Fiery Bird Show on Radio Woking featuring an interview with John McNally founder member of The Searchers recently returned from their Australian tour and hitting Aldershot on 5 May.
The Fiery Bird Show this week featured an interview with John McNally a founder member of The Searchers and and Mabbsy and I used it to have a retrospective of 60’s poptastic tunes laced in with the memories we had of hearing the songs in the background on the radio (he does admit to being a 70’s kid really). We also mentioned the Fiery Bird Venue fundraiser with Eddie & The Hot Rods, Dept S, Ed Tenpole-Tudor and  Phoenix Chroi.

To catch up on the show and the interview with John you can listen again here

PLAYLIST

Female of The Species – The Walker Brothers – well obviously

The Clapping Song – Shirley Ellis – remember this one trying to remember the words

This Boy – The Beatles –

Anna and I, singing along, 14 years old, hairbrushes as pretend microphones. Now, I pretend my microphone is a hairbrush, my friend is singing along and the whole world is ahead of us 🙂

She’s Not There – The Zombies – Andy interviewed Colin Blunstone on his radio show this was a song for me mate

Autumn Stone – The Small Faces – one of my London songs – on the way to sound check, early evening sun, train passing Pimlico plumbers pulling in to Waterloo, head against the train window the song on the iPod, in rhythm with the train moving, the usual gig thing – going up in the afternoon, no matter how sunny and then cold out into the night air after the gig to go back to Waterloo the portal in and out of London for us suburbanites, picking up my bike at the station and cycling home, cold clear night, stars out, moon full.

Swords of A Thousand Men – Ed Tenpole Tudor – a man coming to support our Fiery Bird Fundraiser

Is Vic There? – Dept S who arranged the fundraiser with their excellent hit from the post punk halcyon days

Destruction – Phoenix Chroi – our band – the local support at the venue fundraiser with the song that raises money for Living Without Abuse a charity supporting those who are surviving abusive relationships

Do Anything You Wanna Do – Eddie & The Hot Rods – headliners at the Fiery Bird venue fundraiser and their brilliant anthem to cut the shackles and do your thing

GLORIA – Patti Smith – because her version of this song is excellent – the Them song interspersed with her own poetry to make something completely new – I believe this is what is known as ‘ripping a new one’ and fair play to her – thoroughly enjoyed and enriched from reading Just Kids and M Train.

Sweets For My Sweet – The Searchers the song John Lennon credited as being the best single to come out of Liverpool

Needles & Pins – The Searchers – Peggy, my Mum and Dad’s neighbour used to get me to babysit her kids or rather my Mum told her I would – it seemed I communicated this willingness psychically. Anyway she gave me a load of records and among them was this one – listening to it again brought me slap right back to being 13 and the start of finding out about modernism, playing bass, writing songs and then only three years later putting the bass and the songs down for another 25 years.

Brand New Day – Deep Six – a new release from a band releasing new original material

Never Buy The Sun – Billy Bragg – speaks for itself, this was the week that yet again there was controversy about truth in  papers relating to Liverpool and it’s citizens characters. Interviewing John McNally a founder of a band that was part of the movement that brought the cultural output of Liverpool to the world stage – we should all stand up for people of any city who are demonised and belittled by the international money that might seek to make of us knaves and fools. People deserve better.

You’ll Never Walk Alone – Gerry & The Pacemakers, if people listen to the words of the song adopted by Liverpool, credited as a hymn and forgotten as a musical gem it can really mean something. An extra religious head teacher at assembly once poured scorn on ‘football fans making sacrilegious chants of sacred songs’ using this as an example – I wonder did anyone have the heart to tell him it was a song from a musical and no hymn at all. Bless.