My final 1983 gig-going-entry recaps a couple of shows I took in during a crazy/nuts four-day trip to NYC.
While I will be discussing the performances by hardcore titans The Circle Jerks and post-Throbbing Gristle offshoot Psychic TV, I’ll also be looking at the madcap trip to Manhattan as a whole, recounting the hijinks that MZ, Miss B, myself, and others got up to.
If you’ve heard or read EP 25 on the Flipper show at Fryfogle’s, then you’ll have somewhat of an idea of what to expect.
Tune in for destroyed hotel rooms; terrified cousins; "Peace, Love and Groove!"; Danceteria bathroom hallucinations; Brooke Shields' husband, Broadway Bob; and pterodactyls and manifestations.
You can also read the original blog entries for The Circle Jerks and for the Psychic TV show on the mylifeinconcert.com blog.
Next On Stage –> I am jumping back further into the past as I recall a cabaret show that happened between my first and second “official” gigs (Roxy Music at the London Arena on February 5, 1975 and Bob Seger at the London Gardens on May 19, 1978).
I saw the cabaret in Portsmouth, England, in August 1977, and it featured early-60s popster Susan Maughan, she of the 1962 hit, “Bobby’s Girl,” and possibly the legendary Tessie O’Shea.
I had initially planned to discuss it as part of upcoming compilation episode but have instead decided to make it a stand-alone episode.
The EP's Special Guest is my 96-year-old mother—we’ll call her Vera Various Artists—who attended the cabaret along with me and my late father.
My mum shares her vague memories of the evening, including that she feels the legendary Tessie O’Shea was on the bill. If my mother is right, then boy do I wish I could remember that. I wouldn’t have known who she was then but I sure do now.
We do both remember humourist Pam Ayers and the Famous People Players being part of the show.
My mother also recalls the venue itself, the Portsmouth The Hippodrome but also The King’s Theatre in Southsea, as she grew up in Petersfield, but later moved to Portsmouth after marrying my dad, and both my elder siblings were born there.
In the interview, she discusses listening to the radio as well as records in the UK as a girl in the ‘30s, and also music and live shows she enjoyed after to moving to Canada in the mid-50s and onwards.
I also talk about my experiences on this trip in the ultimate UK punk year—1977—amid the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
Tune in for dangerous radio batteries, hanging out in British record stores to hear the latest releases, what double album of my mum’s drove me nuts in the ‘70s, punk rock mania, not seeing The Sex Pistols, and what Ethel Merman was really like live.
That’s all coming up in Episode 31, Concert no. 001.5, entitled UK 1977: VA’s Mum on Ethel Merman and Susan Maughan at the Portsmouth Hippodrome and the Music of Her Life + My UK Trip Amid the Year of the Punk Rock Explosion and Silver Jubilee