News, Views and Music Issue 155 (Intro)

August 10th: Dear all, it was this time during the last Olympics that I’d just finished writing about the ‘core’ 101 reviews for this site and had some rare time off to watch the Beijing Olympics, long before the News, Views and Music newsletters existed. Personally I’ve always found the summer Olympics really boring compared to the winter ones and so it was that year, but I still tuned in to see some of the excellent events I don’t get to see very often (badminton, hockey). This year Olympic madness is everywhere simply because its down the road and every time I see some smug look on David Cameron’s face or The Queen pouting in her Royal box I feel sick. The opening ceremony, while confusing, wasn’t the snoozefest I expected it to be (well, the alphabeticised team entries did get boring round about ‘B’) and the caulfrons lit at the end were genuinely impressive. What worried me was: Cameron’s smug face even though the Olympics were brought to London on Labour’s watch, the criticism of Paul McCartney ending the ceremony (where a subdued performance really wasn’t his fault - a dodgy monitor ended up echoing his performance round the hall after every word, just like on ‘Live Aid’ although Macca the trooper carried on; after all the only thing Britain has managed to give to the world since the last London olympics in 1948 is music) and the fact that we were praising the NHS and our wonderful cyclists at the same time when, in the real outside the stadium, the NHS is being destroyed and innocent cyclists are being kettled for mistakenly using Olympic lanes. Remember all the fuss four years ago about China’s human rights record and whether athletes were going to stay away in droves in protest? They should have waited four years for the Coalition to ban all types of protest and force one group of taxi driver protestors to risk his life diving from the Jubilee Bridge to get his point on the news. However many medals we come away with, however much we rescue our damaged world reputation by putting on a vaguely cohesive games, we should not get smug because we still have so much more to learn, our leaders especially. By the way the Olympic coverage is the perfect timing for the Government’s friends in the BBC to put on two specials about how awful and unfair the medical benefit system is, on Monday at 8.30 and 9pm. Be sure to tune in if you can, even if there is trampolining on the other side, because this the real state of Britain in 2012 that’s being kept from the world. I Just wonder how many more mistakes like showing the wrong flag for North Korea will happen by the time the games are over.. In happier news, if you’re a reader of our blogspot site (www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk) you may have noticed that we’ve added a whacking great list of links to all our reviews and top fives. In theory this means that you will be able to look for a particular article if you’re in a hurry and to ease things we’ve had a go at listing the albums by artist in chronological order. Unfortunately our hit rate on this site has tailed off remarkably (we’d hit a peak of 135 views last Monday, mainly because of a mention on the excellent Kinks site KindaKinksNet) – typical really because our first site (at www.alansalbumarchives.moonfruit.com) is getting more hits than ever (an average of 60 this past week!) Alas I’ll have to give it a breather because working on this and coping with the job centre has worn my cfs-attacked body out to a frazzle – but I’ll be able to do the same with the first site some time soon. We now stand at a high of 20598 on Moonfruit and 1345 on Blogspot, which isn’t bad for just over 7 weeks online! Oh and finally, most of Britain was surprised to learn that we’d kept our economic AAA rating this week. We weren’t surprised, though, were we AAA readers?! Perhaps they’ll get us to do the Coalition’s finances for them (we can’t do a worse mess than George Osbourne...) ♫ Beatles News: Dhani Harrison, son of George, has just released his second album under the pseudonym ‘The New 02’, with album ‘Thefearofmissingout’ (all one word) hot on the heels of well received debut ‘You Are