Entertainment For Lively Minds
Word Podcast 164: precious memories and inky fingers with Pete Paphides and #oldmusicpapers
Posted by David Hepworth on 11 March 2011 - 3:50pm.
A week ago Pete Paphides bought a job lot of old music papers and started tweeting about them under #oldmusicpapers which became a twitter sensation. This morning he bought a lot of them into the office for the podcast. It's all here. History as it was written, bad puns, mistaken critical judgements, momentous news announcements tucked away at the bottom of the page and all. For people of a certain age it's a deeply nostalgic listen.
You can follow this link to get the podcast every week or stream this new episode below.
strike a light...
the blue shirt thing is going to become a meme at this rate...
I'm looking forward immensely to listening to this later on.
Fantastic stuff...
This could be the first of a regular podcast feature... trawling rock's back pages.
As an aside, I realized that I didn't know what Jake Riviera looked like and googled him. This led me to a photo of him with Charlie Gillett. It is part of a collection of the much-missed Gillett's photos and memorabilia on Flickr. It's really worth taking a look...
http://www.myspace.com/djjackdaw/photos/albums/my-photos/321432#mssrc=Si...
Bremen v Borussia Monchengladbach? St Pauli v Stuttgart?
Oof.Two relegation six pointers. May be tasty. Especially on Sunday...
Darren Burn
Peter's Darren Burn story was interesting and I'd love to see the Man Alive documentary but a quick scan of you tube revealed nothing. Anyone know where I could find it?
Not quite what you're after...
but I did find this: http://www.boysoloist.com/artist.asp?VID=467
Thanks
It's a fascinating story I'd not heard of before - really want to see that documentary.
I'm fascinated as well
Not least because I pass the road he used to live in every day on my way to the Tube and the church where he sang in the choir is very near by. I haven't been able to find the documentary but somebody's done a Facebook tribute here which is full of interesting information. It appears that his father Colin died in 2009. There's a Music Week obituary here that doesn't mention his son. I'll try to find out more.
Darren Burn
Hi, my name is David Rayner and I have just registered in order to log in to say that it was I who, last June (2010), created the Facebook tribute pages to Darren Burn and that I also have a DVD-R of the 1973 BBC Television Man Alive documentary about EMI's expensive and ill-fated launch of Darren, entitled "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." I managed to obtain the recording privately about six years ago.
I have no idea who "Peter" is, or what he said in his post about Darren and I can't find a link to his post on here. I have been contacted on Facebook by a member on here asking if I knew where they could get a copy of the Man Alive film, but instead of sending me a message, they sent a friend request. I explain on my Facebook page that I can't accept friend requests on the tribute, because if I did, it would look on the requester's friends list as though Darren Burn was one of their friends and that would look odd, seeing that he died twenty years ago.
I envy David Hepworth for living so near to where Darren lived (he lived as a boy at 17, Queen Elizabeth's Drive, Southgate) and, if the present poor state of my health permitted it, I would love to travel from my home in Stoke-on-Trent to Darren's former childhood home to see it in person. It would be like a kind of pilgrimage for me. His house backed onto the beautiful Grovelands Park, where his ashes were scattered in 1991 and I would also like to go there to pay my respects. Who knows, maybe one day I will.
Most of Darren's records from 1973 and 1974 can be heard on YouTube, uploaded by another fan of Darren.
Darren Burn
I was sent a link to the podcast of Peter talking about Darren Burn to two other guys. It seems the other guys weren't old enough to remember the big build up that Darren Burn got in 1973 and knew nothing about him. Peter got so many details wrong, I feel compelled to put the record straight here.
(1) No one said that Darren couldn't sing. He had spent six years as a trained choirboy and senior chorister at Christ Church, Southgate and had a fantastic singing voice.
(2) Only one person on the Man Alive film didn't like Darren's first single, "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart". Roy Carr, an NME critic who wrote a scathing review of it and was the kind of person who couldn't have seen talent if he had tripped over it in broad daylight, was scathing about the the whole weenybopper thing. Ignoring the fact that Darren, at eleven, was very intelligent and mature for his age, composer Roger Greenaway merely expressed his opinion that the song was too old for Darren, as if Darren was incapable at his age of falling in love with anyone. From personal experience, I can assure you that it's quite possible for an eleven year old to fall in love and to identify with the lyrics of the song.
