Stormsville Shakers and The Moral Set

Photo may be subject to copyright

17 September 1966 – Dave Anthony’s Moods

18 September 1966 – missing gig

Photo may be subject to copyright

24 September 1966 – David Bowie & The Buzz

25 September 1966 – Parker’s Mood (replaced by The Couriers)

 

1 October 1966 – The Fingers

2 October 1966 – Pastel Shades

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

15 October 1966 – Bluesology and The Guests

16 October 1966 – The Suspect

21 October 1966 – The End (this is a Friday)

22 October 1966 – The Rick ‘N’ Beckers and The Shades of Black

23 October 1966 – The King Pins

Photo may be subject to copyright

29 October 1966 – Julian Covey & The Machine and The Noyse (featuring Mouse)

30 October 1966 – The Mixed Feelings

 

5 November 1966 – Philip Goodhand Tait & The Stormsville Shakers and The End

6 November 1966 – The Noyse (featuring Mouse)

Photo may be subject to copyright

12 November 1966 – The Majority (straight from the Playboy Club, London) with support

13 November 1966 – The Kult

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

26 November 1966 – The [Mike] Stuart Span plus support

27 November 1966 – The Rebounce

Missing dates here

24 December 1966 – MI Five and Moral Set

Photo may be subject to copyright

26 December 1966 – The Savoy Brown Blues Band and Shades of Black

Photo may be subject to copyright

31 December 1966 – The Motivation (ex-Noblemen) and The Suspects

 

1 January 1967 – The Meantimers

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

14 January 1967 – The Gods and The Roots of Evil

15 January 1967 – The End

21 January 1967 – The Rick ‘N’ Beckers and The Rebounds

22 January 1967 – The Poor Boys

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

4 February 1967 – Motivation (ex-Noblemen) and Spectre Quin Team and Vaughan & Diana

5 February 1967 – Vaughan & Diana’s Spin

Missing dates here

Photo may be subject to copyright

18 February 1967 – The Warren Davis Monday Band with support

19 February 1967 – The Rick ‘N’ Beckers

Missing dates here

 

4 March 1967 – Heinz & The Wild Boys and The Suspects and Vaughan & Diana

Photo may be subject to copyright

5 March 1967 – The Rick ‘N’ Beckers

11 March 1967 – The Joyce Bond Show

12 March 1967 – Missing gig

Photo may be subject to copyright

18 March 1967 – The Gods

19 March 1967 – Heart & Soul

Photo may be subject to copyright

25 March 1967 – Long John Baldry Show and The Silhouettes

26 March 1967 – Winston’s Fumbs

 

Missing dates here

22 April 1967 – The Rick ‘N’ Beckers

23 April 1967 – Just 4

28 April 1967 – the Soulville Show (Friday)

Transfusion

Original Transfusion line up, 1968. Photo courtesy of Danny McBride

Simon Caine (Vocals) 

Danny McBride (Guitar, Vocals) 

Rick Shuckster (Bass) 

Tom Sheret (Keyboards) 

Pat Little (Drums) 

Later members included:

Andy Kaye (Guitar) 

Louis Yacknin (Bass) 

Ray Arkenstaul (Keyboards)

Stan Endersby (Guitar, Vocals)

Brother of Lighthouse singer Bob McBride, Danny McBride (b. 1951, Toronto) had started out playing in The Shades alongside his brother in 1965. The group was the house band at Charlie Brown’s coffeehouse.

Danny McBride later helped Don Walsh start The Downchild Blues Band and also did stints with The Diplomats and Bob McBride and The Breath.

Danny McBride formed the original line up of Transfusion around July 1968 with former Georgian People (later Chimo!) drummer Pat Little (b. 10 March 1947, North Bay, Ontario), who had recently rehearsed with McKenna Mendelson. With the help of John Brower, who was looking for a house band to play at the Rock Pile, they completed the line up with former Simon Caine & The Catch members, Simon Caine, Tom Sheret and Rick Shuckster.

The first line up played together for most of the year before Caine, Shuckster and Sherett moved on and McBride and Little brought in Andy Kaye from Peter & The Pipers and Louis Yacknin from The Carnival Connection.

Former Livingston’s Journey member Stan Endersby replaced McBride in January 1969 after briefly working in England in late 1968 with Horace Faith and the house band at Hatchetts Playground in Piccadilly, London and then returning home to play a few shows with Leather.

Transfusion then changed name to Crazy Horse and opened for The Mothers of Invention in February. The band successfully auditioned for a show at Toronto’s Electric Circus during February 1969 but Endersby left soon afterwards and flew to England to form Mapleoak with Peter Quaife of The Kinks.

The rest of the band, still under the Crazy Horse name, began a show at the Electric Circus on 21 April 1969.

Yacknin left later that year to join Lighthouse and the band broke up soon afterwards. Little traveled to New York and played with Van Morrison.

Danny McBride rejoined Pat Little in January 1970 in a revamped Luke & The Apostles. McBride established a solo career and worked as a session player, subsequently joining Chris de Burgh among others.

Advertised gigs

20 September 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Blood, Sweat & Tears

22 September 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Blood, Sweat & Tears

27-28 September 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with The Silver Apples

 

4 October 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Fever Tree

5 October 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Procol Harum and Fever Tree

6 October 1968 – Massey Hall, Toronto with The Fugs and McKenna Mendelson Mainline

27 October 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Jeff Beck Group

 

30 November 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with McKenna Mendelson Mainline

 

27 December 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Mandala and The Paupers

31 December 1968 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Kensington Market and Sherman and Peaboby

 

15 February 1969 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Witness Inc (billed as New Transfusion)

Venue poster. Thanks to Stan Endersby for sharing

22 February 1969 – Unknown venue, Toronto with Leather (billed as Transfusion)

23 February 1969 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention (billed as Crazy Horse)

27-28 February 1969 – The Garage, Toronto (billed as Crazy Horse)

 

3-6 March 1969 – El Patio, Toronto (billed as Crazy Horse)

21 March 1969 – Rock Pile, Toronto with Mary Lou Horner (billed as Crazy Horse)

All gigs are from the Toronto Telegram‘s After Four section. This website was also very useful: https://yorkvillecoffeehouses.org/

Huge thank you to Danny McBride, Pat Little and Stan Endersby for providing information on the band. 

We’d love to hear from anyone who can provide more information and photos.

Franklin Sheppard & The Good Sheppards

The group in August 1967. Left to right: Chuck Slater, Rick Berkett, Glen Higgins, Franklin Sheppard, Wulf Stelling, Gordon Baxter and Sonnie Bernardi. Photo: Gord Baxter

Franklin ‘Zeke’ Sheppard (Vocals)

Ed Patterson (Guitar)                        

Robbie King (Organ)

Ronnie Banks (Bass)

Gordon Eves (Drums)

 

Wulf Stelling (B-3 organ) 

Gordon Baxter (Guitar)

Glen Higgins (Saxophone)      

Rick Berkett (Bass)                    

Frank De Felice (Drums)

 

Sonnie Bernardi (Drums)

Chuck Slater (Drums)

Singer Franklin Sheppard had started out with The Dovermen in the early 1960s before putting together Franklin Sheppard & The A-Go-Gos around 1965 with the first line up. Guitarist Ed Patterson may have been the same musician who was in Brantford, Ontario band, Jaye’s Rayders, but this needs confirmation.

This band subsequently became The Good Sheppards and gigged extensively in Toronto before travelling to Vancouver in September 1966 for a show at Dirty Sal’s Cellar. On their return, the musicians went their separate ways and the singer looked around for a new band to become the second version of The Good Sheppards.

In October 1966, he found a Brantford, Ontario band led by Wulf Stelling and took over from the original singer Larry Lewellan. He then took the band back to Toronto.

Group leader Wulf Stelling had worked with The Marques Royales in the early 1960s alongside several future Grant Smith & The Power members.

During the spring of 1966, he began to put together a new soul/RnB group with former Jaye’s Rayders members Rick Berkett, Glen Higgins and Frank De Felice. To complete the formation, he brought in singer Larry Lewellan plus (from Kitchener group The Counts Royale) guitarist Gordon Baxter.

Photo: Gord Baxter

The new band rehearsed intensively for three months before Franklin Sheppard turned up and took over the lead singer position. Through their Toronto-based manager Gary Salter, they began to pick up work on the southern Ontario club circuit.

The new version also appeared on CTV’s It’s Happening and played tonnes of soul tunes. One of Sheppard’s popular numbers was Sam Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’.

During mid-1967 Sheppard and Stelling decided to add a second drummer and brought in Sonnie Bernardi from Marianne Brown & The Good Things.

However, when the group was offered a US tour in August 1967, Frank De Felice decided to leave and later worked with the band Jericho. Chuck Slater took his place.

The following month, Franklin Sheppard & The Good Sheppards embarked on a US tour that lasted until May 1968, kicking off with a residency at Tony Mart’s in Ocean City, New Jersey on 3 September, playing alongside The Coachmen.