Here’. The album got a right old drubbing in Mojo this month, but the references to psychedelia soft rock in the article have still whetted my appetite. More news if and when... Oh, yeah, and Paul McCartney played ‘Hey Jude’ at an Olympics ceremony best remembered for the bizarre juxtaposition of James Bond and the Queen (I always thought Dabiel Craig was the most wooden faced actor around – I was wrong) and the kettling of innocent bikers outside the stadium by police that night. What an absolute mess. At least Macca didn’t sing ‘Ob la di, Ob La Da’ at this one... ♫ Jefferson Airplane News: In one of those eerie coincidences that seems to keep happening with this site, Radio 4 are broadcasting a new dramatisation of John Wyndham’s ‘The Chrysalids’ in their Afternoon play spot the next couple of Wednesdays at 3pm. We mentioned this book last issue because Paul Kantner based the title track of the album ‘Crown Of Creation’ on one of the chapters – now you can hear for yourselves how similar the two are! ♫ Rolling Stones News: A low quality bootleg of Mick, Keith and Ronnie meeting up with their idol Muddy Waters in 1981 has been doing the rounds on bootleg for years. However now all fans have the chance to see it as its now out officially on DVD under the title ‘Live At The Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago’. Mick predictably takes over and Keith predictably stands at the back whilst taking all the camera time, but most interesting for long term fans is the chance to see ‘sixth stone’ Ian Stewart in his element, boogie woogie-ing away on a piano like he’d been a member of Muddy’s band his life long through (filmed four years before his death, during a period when the Stones rarely toured, its one of the last chances to see him at all). Muddy, of course, famously gave the band their name (see below!) so its fitting to see two legends come together, even if it isn’t a release you’ll play that many times. A soundtrack CD is available too, although that must have an even more limited shelf life you’d have thought. ANNIVERSARIES: Birthday cakes with lots of candles are in order for the following AAA stars born between August 1st and 7th: Jerry Garcia (guitarist with the Grateful Dead) who would have turned the big 70 on August 1st. Anniversaries of events include: The Beach Boys spend their first week of many on the British charts with ‘Surfin’ USA’ (August 1st 1963) and finally, George Harrison’s first concert for Bangladesh (also starring Ringo and Badfinger) takes place at Madison Square Garden (August 1st 1971); The Beatles headline their first gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club (August 2nd 1961); The Who rescue the film premises Shepperton Studios from demolition, buying the venue for use in their ‘Kids Are Alright’ documentary and ‘Quadrophenia’ film (they still own it too; August 2nd 1977); Just two years, one day and 293 appearances after their first headlining gig, the Beatles play their last show at The Cavern Club (August 3rd 1963); Beatles record are banned in South Africa following John Lennon’s statements about the band being ‘bigger than Jesus’ (August 3rd 1966) – a day later six South American states follow suit; Wings are officially formed on August 3rd 1971, with Dennys Laine and Seiwell as well as Paul and Linda McCartney; The Small Faces release perhaps their most famous single ‘Itchycoo Park’ (August 4th 1967); Pink Floyd stage The Wall for the first time at London’s Earl’s Court (due to costs they only ever stage the show four times – August 4th 1980); Two 1960s milestones are released on August 5th: The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ in 1966 and Pink Floyd’s debut ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ in 1967; The Small Faces release their debut single, the wonderfully ungrammatical ‘What’cha Gonna Do ‘Bout It?’ (August 6th 1965); Pink Floyd’s film version of ‘The Wall’ premieres in America (August 6th 1982); Time Magazine becomes the first magazine to review the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ released the previous month and – you’ve guessed it, they absolutely hate it, with a headline ‘avoid at all costs’! (August 7th 1964).

