With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

Hello once again on this 3rd day of March. I would like to point out that todays post is a little shorter than other recent posts as I have been suffering from a bad case of man flu. Ladies you just don’t understand this, but it’s terrible! Anyway I do have a great way to kick off todays post. There has been a considerable furore over cuts to arts budgets in British Columbia in Canada and in a novel way of raising the profile of the issue a theatre director and an arts group treasurer have organised an excellent spoof recording of a Bonnie Tyler song. The link to the song is on the news page which you will find if you click on the song title, which is “Total Eclipse Of The Arts” I would like to thank Tracy, who runs a number of great Yahoo Groups, notably FAMOUS_WOMEN_IN ROCK, for this story.

So onto the birthdays first starting with Mike Pender of the Searchers who is 67 today. The Searchers took their name from John Ford’s classic western movie. They were a Liverpool band who like their contemporaries the Beatles also played at the famous Cavern Club and indeed the Star Club in Hamburg. They have another link with the Fab Four too, their original drummer Norman McGarry took over the drum stool with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes after Ringo Starr left to join the Beatles. The band had three UK number ones; “Sweets For My Sweet” in 1963, “Needles And Pins” and “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” both in 1964. All of these songs were covers, the originals were by the Drifters, Jackie DeShannon and the Shirelles respectively. In December 1966 the group changed drummers again, the new guy was in fact my namesake Billy Adamson, as far as I know we’re not related! Do any other readers have any namesakes like this? Major or minor any will do, just let me know. Anyway to close this piece on the Searchers here they are with “Needles And Pins” which incidentally fact fans was co written by Sonny Bono.

Before their initial success the boys had to share one guitar

Today is also Ronan Keating’s 32nd birthday. Ronan is so far the only member of Boyzone to have carved out a solo career for himself. In my opinion he has slightly more talent than Robbie W, which those regular readers among you know is not a lot. If any Robbie or Ronan fans have stumbled upon this blog by chance, then please note this is my opinion! It is with great sadness that I have to add that Ronan entered the Guinness Book Of Records last year by becoming the only performer ever to achieve a run of 30 consecutive top 10 singles in the UK Charts. He also briefly managed Westlife. So are there any redeeming features? well actually for me there are two.Firstly Ronan is currently climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with a group of celebrities to raise money for Comic Relief. Secondly it is for one of my guilty pleasures, Ronan’s single “Life Is A Rollercoaster” It was a UK number one in 2000 and was co written and produced by the supremely talented Gregg Alexander the man behind the wonderful but short lived New Radicals.

Ronan had done everything he could to make himself lighter for his RyanAir flight, but now he didn't have a coin for the toilet!

On this day in 1973 Slade went straight in at number one in the UK singles chart with “Cum On Feel The Noize”. This was the first time this had been done since the days of the Beatles. The bands manager was Chas Chandler who was also Jimi Hendrix’ manager and was also credited with discovering him. When Chas first saw them in 1969 they were called Ambrose Slade. At Chas’ suggestion the band capitalised on the current skinhead craze and wore boots, braces and cropped their hair. Later that year they shortened their name to Slade. They signed to Polydor in 1970 and went on to have the first of their six UK number one the following year with “Coz I Luv You” Their trademark spelling appears to have predated text speak by many years! Allegedly the band turned down the opportunity to represent the UK in the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest, now that would have been interesting! So without further ado here are Slade with the excellent “Cum On Feel The Noize” Clearly by this time the skinhead look was long gone and just check out Dave Hill’s headgear, what’s that all about then? Please feel free to enter the Slade caption competition below 🙂

OK here's the deal, you provide a caption for what Dave and Jim are saying behind Noddy's back and I'll include it in a future post!

It was on this day in 1985 that Michael Jackson visited Madame Tussauds in London to unveil his waxwork lookalike. Here is Michael on that visit and the picture below shows a very different version of his waxwork, so clearly it has been someone’s job to keep him up to date. That must be the busiest job at Tussauds!

Even a personal appearance in the ticket office didn't improve ticket sales