Thoughts&Words Your letters and emails –jon@shindig-magazine.com


Hi guys, I am 19 years old and I love ’60s and ’70s music and I was thrilled to see The Hollies as a cover feature on Shindig! as I am a big fan of the band and found the article very informative. Dorit Vaknine


Hi Jon and team, Really enjoyed The Hollies article in the latest issue. I always knew they were a great singles band but, until reading Andy Morten’s piece, wasn’t aware that they had a psychedelic moment in the mid/late ’60s. After reading the article I embarked on a bit of a “Hollies spree”, buying copies of Evolution and Butterfly. I also picked up a great value EMI three disc set – The Hollies Special Collection – which includes ‘Wings’ a track that Andy, quite rightly, described as “beautiful”. Being a bit of a sunshine pop aficionado I also got hold of the fascinating Hollies At Abbey Road 1966-1970 comp so I could lend an ear to ‘Everything Is Sunshine’ a track singled out by Andy as a gem. And it really is: a lovely song with unusual instrumentation but, at just under two minutes, far too short (but then again, perhaps its brevity is what makes the song so special). Congratulations on the magazine – it just goes from


strength to strength and each issue is so well produced: a real pleasure to look at and to read. The sheer number of albums currently being released is tremendously exciting but also overwhelming and Shindig! is a great guide to those artists, albums (and books, DVDs and magazines) which I may well have otherwise overlooked. Keep up the great work! Graham Lovatt


Hey Jon, Your magazine just goes from strength to strength, and know I won’t need to see you in your study Mr Rossi (thankfully) as I have Skip Bifferty on vinyl, though sadly not on RCA. I particularly enjoyed the piece on The Hollies but the track ‘Tomorrow When It Comes’ is certainly not on my copy of Butterfly?? G.D.Evans Dorit I just had to publish your letter… it proves that both females and people under the age of 30 read us and we are so glad you are a fan of The Hollies. We have always loved the guys and feel fulfilled that we have introduced their “psychedelic” era to Graham. Turning people onto things we rate is the best part of our job! Mr Evans, Andy Morten adds: “Oops! Well spotted G. D. that one slipped through the net. It should have read Rarities LP, ’88 just like ‘Relax’.”


Hi Jon and Andy, Just a short note. First of all I have really appreciated reading Shindig! over the last year. I started subscribing after I heard you on The Freak Zone last year (April or May was it?) I think my favourite article was the piece you did on Circulus, nice to shed some light on them. Also liked the cover CD. It’s been interesting and so I’ve just renewed my subscription. That neatly brings me on to the reason I emailed. I


haven’t seen anything on your website about the closure of 6Music. I’d have never have discovered Shindig! if it wasn’t for that 6Music interview. Anyhow I wondered if you were going to post anything about the proposed closure of 6Music and the BBC Trust’s consultation on the Shindig! website? Dave Lauchlan. Yes Dave our brothers-in-arms Stuart and Justin (plus


4


producer Henry) are on our wavelength and were kind enough to raise our profile by having Andy and I on the show. We too have been disgusted by the Beebs proposed cuts, and if we had more time we would have penned something for the site. Here’s to 6Music!


Hi Jon, I enjoyed your Bosstown Sound articles very much. I have always felt it had been wrongly maligned, and am glad its brilliant music is being reappraised. But why no mention of The Banchee who made two fine albums, one self titled and one called Thinkin’. However I’ve always felt that the real coup de grace was perpetrated by Mike Curb, when he became the president of MGM and Verve records. With his war cry “dump the dopers” he started a


crusade against what he called drug groups, who he called the cancer of the industry. Eighteen groups (many of them from Boston) lost their record deals. Clive Davis at the time referred to this as nothing short of an “artistic witch hunt”. MGM’s cash cow Eric Burden’sAnimals were the only group to escape this purge unscathed. So called “drug groups” must only be a cancer when they don’t make big bucks. Apparently Beacon Street Union recorded material


for an unissued third LP ( E/SE4598), as did Ultimate Spinach ( SE4642) and Orpheus ( SE4643) before they too got the chop. Hopefully any resurgence might get these out of the


vaults. Again many thanks for a brilliant magazine.


