The Pre-Genie

Bowie's The Jean Genie is nearly 45 years old. Can you believe it? It was released as a single in November 1972, before appearing on Aladdin Sane the following year.

'Make Me Your Baby' by Giorgio Moroder, meanwhile, will be 50 next year. Moroder, the man who gave us Chicory Tip's 'Son of My Father' and a ton of disco smashes including Donna Summers' orgasmic 'Love to Love', released this prototype for the Jean Genie in April 1968.

Giorgio Moroder - Make Me Your Baby

Tigers on Vaseline

Ziggy

Ziggy and the Spiders. No one was really sure where Ziggy hailed from - Bromley in Kent, probably - but everyone knows where the Spiders came from. And no, it's not the red planet. The Spiders: Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder were all residents of Kingston upon Hull. That would have been a bit of a mouthful back in 1972 when Ziggy Stardust was looking for a name for his backing band. So, Mars it was then.

Waggy

It's not documented whether or not Ken Wagstaff (the greatest striker ever to have pulled a Hull City shirt on) was a Bowie fan or not. But in '72, Waggy and the Tigers were plying their trade in the old Second Division. In that same year The Spiders from Mars tour was in full flow.

Meanwhile, back in Hull, City (unlike now) were consistently under achieving: it would be another thirty years or more before they reached the top flight. Bowie, on the other hand, was on fire. Ziggy Stardust catapulted both him and his East Yorkshire band members front and centre - their mammoth UK and North America1972 campaign pulled in some prestigious dates in the US including New York's Carnegie Hall and the Winterland Auditorium in San Fransisco, before rounding off the year at London's Rainbow Theatre. Hull's itinerary, meanwhile, included exotic locations such as Preston North End. And Middlesborough. Although Waggy missed part of the season due to injury, he was still finding the back of the net. However, they would still finish the season nearer the bottom of the league than the top. Tigers on vaseline, indeed.

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Today's offering comes on the back of finishing my new song, 'Won't Fade Away'. It's a eulogy to Hull - the place where I was born. York Songwriters are putting on a gig in the summer in a little bar in the Fruit Market later in the summer - each of us playing a Hull themed ditty. Unfortunately I'll have moved by then, so will miss it. Here's the first verse:

I was born on the Beverley High Road

When Waggy and the Tigers played at Boothferry Park

And we'd go to the Land of Green Ginger

Have a few few beers...stumble home in the dark

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Getting Better

I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time; seven weeks on Thursday.

That's my bit at the end. John and Paul were kind enough to leave the gaps, so you can sing along with the extra line - should you so desire. It actually forms part of the new remastered version of Pepper (it was fifty years ago today, sort of) that will be available for you to buy (again) next month. Sneak preview time:

The Beatles - Getting Better (instrumental) mp3

Living in Hope

Barry Wom - pretty in pink

hope


noun

       1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen




Barrington Womble (aka Barry Wom) was living in hope; and he wasn't even the best drummer in the Rutles. Allegedly.

Blind Faith

No caption required

What you're about to read in the opening paragraph just couldn't happen now. Could it...?

It's 1969. You're a 14 year old girl. A photographer approaches you on the London Underground and asks if you wouldn't mind taking your top off for some 'artistic' snaps he wants to take for a pop group's new album cover. 'No, I think I'll pass' says the youngster, 'but my younger sister would be up for it.' The shoot is set up (amazingly with the girl's parents' consent), whereupon photographer Bob Seidemann asked the topless 11 year old - Maiora Goschen - to hold a phallic spaceship. He calls the resulting image 'Blind Faith'.

She can laugh about it now

The album in question goes on to sell millions (well, Eric Clapton *was* God at the time), though the sleeve is still reviled in certain quarters. Accusations of child pornography aside, the standout song on Blind Faith's one and only album is 'Can't Find My Way Home'. It was written by a then twenty year old Stevie Winwood. When the supergroup played it at their debut gig in Hyde Park it was a baking hot day in June. Forty odd years later here's Winwood playing it solo and dressed for the tundra. He really needs to crank the heating up.