well, after something of an absence of this sort of thing for some time, here we go with a collection of random images culled, for the most part, off of the internet. i don't particularly have much else to offer you at the moment, look you see, and so i offer these in the hope that they get found and prove to be of some interest to someone somewhere.
mostly a music and slightly a film related collection this time around, but a few of the images relate, more or less, to neither. and starting all that off is one that i cannot say for certain is legit, but a cursory glance across the internet suggests that actually it is.
what that? the caption with it around the web says that it's 18 people having a bit of a dance, or if you like a shindig, within the confines of a club or hall in Aldershot, back in 1961. the interesting aspect of this - not that Aldershot it's most interesting - is that the band playing happens to be a more or less finished and complete version of the pop group The Beatles.
this would be some 12 - 18 months before they made it big, so to speak - not that playing at a club in Aldershot to a select audience isn't big. stories like this tend to be true - from what i recall Queen first played a gig similar to this, only to an audience of 4 people, and there was only about 12 at the "legendary" first gig off of the Sex Pistols. in regards of both of them, if the amount of people who claimed to be at them was close to true, them both played debut concerts to a quarter of a million people. wow.
now then, we are a way off a hat trick, but the best thing about Christmas for the last two years has been a screening of Chas & Dave's Cockney Knees Up from 1982. how about, ladies and gents, a look at the TV Times article promoting it for when it was first shown in 1982?
why has this been rebroadcast for the last two Christmases we have celebrated? a mix of things, i think. for one i expect the royalties and fees to show it are disproportionately low in terms of the talent on display in it. also, it is Channel 5 what shows it, and as far as i am aware it's Richard Desmond who owns that channel. if you wish you can dig up information on this gent, but he is very Chas & Dave. i don't actually care why they keep showing it, i am most pleased that they have and hope that they continue to.
a slice of history for you, beyond the history above, and here's a super computer from, i think, 1968. it says that it is an analogue computer, which i would take to mean an abacus, or possibly a pad of paper with a pencil.
that's awesome that is. these days people seem to want smaller computers for some reason. i do not. i want a big, massive bank of computer stuff, all shiny and with switches, like that one what they built in the cave at the end of Superman III. i like the idea of my computer looking totally massive and impressive.
some more music? for sure. here's a collection - sadly and sorry a blurry one - of some Depeche Mode posters and things that someone had upon their wall.
nice dedication that. my bedroom wall probably looked more or less the same, but with Frankie Goes To Hollywood rather than the Depeche Mode. from what year is the above collection? Violator is clear and present, so i would say late 89, early 90 maybe?
on to the visual arts, then, and none more visual than Don Johnson off of Miami Vice and all them other things which he done that are fabulous but just not as well remembered.
actually he did a very smart film called Dead Bang not long after Miami Vice, and he was the best part of that Tin Cup film. also i can remember he was really very good in a miniseries called The Long Hot Summer; one that i would track down and watch again if time allowed me to do such things.
indeed that pictures is of Don smouldering and pouting. i thought that most of the ladies reading this, and a fair few of the chaps, would like that.
that said, the next image might be something of an acquired taste. so to speak.
yes, indeed that is a promo picture for the first Hellraiser film, which came at the world in 1988. there have been several films with the name since, but only the second one was any good, and even then that one for some reason moved the whole plot to Chicago from London / Liverpool without ever giving reason for it.
as much as i love the first two Hellraiser films there is a school of thought to say that none of the films so far have ever really lived up to the awesome potential of the concept. i think i read they are having another go at the films, hopefully it turns out smart. and now that i think, wither Clive Barker? i really loved his novels, i must remember to see if he's done any in the last few years and i've somehow missed them. Arabat, i think, was the last thing i recall.
on to film of a more family orientated nature, then, and here's how the magazine the TV Times elected to promote the screening of the Disney film The Black Hole on ITV. back in 82 or 83, i think.
back then there was not an "internet" to copy and paste pictures off to go in your magazine. if you didn't have promo pictures given to you for a film or whatever then you had to organize for someone to draw what you wished to published. whilst them pictures are better than what i could draw, well, they are not quite as accurate caricatures as they might me.
a return to a bit of music and a gander at someone who was incomprehensibly famous despite the fact that such fame would be celebrated with controversy and arrests today? sure. here's Lemmy off of Motorhead with Samantha Fox. no, not the US 'actress' of the same name, but the Brit one who had a somewhat similar career to the US named one.
i would imagine that a great many people who were not there in the 70s and 80s are, in the context of today's standards and morals, left simply baffled by the number of elder members of the entertainment community that had relations which girls of school age. without in any way or manner justifying it, your understanding comes from what was considered "perfectly normal" back then. as in, Samantha Fox came to fame for posing topless for the legendary Page 3 of The Sun "newspaper" in the 80s. when she was 16. and no, they didn't hide that she was 16 or lie about it, the fact that she was doing nudies at this age was positively celebrated.
add to that the fact that, for example, Billy Wyman was marrying a 16 year old, and Jimmy Page was considered "a bit of a cheeky lad" for abducting and, ahem, guess, a 14 year old fan, and you kind of get an idea as to why and how certain things we'd raise an eyebrow at today flew under the radar and into the realm of "ha ha nice one" back then.
as for the Lemmy, well, he was a ladies man, man. as in not girls.
a celebration of some of the lesser know and not quite as fondly remembered stars of the New Romantic period of pop music? sure.