Photo: Gord Baxter

Through their US booking agent Jack Fisher from Hillside, New Jersey, the band performed seven nights a week on the US ‘nightclub circuit’.

Through him, Gord Baxter remembers that they got to perform at #3 Lounge in Boston from early October 1967 and then worked a number of nightclubs in Boston, including the Intermission, before moving on to New York to play at Trude Heller’s in Greenwich Village, starting in mid-November. After playing in the Big Apple, Chuck Slater departed in December and later joined Ocean.

Photo: Gord Baxter. Castaways Club, Chicago

Reverting to a single drummer, the musicians next travelled to Chicago to perform at the Castaways Club before moving to Nashville. From there they headed to Miami, Florida and worked at Wayne Cochran’s club, the Barn during February 1968 alongside Wayne Cochran and The CC Riders and Freddie Scott & His Kinfolk.

Photo: Gord Baxter

Baxter remembers that after they finished up in Miami, the group headed north again and performed in Newport, Rhode Island, around Cape Cod and back to Boston.

In May 1968, the group was playing at the Inferno in Buffalo, New York when Sheppard decided he had had enough. With the rest of the musicians exhausted, everyone returned to Ontario where Baxter started to put together a new group in Kitchener.

Then, in January 1969, Stelling contacted him to join a new version of Grant Smith & The Power alongside Berkett and Bernardi.

Stelling left in May that year while the others remained with The Power until August when Grant Smith paired the band down. Baxter then reunited with Stelling in The Wulf Pack.

Sheppard joined Mainline in the spring of 1970 and later played with Blackstone. During the ‘70s he may have played with The Dutch Mason Band before moving to Nashville to work as a studio musician. After working in Florida he died of cancer.

Selected gigs

1 October 1965 – Jubilee Auditorium, Oshawa, Ontario with The Morticians (billed as Franklin Sheppard & The A Go Gos)

 

3-4 December 1965 – Devil’s Den, Toronto

10-11 December 1965 – Devil’s Den, Toronto

24-25 December 1965 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

 

14 January 1966 – Gogue Inn, Toronto with The Counts

15 January 1966 – Gogue Inn, Toronto with Jaye’s Rayders and Hamilton and His Teejays

 

18-19 February 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

25-26 February 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

 

1 April 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto with Jon and Lee & The Checkmates

2 April 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

22-23 April 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto with G Lawson Knight & The Chancellors

 

14 May 1966 – Inn Crowd, Toronto

20-21 May 1966 – Inn Crowd, Toronto

22 May 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto with Jon and Lee & The Checkmates

 

31 July 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

 

26-27 August 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

 

2-4 September 1966 – Avenue Road Club, Toronto

23 September 1966 – Gogue Inn, Toronto with Soul Searchers featuring Dianne Brooks and Eric Mercury, George Lawson Knight and & The Chancellors, Greg Winkfield and Al Lalonde

24 September 1966 – Dirty Sal’s Cellar, Vancouver, British Columbia with The Villains (Vancouver Sun)

The second version began here

18 February 1967 – Gogue Inn, Toronto with E G Smith & The Power and The Wyldfyre

24 February 1967 – The Gogue Inn, Toronto with The Five Good Reasons, The Dana and Sunny and Peter

 

3 March 1967 – The Gogue Inn, Toronto with The Lords of London, The New Breed and Murray McLaughlan

17 March 1967 – The Gogue Inn, Toronto with The Stampeders, The Dana and Doug Brown

24 March 1967 – The Hawk’s Nest, Toronto with Bobby Kris & The Imperials and R K & The Associates

31 March 1967 – Weston Legion Hall, Toronto with The Ugly Ducklings

 

15 April 1967 – The Gogue Inn, Toronto With G Lawson Knight & The Paytons

 

26 May 1967 – Don Mills Curling Club, Toronto with The People

27 May 1967 – Club 888, Toronto

 

24 June 1967 – Broom and Stone, Scarborough, Ontario with Luv-Lites and Act IV

27 June 1967 – Balmy Beach Club, Scarborough, Ontario

 

15 July 1967 – The Hawk’s Nest, Toronto

 

2-3 September 1967 – Sauble Beach Pavilion, Owen Sound, Ontario (The Sun Times)

 

1 October 1967 – #3 Lounge, Boston, Massachusetts, USA with The Coachmen (start of three-week engagement)

22 October 1967 – Intermission, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (start of week-long engagement)

 

12 November 1967 – Trude Heller’s, NYC, USA (start of four-week engagement at this club)

 

10 December 1967 – West Dance, New Jersey, USA (start of two-week engagement) The band returns to NYC after this to play at Trude Heller’s again

Photo: Gord Baxter. Castaways Club, Chicago

January 1968 – Castaways Club, Chicago, Illinois, USA

 

February 1968  – The Barn, Miami, Florida, USA  with Wayne Cochran and The CC Riders and Freddie Scott & His Kinfolk

 

May 1968 – Inferno, Buffalo, New York

All Toronto area gigs are from The Toronto Telegram’s After Four section. RPM Music Weekly was also very helpful for background information.

Huge thanks to Gord Baxter for the group photos and providing details about the second version

 

 

The Diplomats

Peter McGraw (Vocals) 

Bob McBride (Guitar, Vocals) 

Ricky Capreol (Guitar)

John Brower (Bass) 

Pat Godfrey (Piano) replaced by John Goadsby (aka Goldy McJohn) (Keyboards)

Jeff Smith  (Drums) replaced by Richie Grand (Drums)

The Diplomats were an interesting mid-late ‘60s outfit, which featured future Lighthouse singer Bob McBride and top session player Pat Godfrey.

John Brower later became a top rock promoter and was instrumental in setting up Canada’s first outdoor rock festival. He was also involved in organising the Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival concert with The Plastic Ono Band.

Peter McGraw later led Diamond Back in the mid-‘70s, while original drummer, Jeff Smith, later started his own recording studio.

The original line up, with the exception of McBride, had previously played together as Little John & The Friars and changed name sometime in early 1965 after Grand and Goadsby had joined The Mynah Birds a few months earlier.

According to Toronto Telegram‘s After Four section, McBride formed his own band Bob McBride & The Breath in late 1967 and played at the Purple Peanut Club in Toronto on 26-27 December.

McGraw sang with Dave Nicols & The Coins when the band broke up while Godfrey went on to Simon Caine in late 1969.

Richie Grand, who had come in from The Mynah Birds in May 1965 ended up with The Stormy Clovers. John Goadsby, who also came in from The Mynah Birds that same month, only stayed a few months and ended up joining The Sparrows, changing his name to Goldy McJohn. The band sometimes gigged as Little John & The Diplomats.

Advertised gigs

21 May 1966 – North Toronto Memorial Arena, Toronto with The Five Rogues, The Big Town Boys, J B & The Playboys and Dee & The Yeomen

1 October 1966 – Gogue Inn, Toronto

16 September 1967 – Peggy’s Pavillion, Stroud, Ontario

28-30 December 1967 – The Purple Peanut, Toronto with The New Breed

All of these gigs were advertised in the Toronto Telegram‘s After Four section. Thanks to Peter McGraw for providing some of the band information.

We’d love to hear from anyone who has any photos or can add any more information. 

Little John & The Friars

Peter McGraw (Vocals) 

John Goadsby (aka Goldy McJohn) (Keyboards) replaced by Pat Godfrey (Keyboards)

Ricky Capreol (Guitar)

John Brower (Bass) 

Richie Grand (Drums) 

Little John & The Friars were an early R&B band formed in Toronto in 1962 by singer Peter McGraw (b. 23 December 1943, Toronto, Ontario).

The group is perhaps best known for containing Goldy McJohn and Richie Grand (b. 11 June 1945, Toronto, Ontario) who went onto play with The Mynah Birds with Rick James 1964-1965.

Brower and Godfrey had started out playing in The Omegas. In early 1965 the group added second vocalist Bob McBride and changed name to The Diplomats.

Advertised gigs:

8 October 1966 – Hawk’s Nest, Toronto (billed as Little John & The Diplomats) (Toronto Telegram’s After Four section)

We’d love to hear from anyone who has any photos of the band and can add more information

 

 

 

Blue Moon, Cheltenham gigs July 1965-May 1967

The entry below should be credited to David Jackson, Chris Stanbury, Mike Williams and Richard Goddard who own the copyright on the following.

The story of the Blue Moon Club, Cheltenham began lunchtime on the 25th December 1964 as the then twenty-year-old John Norman and his elder brother Eddie were eating their Christmas Day lunch in the Headstone Hotel in West London. For some time under the guidance of Eddie the pair had been running regular live music events in and around Middlesex, including The Fender Club, Kenton; The Memorial Hall, Harrow Weald; The Railway Hotel, North Harrow; The New Georgian Club, Cowley and the original Blue Moon Club in Hayes.  In what would soon turned out to be a stroke of good luck for all concerned like-minded jazz musician and local music promotions rival Bill Reid was also in the restaurant that Christmas Day and overhearing Eddie and John’s conversation he made his way to their table saying to the brothers that he had often had similar thoughts of expansion.

