ANOTHER ASTERICK-AWFUL DANCE! . . . The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin – University of Kent 1967 and 1971

March 28, 2024 Peter Stanfield

I’ve eaten a good many meals in Rutherford Dining Hall, the idea of Led Zeppelin playing there, as rumour had it, seemed as fanciful as them playing the even smaller venue Bridge Place Country Club (now a restaurant) in a village near to Canterbury. I’ve been there once and I can’t figure out where they would have played – all the rooms seem entirely inadequate for a rock band. . .

The Who had played Eliot Dining Hall the year before, which is the same size as Rutherford, holds approximately 600 bodies, but then, as it turned out, the event took place in the Sports Hall and not where I bought chips and beans.

The gig was part of Zeppelin’s ‘Back to the Clubs’ tour and their sixth UK jaunt, the idea was to reconnect with their audience. . . . which Robert Plant, at least for this reviewer, singularly failed to do . . .

Back when they played in Bridge in December 1968, Zeppelin were billed locally as ‘The Yardbirds’, possibly the last time they were promoted as such in Britain.

Before the three original Yardbirds up and quit on him in the Spring of 1968, Jimmy Page had played alongside Keith Relf, Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja for the University’s Summer Ball, 1967 . . . Their performance was slammed in the student paper InCant.

No Ball!
NOT AGAIN! YES, AGAIN I’M AFRAID – ANOTHER ASTERICK-AWFUL DANCE!
The really significant word in the above statement/exclamation is ‘Dance’. Friday the 2nd of June was to be the University of Kent at Canterbury Summer Ball. What we actually got was a rather upper-second-rate hop.
What price non-culmination? About £200 in the red! Much of this debt probably due to the £300-odd paid for 50-minutes’ ‘worth’ of un-danceable Yardbirds.

To cap it all, the buffet served day-old lemon mousse . . . . the horror

In defence of The Yardbirds, there were complaints about nearly every band subsequently booked for freshers week or the end of year ball. You couldn’t dance to any of them and they were always too loud and money was inevitably lost . . . Of all the bands who played the University in the 1960s and first half of the 1970s – Manfred Mann, Kinks, The Move, Procol Harum, Ten Years After, The Who – only Fairport Convention, twice, turned a profit. University gigs were subsidised and always ran at a loss, but lemon mousse, at least, was never again on the menu . . .

Yardbirds at Dayton's Super Youthquake, August 5, 1966

June 15, 2023 Peter Stanfield

The Yardbirds first appearance on their debut US tour with Jimmy Page was for two afternoon shows, Friday August 5, 1966, at Dayton’s department store in their eighth floor auditorium.

Outside of showcase gigs like those at the Hullabaloo in Hollywood, back at the start of 1966 when Paul Samwell-Smith was still in the band, The Yardbirds’ US shows that year were mostly as part of some bigger event, like this smash fashion bash.

Dayton’s department store was massive, a size that must have seemed beyond belief to young Englishmen in 1966

Jimmy Page outside the store, snap taken by fan John Morris [**HERE**]

All a blur: image of the gig that is floating around on Facebook with Beck present and correct.

The Super Youthquake was a month long back-to-school bash, The Yardbirds no more than a blip in the scheme of things – at best they were part of a promotional gambit, another piece of English culture, like a faux Carnaby Street window display

‘Girl watchers’ . . . . those attending the afternoon shows. All very ’66 Mod and not a word on the ’Birds – the ostensible reason they had gathered to look and be looked at

Image is from the press conference given in the store, it is not a publicity shot like those used in advertising the event that still featured Paul Samwell-Smith.

The Yardbirds were in Minneapolis but a day before moving on to Davenport, Iowa and then Chicago for a meeting with Cynthia Plaster Caster who would take a mould of Beck’s leg . . . After the Dayton’s gig you could buy the demonstrator Fender amp they’d used (perfect working order) or pick up a ‘Yardbird’ type fuzztone (bring ad for special discount). . . . The traces they left . . .

It's Madness: Don't Say 'Fab' Say Mickey Finn and the Blue Men

January 16, 2023 Peter Stanfield

I’ve been digging around in the pop music press of 1964, searchin’ for material on the R&B boom generally and The Yardbirds in particular. I was struck by how heavily the East End Mod group, Mickey Finn and the Blue Men were hyped, more adverts than even the Stones managed. The cartoon figures caught my eye as much as the pork pie hats

Blue Beat alongside Motown, Chicago blues, Stax and the jazz of Mose Allison and Jimmy McGriff was just part of the panoply of styles that R&B encompassed in 1964. Mickey Finn got in on the act by having their first record released on the premier UK-Jamacian label, getting a testimonial from the man himself, Prince Buster, and then pulling into the mix Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

I’m not that keen on the band’s neophyte ska moves but I love the R&B raver on the b-side of ‘Reelin and a Rockin’, ‘I Still Want You’. Lovers of the freakbeat sound go for their 1967 release ‘Garden of My Mind’. Munster Records have pulled together all the band’s recordings from 1964–67 with top sleeve notes from Mike Stax (Ugly Things), you can hear their latest by dialing the number GER 7080 /7089. . .

Mickey Finn began the year as a five piece and ended it with six members having dropped the mod look and taken up posing on building sites and railway platforms as if they were the Stones or Pretty Things.

The added member, at least in publicity shots, was Jimmy Page – session man and harmonica player on the early singles.

Peter Aldersley review in Pop Weekly (February 16, 1964)

NME (July 3 1964). Derek Johnson also reviewed the High Numbers single which he described as ‘compelling styling but weakish material’.

A Little less than a year after moonlighting with Mickey Finn our man is declared ‘the greatest guitarist in Europe. The greatest harmonica play in Europe. Jimmy Page is a phenomenon’. Why stop with Europe, why not the world?

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