Yearly review by Nick the Bookman, our Official Court Music Reviewer (it says so on his name card):

Music bits - 2014, Jan 22, 2014, by Nick the Bookman

Well, it's January 2014 and I've already had some musical adventures as we gallop headlong into The Year Of The Horse. It's my fifth time around this Zodiac cartwheel and quite possibly the last time around for Crazy Horse, who are most likely to end their live adventures sometime this year. You know Crazy Horse. Backed Neil Young at HarbourFest 2003. Which leads me nicely into the cover story in The Review section of the Sunday Morning Post 5/1/2014. It's titled All Star Cast and details the musings of some important local musical experts on what were the most memorable gigs in HK history.

Richard Lord, who wrote the piece, picked 10 gigs. In order in the newspaper, they are: The Beatles - Princess Theatre, 1964: David Bowie - Coliseum, 1983: Miles Davis - QE Stadium, 1985: The Wedding Present - Ko Shan Theatre, 1993: INXS - QE Stadium, 1994: Suede - QE Stadium, 1995: Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys (in order of appearance) - QE Stadium, 1996: Re-Unification Concert - Coliseum, 1997: HarbourFest - Tamar, 2003: and finally Clockenflap - West Kowloon Waterfront, 2011: Added into that final entry are the four Rock-It Festivals in Victoria Park, 2003-6 and the other Clockenflap Festivals at Cyberport, 2008-9. The small one in Aberdeen in 2010 and the last two 'Flaps at WKWF in 2012/13.

Out of that select grouping, I realised that I had been at at least 7. Possibly more. I didn't see The Beatles. I was nine and tickets were fiendishly expensive for the time. Plus there were only three Beatles. Ringo was ill and temporarily replaced by Jimmy Nicol on the drum seat. To fill the empty spaces, hordes of squaddies and their wives were bussed in to enjoy the show. It remains the ONLY concerrt where a promoter LOST money on The Beatles. Although The Beatles didn't get paid after their ill-starred tour of The Philippines after allegedly snubbing the Marcos family. They were lucky to leave with only minor bruises.

I was at the second David Bowie Concert on the third anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. Bowie sang "Imagine" in tribute. It was The Serious Moonlight Tour and although the show was brilliant and very well played, it was a bit too much funk and not enough Ziggy/Man Who Sold The World glam/rock. The prelude to DB - The Cocaine Years in Berlin. The DVD has shots from the Coliseum show and extracts from DB's HK press concert. Where I can be spotted. Hell, I got to speak to him and he signed my copies of "Pin-Ups" and "Hunky-Dory". My parents hopefully still have my photos of the show, back in England/Andorra.

Miles Davis played twice in HK. In successive years. His opening act was The Wayne Shorter Group, featuring the stunning Norwegian percussionist Marilyn Mazur. Next year's show, she was playing with Miles and was (if memory serves) the only performer who was truly non-stop. The gigs were known as The SLUTS shows . For Select Under The Sky. Ported down to HK after a brief tour of Japan. Other performers in those two years included Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell and David Sanborn. I also remember the first two gentlemen coming down to The Canton disco (set up by impresario Andrew Bull) to watch that smooth jazz soul group who was fronted by Corinne - the former girlfriend of Christian from LKF and 1997 bar. The band name is stuck in my forgettery. Probably a good reason for that. Anyway, the band couldn't play live so they MIMED their set. Only got told afterwards that Herbie and Bill were in attendance. Major embarrassment.

The Wedding Present. Did both their shows. At Ko Shan Theatre in 1993 and at Grappas in 2012. Possibly the only member of both audiences. Radiohead's only HK gig was also at Ko Shan. Pre-handover and even then, they didn't like playing "Creep" and haven't been back to Honkers since. Other gigs mentioned in this paragraph were The Clash at AC Hall (!982). Seen. Along with The Boomtown Rats. The Pretenders (featuring James Honeyman-Scott's final performance before his fatal drug demise). The Banshees (where Siouxsie told the fans to stop gobbing on them because "we're hippies not punks"). Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark, Classix Nouveau and Japan. I was also at Beck in Neptune's. Mental As Anything at Jimmy's Sports Bar in the HK Stadium. A place where Fatboy Slim and rock band Gene also played. Saw them both at different venues, at other times. Chris B brought Fugazi to HK, but I missed that one because Marilena left me stranded accidentally in town with just the ferry ticket home and no way to get to the South Island school. Incidentally, they also spent two days on Lamma in what is now Mitch's small flat in Tai Wan To.