News, Views and Music Issue 135 (Intro)

March 3rd:

Hello again dear readers. As I write to you we edge ever closer to our April Fool’s Day issue (we’ve successfully managed to retrieve it from 1996, when it accidentally slid down a portal) and, well, we’re sorry. You see the Mayan prophecy of time coming to a standstill seems to be our fault. Just thought you ought to know in case you were planning on going anywhere this year and suddenly found yourself back in the 15^th century (either that or you’ve just visited Ormskirk by mistake!) In the meantime we’ve got a cracker of an issue lined up for you this time around dedicated to a parallel time dimension of our very own. We spend our main review discussing what might have happened to the ‘Milk and Honey’ album had Lennon lived and then look at the six albums that might have been had the Beatles stayed together in the 1970s (but still written the songs they end up recording for their solo albums).  

In other news, I wish I could report that what the Coalition are up to was an April Fool, but sadly it isn’t. The Government’s long discussed ‘Workfare’ projects seem to have started up, despite comment from just about anybody that they aren’t fair or workable. Predictably it’s the biggest companies like Tescos that have fallen for the promise of extra pay to give jobs out to the unemployed first, despite the fact that the taxpayer is effectively paying for a wage and the worker is seeing nothing good come of the situation (except not having his benefits cut). This is a terrible crime and already we’re hearing of people being forced into work at a moment’s notice, given all the worst jobs to do that no one else wants and then having to suffer in silence because no one from the media takes their problems seriously. Well, we do. Workfare is what used to be promised in Communist Russia (in the Stalin days when it amounted to a dictatorship, not the glory days under Lenin which, we still argue, could have worked) and, believe or not, in the workcamps at Auschwitz andf Bergen-Belsen and beyond. It’s what unfair rich people do when they think they can get away with treating the poor and downtrodden how they like because they’ve drilled it into people’s heads that it’s fair to make them do the dirty jobs for no return just because they say so. And before we hear that hoary chestnut about living off the state let me remind you that it’s the rich that live off the state – if not ours currently then in times gone by, given land and money for nothing except their name. This is slave labour under any other name and like all unfair and unjust laws we expect people to fight it – sadly it will just take time to coerce people into taking a stand. Of course I can’t even pay myself with this site never mind any-one else but let me tell you – there is no way we would ever resort to expecting the taxpayer to fund a wage which is procured through hard, honest labour and if I can say that on a pittance then these major multinational companies with a gadzillion pounds profit every year can easily do the same.

Erm, where was I? Oh yes, our site has now reached 14,400 hits which ain’t bad and I see my twitter followers have gone up to 198 (actually they were up to 199 the other night – where did that last one go?!) A big welcome to all our new readers and a big salute to all our old readers who are still with us! An especially big hello to my new twitter friend Frank Jay Gruber who shares the same good taste in Monkees and Dr Who and may well indeed be the brother I never knew I had (hmm New Jersey, America twinned with Ormskirk, Lancashire though – can’t see many links there!) Happy reading and hope you find some good things to enjoy! Now that all that is out the way it’s on with the news...

                                               

♫ Byrds News: You wait for a Gene Clark album on CD and then two come along, almost at once – but not quite close enough to be a part of the same re-issue programme. ‘Roadmaster’, an uncompleted album from 1972 and originally issued in 1977 (though only in Holland), is the next on our shelves and I only mentioned it last issue as possibly my favourite Clark album (along with January’s re-issue for ‘Two Sides To Every Story’. It features two full Byrds reunions from before the official reunion in 1972 on ‘Here Tonight’ and the first version of ‘Circle Song’, two great songs beloved by fans and missing from the records for far too long. Wow, the power of the album archives! What else can we mention here that we want to see released soon? Hmm how about ‘The Paul McCartney Outtakes Box Set Part One: The Seventies’ ‘Hollies Rarities 2’ or ‘The Monkees Missing Links 4’, that should keep me happy for a while longer...

♫ Hollies News: Less essential is yet another Hollies best-of from EMI (I make this 70-something now for Hollies compilations!) Sensibly ‘The Very Best Of’ 2 CD set concentrates on the 1960s material and features lots of album tracks this time around whilst avoiding the pit-falls of the recent past by sticking to only the material issued in The Hollies’ lifetime. On the downside, what’s the point of spending £12-15 for a 2 CD set when for £17 you can own the whole bang lot of the band’s material with Graham Nash still in the band (ie 1963-69) on six shiny discs? The Clarke-Hicks-Nash Years box set is well worth buying with hardly a duff track included.