Haircut 100, man. i think their big song was Love Plus One, although something called Fantastic Day comes to mind too. my abiding memory of the band was that the singer, Nick Heyward or something, was very shy. he was always quiet and blushing when someone tried to interview him on TV. my thought on that is, if that's the case for you, don't go and become a f*****g pop star; then, rather be a plumber or something else what pays the bills and doesn't bring much media attention.
A Flock Of Seagulls? the only positive there is that they took their name off of a lyric from Toiler On The Sea by The Stranglers. otherwise, crap hair, a lack of bass and I Ran is as good as it got from them, and it's just all plain whiny.
more non entertainment stuff, of sorts, then, and here's what is described as a mobile swimming pool in New York, somewhere in the 1960s.
that's very smart, that is. you couldn't do that now, of course - too much traffic, people are just not fun enough to do it any more and you'd need billions in public liability insurance, since today is a time when no one is prepared to accept that either consequences or accidents can happen as a result of decisions we make and actions we take.
also back in time for you, and indeed with a brief but all the same impressive return to the world of computers, here's what a hard drive of 5MB capacity looked like, and indeed here's a glimpse of how easy it was for a chap to transport it around.
yes. when i said that i like the idea of my computer looking big and massive, i think it is pertinent to say that i would very much like it to retain the rather more compact nature of hard drives that we know today. for a scale sort of thing, that 5MB drive being lifted into an aeroplane could hold approximately 70% of the digital download of All For One by The Stone Roses, a download which i have apparently bought twice.
referring back to cultural and moral differences between then and now, there were things that happened then in promoting music which do not happen now. a big one, of course, was taking out a full page advert for a new album - to do that today would probably see the album released at a loss. which is weird, considering how many ways there are to promote something now.
also today, if you say anything about anyone, even in terms of a generalised group, someone will take offence on behalf of that person or group and mouth off about how offended they are on behalf of someone else, and will not stop or shut up until people pay attention. usually this causes massive waves, and then is forgotten about within a day or so.
basically, the two points above mean that the below would be unlikely to be a thing today.
there is an absolutely massive drive to make sure that China, or if you like the Chinese, are in particular not upset by anything. films are made in such a way to appease the Chinese authorities and make them look super (cf The Martian, most Marvel films off of Disney), and as recently as last night we saw a watered down Eurovision Song Contest so that it would not fall foul of Chinese censors.
should Pete Townshend wish to have made an album like the one above today, he would have had to call it The Chinese Are The Best Cowboys, or even possibly left China out of it all together.
was the album, in among all of this, actually any good? no. as was the case with Queen, Rolling Stones, etc, when at this time artists were allowed to make mostly indulgent solo albums they didn't use the best stuff on it, rather instead keeping clear hits for the band. why? well, from an artistic point of view releasing something as by The Who means a much bigger audience than exists for Pete solo, and from finances in means a very great deal more money. on the plus side for the record, as you can see All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes was released on tape, too.
a promo poster for a late 80s gig by the Pink Floyd in France? sure.
i'm not really a big Pink Floyd fan, to tell the truth. some of their stuff is all right, but mostly it just plain doesn't say anything to me. i appreciate the fact that they have more talent than me, and loads more success and money, and as a consequence have a good many more fans than i do.
i must like some of their songs, you would think, otherwise i would not have bothered to put the above in at all. but yes, mostly it's for their fans to find and enjoy. happy looking.
for a penultimate look at the world of vibes in this post, an advert off of an American magazine from 1982 that shows how much effort once we had to go to in order to obtain, or if you like attain, the vibes we want.
yeah, before an "internet" which allowed you to order stuff from overseas, or simply obtain it in an unofficial way, you had to scour magazines to find ads for imports of records what were only released in one part of the world. in this case it would seem that the records were from Germany.
i happen to have that Story Of The Who set on vinyl. boss, it is. it rather successfully condenses highlights from Tommy on one of the four sides, and it still sounds quite coherent. well, as coherent as it, greatest work of art from the last century that it is, gets.
current music fans upset about being ripped off by record labels over having to get an expensive box set just to access one or two rare tracks may well take heart from the pre-Axl AC/DC set above. yeah, throwing old records together and re-selling them to you on the promise of it being an exotic pressing and some unreleased stuff being on it has always been a thing.
an image of a beggar running after the car of his excellency King George V, cap in hand (the beggar, not the king), asking for money? that's what it says this picture is of.
is the picture legit? not sure. someone with talent could soon photoshop that, and did they even have cars like that when King George V was around? also, there's no fact to say that he is a beggar what is betting, in particular as he has quality footwear on. perhaps it is just a gent that neglected to doff his cap in reverence as The King went by, and has run up to make amends for that, lest he get executed. such things used to happen when you were rude to royalty, you know. wars were started for less than a lacking cap tip.
finally, and you may argue the best has been saved for last, kind of, here's David Lee Roth (the best) as part of Van Halen (kind of)
the dynamics of the above are interesting. this is Van Halen on tour in 1982. by this point, right, if you live in a town with a population of 5,000 or less, then the combined efforts in this respect of your entire population have had less sex in the last three years than what Roth had experienced by this point. he was amazing in that regard, man, and probably still is. paradoxically, all that is known of his band mate Eddie "Edward" Van Halen, pictured with him, is that his one son was not born until about 9 years after this, so it's possible that Eddie's doing a sex count was at zero at this stage. he should have dressed as smart as Roth, man, in particular with respect to neck scarves.
phew, that's that. thank you for reading, and i trust that some if not all of the above helped pass some time, or proved to be of interest. more as and when it happens, dear reader.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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