Bill was well known to John and Eddie for his jazz-orientated promotions with fellow jazz enthusiast and business partner Jack Fallon. At the South Harrow Jazz Club, they would book such names as Jerry Lee Lewis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Bill said he would be interested in their new venture suggesting they join forces and follow up the advertisement with a trip out ‘West’ to check out the premises in Cheltenham’s High Street.

The club opened on the 17th July 1965 and closed its doors finally on 17th May 1967 and was probably one of best of a small band of regional Mod clubs outside of London

The Action appeared nine times, followed by Gary Farr & The T-Bones who appeared eight times lead the way for visiting bands from outside the local area; local group The Alan Walker Band, managed by the club owners appeared nine times. The club will be well remembered for appearances of Jimi Hendrix and Cream

The artists and performance dates were sourced via original club members and club management flyers along with advertisements placed in The Gloucestershire Echo and The Citizen newspapers held at the local Archive Offices in Cheltenham and Gloucester, John Norman Stephen Reid, son of the late co-owner Bill Reid and fellow Blue Moon book researchers David Jackson, Chris Stanbury, Mike Williams and myself Richard Goddard.

1965

17 July 1965 – The Bo Street Runners (Grand opening night)

18 July 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

21 July 1965 – Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds

22 July 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

23 July 1965 – Ups ‘N’ Downs

24 July 1965 – Ray Martin Combo (aka Ray Martin Group)

25 July 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

28 July 1965 – The Chessmen featuring Tony Knight

29 July 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

30 July 1965 – Alan Walker’s Roadhogs (says first appearance at the Blue Moon)

31 July 1965 – The London Crowd (says from the West’s End’s Marquee and Flamingo)

 

1 August 1965 – Dave Whittling (top London folk singer) plus discotheque

4 August 1965 – Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band

5 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

6 August 1965 – Sons of Fred

7 August 1965 – The Artwoods (says that sensational recording group from RSG)

8 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

11 August 1965 – The Who (says Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere!!!)

13 August 1965 – Mickey Finn & The Blue Men

14 August 1965 – John Lee & The Groundhogs

15 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

18 August 1965 – The Ram Jam Band featuring Geno Washington

19 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

20 August 1965 – The Strats (says the newest sound to follow “Them” from Ireland

21 August 1965 – The Bo Street Runners (says by fantastic demand –the return of)

22 August 1965 – Discotheque

25 August 1965 – Steam Packet featuring Long John Baldry, Brian Auger, Rod Stewart & Julie Driscoll

26 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque

27 August 1965 – The Tyrants  (says top group from the West)

28 August 1965 – The Shevelles

29 August 1965 – Discotheque

30 August 1965 – Discotheque

31 August 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett/discotheque & dance auditions

 

1 September 1965 –T-Bones  (says great London sound of the)

2 September 1965 – Discotheque

3 September 1965 – John Lee & The Groundhogs (says fantastic demand, the return of)

4 September 1965 – Davy Jones & The Lower Third (says by request)

5 September 1965 – Discotheque

8 September 1965 – The Graham Bond Organisation

9 September 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett /discotheque

10 September 1965 – The London Crowd (says from the West End those sensational)

11 September 1965 – The “0-0” Soul Show featuring Alex Harvey & Jimmy Cliff

12 September 1965 – Discotheque

15 September 1965 – Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds (says by fantastic demand)

16 September 1965 – Discotheque

17 September 1965 – Ram Jam Band featuring Geno Washington (says by fantastic demand the return of)

Photo from Richard Goddard

18 September 1965 – Boz & The Boz People (says sensational new sound)

19 September 1965 – Discotheque (says best record selection anywhere!)

22 September 1965 – Lou Johnson plus Sonny & The Cool School (says direct from the States)

23 September 1965 – Discotheque

24 September 1965 – Ronnie Jones & The Nightimers (says from London’s West End)

25 September 1965 – Chris Farlowe & The Thunderbirds (says by fantastic demand the return of)

26 September 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett /discotheque

27 September 1965 – Jimmy James & The Vagabonds (says reckoned the absolute tops. Don’t dare miss this!)

30 September 1965 – Discotheque

 

1 October 1965 – Discotheque

2 October 1965 – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (says sensational London group)

3 October 1965 – Discotheque

6 October 1965 – The Shevelles (says the fabulous and unique sound of)

7 October 1965 – Discotheque

8 October 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett /discotheque

9 October 1965 – John Lee & The Groundhogs (says fantastic demand, the return of)

10 October 1965 – Discotheque

13 October 1965 – The Mike Cotton Sound (says sensational must be heard)

14 October 1965 – Discotheque

15 October 1965 – Discotheque

16 October 1965 – The Chessmen (says fantastic demand, the return of London’s top group)

17 October 1965 – Discotheque

20 October 1965 – Steam Packet featuring Long John Baldry, Brian Auger, Rod Stewart & Julie Driscoll

21 October 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett /discotheque

22 October 1965 – Discotheque

23 October 1965 – The Silence (says from London’s Flamingo & West End)

24 October 1965 – Discotheque

27 October 1965 – The Small Faces (says “Whatcha Gonna Do About It”) plus The Advocates

28 October 1965 – DJ Dave Bennett /discotheque

29 October 1965 – Discotheque

30 October 1965 – The Hellions (says west country’s top recording stars the sensational)

31 October 1965 – Discotheque

 

3 November 1965 – Zoot Money (says by fantastic demand the return of)

4 November 1965 – Discotheque

5 November 1965 – Discotheque

6 November 1965 – Blues Hounds (says Spencer Davis is raving about the sensational)

7 November 1965 – The Alan Walker Group

10 November 1965 – The Graham Bond Organisation (says by fantastic demand)

11 November 1965 – Discotheque

12 November 1965 – Discotheque

13 November 1965 – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (says by fantastic demand the return of)

14 November 1965 – The Alan Walker Group

17 November 1965 – The Alan Walker Group (Alan Price advertised but did not play)

20 November 1965 – The Alan Bown Set (says Gent’s please note, Ties to be worn (Saturdays only)

21 November 1965 – The Alan Walker Group

24 November 1965 – Advertised -From USA – ‘In the Midnight Hour” Wilson Pickett, did not appear.

26 November 1965 – The Alan Walker Group

27 November 1965 – The Action (says TV’s Disc-A-Go-Go tonight choosing 100 dancers for next Wednesday’s show.

28 November 1965 – Discotheque

 

2 December 1965 – Hedgehoppers Anonymous + The Alan Walker Group

3 December 1965 – Discotheque (Featuring Dave Bennett as your DJ)

4 December 1965 – Steam Packet: – Long John Baldry, Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and Rod ‘The Mod’ Stewart

5 December 1965 – The Alan Walker Group

9 December 1965 – The Spencer Davis Group plus The Hellions

10 December 1965 – The Alan Walker Group (says only 14 more days)

11 December 1965 – The Downliners Sect (says, Sensational Recording and R & B Group …The Exciting)

12 December 1965 – Discotheque (Extra shilling charged on admission to go towards Children’s Party)

16 December 1965 – The Action (says, By overwhelming demand, the return of the…)

17 December 1965 – The Alan Walker Group (says, Only 7 more days)

18 December 1965 – The Hellions plus The Advocates

19 December 1965 – The Alan Walker Group (says, Getting Warmer)

23 December 1965 – Discotheque (says, Pre warm up for tomorrow)

24 December 1965 – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (Christmas Party)

26 December 1965 – The Alan Walker Group plus The Advocates (says Boxing Day Bonanza)

27 December 1965 – Discotheque

30 December 1965 – Discotheque

31 December 1965 – John Lee and The Groundhogs (New Years Eve Party)

1966

1 January 1965 – Gary Farr and The T-Bones (says, Start the New Year at the Moon)

2 January 1965 – Discotheque (says, Back to normal!! Whew, what a week!!!)

6 January 1965 – The Birds (says, Sensational London Group)

7 January 1965 – Discotheque (DJ Dave Bennett, in the cage)

8 January 1965 – The Shakedown Sounds  (says, Birmingham and London top group, by demand the)

9 January 1965 – Discotheque

12 January 1966 – Fontella Bass plus Quiet Five (says, one sensational night only! “Rescue Me” From the USA)

13 January 1966 – The Alan Walker Group

14 January 1966 – Discotheque (DJ Dave Bennett)

15 January 1966 – The Fairies (says, sensational London Group – R S G -Thank Your Lucky Stars)

16 January 1966 – The Advocates

20 January 1966 – The Pretty Things (says, You may hate them, you may love them)

21 January 1966 – Discotheque

22 January 1966 – The Action (says, the group you’ve all been waiting for)

23 January 1966 – Discotheque

27 January 1966 – Lee Dorsey plus The Advocates (says, The Sensational  ” Ride Your Pony” Man)

28 January 1966 – Discotheque

29 January 1966 – James Royal and The Hawks (says, the up and coming London group)

30 January 1966 – Discotheque

 