♫ Jefferson Airplane News: A rather more surprising re-issue is the Airplane’s self-titled reunion and farewell LP from 1989. Unavailable since the early 90s, it’s gone down in some quarters as some sort of lost classic, featuring the last time we heard those famous band harmonies and the last album before Grace Slick’s retirement. Trust me, it isn’t – there are a few good moments such as Marty Balin’s wistful song of nostalgia ‘Summer of Love’, Paul Kantner’s last great piece of eccentric writing on ‘Planes’ and Grace’s lovely poem set to awful music about pandas. But why wasn’t original drummer Spencer Dryden invited back to the fold? And why, after so many years away (even the last Starship album featuring Grace was three years old) is the band so stretched for material that they have to rely on outside writers and left-overs from old sessions? Also, hearing the world’s greatest psychedelic band in such a sterile 80s setting is even more upsetting than hearing sterile 80s groups in a sterile 80s setting. What were they thinking?! No bonus tracks by the way, which is a shame – or a relief, depending how you feel. Still, nice to have it out on CD again.

ANNIVERSARIES: As it’s a leap year, this time we’re featuring birthdays between February 28^th and March 5^th: Brian Jones (multi-instrumentalist with The Rolling Stones 1962-68) who would have been 69 on February 28^th and Roger Daltrey (singer with The Who 1964-82 and various re-unions) who turns 67 on March 1^st. Anniversaries of events include: John and Paul write ‘From Me To You’ in the back of a tour bus after reading the quote in that week’s letter column of the NME (February 28^th 1963); The Cavern Club closes its doors for the final time after raking up debts of £70,000 (February 28^th 1966); The Beatles start filming for their first film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – amazingly the film will premiere in the summer of the same year (March 2^nd 1964); Stephen Stills takes part in the fondly if hazily remembered ‘Havana Jam’ festival, an event held to strengthen American-Cuban relations (March 2^nd 1979); John Lennon’s quote about The Beatles being bigger than Jesus first appears in print in the Evening Standard where it doesn’t even make a headline – it won’t be till American journalists get hold of the story a few months later that it becomes front page news (March 4^th 1966); The Rolling Stones record their ‘Love You Live’ album at Toronto’s low capacity and intimate El Macombo Club – with Keith Richards’ latest drug bust hanging over the band (see last week’s column) there are fears that this will be the last record the bad will ever do (March 4^th 1977) and finally, The Rolling Stones and The Hollies begin a tour together, creating a friendship that lasts throughout most of the 1960s (March 5^th 1965 – and contrary to most books on the subject they are joint headliners, generally switching billing depending on the venue).

News, Views and Music Issue 108 (Intro)

August 4^th:

So, we’ve lost yet another singer to the ‘27’ club, full of tormented singer songwriters like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Brian Jones who died at that age (OK, so the last one wasn’t a songwriter but you know what I mean...), when the first flush of fame had worn off. While Amy Winehouse was hardly in the same league as the above list, her passing is still a huge waste of talent. Where were the people protecting her from herself? Can a manager ever truly be ‘one of the band’, understanding everything they go through? Is the problem better or worse when your manager is a member of your own family? In our top ten this week we’ll be looking at a sample of AAA managers and asking whether they were a curse or a blessing for the band involved (as ever with these lists, the answer is both, often at the same time).

Oh and while I’m in a bad mood, does anyone else think finding 93% of incapacity benefit claimants fit for work is a little steep? I know we’ve got a brain-dead prime minister in Downing Street but there’s no excuse for that. Plus I want to see everyone responsible for the incapacity charade (with thousands missing out on benefits because of a mix up in the system, caused by sending too many people to back-to-work interviews they shouldn’t have) sacked and on unemployment benefit – and then perhaps they’d know how hard it is to live on such a paltry amount. Well, at least the time is ripe for a Cameron Kicking after Andy Coulsen and the News of the World scandal – let’s try and get the moron out by Christmas! Not that America’s doing much better at the moment. It’s been low down the news in the UK but no wonder Obama’s having a hard time trying to find a compromise to reduce the American deficit. Have you heard the Republican plans? Tax breaks for the rich and all benefits removed from the poor? For a financial crisis that still isn’t yet as bad as the 1990s, 1980s,1970s or 1950s recessions? So much for civilisations being judged over how they treat society’s most vulnerable – at this rate the 21^st century is one step away from Medieval witch burnings... 

