So what comic related items did you get for Xmas then?

[Digifiend]

was wanting the Dandy Beano best of annual but its sold out in my area (that'll teach me)

For anybody else who failed to get the Beano/Dandy Winter Games Book I noticed that the local branch of Poundland had loads on sale today for just a pound each! Sometimes it really is worth waiting. (I also got the Bunty Book from Smiths for an exorbitant £1.99)

- Phil Rushton

Typical. My local Smiths (all three main branches, the only one in Hull I haven't checked is the smallest one, at Paragon railway/bus station) sold out of Buntys before Christmas. My mum wanted it (she read the comic in the late 60s) but we didn't get it.

I wonder if Winter Games undersold (meaning that Poundland ended up with the stock other shops didn't want) because people didn't recognise it as they changed the cover design so much? Perhaps they should revert to the old style next year.

[Phoenix]

Nothing, unless I'm allowed to count a new keyboard with the letters on the keys still intact, so I can avoid all my current guesswork when writing posts. This one is called a Wireless Desktop for heaven's sake. I'll open the box shortly but in the meantime I will wish everybody a Happy New Year on the old keyboard.

[steelclaw]

Nothing, unless I'm allowed to count a new keyboard

I read that and thought oohhh Phoenix is in a band it's Rick Wakeman.

"Happy New Year everyone"

This has been a very good year for reprints, here's to a new 'Whizzer & Chips' style comic to be issued in the new year(Only Joking)

[Phoenix]

I read that and thought oohhh Phoenix is in a band it's Rick Wakeman.

Phoenix was in a band, steelclaw, but he was on rhythm guitar. He is on the left of this publicity photo. The choice of setting, in a derelict railway carriage in Wallasey, was to suggest something of the 'down home' bluegrass feel that the photographer thought appropriate. In the other snap he is on the right, practising in sunny Hyde Park prior to going off busking to see how much beer money we could persuade those tight Londoners to part with. Where on earth have those Sixties gone to?

[steelclaw]

Hey man cool pictures.
You don't mean The Crabtrees the popular folk group on Merseyside during the 1960s.
Did you play anywhere in London? Like the Marquee.

[Phoenix]

Hey man cool pictures.
You don't mean The Crabtrees the popular folk group on Merseyside during the 1960s.
Did you play anywhere in London? Like the Marquee.

Yes, that was us, steelclaw. How have you heard of us? We did play just the once at the Marquee in 1966, once also at Tiles on Oxford Street, and at a couple of other clubs, one I think was called the Troubadour and the other was called the Roundhouse or some such name. We were only down on a flying visit to try to get a toehold in the capital. It was quite difficult because the woman who was acting as our agent there, Sandra McGregor Hastie, whose main responsibility was to John Gardner, the author of the James Bond spoof novels starring Boysie Oakes, didn't seem to know what places to book us into, so we ended up finding our own. We eventually dossed down in the house where banjo player Pete Stanley and Wizz Jones, a fantastic flatpicking guitarist, had their own living quarters. Only two other things of note happened that summer. We recorded some songs in a studio in Leytonstone for a guy whose name I've forgotten, but he owned Sparta Music in Oxford Street, but that didn't lead anywhere. Nor did the audition we did for Dave Forrester, Ken Dodd's agent, in his thickly-carpeted pad in Park Lane. He was impressed enough to sign us up, but that was the last we saw of him. The attachments show us playing a fairly swish club in Birkenhead called the Tam o'Shanter early in 1965 (I'm on the right), the ad for Tiles is from 1966 and the other photo (I'm on the left) is from November 1967 when we were doing a show for the whole evening at Folk Haven, a club about ten miles out of Frankfurt where we were made extremely welcome by club members on whatever nights we were not required to perform in the American Air Force bases in Germany, Holland or Belgium during our five-week tour. I am still in touch with several of those German folk club members to this day.

[Digifiend]

Small world!

[steelclaw]

Phoenix No sorry I haven't heard of you(I did a bit of Googling), you were just a bit before my time, but I have a great interest in all sorts of music, and I like to hear about what bands got up to specially in the 1960's.

Did you ever have any Demo's pressed up or anything like that?

(This is why we need a a non-comic forum for things like this)

[Digifiend]

was wanting the Dandy Beano best of annual but its sold out in my area (that'll teach me)

For anybody else who failed to get the Beano/Dandy Winter Games Book I noticed that the local branch of Poundland had loads on sale today for just a pound each! Sometimes it really is worth waiting.

- Phil Rushton

They've got the Dennis & Gnasher annual as well.