3 February 1966 – Chris Farlowe and The Thunderbirds (says, the one and only)

4 February 1966 – Discotheque

5 February 1966 – The Carnaby (says, the street and band the whole country is talking about)

6 February 1966 – Discotheque

10 February 1966 – Doris Troy (says, “What Gonna Do About It” “Heartaches”)

11 February 1966 – Discotheque

12 February 1966 – Jimmy Brown Sound (says, the only Band that could back Ben. E. King on his last tour)

13 February 1966 – Discotheque

17 February 1966 – Zoot Money and his Big Roll Band (says, The Showman himself)

18 February 1966 – Discotheque

19 February 1966 – The Alan Bown Set

20 February 1966 – Discotheque

24 February 1966 – John Lee’s Groundhogs (says, Moon’s most favourite group)

25 February 1966 – Discotheque

26 February 1966 – The Advocates

27 February 1966 – Discotheque

 

3 March 1966 – Jimmy Cliffs Dynamic All Soul Show, Pete Hodges New Generation featuring Ayesha.

4 March 1966 – Discotheque

5 March 1966 – The Statesides (says, top London group with a big line-up)

6 March 1966 – Discotheque

7 March 1966 – The Advocates (Yardbirds advertised, did not play)

10 March 1966 – Steam Packet: – Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, Julie Driscoll, and Brian Auger Trinity.

11 March 1966 – Discotheque

12 March 1966 – Mickey Finn (says, by overwhelming demand – the sensational)

13 March 1966 – Discotheque

16 March 1966 – Discotheque

17 March 1966 – The Birds (says, by request, the return of the dynamic)

18 March 1966 – Discotheque

19 March 1966 – John Lee’s Groundhogs

20 March 1966 – Discotheque

23 March 1966 – Discotheque

25 March 1966 – Discotheque

26 March 1966 – The Rosco Brown Combo (says, big London line-up… from London’s Marquee)

27 March 1966 – Discotheque

30 March 1966 – Discotheque (says, your first drink on the house)

 

1 April 1966 – Discotheque

2 April 1966 – Steam Packet: – Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, Julie Driscoll, and Brian Auger Trinity

3 April 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage.

6 April 1966 – Discotheque

8 April 1966 – Discotheque

9 April 1966 – The Action (says, Sensational London Group)

10 April 1966 – Discotheque

11 April 1966 – The Alan Walker Group (says, After a long absence — from London’s Marquee & Flamingo)

13 April 1966 – Discotheque

15 April 1966 – Discotheque

16 April 1966 – The Crowd

17 April 1966 – Discotheque

20 April 1966 – Discotheque

22 April 1966 – Discotheque (the weekend starts here)

23 April 1966 – The Alan Bown Set (says, by demand, the sensational.)

24 April 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

27 April 1966 – Discotheque

29 April 1966 – Discotheque

30 April 1966 – Gary Farr and the T-Bones (says, sensational London Group)

 

1 May 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage.

4 May 1966 – Discotheque

6 May 1966 – Discotheque

7 May 1966 – The Action (says, by overwhelming demand)

8 May 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage.

11 May 1966 – Discotheque

13 May 1966 – Discotheque

14 May 1 966 – The Good Goods (formerly known as The Advocates)

15 May 1966 – Discotheque

18 May 1966 – Discotheque

20 May 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

21 May 1966 – The Shotgun Express: – Rod Stewart, Beryl Marsden, Peter B’s Looners, (great new steam packet)

22 May 1966 – Discotheque

25 May 1966 – Discotheque

27 May 1966 – Discotheque (the weekend starts here)

28 May 1966 – The Deep Feeling (formerly The Hellions)

30 May 1966 – The Buzz

 

1 June 1966 – Discotheque

2 June 1966 – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (says, back by popular demand)

3 June 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

4 June 1966 – The Jimmy Brown Sound

5 June 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

8 June 1966 – Discotheque

10 June 1966 – Discotheque

11 June 1966 – The Shevelles (says, from London’s Flamingo, the exciting)

12 June 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

15 June 1966 – Earl Richmond (says, Radio London’s DJ)

17 June 1966 – Discotheque

18 June 1966 – The Falling Leaves (says, Oxfords top group)

19 June 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

22 June 1966 – Discotheque

24 June 1966 – Discotheque (the weekend starts here)

25 June 1966 – Jimmy James and The Vagabonds (says, by absolutely overwhelming demand)

26 June 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett

29 June 1966 – Discotheque

 

1 July 1966 – Discotheque

2 July 1966 – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (says, don’t miss this)

3 July 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

6 July 1966 – Discotheque

8 July 1966 – Discotheque

9 July 1966 – David Bowie and The Buzz

10 July 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

13 July 1966 – Discotheque

15 July 1966 – Discotheque

16 July 1966 – The Alan Bown Set plus The Bo Street Runners (says, first birthday party night)

17 July 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

20 July 1966 – Discotheque

22 July 1966 – Discotheque

23 July 1966 – The Good Goods

24 July 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

27 July 1966 – Discotheque

29 July 1966 – Discotheque

30 July 1966 – James Royal and The Hawks (afternoon opening for staff and members to watch World Cup)

 

3 August 1966 – Discotheque

5 August 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

6 August 1966 – The Action

7 August 1966 – Discotheque

10 August 1966 – Discotheque

12 August 1966 – Discotheque

Photo from Richard Goddard

13 August 1966 – Cream (says, don’t dare miss this)

14 August 1966 – Discotheque

15 August 1966 – Gary Farr and The T-Bones (says, back again by demand)

17 August 1966 – Discotheque

19 August 1966 – Discotheque

20 August 1966 – Keith Powell and Billie Davis plus top band.

21 August 1966 – DJ Dave Bennett – in the Cage

24 August 1966 – Discotheque

26 August 1966 – Discotheque

27 August 1966 – Gary Farr and The T- Bones (says, back again by demand, the fantastic sound of)

28 August 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

31 August 1966 – Discotheque

 

2 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

3 September 1966 – The Koobas (say’s, Latest Recording “Sweet Music)

4 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

7 September 1966 – Discotheque

9 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

10 September 1966 – The Graham Bond Organisation

11 September 1966 – Discotheque

14 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

16 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

17 September 1966 –The Shevelles

18 September 1966 – Discotheque

21 September 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

23 September 1966 – DJ Frankie & Rocky

24 September 1966 – The Action (says, don’t be late for this one, free admission with advert)

25 September 1966 – Discotheque

28 September 1966 – Discotheque

30 September 1966 – DJ Frankie & Rocky

 

1 October 1966 – Gary Farr and The T-Bones

2 October 1966 – Discotheque

5 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

7 October 1966 – Discotheque

8 October 1966 – Dace Anthony’s Mood (says, from London’s Marquee. the big sound of) This is Dave Anthony’s Moods

9 October 1966 – Discotheque

12 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

13 October 1966 – Discotheque

15 October 1966 – The Falling Leaves (says, knockout group, currently playing at Tiles

16 October 1966 – Discotheque

19 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

21 October 1966 – Discotheque

22 October 1966 – Alvin Robinson (‘Something You Got” “Searching “ and Down Home Girl”)

23 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

26 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

28 October 1966 – Discotheque

29 October 1966 – Ray King Soul Band featuring James Royal (says, from Tiles the big sound of)

30 October 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

 

2 November 1966 – Discotheque

4 November 1966 – Discotheque

5 November 1966 – The Artwoods (says, the awaited return of London’s)

6 November 1966 – Discotheque

9 November 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

11 November 1966 – Discotheque

12 November 1966 – Nepenthe and the Subterraneans (says, from America, the way-out sounds of)

13 November 1966 – Discotheque

Photo from Richard Goddard

18 November 1966 – Lee Dorsey plus supporting show (support band the Good Goods)

19 November 1966 – Cream (says, England’s top group)

20 November 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

26 November 1966 – Discotheque

27 November 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

29 November 1966 – The Alan Bown Set (says, the sensational)

 

