several stunning incidental songs from series two onwards, composed and performed by Leo Sayer), its spin-off Charles Endell Esquire (for which Sayer’s ‘Long Tall Glasses’ was reworked in a jovial Glaswegian brogue by Ian Cuthbertson) and Rock Follies (music by Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay, also responsible for the chilling Armchair Thriller theme).


Former Herd keyboardist Andy Bown (yes ‘im wot’s in Status Quo) unknowingly laid down a stone classic when he wrote the song ‘Tarot’ for the ultimate kids’ horror/fantasy series, Ace Of Wands: this programme, perhaps more than any other, sums up the mixture of magic, mellotrons, demonism and daps we admire.


Luckily, the Cherry Red subsidiary RPM have made half this stuff available on compilations like Magpie, where you’ll find the song of that title by Hardin & York, the haunting theme from The Family, and tracks from the infamous album by possibly the ultimate Britcult star, Peter Wyngarde. That, however, is another story. Trust me, I’m working on it.


Labels like RPM, Finders Keepers and Lightning Tree (named, by Shindig!’s Richard Allen after the theme from Follyfoot) are important to collectors, as they know their market. There are hundreds of us between 25 to 55, as fascinated by cult TV, horror, sci-fi, sex comedies and sitcoms as we are by Bulldog Breed, T2 or Mighty Baby, and many stoners ’n’ heads whose teenage Sabbath- worship went, as did mine, hand in hand with a love of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, Jason King and the Confessions films. Don’t get me started on Kipper’s resemblance to Mott The Hoople, or Robin Askwith’s stint as drummer for Flaming Youth, later featuring Darryl Read!


Let’s just say that nobody defined the decade better than the cheeky chappie with the Jagger lips, and from Pasolini to sex comedies, to swinging scenester pictures and extreme terror trash like The Flesh And Blood Show (starring Magpie presenter Jenny Hanley), and Horror Hospital (which


yielded another classic slice of exploitation rock in Mystic’s ‘Golden Eyes Of Evil’) he captured the “spirit of the age” more than anyone save for Python and The Goodies.


Come to think of it, maybe the wacky trio summed the whole shebang up perfectly when they sang about “the inbetweenies everyone tries to forget”. Truly, we are those inbetweenies, caught forever between mod, rocker and hippie, between childhood, adolescence and adulthood – indulging daily in the ultimate irony as we use the technology of the present to gain access to the ephemera of our past.


Whatever decade I would personally prefer to live in, I can’t deny that the Internet has been indispensable in this regard – not just to a mag like Shindig!, but on a personal level. No longer do we have to say things like “what’s that film where Camp Freddie out of The Italian Job lives in a church and murders girls, with that bird who looks like PP Arnold singing gospel songs?” Now, we simply open IMDB, find that it’s called The


the filmstill conveys that misty, dreamy otherness that somehow only


productions shot just outside Middlesex seem to achieve.


Fiend (’71), and the actor is Tony Beckley, known to Dr Who fans as horticultural organ widdler Harrison Chase. Although to be honest, I miss and regularly bemoan such conversations, as they made my formative years more interesting. Maybe once we know everything, there’ll be nothing left to learn?


Possibly, but the past wouldn’t be so alluring if it didn’t look so damn good, and on DVD it looks even better. Brian Clemens’ And Soon The Darkness and Thriller, and Pete Walker and Norman Warren’s films, are now available in their kipper-tie, denim trouser suit and Brentford Nylon glory, embellished with guest appearances by cult musicians (Christopher Sandford, Jess Conrad, John Leyton, Chris Jagger, Jigsaw, even Jack Jones) galore, Topographic Oceans posters and Zep II sleeves lining the walls, and John Kongos lyrics forming an integral part of the plot. It’s all there for the taking.


Ironically, if someone ever did invent that time machine, we probably wouldn’t see much of it at all, unless we happened to be at the right cinema, or rich enough to collect 35mm reels. In a ’74 edition of a German magazine shown to me by a fellow DJ, The Sweet’s Brian Connolly waxes lyrical about “this new machine I’ve just got, which can record and copy programmes off the telly.” If only he had known.


As the ’70s slid towards the ’80s (and the abolition of the Eady Levy, which meant the death of homemade horror and sex films as we knew them), a very different Britain loomed.


This change is evident in Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford’s stark reading of Jerzy Skolimowki’s surreal horror The Shout (’77) its howling vision of insanity a far cry from the playful world of his earlier Deep End (’69) featuring the sounds of Can and Cat Stevens. The days of purple loonpants, white Citroens, and orange kitchen cabinets with white formica handles that go “plmpft” (which Shindig!’s Phil King still has in his flat) were over, levelled by The Winter Of Discontent, the Callahan government and that old bugbear punk.


Psychomania


Chris Petit’s Radio On (’79) drew a line under the decade, its grey beauty set to the


47


Keith Moon in Son Of Dracula


Shane Briant and Rita Tushingham in Straight On Till Morning


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