[Lew Stringer]

Yes, that was us, steelclaw. How have you heard of us? We did play just the once at the Marquee in 1966, once also at Tiles on Oxford Street, and at a couple of other clubs, one I think was called the Troubadour and the other was called the Roundhouse or some such name.

You're a dark horse Phoenix. Did The Wacks ever feature you on their pop page in Wham?

Lew

[Phoenix]

Phoenix No sorry I haven't heard of you(I did a bit of Googling), you were just a bit before my time, but I have a great interest in all sorts of music, and I like to hear about what bands got up to specially in the 1960's. Did you ever have any Demo's pressed up or anything like that?

Yes. In fact, with the invaluable help of a professional sound engineer based in the Wirral I am currently putting together a double CD of our warblings. One has 19 tracks, made up of studio recordings, BBC radio and Granada TV programmes, the other will be an edited version of the live Folk Haven concert I referred to earlier. I was interviewed by Geoff Speed for forty minutes on Radio Merseyside's Folkscene last July about the project after the presenter read an article about it in the Liverpool Daily Post. Accompanying the recordings will be an illustrated booklet about the history of the group. I'm not trying to make any money out of it, it's mainly for Joy Crabtree and myself and, of course, our families. However, as I will be on Spencer Leigh's music programme, and probably Billy Butler's as well, once I've got the project boxed off, it may just sell well to some appreciative Merseysiders with long memories. Then again.........maybe not!!

[Phoenix]

You're a dark horse Phoenix. Did The Wacks ever feature you on their pop page in Wham?

As you know, Lew, I never bought comics so I can't be sure, but I shouldn't think so because we didn't have that kind of profile. However we were featured frequently in papers across Merseyside and North Wales throughout the four years of the life of the group, as well as getting reviews in other local newspapers where we played clubs for a week at a time, such as Bernard Manning's Embassy Club in Manchester, supporting Marty Wilde, The Wishing Well in Swinton with Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, and another Manchester club whose name escapes me where we supported Matt Monro. I do remember the club itself though because we were sharing the dressing room with all the strippers. The national weekly The Stage reported on our weeks in residence in cabaret shows in Leeds, Rhyl, Sunderland, Boston, Preston, South Wales etc. Some supporting evidence here below. The first photo is from the Birkenhead News in the summer of 1967, the first cutting is from The Stage in 1966, the second cutting is from the Liverpool Echo in 1968, and the final picture is the front page of the Wallasey News early in 1967.

[steelclaw]

Phoenix although Folk isn't my main interest your CD sounds interesting, the closest I've got to Folk is the few that were released on the Vertigo record label from 1969-1973 but they were mainly Folk Rock and Progressive Rock.

Shame about the non public TV appearnce,but good about 'Blackpool Night Out'

I assume you watched Folk Britannia on BBC4?

[STARBOY]

Went to Poundland in Hamiltion yesterday (Saturday 2/1/10) amazed to see so many copies of the Dandy, Beano, Broons, Winter games and Oor Wullie/ Broons: Glory Years 1956/69 (even a few - 10 copies- of Bash Stret Kids , Dennis the Meanace, Ben 10, Marvel annuals etc) on sale for a £1 each- yet the Winter Games and OorWullie/Broons books were sold out in the main shops?? - Still fantastic reads got Winter Games and the Oor Wullie/Broons ones and really enjoying them fantastic production on both and great Baxendale stuff in Winter Games - worth the wait (and I got the Buster special at long last also, so in fanboy heaven lol)

[Phoenix]

Phoenix although Folk isn't my main interest your CD sounds interesting, the closest I've got to Folk is the few that were released on the Vertigo record label from 1969-1973 but they were mainly Folk Rock and Progressive Rock. Shame about the non public TV appearnce,but good about 'Blackpool Night Out' I assume you watched Folk Britannia on BBC4?

As most of our eventual repertoire was influenced from the States, steelclaw, I was far more interested in the three-part Folk America series, which inevitably contained more nostalgic elements. Where Folk Rock was concerned, for me it started with Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan going electric and then The Byrds, who revisited Pete Seeger and the Dylan songbook, and at least one branch of it then rather wandered off via bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage. What happened over here with Fairport Convention, who were just about contemporary with us when they started out, was fascinating but the movement only really took off in the early Seventies, after we had split up. I did follow it though via Eclection, Fotheringay (I saw Sandy Denny singing in London in the summer of 1967), The Albion Band, Steeleye Span, Richard and Linda Thompson etc. I even liked the traditional British material sung in harmony by Hedgehog Pie.