1 December 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

2 December 1966 – Discotheque

3 December 1966 – The Koobas

4 December 1966 – Discotheque

7 December 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

9 December 1966 – Discotheque

10 December 1966 – Zoot Money and his Big Roll (says, that Raving Looner)

11 December 1966 – Discotheque

14 December 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

16 December 1966 – Discotheque

17 December 1966 – The Move (says, the Psychedelic Phenomena)

18 December 1966 – Surprise band

21 December 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

23 December 1966 –Surprise Band

24 December 1966 – Gary Farr and the T-Bones (Christmas Eve Party)

26 December 1966 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

28 December 1966 – Discotheque

30 December 1966 – Discotheque (says, warm up for tomorrows rave)

31 December 1966 – Long John Baldry Show Ft Alan Walker & Stuart Brown & Bluesology

1967

1 January 1967 – Discotheque (says, phew its all over, back to normal, back to work tomorrow)

5 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

6 January 1967 – Discotheque (says, the weekend starts here)

7 January 1967 – Brian Auger Trinity Ft Julie Discoll

8 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

11 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

13 January 1967 – Discotheque

14 January 1967 – The Alan Bown (says, the awaited return of London’s)

15 January 1967 – The Good Goods

18 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

20 January 1967 – Discotheque

21 January 1967 – The Frame (from Birmingham, recorded “Doctor” “ I can’t go on” RCA Records)

22 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

23 January 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

27 January 1967 – Discotheque & Go Go Competition

28 January 1967 – Gary Farr and The T-Bones (says, after Christmas Eves fantastic rave)

29 January 1967 – Discotheque

 

1 February 1967 – Discotheque

3 February 1967 – Discotheque (says, phew its all over, back to normal, back to work tomorrow)

4 February 1967 – Long John Baldry Show Ft Alan Walker & Stuart Brown & Bluesology

5 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky and the Moon Go Go Girls

8 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

10 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

11 February 1967 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience

12 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

15 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

17 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky (Says, the weekend starts here)

18 February 1967 – The Action (says, back again by demand. The fantastic sound of)

19 February 1967 – Discotheque

22 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

24 February 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky (says, the weekend starts here)

25 February 1967 – Alan Bown (says, by demand, the return)

26 February 1967 – Discotheque

 

1 March 1967 – Geno Washington (says, one night only, on stage in person)

3 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

4 March 1967 – Sack’O’Woe

5 March 1967 – Discotheque and Go Go competition)

Photo from Richard Goddard

8 March 1967 – Lee Dorsey (says, by fantastic demand, the return of)

10 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

11 March 1967 – The Chessmen (says, London’s sensational)

12 March 1967 – Miss Go Go final discotheque.

15 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

17 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky (Says, the weekend starts here)

18 March 1967 – Brian Auger Trinity Ft Julie Discoll

19 March 1967 – Discotheque

22 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

24 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

25 March 1967 – The Action (says, by fantastic demand)

26 March 1967 – Discotheque

27 March 1967 – Easter Egg Rave Discotheque

29 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

31 March 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky (says, the weekend starts here)

 

1 April 1967 – P.P.Arnold and The Mike Cotton Sound Ft Lucas (says, April fools rave)

2 April 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

5 April 1967 – Discotheque

7 April 1967 – Discotheque

8 April 1967 – John L Watson and The Webb (says, Americas….)

9 April 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

12 April 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

14 April 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Rocky

15 April 1967 – The Chessmen Ft Owen Gray (says, by fantastic demand – return of)

16 April 1967 – Top DJ’s (DJ’s from other clubs owned the Moon owners)

19 April 1967 – Jimmy James & The Vagabonds

21 April 1967 – DJ’s Frankie & Mad Jim (Jim Donovan, from the1600 club in Hereford)

22 April 1967 – Long John Baldry Show Ft Alan Walker & Stuart Brown & Bluesology

23 April 1967 – Top DJ’s

26 April 1967 – The Drifters (believed to be The Invitations)

28 April 1967 –Top DJ’s

29 April 1967 – The Soul Sisters (says, from America … The Dynamic Exciting.)

30 April 1967 – Discotheque

 

3 May 1967 – Discotheque

5 May 1967 – Discotheque

6 May 1967 – Cliff Bennett (an unannounced appearance)

7 May 1967 – Top DJ’s (Mad Jim, Tony Lott  & Frankie used over the final club dates)

10 May 1967 – Discotheque

12 May 1967 – Discotheque         

10 May 1967 – Discotheque

13 May 1967 – The Dual (the last band to play at the club)

14 May 1967 – The last Sunday discotheque at the Moon

17 May 1967 – Blue Moon Closed.

 

The Total

Many thanks to Steve Sheldon for providing the information below and all of the photos

Formed in Worthing, West Sussex in early 1965, the original line up comprised:

Ian Gander – lead vocals

Pete Wadeson – lead guitar

Steve Sheldon – rhythm guitar

Pete Cushion – bass

Paul Jordan – drums

With the exception of Jordan, who had previously played with Le Bambas and Peter & The Zodiacs, and former Thunderbolts, Sabres and Zabres member Pete Cushion, the core members came from local band Pythagoras and his Theorems.

In late 1965, former Guilty Party drummer Charlie Pert replaced Paul Jordan.

Then, around July 1966, Ian Gander departed and singer (and multi-instrumentalist) Raymond Thompson, briefly joined and shared lead vocals with Sheldon.

Summer 1966. Left to right: Charlie Pert, Steve Sheldon, Pete Cushion, Raymond Thompson and Pete Wadeson

Thompson had recently moved to the south coast after his former band, west London outfit Malcolm & The Countdowns split. The Countdowns, incidentally, featured future Sweet bass player Steve Priest.

The new singer, however, didn’t stay long and soon moved to Toronto, Canada with his parents, where he subsequently formed the duo Stillwater.

Summer 1966. Left to right: Charlie Pert, Raymond Thompson, Pete Cushion, Steve Sheldon and Pete Wadeson

With Thompson gone, Sheldon assumed lead vocals and the quartet continued to gig locally and along the south coast of England. During 1965 and 1966, The Total backed national acts like The Hollies, The Kinks, The Who, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, The Zombies and others at top Worthing venues like the Assembly Hall and Pier Pavilion.

In early 1967, the band expanded its line-up with keyboard player Jim Denyer.

With Cushion unable to get time off his work, the band – Steve Sheldon, Pete Wadeson, Charlie Pert and newcomer Jim Denyer – did an audition at Regent Sound Studios in Denmark Street in Soho, central London during 1969.

The band at Regent Sound, 1969 with new member Jim Denyer (bottom right)

Not long afterwards, The Total (with Pete Cushion joining the others) recorded three tracks at Regent Sound with producer Shel Talmy. The track “Think” appears on Ace Records’ compilation CD Planet Mod.

1969 line up

However, in 1971, The Total split up and the individual members briefly worked with local bands.

Cushion, Sheldon and Wadeson subsequently reformed The Total later that year with new drummer Quentin Allen.

The Total in 1972. Left to right: Quentin Allen, Pete Cushion, Steve Sheldon and Pete Wadeson

The band continued into the mid-1970s but underwent a number of significant changes.

The Total, 1972

Sheldon moved to South Africa in 1975 but returned to the UK in 2017. While in South Africa he formed the band Easy Street and made some recordings.

The final Total line up in the mid 1970s. Bass player is Robert Elliott (far left)

The posters below have all been supplied by Steve Sheldon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cesar’s Club, Bedford

Cesar’s Club in Bedford was a significant rock venue in the 1960s that hosted a number of notable bands, including early Pink Floyd, Family and Ten Years After.

This is the start of an entry on listed artists, advertised in the Ampthill News & Flintwick Record and/or Bedfordshire Times. There are lots of gaps and we would welcome any additions.

Photo may be subject to copyright

9 June 1967 (Friday) – Freddie Mac & The Mac Sound

10 June 1967 (Saturday) – The Merseys

Photo may be subject to copyright

16 June 1967 (Friday) – Marmalade and The Alex Read Sound

17 June 1967 (Saturday) – The Family and The Clew

23 June 1967 (Friday) – Billy J Kramer & The Dakotas with The Minor Portions Roll Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

24 June 1967 (Saturday) – Pink Floyd (they either replaced The Skatterlights and The Contax or were replaced by them)

30 June 1967 (Friday) – The Chevells and The Peapots

 

1 July 1967 (Saturday) – The Dellroy Good Good Band and The Jamboree Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

7 July 1967 (Friday) – Elkie Brooks & The Scotch & Soda

8 July 1967 (Saturday) – Amen Corner

14 July 1967 (Friday) – Bag-o-Nails (ex-The Blue Flames)

15 July 1967 (Saturday) – The Move

21 July 1967 (Friday) – Wynder K Frog

22 July 1967 (Saturday) – Sonny Childe & The TNT

Photo may be subject to copyright

28 July 1967 (Friday) – Gass with The Niteshades or Nite Train

29 July 1967 (Saturday) – The Original Dyaks with Reaction

 