In other news, our site has now passed the 7500 mark and continues to climb by around 15 hits a day (not bad considering I’ve fallen a bit behind in the publicity stakes the past few weeks).  I am still struggling with my computer though – she may have to be sent away again soon in which case here comes more delays and a lot of trips to the library, full of squeaking people during the Summer Holidays (and I mean the parents and grandparents as much as I mean the children, by the way). Oh and I had to laugh at the charts this week – you know Adele is naming her albums after her age when she recorded them (so that this year’s album is ‘21’ and 2009’s epic was called ‘19’)? Well, Beyonce is doing the old Stephen Stills trick of naming her albums ‘1’ ‘2’ ‘3’ etc. So last week the charts read ‘Adele: 21, Beyonce: 4’. Sums Beyonce’s audience up quite well I think...Anyway, enough of this rambling, on with the news...

                                                  

♫ Beatles News: Beatles drummer Pete Best might have been forced out of the band before their first single but he’s always been a big hit with fans in Merseyside (indeed, jealousy his popularity with the girls is often cited as reason why he got the push). So good on Liverpool and 10,000 fans on facebook who’ve supported a petition which finally awards Pete his own slice of Wirral immortality by naming a new street ‘Pete Best Drive’ in his honour. The new estate by Bellway Homes chose a site in West Derby for the new name, a highly suitable one for us Beatle fans seeing as Pete lived there for a time in the mid-60s and his mother Mona’s coffee house The Casbah (where the early Beatles used to perform) is right round the corner.   

♫ Jefferson Airplane News: Grace Slick’s first solo album ‘Manhole’ has finally been re-released on CD after over a decade of being out of print. While far from a  classic, ‘Manhole’ has gathered something of a reputation amongst collectors after following the all-out geniusness of her and Paul Kantner’s three albums together (including AAA review no 44 ‘Blows Against The Empire’) and features the same line-up of San Francisco luminaries (including Jerry Garcia and David Crosby, as well as Airplane and Starship bandmates Paul Kantner and David Freiberg).Weirdly, the latter even gets a song to himself with ‘It’s Only Music’, a song on which Grace doesn’t even appear (on her own solo album?!). Most critics have been praising the 17 minute epic title track and the wordless ‘Jay’ but, believe you me, these are terrible – the real weight of the record comes in Grace’s sarcastic ‘Come Again Toucan’ and the rousing finale ‘Rock Epic #38’, which has more false endings then the News of the World scandal. Now all we need is Grace’s superior follow-up LP ‘Dreams’ from 1980 out on CD and I’ll be happy, honest...   

♫ Oasis News: There are indeed going to be not one but two Noel Gallagher albums in the shops before too long! ‘High Flying Birds’ is the more straightforward of the two sets, made up of newer material and unreleased Oasis goodies like ‘If I Had A Gun’ and ‘Stop The Clocks’ (but, alas, no ‘Living A Dream I My Record Machine’, the best unreleased Oasis song of all), due for release on October 17^th this year. A second untitled LP, made with psychedelic remixers ‘Amorphous Androgynous’ (who remixed several of the songs from the last Oasis LP ‘Dig Out Your Soul’ as B-sides), is due early next year. To promote the two albums, Noel even edited Mojo magazine this month (as ‘September’s issue’, though why is anybody’s guess seeing it came out on July 20^th!), with the best freebie CD the mag’s had for ages. Remember three issues back when we were comparing the early days of Noel and Lindisfarne’s Alan Hull and the similarities of the pair’s early material? Well, either Noel knew that already or he’s read our newsletter because there’s a rare 1975 live recording of Hull singing ‘We Can Swing Together’! Plus my favourite Buddy Holly song ‘Well...All Right’, which hardly anyone else rates and you can read about in our ‘top five pre-1960s songs’ in News and Views no 27 (I agree with Noel too – this is the sound of psychedelia eight years early!) As for articles, umm the only one worth reading was about Noel himself, with a pretty good article about what he’s been up to since Oasis’ split and his favourite books and DVDs (including Neil Young biography ‘Shakey’ and the Rutles ‘All You Need Is Cash’) plus favourite records including The Beatles ‘Ticket To Ride’, Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey My My’ (as played by Oasis on their 2000 tour) and Wings’ ‘1985’.