Bohdan Kryopywnckyj Patrick Curran, the author of the article says: “I must admit I’d never heard of The Banchee or I would have included them. Apparently they were from Boston and had two albums (1969 and ’70), the first was on Atlantic. I’ll investigate. (Oh no not a part three I hear them shout in unison.)” Apart from that I mentioned the third album by


Spinach and BSU and the third and fourth by Orpheus. Still, I’m so glad it sparked a response.


Hi guys, Another great issue. Just to add something to your Fludd CD review.The reason why the band has a British sound is that the Pilling brothers were originally from Birmingham and played there during 1967 with Wages Of Sin, Yellow Rainbow and finally Zeus (backing Cat Stevens briefly). Nick Warburton Thanks Nick. For those of you that find this intriguing we will be running a specially commissioned piece by Nick about Wages Of Sin, Yellow Rainbow and Zeus soon.


Dear Shindig! Haven’t gotten your magazine in a while but when I saw the Bonzos on the cover I had to check it out. Nice work. Thumbing through the magazine, I noted the update on Vashti Bunyan. Did you know that there is a connection (sort of) between the Bonzos and Vashti? I happen to be reading The Pythons’ Autobiography By The Pythons, and on page 81 of said tome I notice some memorabilia of The Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club’s early ’60s production Hang Down Your Head And Die, featuring Terry Jones and (behind the scenes) Michael Palin, and I noted that the number before Terry Jones’s song ‘I Want Gas’ was a song called ‘There’s Gonna Be A Commission’ written by Robert Hewison and Vashti Bunyan. So before she worked with Joe Boyd, and


before she worked with Andrew Loog Oldham, she worked with future Monty Pythons? It’d be interesting if someone asked her about that... Jim Finnigan Hi Jim, here’s what our writer/Vashti expert Jeanette Leech has to say: “Yes indeed there is aconnection between Vashti Bunyan and the early Pythons. It stems from Vashti’s period at Ruskin Art College in Oxford. Vashti at that time was developing her songwriting and was in a girl group with her friends Jennifer Lewis and Angela Strange. The three of them were friends with Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and were involved behind the scenes at Hang Down Your Head And Die, a powerful piece by The Experimental Theatre Company on capital punishment. Not long after, Vashti got thrown out of Ruskin and met Andrew Loog Oldham, while Jennifer and Angela continued as a duo and made two great folk-pop singles.”


Dear Jon, I was looking out for a copy of your last issue of Shindig! (with the Bonzos piece) but seems like it’s completely sold out. Picked up Issue 15 and was intrigued by the letter


from Jim Sheepy regarding the Vivian Stanshall song ‘Bugger Off’. This is actually the chorus from a number entitled ‘Parakeet to Meet You’ from the production staged by Vivian and his wife, Ki (Pamela) Longfellow on the Old Profanity Showboat, Bristol in 1985 – Stinkfoot: An English Comic Opera. I know as I worked on it – bloody annoying song that you can’t get out of your head!!! It might interest you that Ki is mounting a concert


version of Stinkfoot in July at the same venue to raise interest in a revival of the show to tour the UK. I’m in touch with Ki with regard to helping her promote it and I know she’d be keen to talk to you guys for any help/advice that you might be able to give. By the by, she is a bloody interesting person to talk to


re: the music scene in San Francisco & New York in the ’60s & ’70s in addition to her relationship with Vivian... Great magazine, by the way – nice writing, good


reviews and fun! Fleur Thanks for clearing that one up Fleur. You’ll be glad to know that Ki has been in touch and we will be covering any Stinkfoot news.


Dear Mojo Man! It was so kind of you to send the issue. I’m going to subscribe now. I’m hooked. What a great magazine. I love the articles on movies and their music. I worked in films in LA from 1982 to ’95, both behind the camera and in front. I had a few bit parts. Star Trek: The Next Generation, Night Court and Solar Crisis, to name a few, so the articles are very interesting to me. Please thank Brian Greene for for doing such a fine job on the articles on our groups. If he has an email address I’d like to get it. I have my own take on Lightning that is quite different from Caplan’s. Mick Stanhope. So from Lightning to The Final Frontier then? Brian is looking forward to talking with you.


Hi Jon, I have read pop papers and magazines for 40 years and never have I read anything about Popol Vuh. Thank god that you exist. Pop and rock music might have been at is all time


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