4 August 1967 (Friday) – TD Bachus & The Powerhouse and The Teapots

Photo may be subject to copyright

5 August 1967 (Saturday) – John Evans Smash and Minor Portion Roll Band

6 August 1967 (Sunday) – Minor Portion Roll Band

There is a gap in gigs advertised

Photo may be subject to copyright

25 August 1967 (Friday) – Freddie Mac & The Mac Sound

26 August 1967 (Saturday) – Tiles Big Band

27 August 1967 (Sunday) – The Kontax

There is a gap in gigs advertised

Photo may be subject to copyright

8 September 1967 (Friday) – Family and Flower Children

9 September 1967 (Saturday) – Floribunda Rose and Nite Train

10 September 1967 (Sunday) – Stuart James Inspiration

Photo may be subject to copyright

15 September 1967 (Friday) – The Kool and The 100w Carnation

16 September 1967 (Saturday) – The Lloyd Alexander Blues Band and The Courtelles

17 September 1967 (Sunday) – The Jambourie Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

22 September 1967 (Friday) – Amorous Prawns and The Paper Blitz Tissue

23 September 1967 (Saturday) – Hamilton & The Movement and Scotch of St James

24 September 1967 (Sunday) – The Maze

Photo may be subject to copyright

29 September 1967 (Friday) – The Soul Caravan and The Power

30 September 1967 (Saturday) – Geranium Pond and Roscoe Brown Combo

 

1 October 1967 (Sunday) – Craig King & The Night Train

Photo may be subject to copyright

6 October 1967 (Friday) – The Warren Davis Monday Band and The Locomotion

7 October 1967 (Saturday) – The Trax and The Jamboree Band

8 October 1967 (Sunday) – Tony Rivers & The Castaways and Plastic Dream Boat

Photo may be subject to copyright

13 October 1967 (Friday) – James Royal and The New Breed

14 October 1967 (Saturday) – Pink Floyd and The Tecknique

15 October 1967 (Sunday) – The Human Instinct and Modes Mode

Photo may be subject to copyright

20 October 1967 (Friday) – Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers and The Triads

21 October 1967 (Saturday) – The Lemon Line and The Garden

22 October 1967 (Sunday) – Ten Years After and The Mead

Photo may be subject to copyright

27 October 1967 (Friday) – The Orlons and The Paper Blitz Tissue

28 October 1967 (Saturday) – The Gods and The New Jump Band

29 October 1967 (Sunday) – The Derek Savage Foundation and The Pink Champagne

Photo may be subject to copyright

3 November 1967 (Friday) – The Alan Price Set and The Taylor Upton Big Band

4 November 1967 (Saturday) – The Survivors (or The Healers with Spectre Powerhouse)

5 November 1967 (Sunday) – Pesky Gee

Friday (and most Sunday) gigs appear to be missing from now on

10 November 1967 (Saturday) – The New Breed (According to Graham Sclater’s diary, The Manchester Playboys played on this date)

Photo may be subject to copyright

11 November 1967 (Sunday) – Cats Pyjamas and Geranium Pond

Photo may be subject to copyright

17 November 1967 (Saturday) – The Skatelites with The Minor Portion Roll Band

25 November 1967 (Saturday) – Marmalade and The Vivas

Photo may be subject to copyright

2 December 1967 (Saturday) – Milton James and the Harlem Knock Out

9 December 1967 (Saturday) – Catch 22 (aka Katch 22)

16 December 1967 (Saturday) – The Skatelites

Photo may be subject to copyright

23 December 1967 (Saturday) – The Human Instinct

Photo may be subject to copyright

30 December 1967 (Saturday) – The Lloyd Alexander Blues Band

 

13 January 1968 (Saturday) – Copper Pot

20 January 1968 (Saturday) – Workshop

Photo may be subject to copyright

27 January 1968 (Saturday) – Simon K & The Meantimers

The Bedfordshire Times stopped advertising gigs in 1968 after the above date

Copyright © Nick Warburton. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, without prior permission from the author

400 Ballroom, Torquay, Devon

This is the start of an entry on a popular music venue located in Torquay’s harbour that hosted many important visiting bands during the 1960s.

The gigs below and images are all from the Herald Express newspaper

For most of the year, gigs are only on Fridays and Saturdays with occasional gigs on other days in the week, such as Mondays and Wednesdays

2 October 1964 – The Secrets

3 October 1964 – The Master Sounds

5 October 1964 – The Dictators

9 October 1964 – The Telstars

10 October 1964 – The Mon-Keys

12 October 1964 – The Hunters

16 October 1964 – The Cyclones featuring Johnny Carne

17 October 1964 – Kevin & The Kinsmen

Photo may be subject to copyright

19 October 1964 – The Townsmen

23 October 1964 – The Fortunes

24 October 1964 – Mike Allard & The Tremors

26 October 1964 – The Buccaneers

30 October 1964 – The Tycoons

31 October 1964 – The 007

 

1 November 1964 – The Southbeats

2 November 1964 – The Harlequins

6 November 1964 – The Telstars

7 November 1964 – The Avengers

9 November 1964 – The Cossacks

Photo may be subject to copyright

13 November 1964 – The Vikings

14 November 1964 – The Soul Agents

16 November 1964 – The Starfires

20 November 1964 – Steve Bradley & The Sounds Unlimited

21 November 1964 – The Impact

23 November 1964 – Tony Just & The Orbits

27 November 1964 – The Bossmen

28 November 1964 – The Chevrons

30 November 1964 – Bobby & The Blue Diamonds

 

3 December 1964 – The Buccaneers

4 December 1964 – The Master Sounds

7 December 1964 – The Harlequins

11 December 1964 – The Buccaneers

12 December 1964 – The Initials

14 December 1964 – The Starfires

18 December 1964 – Steve Bradley & Sounds Unlimited

19 December 1964 – The Companions

21 December 1964 – The Harlequins

Photo may be subject to copyright

24 December 1964 – The Jellys

26 December 1964 – The Southbeats

28 December 1964 – The Ebonies

31 December 1964 – Dek Dooley & The Dominators and The Buccaneers

 

1 January 1965 – The Plymouth Sounds

2 January 1965 – Dek Dooley & The Dynamic Dominators

8 January 1965 – The Merry Knights

9 January 1965 – Four Hits & a Miss

15 January 1965 – The Better Days

16 January 1965 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks (future Slade guitarist/singer Noddy Holder was a member until late 1965)

22 January 1965 – The Starfires

23 January 1965 – The Master Sounds (replaced by The Impacts)

29 January 1965 – The Better Days

30 January 1965 – The Strollers

 

5 February 1965 – The Tycoons

6 February 1965 – The Blues Syndicate (Bass player Geoff Penn says that the group opened for The Yardbirds this evening).

12 February 1965 – The Telstars

Photo may be subject to copyright

13 February 1965 – Les Fleur De Lys

17 February 1965 – The Montanas

19 February 1965 – The Royals

20 February 1965 – The Southbeats

26 February 1965 – The Better Days (replaced by Gary Kane & The Tornados)

27 February 1965 – Ricky Vernon & The Pathfinders

 

1 March 1965 – The Montanas

5 March 1965 – Four Steps Beyond

6 March 1965 – The Tallmen (replaced by The Dynacords)

8 March 1965 – The Secrets

12 March 1965 – The ‘N Betweens (this band evolved into Slade)

13 March 1965 – The Nite People

15 March 1965 – The Better Days

Photo may be subject to copyright

19 March 1965 – The Better Days

20 March 1965 – The Soul Agents (Rod Stewart was singer at this point)

22 March 1965 – The Better Days

26 March 1965 – The Better Days

27 March 1965 – The 007s

29 March 1965 – The Buccaneers

 

2 April 1965 – Tony Just & The Orbits

3 April 1965 – The Freebooters (replaced by The Palmer James Group)

5 April 1965 – The Tacits

9 April 1965 – The Emeralds with Daniel Boone

10 April 1965 – The Emeralds with Daniel Boone

12 April 1965 – Clive Richie & The Couriers

17 April 1965 – Zuider Lee (could be Zuyder Zee, a popular Dutch band)

19 April 1965 – The Southbeats

23 April 1965 – The Better Days

24 April 1965 – The Hoboes

26 April 1965 – The Guild

28 April 1965 – The Emeralds

30 April 1965 – The Condors

 

1 May 1965 – The Big T Show

3 May 1965 – The Better Days

5 May 1965 – The Guild

7 May 1965 – The Tac Tics

8 May 1965 – The Riots

10 May 1965 – The Better Days

12 May 1965 – The Telstars

Photo may be subject to copyright

14 May 1965 – The Undertakers

15 May 1965 – The Primitives

17 May 1965 – The Tic Tacs

19 May 1965 – Peter & The Wolves

21 May 1965 – The Applejacks

22 May 1965 – The Cougars

24 May 1965 – The Hunters

Photo may be subject to copyright

28 May 1965 – Johnny Kidd & The Pirates

29 May 1965 – The Diplomats

30 May 1965 – Robin & The Four Hoods

Photo may be subject to copyright

4 June 1965 – The Loose Ends and The Buccaneers

This is roughly the start of the summer season each year (the same applies for subsequent years) when certain artists play the entire the week from Saturday through to Friday. However, it’s not always clear whether they also played the Sunday

