Having a devilish Halloween

Chance meeting

More vinyl, more totty. This is actually a well-known album cover, Country Life by Roxy Music (1974), predictably banned by various dull people over the years. The reason for this posting now is that I now learn that the models, Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald, were two German girls that Bryan Ferry met on holiday. Would they pose on the cover? Of course!! Excuse over....

The back of the sleeve is much less interesting

Hoffnung Interlude

I was very surprised to read that Gerald Hofnung, well known musician and humorist, was only 34 when he died in 1959. These cartoons appeared in Lilliput magazine, issue dated August/September 1953.

Hood's of Hammersmith

Another record acquisition, some sixty years older than that in the previous posting. This is made of shellac, rather than vinyl, and the cover is advertising Hood's shop in Hammersmith, selling Bicycles, Radios, Gramophones and records, an interesting combination! The shop in Fulham Palace Road still stands, but the block is largely empty.

The record within is The St Louis Blues, in this case by Hawaiian guitarist Frank Ferera (1885-1951), released in 1925.

Euro-cheese

The only reason that I bought this single (in a St Albans charity shop for 50p) was that it had an attractive woman on the cover and that I hadn't a clue who she was. As it turned out, Vikki, or Aeone Victoria Watson to be precise, was our Eurovision Song Contest  entry for 1985. Although I am not a particular fan of the event, we usually watch it on TV, although whether that included 1985, I couldn't say, being besieged by numerous small children at the time. The song, 'Love is................', apparently came fourth with 100 points, so did well, later reaching 49 in the UK singles chart. The poor girl was then put into the bargain bin at Woolies. She now lives in the US, recording New Age/Spiritual music as Aeone.

But was it any good? You had better judge for yourself, I couldn't possibly comment.........

Red Star Weekly

I know little about this title, three copies of which I picked up yesterday. Red Star Weekly featured romantic stories aimed, of course, at a female readership, as well as features, reader's letters, cartoons, adverts and agony aunt 'Dear Madge'. It appears to have been published from at least the 1940s until the 1980s, the three copies below dating from 1969. It was published by DC Thomson & Co., from the same stable as The Beano and The Dandy, being of a similar size and quality.

Have it Awayday

Saucy goings-on in the British Rail publicity department in the 1970s; the cartoonist of the right hand,1975, leaflet, was Styx, otherwise known as Leslie Harding (1920-80).

Bobby Crush on the buses

If you were going to throw a piano party back in 1982, then I guess that Opportunity Knocks-winning Bobby Crush was as good a booking as ever, Mrs Mills having passed away in 1978 (he popped up looking, er, a little portly, on a tribute show about her, earlier this year). This album, one of two with almost identical covers, was recorded at Abbey Wood Studios and features 101 tunes played at break-neck speed; well, they would have to be.

The illustration on the cover is a caricature of a real bus, former Southport Corporation all-Leyland FFY 403, a vehicle that is still running at 66 years-old, being used in Torquay this summer.

Bobby Crush is still performing, including a regular appearance in panto as Dame, although there is little on YouTube. The clip below is an early one of him surrounded by a bevy (what else?) of girls in swimsuits whilst he plays a song in 23 seconds on a white piano.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKF4HfwSsm0

Dockland cricket

This interesting picture appeared in London - Work & Play, published by Batsford in 1950 and is credited to Fox Photo's. It shows children playing cricket in Alpha Road, Millwall, using improvised packing cases and bits of wood while the grown-ups look on. I love the sheer incongruity of seeing ships looming above terraced houses, once a common enough sight in Liverpool, Glasgow and elsewhere.

Alpha Road was apparently renamed Alpha Grove at some point, and still exists, although everything around it has been rebuilt, either because of bomb damage or post-war redevelopment. In my 1950s A-Z, it is already down as Alpha Grove, which then stretched up to Millwall South Dock, where the Union Castle Line ship is berthed. There was also a railway line, tantalisingly behind that tall fence......