INXS I saw at the QE Stadium. Glad I saw the Aussie rock god via HK before he fatally auto-asphyxiated himself on a hotel door knob. UB40 and Duran Duran also played reasonable gigs at the QES. As for Suede, they're the second act on the list that I somehow never got around to seeing. Maybe one day. They've played HK at least seven times by now. but just weren't my bag I guess.

The MTV Tour , featuring FF, SY and TBB was a mega-blast. Five plus hours of music. Sonic Youth was imperious. The undisputed headliners no matter what anyone else says. The Foo's were in their infancy but showed great promise. Absolutely achieved by now by The Nicest and Hardest Working Man In Rock. The Beastie Boys were a sprawl-o-rama of thrills aqnd confusion and great beats. Dave Grohl also played drums with them. Meanwhile, Mickey (Tracy Duggan's ex-husband(?) and father of Rosie) brought Lee "Scratch" Perry, 2BadCard and Adrian Sherwood to the basement of the Bank of America building. 90+ percent of that audience was from Lamma and when Lee lit up a spliff on stage, well so did quite a few other people... All the artists joined forces for a friendly summit at one point. Which I missed...

Didn't do Uncle Ray Cordeiro's Re-Unification Concert when he revived the careers of most of the top bands in HK at the end of the Sixties and early Seventies. I was at the Handover Party at HITEC where I was trying to film a short documentary with my sister-in-law's now ex-husband. We shot a lot of film and interviewd people on Lamma and that was pretty much it. Karri fucked off with the film and that was all she wrote, folks The handover gig featured Grace Jones in concert. And fully naked at one point. Did you know she absolutely terrified Sir Roger Moore in whatever Bond film it was they did together? Sir Roger (a Saint) still won't discuss her. Pete Tong, Nick Warren and James Zabiela also DJ'ed. Gene also played.

I did attend Uncle Ray's 70th birthday bash concert. Overseas attractions consisted of The Ventures (zimmer frames discreetly off stage. Possibly). There was the latest touring incarnation of The Turtles, featuring original singer Howard Kayman. And Eric Burdon and The New Animals (because he lost the rights to the old name). Howard, and fellow Turtle Mark Volman, became Flo and Eddie and joined forces with Frank Zappa. He was present when "some stupid with a flare gun" burned the Montreux Concert Hall to the ground during Zappa's show. The incident is immortalised in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water". Howard was also present when some fuckwit fan threw Frank Zappa off stage at the Royal Albert Hall. The opening line of his recently published biography tells how he was snorting cocaine off the Abraham Lincoln desk in the Oval Office of The White House. No idea of who the Prez was at the time. The only other comparable line comes from "Going Down with Janis" a memoir by Peggy Caserta who was the lesbian lover of Janis Joplin. It went something like I was stark naked, stoned out of my mind on heroin and the woman between my legs giving me head was Janis Joplin. Sex, drugs and rock n'roll all in one pithy sentence. It's a tawdry book, but a collectible and I lost my copy about 30 years ago. You can see Peggy with Janis when they were both with the Grateful Dead in the opening minutes of Woodstock. She's the submissive blonde trailing Janis. Sorry a bit of a side track there. I remember The New Animals did "House Of The Rising Sun", Ït's My Life" and "When I Was Young". I also remember that Chelski Annie was there as well.

HarbourFest. Missed Prince and Tatu, but still go "dreamy eyed" at Neil Young/Crazy Horse's magnificent set. He was using a lot of the music props from "Rust Never Sleeps/Live Rust". A stunning set. Seeing as he had never played HK and is yet to return, the audience got the greatest hits and not just the Greendale tour. I remember "Old Man", "Needle and the Damage Done", and especially "Keep On Rocking In The Free World" where the crowd went absolutely bonkers. Bill Clinton might have been there as well. He was for The Stones the next two nights and Neil stuck around as well, but didn't jam with Their Satanic Majesties.

Finally, did all four Rock-Its and all the Clockenflaps, apart from the small gig in Aberdeen which featured The Charlatans. Didn't write much on Rock-It, but the five big 'Flap reviews are up on the Music Forum and on home pages of yore. Enjoy.

