Hello World

Hi,

Well I've come late to the blogging revolution, but better late than never, that's what they say. I like to keep up to date with some regular blogs myself so I thought I'd have a go as well and see how I get on.

I've been putting this off for a while until I was in the right frame of mind to do it, but I've been waiting for ages and that still hasn't happened so here I am anyway.

I was wondering what to write about for my first post and I thought I'd share something with you that's been popping in and out of my mind for maybe 35 years now. It's about George Martin, the Beatles producer, more specifically his composition 'Theme One', written for the BBC to be their Radio 1 theme tune. This was in the days when they actually used to go off the air at night and come back on in the morning.

Anyway, in the early seventies, for various reasons I had a spell of living at my grandma's house. She had a put-you-up bed settee thing that wasn't too bad to sleep on, but it was in the living room and the curtains were really thin, meaning that I'd be awake at the crack of dawn (it must have been Spring or Summer).

I had this tiny light blue transistor radio and one morning I put it on and there was this, to me, scary organ style music, which sounded like something from a Hammer film but speeded up.

I liked it, was thrilled by it, was fascinated by it and I was scared of it all at the same time. It got to the point where I'd wake myself up purposely to hear this strange music every morning. However, I never knew what it was, or who made it until much later but the strange way I found it has popped into my head every so often since that time.

So there I was, looking through YouTube the other day and I thought...I wonder. Well, I didn't find George Martin's version, but I did find this:



I love it. Listening to it now, it still kind of affects me, but I like it even more now because this is my nostalgia.

And I wasn't aware of them at the time, but looking back now didn't VDGG have it all. Apart from the vocalist who's not needed for this track, the three VDGGs featured here are; the handsome, capable keyboarder; the crazy genius saxophonist; and the super-competent jazz-rock drummer who must have been the template for every surf dude and grunger who ever existed. I love his style of head down, hit it hard and fast. Great stuff and I hope you enjoy it, whether or not it personally still gives you the tingles.

See you soon.