5 June 1965 – George Washington & His Congress Men

7-11 June 1965 – George Washington & His Congress Men

12 June 1965 – The ‘N Betweens

14-18 June 1965 – The ‘N Betweens

19 June 1965 – Mike Raynor & The Condors

21-22 June 1965 – Mike Raynor & The Condors

23-25 June 1965 – The Dynamos

26 June 1965 – The Emeralds

28 June-2 July 1965 – The Emeralds

 

3-9 July 1965 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

10-16 July 1965 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

17 July 1965 – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich

19-23 July 1965 – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich

23 July 1965 – The Dowlands and The Sound Tracks

25-30 July 1965 – The Dowlands and The Sound Tracks

31 July 1965 – The Marauders

 

1-3 August 1965 – The Marauders

4-6 August 1965 – The King Pins with Roy Grant

7 August 1965 – The Spectres (this may be the same group that evolves into Status Quo)

9-13 August 1965 – Plain & Fancy

14-20 August 1965 – The Emeralds

21-27 August 1965 – The Quiet Five

28-31 August 1965 – The Big T Show

 

1-3 September 1965 – The Big T Show

4-10 September 1965 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks (Noddy Holder is still a member at this point)

11-12 September 1965 – Bern Elliott & His Clan

13-14 September 1965 – The Emeralds

15-16 September 1965 – The Rock-A-Fellows

18 September 1965 – The Emeralds

20-24 September 1965 – The Emeralds

25 September 1965 – The ‘N Betweens

27-30 September 1965 – The ‘N Betweens

 

1 October 1965 – The ‘N Betweens

2 October 1965 – Peter Fenton & The Tasty Mob

4-6 October 1965 – The Hi-Jackers

8 October 1965 – Tommy Quickly & The Remo Four

9 October 1965 – The Alleycats

11 October 1965 – The Better Days

15 October 1965 – Sounds Incorporated

16 October 1965 – The In-Sect

Photo may be subject to copyright

18 October 1965 – The Cherokees

22 October 1965 – Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers

23 October 1965 – The Condors

25 October 1965 – The Prophets

29 October 1965 – The Checkmates

30 October 1965 – The Kingpins

 

1 November 1965 – The Telstars

5 November 1965 – The Applejacks

Photo may be subject to copyright

6 November 1965 – The Hellions

8 November 1965 – The Blackjacks

12 November 1965 – The Swinging Blue Jeans

Photo may be subject to copyright

13 November 1965 – The Emeralds

15 November 1965 – Gary Kane & The Tornados

19 November 1965 – Rob Storm & The Whispers

Photo may be subject to copyright

20 November 1965 – The Wheels

22 November 1965 – The Cordettes

26 November 1965 – Eden Kane with supporting group

27 November 1965 – Pete de Witt & The Magic Strangers (Dutch band)

29 November 1965 – The Spartans

 

3 December 1965 – The Dedicated Men’s Jug Band and support

4 December 1965 – The Montanas

6 December 1965 – The Telstars

10 December 1965 – The Mojos

11 December 1965 – The Montanas (replaced by Trendsetters Limited)

13 December 1965 – The Royals

17 December 1965 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs with support

18 December 1965 – Finders Keepers (replaced by The Candles)

Photo may be subject to copyright

24 December 1965 – The Deltas

27 December 1965 – The Riots

31 December 1965 – Dave & The Diamonds

Photo may be subject to copyright

1 January 1966 – The Mike Stuart Span

7 January 1966 – The Power House Six

8 January 1966 – Zuyder Zee (a popular Dutch band)

14 January 1966 – The Emeralds

15 January 1966 – The Symbols

21 January 1966 – Tony Rivers & The Castaways

22 January 1966 – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

28 January 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks (Noddy Holder had recently left)

29 January 1966 – The Cougars

Photo may be subject to copyright

4 February 1966 – The Nite People

5 February 1966 – The Manchester Playboys

11 February 1966 – The Quiet Five

12 February 1966 – The Trendsetters Limited

18 February 1966 – The Meddyevils

19 February 1966 – The Condors

23 February 1966 – The Maurice Price Seven

25 February 1966 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

26 February 1966 – The Vibros

 

2 March 1966 – The Trendsetters Limited

4 March 1966 – The Symbols

5 March 1966 – The Mike Stuart Span

9 March 1966 – The Trendsetters Limited

11 March 1966 – The Hot Springs (formerly The Riots)

12 March 1966 – The Majority

16 March 1966 – Carnaby 1 Plus 4

18 March 1966 – The Tennessee Teams

19 March 1966 – Ray Anton & The Profoma

23 March 1966 – The Couriers

25 March 1966 – Cops ‘N’ Robbers

26 March 1966 – The Vogue

Photo may be subject to copyright

1 April 1966 – The Alan Bown Set

2 April 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

9 April 1966 – The Bystanders

Photo may be subject to copyright

11 April 1966 – The Emeralds

15 April 1966 – Kris Ryan & The Questions

16 April 1966 – The Big Sound with Karol Keyes

22 April 1966 – The Statesmen

23 April 1966 – The Kingpins

29 April 1966 – The Couriers

30 April 1966 – The ‘N Betweens

 

6 May 1966 – The First Lites

7 May 1966 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

13 May 1966 – Carnaby 1 Plus 4

14 May 1966 – The Deltas

20 May 1966 – Peter Fenton with Him & The Others

21 May 1966 – George Bean & The Runners

27 May 1966 – The Silhouttes

Photo may be subject to copyright

28 May 1966 – Davey Sands & The Essex

30 May 1966 – The Gaylords (this band became Marmalade)

 

3 June 1966 – The Anzaks

4 June 1966 – The ‘N Betweens (Noddy Holder may have joined by now)

6-10 June 1966 – The ‘N Betweens

11 June 1966 – The Vogue

13-17 June 1966 – The Vogue

18-24 June 1966 – The Bystanders

25-30 June 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

 

1 July 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

Photo may be subject to copyright

2 July 1966 – John Bull Breed (Bass player John Lodge joined The Moody Blues in October 1966)

4-8 July 1966 – John Bull Breed

9 July 1966 – The Powerhouse Six

11-15 July 1966 – The Powerhouse Six

16 July 1966 – The Nite People

18-22 July 1966 – The Nite People

23 July 1966 – Ray Grant & The Kingpins

25-29 July 1966 – Ray Grant & The Kingpins

30 July 1966 – The Powerhouse Six

 

1-5 August 1966 – The Powerhouse Six

6 August 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

8-12 August 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

Photo may be subject to copyright

13 August 1966 – The Noblemen (Guitarist Martin Barre joined Jethro Tull in late 1968)

15-19 August 1966 – The Noblemen

Photo may be subject to copyright

20 August 1966 – Ray Anton & The Proform

21-22 August 1966 – The Symbols

Photo may be subject to copyright

23-24 August 1966 – The Quiet Five

25-26 August 1966 – Trendsetters Limited

27 August 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

29 August-2 September 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

 

3 September 1966 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

4 September 1966 – Steve Brett & The Mavericks

5-9 September 1966 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

Photo may be subject to copyright

10 September 1966 – Cops ‘n’ Robbers

12-16 September 1966 – Cops ‘n’ Robbers

Photo may be subject to copyright

17 September 1966 – The ‘N Betweens (this Wolverhampton band later became Slade)

19-23 September 1966 – The ‘N Betweens

24 September 1966 – The Beau Oddlot

Photo may be subject to copyright

26-27 September 1966 – The Mike Stuart Span

 

28 September 1966 – The ‘N Betweens

29-30 September 1966 – The Mike Stuart Span

 

1 October 1966 – Giorgio & Mario’s Men

Photo may be subject to copyright

7 October 1966 – Listen (possibly Robert Plant’s band)

8 October 1966 – Blaises

14 October 1966 – The Voids

15 October 1966 – The Combine

21 October 1966 – The Anzaks

22 October 1966 – Mr Hip Soul Band

28 October 1966 – The Onyx Set

Photo may be subject to copyright

29 October 1966 – The Palmer James Group

 

4 November 1966 – The Rage

5 November 1966 – The Kingpins with Ray Grant

12 November 1966 – The Lonely Ones

19 November 1966 – The Raging Storms

26 November 1966 – The Talismen

 

2 December 1966 – The Reason Why

3 December 1966 – The Palmer James Group

Photo may be subject to copyright

10 December 1966 – Grand Union

16 December 1966 – Guest Group

Photo may be subject to copyright

17 December 1966 – The ‘N Betweens

Photo may be subject to copyright

23 December 1966 – The Onyx Set

24 December 1966 – The Mike Stuart Span

Photo may be subject to copyright

30 December 1966 – Lord Caesar Sutch & The Roman Empire

31 December 1966 – Mr Hip Soul Band

 

