Forty five years ago; February 1976. A time of incipient change. Ahead of me, my A-Level exams (equivalent of Polish matura), summer holidays in Poland - then university.
But which one? It was this month 45 years ago that I set off on my own to see five universities around the UK - Lancaster, Warwick, Kent, Essex and East Anglia. These were my choices for the university admission process that would end with offers of grades needed at A-Level. I'd never travelled so intensively, or so far, on my own around England as I did that month. I came back from East Anglia, Norwich (or was it Essex, Colchester), with a dose of the flu, leaving me bed-ridden for a few days.
It was a specific time in my life. My father had just installed a new central heating system in the house - on his own - and I recall the smell of the paint of the new Potterton boiler, looking into the little window at the blue pilot light, watching it ignite the gas with a muted 'whoomph', the warmth, the copious hot water... At the time, I was making an Airfix kit of a North American P-51D Mustang, USAAF Eighth Air Force, England, 1944. The period appealed strongly to me; in the pop charts were Glenn Miller and his Orchestra and Manhattan Transfer with another Glenn Miller hit - Tuxedo Junction - 1944 was only as distant from 1976 as 1989 is from today.
And in the Radio Times for Saturday 21 February 1976, on BBC 2, an intriguing programme...
"Introduced by Melvyn Bragg: So You Wanna be a Rock 'n' Roll Star. Tonight 2nd House looks at the reality behind the fantasies with a three-day slice in the life of the Kursaal Flyers, one of the bands most tipped for success in 1976. The film records their ups and downs, joys and anger, in dressing rooms and motels, and includes extracts from two concerts."
It really is worth seeing. If you haven't got a spare hour and 20 minutes, bookmark it and return - a slice of rock history, a snapshot of an era.
This I had to see. Turned out to be most influential - director Mark Kimel's documentary went on to inspire Comic Strip Presents Bad News Tour and of course This Is Sp谋nal Tap, both parodic satires of rock bands on tour. Influential for me too. The 'Flyers' aspect (I didn't know at the time that the name referred to a funfair ride at Southend's Kursaal amusement park) appealed to me, as did the vintage Americana the band's music drew on, a heavily country-influenced sound. The cover art of the band's second album, The Great Artiste (1976), prompted me to buy it later that year.
Mama's boys indeed - the documentary shows that all but one of the band lived with their mums (like Colin out of Bad News).
Watching the Kursaal Flyers documentary influenced me greatly; I'd see them live, at the time (just before punk rock emerged), the pub rock genre was destined for success. Acts like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and Dave Edmunds in the Stiff stable, from Southend and Canvey Island (the Kursaals' home) Dr Feelgood and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Of those five universities I visited 45 years ago, I ended up in my first choice, Warwick, to study America - a country my postwar generation obsessed about.
This time last year:
New platforms, Su艂kowice and Chyn贸w
This time two years ago:
Birds return to frozen ponds
This time three years ago:
Bending the forces of physics with your will
This time five years ago:
Giving it up for Lent
This time seven years ago:
North-east of Warsaw West revisited
This time eight years ago:
Looking for answers
This time nine years ago:
Fresh powder in Warsaw's parks
This time 11 years ago:
Another Lent starts
This time 13 years ago:
Ok臋cie dusk
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6 comments:
Strange how now parents accompany their progeny when visiting potential universities.
@ Andrzej K
I'd have been utterly MORTIFIED to have gone to visit any university with my mother! I have extremely pleasant memories of those long-distance train journeys, Lancaster in particular, coming home on the West Coast Main Line, having a beer in the restaurant car, watching the dusk encroaching... It would have been hell having to put up with my mother's observations about the permissiveness of student life!
Ha!ha! You were lucky !!
My poor son has had to make university choices based on virtual open days and very dreary online lectures in these oft mentioned,difficult times . It would be much more fun to go and see the universities in real life-whatever that is !
And we don’t even know if university life will commence again in October -and if they will even get their A levels !
1976-1978 formative years: I was building scale models of American cities from scrap packing materials in the unfurnished room of my parents’ house (fed by my father’s stories from when he was a migrant labourer in a springs factory in the 60s Chicago), listening to the holy trinity: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and the BBC, alongside my grandfather and father with curtains drawn and the stills working full blast in the basement making moonshine alcohol (‘bimber’). Names like John Peel, Humphrey Lyttleton, Dave Lee Travis, Malcolm Laycock and shows like Top of the Pops, the Jolly Good Show, Jazz For the Asking forged my musical identity. My heart would stop for the duration of the Radio Luxembourg top chart on Tuesdays, with the signal ebbing and flowing, and the set wired to any metal in the house for better reception: radiators, curtain rods, a bike.
@ Helena
This is not a good time to be young! Still, it would be interesting to see in 45 years' time whether your son will look back on the pandemic with nostalgia; one hopes nothing like this will happen to humanity again for a century or so!
@ Jacek
Many thanks for the memories! John Peel was my all-time favourite DJ;I'd be listening to him 10pm to midnight on Radio 1 while printing photos in my dark room, early 1980s... Have you photos of your models of American cities?
@Michal
Sadly in 45 years time I ll be 100 and most likely have toppled from this mortal coil!
Will it be over then馃う馃徎
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