ANNIVERSARIES: Happy birthday to all AAA men and women born between August 1^st and 7^th: so that’s Jerry Garcia (guitarist with the Grateful Dead 1965-95) who would have been 69 on August 1^st, then.  Anniversaries of events include: The Beach Boys spend their first week of many on the British charts with ‘Surfin’ USA’ (August 1^st 1963) and finally, George Harrison’s first concert for Bangladesh (also starring Ringo and Badfinger) takes place at Madison Square Garden (August 1^st 1971); The Beatles headline their first gig at Liverpool’s Cavern Club (August 2^nd 1961); The Who rescue the film premises Shepperton Studios from demolition, buying the venue for use in their ‘Kids Are Alright’ documentary and ‘Quadrophenia’ film (they still own it too; August 2^nd 1977); Just two years, one day and 293 appearances after their first headlining gig, the Beatles play their last show at The Cavern Club (August 3^rd 1963); Beatles record are banned in South Africa following John Lennon’s statements about the band being ‘bigger than Jesus’ (August 3^rd 1966) – a day later six South American states follow suit; Wings are officially formed on August 3^rd 1971, with Dennys Laine and Seiwell as well as Paul and Linda McCartney; The Small Faces release perhaps their most famous single ‘Itchycoo Park’ (August 4^th 1967); Pink Floyd stage The Wall for the first time at London’s Earl’s Court (due to costs they only ever stage the show four times – August 4^th 1980); Two 1960s milestones are released on August 5^th: The Beatles’ ‘Revolver’ in 1966 and Pink Floyd’s debut ‘Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ in 1967; The Small Faces release their debut single, the wonderfully ungrammatical ‘What’cha Gonna Do ‘Bout It?’ (August 6^th 1965); Pink Floyd’s film version of ‘The Wall’ premieres in America (August 6^th 1982) and finally, Time Magazine becomes the first magazine to review the Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ released the previous month and – you’ve guessed it, they absolutely hate it, with a headline ‘avoid at all costs’! (August 7^th 1964).

News, Views and Music Issue 55 (Intro)

March 6:

♫ Hello, hiya, howdy and watcher, it’s time for issue 55 of everybody’s favourite spice girls-baiting rotten music hating AAA-pulsating monkeynuts newsletter. Not much news to tell you this week except that we’re now approaching the 700 visitors mark, so thankyou to everyone whose dropped in for a visit and a quick look round our (non-photo) albums. We’ll be back a bit later than normal next issue but seeing as we’ve been a bit early posting the last two hopefully that shouldn’t matter too much. Anyway, till then happy reading!

                                                             

♫ CSNY News/Jefferson Airplane News: There were no less than two AAA-related answers on last week’s under-rated ‘Only Connect’ quiz (BBC3 Monday 8.30pm) which would have got me a whopping seven points if I’d been on the show (though, as normal, I can’t say I got many of the other rounds that week). For those who don’t know the show is about connections between four seemingly random people/places/objects and on the CSNY round contestants had to guess the fourth name in the sequence after being provided with (Bing) Crosby, (whisky) Stills, (Kate) Nash (the result, of course, was (Jimmy) Young). I’m pleased to see its the only round where I’ve ever guessed the answer from the beginning (or are ever likely to!) As if that wasn’t enough round four was all about ‘famous Graces’, naturally including Mrs Slick from the Jefferson Airplane. Full marks to host Victoria Coren for calling the latter group ‘that wonderful band...’ although perhaps not her ‘bird competition’ joke which changed CSNY into Crowsby, Starling, Natterjack and Yearling! Yeah, OK, so that’s not really very newsworthy but I have to fill this column up somehow!