7 January 1967 – Trendsetters Limited

Photo may be subject to copyright

14 January 1967 – The Albert Square

20 January 1967 – The Undertakers

Photo may be subject to copyright

21 January 1967 – The Bystanders

27 January 1967 – The Onyx Set

28 January 1967 – The Upliners

 

4 February 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

10 February 1967 – The Jaguars

11 February 1967 – The Ziggy Turner Combo

18 February 1967 – The Lonely Ones

25 February 1967 – The Raging Storms

 

4 March 1967 – Mr Hip Soul Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

11 March 1967 – The Palmer James Group

17 March 1967 – The Last-Tik Band

18 March 1967 – The Shannons

Photo may be subject to copyright

25 March 1967 – Paul Young’s Toggery

27 March 1967 – The Anzaks

31 March 1967 – Johnston McPhilby Five

 

1 April 1967 – The Measles

7 April 1967 – The Last-Tik Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

8 April 1967 – Heart & Souls

14 April 1967 –The Jaguars

15 April 1967 – The Vogues

21 April 1967 – The Jigsaw

22 April 1967 – The Delroy Good Good Band

28 April 1967 – The Last-Tik Band

29 April 1967 – The Sunspots

 

5 May 1967 – The Hoboes

6 May 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

Photo may be subject to copyright

12 May 1967 – The Onyx Set

13 May 1967 – The Outer Limits

19 May 1967 – The Last-Tik Band

20 May 1967 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

26 May 1967 – The Jaguars

Photo may be subject to copyright

27 May 1967 – The Lemon Line

 

2 June 1967 – The Hoboes

Photo may be subject to copyright

3 June 1967 – The Worrying Kynde

9 June 1967 – The Children

10 June 1967 – The Ray King Soul Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

16 June 1967 – The Parchment People

17 June 1967 – The Five Proud Walkers

23 June 1967 – Omega Plus

24 June 1967 – Dual Purpose

30 June 1967 – Pentworth’s People

Photo may be subject to copyright

1-7 July 1967 – The Mike Stuart Span

8 July 1967 – The Raging Storms

10-12 July 1967 – The Raging Storms

Photo may be subject to copyright

15-21 July 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

22-28 July 1967 – Mr Hip Soul Band

29 July-4 August 1967 – Wellington Kitch Band

Photo may be subject to copyright

5-11 August 1967 – The Heart and Souls

12-18 August 1967 – The Delroy Good Good Band

19-21 August 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

Photo may be subject to copyright

22 August 1967 – The Tremeloes and The ‘N Betweens

23-25 August 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

26 August-1 September 1967 – The Ziggy Turner Combo

 

2-8 September 1967 – The Real McCoy

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9 September 1967 – The Colour Supplement

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14 September 1967 – Wynder K Frog

15 September 1967 – The Jaguars

16 September 1967 – The Strange Fruit

23 September 1967 – The Shame (Greg Lake was the band’s bass player)

30 September 1967 – The Workshop

 

7 October 1967 – Johnny Carr & The Cadillacs

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13 October 1967 – Scots of St James (rebooked for 17 November)

14 October 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

21 October 1967 – The Dreaded Spectres

28 October 1967 – The Omega Plus

 

3 November 1967 – The Last-Tik Band

4 November 1967 – Mr Hip Soul Band

11 November 1967 – The Vogues

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17 November 1967 – The Scots of St James

18 November 1967 – The Shiralee

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24 November 1967 – The Cat Soul Packet

25 November 1967 – The Shame

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1 December 1967 – The Shell Shock Show

2 December 1967 – The ‘N Betweens

8 December 1967 – The Foundations

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9 December 1967 – Robert Plant & The Band of Joy

15 December 1967 – The Lamb Bros & Co

16 December 1967 – Dual Purpose

22 December 1967 – Sounds Incorporated

23-24 December 1967 – The Mike Stuart Span

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26 December 1967 – Pinkerton’s Colours

29 December 1967 – Simon Dupree & The Big Sound

30-31 December 1967 – Mr Hip Soul Band

 

5 January 1968 – The Calgary Stampede

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6 January 1968 – The Maze (singer Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice co-founded Deep Purple)

12 January 1968 – The Clockwork Orange

13 January 1968 – The Go Show

19 January 1968 – The Tremeloes

20 January 1968 – John Drevar’s Experience

26 January 1968 – The Gods

27 January 1968 – The Purple Dream

 

2 February 1968 – Purple Art

3 February 1968 – Heart & Souls

9 February 1968 – The Vigilantes

10 February 1968 – Blossom

16 February 1968 – The Albie

17 February 1968 – The ‘N Betweens (the band became Slade)

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23 February 1968 – Simon Dupree & The Big Sound

24 February 1968 – Cat Soul Show

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1 March 1968 – The New York Public Library

2 March 1968 – The Firestones

8 March 1968 – The Bunch

9 March 1968 – The Maze

15 March 1968 – Freddie Mack Show

16 March 1968 – Lamb Bros & Co

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22 March 1968 – Status Quo

23 March 1968 – The Shell Shock Show

29 March 1968 – The Big T Sound

30 March 1968 – The Vogues

 

5 April 1968 – The Onyx

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6 April 1968 – Wishful Thinking (formerly The Emeralds)

13 April 1968 – The Ebonites (no Friday artist)

15 April 1968 – Locomotive

19 April 1968 – New World

20 April 1968 – John Drevar’s Experience

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26 April 1968 – The Shy Limbs (Greg Lake on bass)

27 April 1968 – Delroy Williams & The Sugar Band

 

3 May 1968 – My Dear Watson

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4 May 1968 – The Mike Stuart Span

10 May 1968 – The Late

11 May 1968 – Fanny Flickers Rock ‘N’ Roll Band

17 May 1968 – The Firm

18 May 1968 – The Extreme Sound

20 May 1968 – The Mike Westbrook Band

25 May 1968 – Gerry Temple & The Storm (no Friday artist)

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31 May 1968 – The Penny Peep Show (Martin Barre joined Jethro Tull)

 

1 June 1968 – The Epics

3 June 1968 – The Ebonites

8 June 1968 – George Bean & The Runners (no Friday artist) (says they are Lulu’s backing band)

10 June 1968 – Breakthru

14 June 1968 – The Merseys

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15 June 1968 – Floribunda Rose (John Kongos was singer)

17 June 1968 – Locomotive

21 June 1968 – Mud

22 June 1968 – Traction

24 June 1968 – Youngblood

25 June 1968 – Marmalade

28 June 1968 – Pepper

29 June 1968 – Cat Road Show starring US Flattop

There may be missing gigs during July as it wasn’t clear if artists played for the entire week

1 July 1968 – The Ebonites

3 July 1968 – The Ebonites

5 July 1968 – The Ebonites

6 July 1968 – The Jasper Stubbs Gloryland Band

8-10 July 1968 – The Mike Stuart Span

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12 July 1968 – The Mike Stuart Span

13 July 1968 – Finders Keepers

15 July 1968 – Finders Keepers

17 July 1968 – Finders Keepers

19 July 1968 – Finders Keepers

20 July 1968 – The Shiralee

22-24 July 1968 – Lamb Bros & Co

26 July 1968 – Lamb Bros & Co

27 July 1968 – Spectrum

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29 July 1968 – Spectrum

30 July 1968 – Reperata & The Delrons, Clouds and Spectrum

31 July 1968 – Spectrum

 

3 August 1968 – The Californians

5-9 August 1968 – The Californians

10 August 1968 – The Light Fantastic (formerly The Vogues)

12-16 August 1968 – The Light Fantastic

17 August 1968 – Wishful Thinking

19 August 1968 – The Onyx

20-23 August 1968 – Wishful Thinking

24 August 1968 – Bubblegum

26-27 August 1968 – Bubblegum

30 August 1968 – Bubblegum

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31 August 1968 – The Gods

 

2 September 1968 – The Gods (they may play all week but it is not clear)

6 September 1968 – The Gods

From this point onwards, it looks like gigs only took place on Saturdays

7 September 1968 – Traction

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14 September 1968 – The ‘N Betweens

21 September 1968 – Jason Cord and First Chapter

28 September 1968 – Mike Raynor & The Condors

 

5 October 1968 – The Luddy Sammes Soul Packet

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12 October 1968 – Scrugg (formerly Floribunda Rose)

19 October 1968 – Scrugg

26 October 1968 – Finders Keepers

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2 November 1968 – Mud

9 November 1968 – Hopscotch

15 November 1968 – Indiana Highway (Friday)

16 November 1968 – The Swamp with Jon & James

23 November 1968 – Breakthru

30 November 1968 – Ebony Blush

 

7 December 1968 – Cardboard Replica

14 December 1968 – Palmyra Stock

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19 December 1968 – Bandwagon and The Grand Union

21 December 1968 – Bubblegum

24 December 1968 – The Mike Stuart Span

26 December 1968 – Mud

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28 December 1968 – The Epics

31 December 1968 – The Ebonites

Copyright © Nick Warburton. All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means, without prior permission from the author