DJTees Blog

1985. Deep Purple are back - and so is rock at Knebworth. 1980 had seen Santana and the Beach Boys play at the Hertfordshire pile, then came two years of jazz / blues - including Ella, BB and Dizzy - before a couple of years of the Christian Greenbelt Festival including, erm, Cliff Richard. Fortunately, in 1985, normal service was resumed. Paul Loasby, who had promoted the Donington Monsters Of Rock in 1980 (Rainbow, Priest, Scorpions) was among the organisers of the 1985 event. In some ways, it was more of a Deep Purple gig than a festival as such:...

These days, the compilation album put out by a label as a sampler of some of their artists, is pretty much dead as a concept. The digital age has put an end to it's worth, but back in the 60 and 70s, it was a primo marketing tool for record labels. And for a record collector like me, it was often the first place I heard of artists such as Nick Drake, If, Blodwyn Pig or Juicy Lucy. They gave you a taste of an often obscure group from which you could decide whether you wanted to hunt down their...

Something is happening here... but you don't know what it is. It's May 17, 1966 and Bob Dylan is playing Manchester Free Trade Hall. He is coming to the end of one of rock's great periods of creativity, courage and sheer visionary bloody-mindedness. It's a few days before his 25th birthday and a few weeks before the motorcycle accident that would see him retire to his tent, emerging bearded and oblique like an Old Testament prophet. That was the immediate future, but the Dylan of 1965 and 1966 was about the immediate present: going electric, never looking back, alienating those...

The Beatles got together in January 1969 to film Let It Be, with the intention of making a documentary that would show them rehearsing, building towards a big live show that would be the climax of the movie. With tensions high within the group, Paul determined that they should return to basics: the live performances that had propelled them to greatness. This belief formed the basis not only of the song Get Back, but the ethos for the documentary in the first part of 1969. But it soon became clear that 1969 was not a rebirth for the Beatles, but...

The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was an historic three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. It was to change history in so many ways.  Crowd estimates for the festival ranged from 50,000-90,000 people, who congregated in and around the festival grounds. The fairgrounds' performance arena, where the music took place, normally had a capacity of 7,000, but it was estimated that 8,500 jammed into it for Saturday night's show. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Ravi Shankar, the...

Whether the events at Altamont marked the death of the hippy dream, as is often claimed, is open to debate, but coming in December 1969, at literally the end of the 60s, the symbolism is irresistible, especially happening four months after the high of Woodstock. But really, it was all far less prosaic than that. When you get many thousands of people in one place, drug them up and have them policed by Hells Angels, it'd be amazing if something bad didn't happen. And, man, something very bad happened at Altamont. Everyone knows, or thinks they know, about the death...

This was the very first Knebworth - a one day festival on the grounds of a stately home. From 1974 to 1980 were its glory days, each show was always a stellar line-up and 1974 was no exception.   However, this was still 1974 and that meant, in UK especially, what we might call 'facilities' were basic. The toilets were, in fact, a massive long stinking trench over which scaffolding had been built and planks with holes in put across the top. Possibly apocryphal tales of people falling into the trench abounded every year at Knebwoth. Having seen the trench in...

As we move to the mid-70s, whereas a couple of years ago rock music played its part in the singles market, as album sales increased, this definitely reduced how many singles sold by rock artists. Along with this, the sales of R & B, soul and dance music began an occupation of the charts that would last the rest of the decade and into the 80s. That Terry Jacks is #2 on this list astonishes me. What a dirge that song was and why on earth did anyone buy it? Well, millions did.  Wings at #22 with "Band On The...

I’m sure if you lived through 1973, you will still, even now, be sick of hearing Tony Orlando and Dawn’s record. It seemed to be around forever, so no surprise it tops this list with much better records languishing below. ‘My Love’ is one of those classic, very affecting McCartney love songs.  That an instrumental as wild as Frankenstein should be at #16 for the Edgar Winter Band is a win for the rock and roll community. In fact, ‘73 was a decent year for rock singles.  Nice to see the Doobies in there with the classic Long Train Runnin’...

I’m pretty sure few of us would think Gilbert O’Sullivan would be #2 on this chart, but briefly he was part of the singer-songwriter tradition that did well in this period on the American charts, represented here by Neil Young’s ‘Heart Of Gold’ and America’s ‘Horse With no Name’.  It’s noticeable how little rock there is on this chart, actually, compared to previous years. That Wayne ‘The Big Fig’ Newton was at #10 says much about where some of America was still at.  Rock had to make do with Derek & the Dominoes ‘Layla’, Argent’s ‘Hold Your Head Up' and...

1971 was a funny year. In UK Three Dog Night couldn’t sell any albums at all and never charted a long player. “Joy To The World” got to #24 and “Mama Told Me Not To Come” #3 and that was it. But stateside they were, for a while, one of the best-selling bands. I don’t know a lot about them but they seem to straddle the freak-out rock audience and the melodic pop mainstream well for 1971. Usually the best-selling singles go down in history as a classic but here at #13 is “Want Ads” by the oddly-named Honey Cone,...

As if to usher in the singer-songwriter era, it seems only fitting that Simon and Garfunkel should top this chart. That The Guess Who are at #3 with "American Woman"is surprising. A superb heavy track, that it was the third best-selling record of the year shows how far heavy rock had made it into commerciality Similarly, "Spill The Wine", another fine song, making the top 20 is not one you'd think would be so high, whereas I thought "Fire & Rain" would have been a top seller.  As ever, Motown's presence is striking. The amount of best-selling singles the label...

When you think of best-selling singles, you wouldn’t think of Lulu topping this chart above other massive names. Weirdly, “To Sir With Love” wasn’t the A-side of a single in the UK. You’d have thought they’d have made it so when they saw it shifting so many units across the pond. It appeared only as a B-side to "Let's Pretend" (released in the UK on 23 June 1967), which reached No. 11 on the UK Singles Chart. The other obvious thing to say is where are The Beatles?  At #30 and #55 is the answer. I suspect this actually shows...

Held on Sat Jul 24, 1971 at Tupholme Manor Park, about 15 miles east of Lincoln, UK, this was a kind of all-star one-day Woodstock of folk music.  The full bill for the day was an extraordinary UK-USA gathering of talent headlined by James Taylor.  Also on the bill: Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, The Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Sandy Denny, Steeleye Span, Ralph McTell, Dave Swarbrick & Martin Carthy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Dion, Tim Hardin, The Byrds. The Byrds, then in their post Gram, and very interesting ‘Untitled’ and ‘Byrdmaniax’ phase,  played an electric set but everyone else...

Held on Sat Jun 21, 1969 at  Sporthal Arena, Antwerp in Belgium, while marketed as an international pop event, it was really a pretty much a Belgium-British affair featuring some of the best British blues and jazz boom bands, along with a few Belgium bands and Paul Revere from USA.  Chicken Shack, Colosseum, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, Davy Jr. and Guess Who? Fleetwood Mac, Freedom, J. J. Band, Joe Hicks, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Procol Harum, Roland and The Blues Workshop, The Nice, The Pebbles, The Tremeloes, Tomahawk Blues Band, Wallace Collection, Yes Dave Dee, Dozy,...