Gigging in the North East 1965-1972. A personal perspective by Roger Smith
The eight year period from the mid sixties to the early seventies was a fantastic time to be in a northeast band. No matter what type of music you played, there were always plenty of gigs available to keep you busy. This section features some of the bands I remember from that period. It also includes the bands I played in from1965 to 1972.
I first came across the Invaders in the early months of 1965. I’d recently joined my first established Newcastle band, the Kylastrons. One of the places we regularly played was the Bluenote club in Sunderland. On two occasions, 12th March…
The hot summer of ’67 was the Summer of Love. People were wearing flowers and beads – not just in Haight-Ashbury, San Fransisco but also in the north east. Even in isolated Northumberland mining villages like Red Row, the hippy…
Way back in the summer of 1967, the ‘Summer of Love’, I’d just joined a newly formed seven-piece soul band called the James South Set. One of our earliest gigs was an open air event on some waste ground in…
Newcastle’s Junco Partners must be one of a small number of bands that performed for over 50 years whilst retaining most of its founding members. Amazingly, when the Junco Partners played its final gig in 2017 four of its original…
In the early sixties, before Screaming Lord Sutch became a politician and leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony party, he was a fairly successful UK rock horror performer. He was famous for his weird antics on stage, which at…
After The Animals took the world by storm in 1964 it was a long time before another Newcastle band would make a sizable impression on the record buying public. It took until 1970 when Lindisfarne began its rise to fame…
I started playing saxophone at the age of fourteen while I was still at school. When I first took up the instrument it wasn’t because I wanted to play in groups – that came a bit later when I started…
