Day: 25 November 2013

SMART 7 great turn out at the White Rock Hotel last Friday and a massive part of the Hastings music history was on display for all to see. Thanks to Mick Mepham the tables were piled high with various posters from the pier gigs and other venues. He also finally showed us the very rare dustbin lid from ‘Stackridge’. Tony Qunta came over from Maidstone with a cd of ‘Factory’ songs which he hopes to put on the internet in the near future. Some great stories and cuttings of him playing with ‘Head On’, ‘Johnny Mars Band’ and ‘Kabbala’ and more.  Roger Carey arrived with more bags of goodies including cuttings from ‘A Minute Passed’ , ‘Hat Trick’ , ‘Felix’ and others, plus gig tickets and business cards. We have talked about his fashion sense in the passed and interestingly the reason he wore white on stage back in the 70’s was he thought Bill Nelson from ‘Be Bop Deluxe’  looked cool dressed in white. He also had us all laughing with his mimics. Great to see Andy Gunton join us. He does a brilliant job in supporting live music and has various interesting projects coming up. Please check out his website pierlessmusic.co.uk which now has the great slogan ‘from Hastings to the world’. A new couple joined us and were talking about the memories of The Black Horse and ‘The Telham Tinkers’. Jon McCallion has now put the ‘Muller’ record Fooling Around on You Tube. Mick O’Dowd is still looking for photos of ‘The Likes Of Us’ and ‘Morning Dew’ featuring Pete Horton. Chat from Andre Martin included correcting some of the recent comments on The Black Cat & Pam Dor coffee bars. His history and memory on the town is amazing and constatly surprises us with rare cuttings from his collection. He also noticed in Mick Mepham’s archives  a contract for Mick’s band ‘Essence’ who played their first pier gig back in 1974 for £10.00 and the code on the contract proved that I booked them. Lots of pier talk from Anita & Ray Medhurst and Barry Taylor gave us more info on the Sex Pistols gig. Other chat was about Gary Moore, Sparks, Vinegar Joe, Shakatak, Genesis, Arthur Brown recent tv interview, Brian Johnson from AC/DC singing Nutbush City Limits at his audition, Titch Turner playing St Marys in The Castle in December and more.

Mick Mepham….Cracking afternoon Alan, well organized mate.

Andrey Palfrey-martin….The amount of information and evidence that keeps coming out is really excellent.

Mick O’Dowd….Just want to say how much I enjoyed the friday meet at the White Rock Hotel yesterday. This was the best ever in my opinion. Old faces, new faces. Great stuff! I think we all ought to thank Alan for doing such a brilliant job organising these dos and the web and Facebook pages. Well done Alan!

Tony Qunta….Great afternoon! See you all at the next one!

Pete Prescott….gutted i couldnt make it.stuck working ! willl get to the next one.

Yvonne Cleland….Same as that!