                              

♫ ANNIVERSARIES: Our birthday boys this week (February 28^th-March 6^th) are Brian Jones (multi-instrumentalist with The Rolling Stones 1962-68) who would have been 68 on February 28^th, Roger Daltrey (singer with The Who 1964-82 and various re-unions) who turns 66 on March 1^st and David Gilmour (guitarist with Pink Floyd 1968-94) who turns 63 on March 6^th. Anniversaries of events include: John and Paul write ‘From Me To You’ in the back of a tour bus after reading the quote in that week’s letter column of the NME (February 28^th 1963); The Cavern Club closes its doors for the final time after raking up debts of £70,000 (February 28^th 1966); The Beatles start filming for their first film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ – amazingly the film will premiere in the summer of the same year (March 2^nd 1964); Stephen Stills takes part in the fondly if hazily remembered ‘Havana Jam’ festival, an event held to strengthen American-Cuban relations (March 2^nd 1979); John Lennon’s quote about The Beatles being bigger than Jesus first appears in print in the Evening Standard where it doesn’t even make a headline – it won’t be till American journalists get hold of the story a few months later that it becomes front page news (March 4^th 1966); The Rolling Stones record their ‘Love You Live’ album at Toronto’s low capacity and intimate El Macombo Club – with Keith Richards’ latest drug bust hanging over the band (see last week’s column) there are fears that this will be the last record the bad will ever do (March 4^th 1977); The Rolling Stones and The Hollies begin a tour together, creating a friendship that lasts throughout most of the 1960s (March 5^th 1965 – and contrary to most books on the subject they are joint headliners, generally switching billing depending on the venue); The Rolling Stones also record their first live album – Got Live If You Want It – during a gig in Liverpool on March 6^th 1965 and finally, The Beatles release their last ever single in the UK with ‘Let It Be’ on March 6^th 1970, over a year after it’s recording.

And for week two (March 7^th-13^th) its birthday celebrations for Micky Dolenz (drummer and actor with The Monkees 1966-70) who turns 65 on March 8^th. Anniversaries of events include: the first time British stars fill up the whole of the UK top 10 (including AAA members The Searchers at no 5 with ‘Needles and Pins’ and The Rolling Stones at no 6 with ‘Not Fade Away’) (March 7^th 1964); The Beatles appear on the radio for the first time singing ‘Dream Baby’ on ‘Teenagers Turn’ a full seven months before their first single release (March 8^th 1962); The legendary Fillmore East venue - or ‘Fillmore Esat’ as they famously mis-spelled it on their advertising banner – opens in San Francisco and will become home to the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane among others (March 8^th 1968); Pigpen aka Ron McKernan, organist and founder of The Grateful Dead, dies of liver failure on March 8^th 1973; The Beatles release their last ever EP after breaking every EP record in the book over the past four years (‘Yesterday’, which never was a single in the UK, is released on March 10^th 1966); The Blue Jays – Moody Blues members Justin Hayward and John Lodge – perform their first gig at the Albert Hall (March 10^th 1975); Paul Simon gets a gold record for his best-selling solo single ’50 Ways To Leave Your Lover’ (March 11^th 1976); Paul and Linda McCartney tie the knot at Marleybone Registry Office (March 12^th 1969); John Lennon gets evicted from Los Angeles’ Troubadour Club after heckling the Smothers Brothers, an act that makes him question the wisdom of continuing his ‘lost weekend’ (March 12^th 1974) and finally, Stephen Stills’ biggest solo hit ‘Love The One You’re With’ reaches its peak in the UK charts (March 13^th 1971).