(3) The reason that "Concrete and Clay" didn't chart was because it was released as the B-side of Darren's second single, "Is It Love", in November, 1973. So even if "Is It Love" had reached number one, "Concrete and Clay" wouldn't have shown up on the chart.
(4) Darren's dad, the late Colin Burn, didn't just work at EMI, he was a top executive with the company.
(5). Darren didn't kill himself a few weeks after the interview on the 1988 BBC Television People programme, but three years later.
(6) The Man Alive film "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" has never been uploaded onto You Tube.
(7). The late Eric Woolfson, Darren's producer at EMI in 1973, was of the opinion that the reason Darren didn't take off as many expected him to was that EMI, despite all the hype, were reluctant to spend more on Darren, because it may have looked odd that they were spending a fortune on the son of a company executive. Also, there was no Internet in those and no videos and publicity was confined to air plays of the records; posters in record shops; newspaper and magazine articles and interviews and publicity photographs and, of course, word of mouth. The Man Alive film of Darren recording and performing and being interviewed was the 1973 equivalent of today's Britain's Got Talent, but without the immediacey. The programme was filmed during July and August, 1973, but not transmitted on national television until Wednesday, October 24th, 1973. I hope this sets the record straight.
Holly Partridge
Alex Gold said he was going to be working with Holly Partridge - I'm curious, is this Andy's daughter as in "Holly Up On Poppy"?
*edit* A quick google tells me that this is indeed so. Here she is with the SheBeats (she's the blonde):
From the attic
So is now the time for me to finally sell the 300 copies of Sound I have in the loft?
BTW, big up to Fraser for setting me up with a website password from his hotel room on a Saturday night - definitely beyond the call of duty.
Stinky but inky
I discovered recently that the gents' loo at the Canary Wharf branch of Byron Burger is entirely wallpapered with pages from the rock press of the early 1970s. This led to me spending rather too long reading a gushing appreciation of early Emerson, Lake and Palmer by the late Les Perrin.
It made me go home and play their first album for the first time in decades. What do you know, it's rather good...
Idea for future podcast
Mark Ellen v Jake Riviera.
When I moved away from Leeds after college I left 6 large boxes of Melody Makers in the cellar of my digs. Realising their worth many year's later I called back at the house and they were still untouched. Only have 1 box left now. I must dig out a bizarre NME interview I have with Brian Eno done by a young hack called Chrissie Hynde.
70's music inkys
About 10 Years ago I worked for a shop in London that specialized in selling vintage magazines. One afternoon we got a call from a film company asking for 100 assorted UK music papers from 1976-1979. Turns it out it was for the movie 24 Hour Party People and a scene set in Ian Curtis's bedroom where he and the rest of Joy Division are hanging out listening to music and flicking through music mags. My skinflint manager told me not to give them any potentially valuable collectors items with covers with the likes of The Pistols or The Clash on, but to offload them editions with much lesser bands on and still charge them top whack like they were getting rare treasures. I recall a slight pang of guilt in sending mainly a load of old Sounds with godawful NWOBHM bands on the front, such as Samson and The Tygers Of Pang Tang
Great 'cast...
..but what is it with Mark and Wishbone Ash?
A perfectly acceptable 70s rock band with some nice twin guitar solos...
I know they weren't Public Foot The Roman, but really.
Roger Daltrey and his microphone mishap
I think this is the clip discussed on the Podcast.
I love the way Roger really winds it up before losing control.
All those old music papers
and still no mention* of Samuel K. Amphong and his ongoing "where is Beatles band" quest.
*on the podcast, I mean.
Brillaint piece of recalling there
Was there a story behind that? someone on the paper livening up the page maybe? Or was it some lost genius elsewhere? Where is Samuel K. Amphong? Surely after all these years we should know.
Danny Baker
knows of his whereabouts - or so I was told.
Neil Tennant
What are the chances of getting Neil Tennant into the Pod? I'd love to hear him, Mark and David reminiscing about the glory days of Smash Hits...
Excellent, requests DO work!
Can we have Chas Hodges please? :-)
whither
Anwar Ted Power?
Lord Ellen's story
about meeting Elvis Costello and his fearsome manager Jake Riviera quite literally made me LOL. The podcast - it's a right old spirits lifter.