The Green Fan

I've spoken to so many lads of my age over the years who remember watching this the night it went out on the Old Grey Whistle Test; like a rite of passage. Led Zeppelin, unsurprisingly, weren't available. And as no oven ready promo film of them playing Trampled Underfoot existed, it was left to the boffins at the BBC to come up with something. Anything. They didn't disappoint. 

Led Zeppelin - Trampled Underfoot (1975)

Old & Grey

Old & Grey (2015)

I used to be a star-kicker. Though these days just getting out of my armchair finds me making that sound your grandparents used to make when bending down. I can't even use Townshend's adage 'I look pretty young but I'm just backdated.' I'm just backdated.

My fellow blogger, The Swede, is spending the next 55 days counting down to his 55th birthday. I just hope he remembers when he gets there what he came for. TS predates me by only a handful of months, so it'll be interesting to see the overlaps between his timeline and mine. Our shared love of music (my main reason for embarking on this blog five years ago) being the obvious one. Come my next birthday, apart from being older and greyer, I would like to think that my sherpa, in the guise of The Swede, will be there to to meet me at the summit with a glass of something warming and tell me that 55 is not as bad as it sounds.

Patches

Clearing out the garage this morning I stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove of seemingly lost photographs, slides, concert and theatre programmes, button badges, commemorative beer glasses and general flotsam and jetsam I've been dragging round with me all my adult life.


My penchant for badges has never left me. From my Blue Peter badge (which I still have c/w the letter from Biddy Baxter that came with it) to the band badges I used to wear as a kid on denim jackets - I would always hunt them down at Record Fairs and market stalls and pin them on my lapel. And only recently I picked up an Old Grey Whistle Test 'star-kicker' that I have on a 'going down the pub jacket'.

But in 1973 I discovered patches: take a look at the photograph of me (found earlier today) taking against a watery backdrop. If you look really carefully you'll be able to make out two letter boxes on my knees; they're actually cloth patches about the same size as an old bank note. In fact, the one on my left knee is a bank note - an Alice Cooper Billion Dollar note. The one on the right, and I can see it now, is Messrrs. Connolly, Priest, Scott and Tucker: The Sweet.

Keith Moon, it would appear, was rather partial to patches too. His famous white boiler suit (the 'July' calendar photo from their 1976 Charlton gig - this was also in a box lurking at the back of the garage) was bedecked with them. I always hankered after the Esso one, but could never find one. Interestingly, the above mentioned drinking jacket has three patches running down the left arm. More proof, if proof were needed, that I'm still not ready to be a grown up.

Benson & Hedges

I'm interviewing George Benson later this evening for the paper. And no, this won't be the strapline we'll be using. But it would be tempting to ask the man if he was into topiary. Instead we'll probably talk about guitars and Give Me The Night. I'm ringing him at 6, so if there's anything non hedge related you'd like me to ask him, let me know. I've found this clip in the OGWT archives showing just how cool he was back in the day; that's Benson, not Harris.