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.
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…
The Junco Partners must be one of the few bands in existence that has been together playing great music for over 50 years, albeit with just one ‘career’ break during that period. Amazingly, most of six of the original 1964…
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…
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…
