Our 57th SMART coffee meet and great to catch up with some old faces that we haven’t seen for awhile as well as new ones. Among the newbies this time were Linda Boiling and Dave Nattress. Linda was reminiscing about when she worked in Stylus record shop and had with her the Johnny Lambe Orchestra programme which Stylus promoted at The White Rock Pavilion, as well as a bundle of photos of dj’s and others from ‘Lazybones’ disco from 1977. We will be posting these on the website in the next few days. Good to see Dave Nattress at last! He had with him posters and artwork of Samisen from the 70’s and the group The Charts from 81. He will send me copies of these soon for the website and hopes to find some long lost photos as well. Geoff Peckham was chatting about the recent success of Plumptonfest and the track ‘This Land Is Green’ which proved very popular. Anthony ’Nan’ Morland arrived with some more interesting items. Including photos and autograph of Adam Faith when he was at the Hastings Museum The Mods and The Rockers exhibition in 2007, as well as photos of Mike Berry, The Redcoats and some interesting stories to tell. Merv Kennard had with him Terry James ‘The DeeJay’ keyring from when the shop was in Hastings Indoor Market and a copy of Merv’s Pirate Disco business card. He was in conversation with Lance Collins and Chris Kennard on disco equipment and memories. John Busbridge had a photo album which included some great photos of his groups and club membership cards. Cliff Wootton is still looking for photos and information of groups that used his dads Supersound amps and guitars and pretty sure that they are used in the GT Strokers photos at the Ore Kit Kat Club in 1967. Dave Trodd is working through photo negatives that he took and in conversation with Jon and Julie McCallion, that it’s possible he took the original promotion photos for ‘Muller’. Elaine & Neil Roberts were chatting to Graham Belchamber about a new group that’s being formed and Graham was talking about his popular radio show and looking for more local groups that he can promote on the air. Stephen Moran in between chatting to Colin Bell, was busy interviewing people, including Pete Millington, Mick O’Dowd and others for his research into the popular music history of Hastings. General chat was about Malcolm Mitchells, the restaurant plan to replace the toilets in the town centre, booster jabs and Fred Dinenage to leave Meridian.This is just a bit of what I can remember but if you wish to add anything else interesting that you were talking about, then please do. Hopefully plan to get one more meet in before Christmas.
Mick O’Dowd… Great Meet as usual Alan. Nice relaxed Meet. Had a long chat with Stephen Moran. Good stuff!
Tony May… Sounds like a cracking meeting! I’m wondering now whether Linda Boiling was the lady who I went to see The Commodores with at Eastbourne in or about 1985? She was going out with the one-armed electrician B.J. at the time…
Stephen Moran… Thank you Alan
Claire Lonsdale…I really wanted to come but I have been laid up with a nasty cold for a few days and I’m still not back to fighting fit. Hope to get to the next meeting. Xx
Geoff Peckham… Well done, Alan. Thanks for bringing us all together again. x
Tony Davis… Sorry to have missed today Alan
Jim Breeds… Sorry couldn’t make it. Face was all numb from dentist appointment immediately beforehand.
Cliff Wootton… Good to make it back after so long. Had a great time.
Elaine Roberts… Thank you for an enjoyable meet Alan. This is our new band, in case anyone’s interested
Colin Bell… great to see all of you at the SMART meeting yesterday, kudos as ever to Alan, who works hard to put it on and re-unite people, well done mate.
Linda Boiling… In reply to Tony May… 1985 I had been married to Peter Boiling (Demon Disco, Lazybones) for 7 years and had 2 daughters, I remember the one armed electrician, (didn’t go out with him)and Peter knew him too, I think they worked together at one time. don’t remember going to see the Commodores sorry.
Tony May… It wasn’t you I worked with at Stylus then! (lol) No surprise me not remembering the poor girl I did work with. For 25 years everyone used to tell me I was thoughtless…only because I didn’t know what being thoughtless meant and didn’t care to find out because I WAS thoughtless I carried on regardless! (lol) Hopefully, I’m a tad less self -centred these days – just a tad!