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.

The cat in the hat

Jingo

My good friend Sarah has recently acquired a new kitten and a bowler hat. So I suppose the above photo has a certain inevitability about it.

I like a bowler, don't you? From Mr Benn and The Homepride Men to A Clockwork Orange and John Cleese's Ministry of Silly Walks, the bowler has been the titfer of choice throughout the ages for the great and the good. Here's a quartet who need no introduction...

I made it to The Top

A recent visit to the West End found me walking down Wardour Street past the site of The Marquee. To any young 'uns reading this, the legendary London was torn down in the early 90s. The only reminder that 90 Wardour Street W1 once played host to some of rock and roll's most famous, and infamous, luminaries is the blue plaque name-checking Keith Moon.











I have many happy memories of nights spent in the tiny Soho club. Anyone who's been (and if you were there, like me, you really must be a dinosaur) will remember the corridor from the main doors leading to the bar on the left. Once in the bar, through the glazed wall/window you could see when the support band were about to pack up and vacate the stage in readiness for the main turn. That's when everyone would pile in and form a scrum in front of the stage. A blind eye would be turned when it came to fire regulations, so despite the venue having an official capacity of 700, there would often be 1000+ sweaty bodies in there. And there certainly was in October 1983 when ZZ Top (even then, a stadium act in the States) came to town. As a warm up gig for their Eliminator tour, the Texan beardies descended on The Marquee - a venue so small that the band would have played in places with dressing rooms bigger than it (and what they would have made of the broom cupboard where they got changed is probably unprintable). Here's my ticket.

I've got a button badge somewhere in the loft with the strapline 'I made it to The Top.' I don't know what ' be in your seats by 7.45' meant...it was strictly standing only. Looking back, three things stand out when I think about that night: seeing Thomas the Vance in the bar, being close to tears when they played La Grange and chatting with Garry Bushell who was reviewing it for Sounds; my music paper of choice. Good times.

Pickin' on Tush!