Apache

Boyfriend material?

I recently watched The Shadows at 60 documentary on the iPlayer and was, yet again, blown away by just how tight they were. Always too good to be someone else's backing band - even Cliff (especially Cliff) - you could see they were destined for bigger (and better) things. Although this bit of footage wasn't in the film (and neither was their cameo in Thunderbirds) it's them playing Apache on British TV in March '61; though not with their regular guitarist. Their stand-in, for what it's worth, went right up in my estimation when I saw this. 

The 1959 Fender Stratocaster you see non-Hank playing is the first Strat to have made its way to these shores from America. Originally finished in Fiesta Red (though Hank Marvin always said it was more Flamingo Pink), this film, for the record, can confirm that it was actually Battleship Grey. It now belongs in the custody of Bruce Welch.

The Shadows - Apache (1961)

Walk Don't Run

Woaah!

I saw this photograph on Twitter this morning. The caption read: 'When you don't want people running down the hallway.'

So the music kind of chose itself today. This is from a Surf compilation album I bought the first time I went to California back in the late 90s. My friend Riggsby took me to a Tower Records store in Mountain View store that was still open at midnight. It's by the Ventures and, for a while, would regularly appear on C90 mix-tapes I was knocking out during that time.

The clip below is over 50 years old and is a superb snapshot in time. It's got everything - the 'group' trying to look cool but failing miserably (the Shadows dance routine is priceless), girls in the audience chewing bubble gum like it's going out of fashion and a backdrop that looks like it was put together just minutes before the red light went on. Perfect.

The Ventures - WALK DON'T RUN (1961)

Too late

There is, in existence, only a minute and a half of movie footage of me as a child. I know this because, in around 1980, I found a yellow cardboard Kodachrome box amongst my dad's slides and asked him what was on it. 'Search me' he said. I replied that the father of my girlfriend at the time had a cine projector. 'Take it' he said, 'and tell me what's on it.' So I did.

Although it only lasts for about 90 seconds, it is a very moving piece of film: only a handful of days after I was born, sometime in January 1961, friends of mum and dad shot a (very) short reel of 8 mm cine film of them bathing their new born. You've never seen a more happy and proud young couple. And, as you can imagine, I am both very young and very clean. Priceless.

If only I hadn't lost it.

Or at least, I thought I'd lost it. Three Sundays ago after we returned to dad's after visiting mum in hospital he gave me a load of slides. 'I'm making you custodian of the Medd photographic archive' he said. Well, not in so many words, but that's what he meant. This next bit is quite hard to write, because, in amongst the the plethora of slides he gave me was the very same distinctive yellow Kodachrome box I thought I'd lost all those years ago. I recognised it straight away - but didn't say anything: I'll get it transferred onto DVD as a surprise, I thought, and we can all watch it together. My folks will be made up.

'It'll be ready next Tuesday' said the man in the photo shop when I took it in a week last Friday. 'Brilliant' I said. 'Mum's not so good at the moment, it'll make her day.' And then some.

It would have done too. If only she could have hung on for a few more days.

I'm seeing dad tomorrow. We'll watch it together and pretend mum's there.