Finally, I feel the music specialists could have cast their net wider. No mention of Rod Stewart/Faces at the HK Football Club Stadium in Sports Road. I think Anders Nelsson and Ming opened for them. Saw Rod at HK Star Ferry in his lysergic blue skin tight drainpipe trews and the leopard skin coat. Said hi to him and that I was looking forward to his show that night. Also saw Britt Ekland leaveThe Peninsula a day later. There's also the small matter of at least 14 HK Folk Festivals at Island School and South Island School. The Folk Society brought Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne, The Oyster Band, The Albion Band, Eric Bogle, The Barely Works, John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee (ex-Pentangle), Dave Swarbrick, Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy, Tir Na Nog, Sharon Shannon, Shooglenifty, Burach and possibly Steeleye Span to HK. Amongst others. Also. lets not forget The Bhundu Boys at SIS. Eleven of the twelve tables were taken by Lamma residents and we got everywhere. On stage, round the side. There was chaos in the heavens and the situation was excellent. My former co-worker at RTHK, Cliff Bale, can attest to that.

Back to Canton Disco which hosted Divine (Pink Flamingo's fame) as its opening act. Followed eventually by Run-DMC and New Order. Andrew Bull also organised The Pet Shop Boys debut concerts at the Coliseum. First time they had played live anywhere. Derek Jarman did the artistic shit - backdrops etc. Courtney Pine played his horns. More stuff at The Coliseum included Santana (three times), Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper and Tiffany (who was actually very good vale for money. Not her fault she was booked into the Coliseum instead of a nightclub and couldn't fill it). Jeez, the list keeps growing and growing like Supertopsy. Time to stop now and return to home.

18/1/2014: It's Saturday night and Jim and Tamara are hosting a "happening" up at Open Space. I've been asked to guest DJ, which I'm chuffed about. Get up there about 2200 hours with about 50 CD's. Realise I'ver left my money at home and slog back down the hill to get some. Meet Parksy on the way with what feels like a Django coffin weight shopping cart full of vinyl 45's. He's the first DJ and takes up through some lesser highways and byways of the Sixties. Yo know the stuff. Songs like "Johnny B Goode", "Hippy-hippy Shake", "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and other soul, r n' b. rock, pop and soundtrack hits from that era. Some of his records unfortunately stick and jump, but no one is shooting the piano player or hanging the DJ tonight. Parksy is getting into some cool sixties/early seventies stuff like the "Hawaii 5-0" theme, "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winter and "All Right Now" by Free, when Jim says it's now my time.

There's a good crowd of about 30 people. Hi, Jim and Sharon, Lisa, Caspar, Tamara, Ben, Daniel, Kumi and Ai and others whose names I've forgotten. My CD set starts slowly and awkwardly. Some CD's are too quiet and a bit jumpy. I've been advertised as doing "psychedelica" and wish to oblige. The space-reverb guitars from "Star Storm" by UFO seem to be a hit. Followed by more guitar magic on "Through With You" by The Lemon Pipers and the long version of "Crimson and Clover" by The Shondells. But the crowd are definitely UP! for more dancing and I'm getting requests for metal, techno, trance or drum and bass. Bother. Forgot to bring those with me. I was more into a medium tempo space-meets-dub sort of set. Which didn't happen. But Sasha's "Expander" from Live at Space, Ibiza, sort of saves the day and the live drum and synths and bass of Joujouka quell any possible mutiny. I hope. Nerves get me at one point and I join Parksy in fucking up. Turning the wrong CD off at the wrong moment. Twice. Nevermind. Jim seems happy to hear some stuff he's not heard before. I know I'm not the best mixer tonight, but I did have some of the more out there tunes. So, I'm happy.

We've had a procession from vinyl junkie Parksy to me and some of my dodgy CDs. Now it's time for Graham, aka DJ Junk, to embrace the 21st century and get all MP3 v laptop on our collective asses. Graham starts with some cheesyish disco-lite r n' b songs and tunes. I decide I've had enough and get set to go home. I've got a free ticket to see Phoenix at Asia Arena tomorrow night (19/1/2014). Thanks to the gorgeous and helpful Kinny. AKA, Mrs Daniel. Junk starts moving into more interesting noise instrumentals with phasing and all round sound. Almost turn back, but have to help Dan, Jim and Sharon get down the hill. Achieved with almost no injuries

Junk does a well-received set and Jim, who started the night, rounds it off. I'm told later by him that there's a bit of unpleasantness during his set when he's sucker-punched by some newly arrived inhabitant who really isn't up to date with how to behave on Lamma. A meeting is arranged for later to sort out any misunderstandings and griefs and I suppose the newcomer is now on double probation until the end of time. Maybe better, just to move elsewhere sport if you can't play nicely. And that's about it for now. Coming up, we've got reviews of Phoenix at Asia Arena on 19/1/2014 and Unknown Mortal Orchestra at Grappas on 21/1/2014. And so until we meet again, some sunny day, it's good-bye-e-e-e from me and me and me.

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This is great info thank you

Nice one Nick! Great writing