About this blog

The blog is named with a nod to all my music making up my fan club diary of live music and also the name of my favoured night club in Leicester, The Fan Club, which gave us so many years of fun during the 80s and 90s but mainly listening to classic 80s tunes.

It all started during a clear out of old boxes, in which I found my old concert tickets and a couple of scrapbooks from my early days of getting into music and the culture around different types of music. I’ve lost a fair few tickets (and many ill fitting T-shirts) along the way, but I’ll detail what memorabilia I can as I go along. I

I know I will miss some concert if I’ve no reference material, but whenever I can fill the gaps, I will.

Sadly, I only have one box of vinyl singles left, I sold the best part of ten boxes of LPs and EPs many years ago to pay the deposit for my first house, at the same time I sold all my programmes, some autographed and to keep things complete for the buyer, some tickets from the concerts went with them. A mistake in hindsight, but, a must at the time, I bought a sensible, grown up house. After all, I guess I thought I would some be growing out of this music lark! So little I knew in those days.

Anyway, I’m now thinking I should write my thoughts on the gigs I know I have been to and anything I can remember from around the time, which may not be much for some! My addition to posterity and a place to dump my thoughts in case I lose anything else…..no one in my past will be hurt in the making of this blog, but are more than welcome to poke my memory if they wish to add anything. 🙂

Music has always played a very special part in my life and has led me to meet a wide range of people from all sorts of walks of life. It features at the highs and lows in life and can be emotionally challenging. I may take this opportunity to revisit some of the lyrics stuck in my head and their meanings to me.

Music started for me around 1978, listening to the radio in the school playground with a few mates. The Top 40 was on around lunchtime in those days and was a highlight for us (Only 3 TV channels in those day, not even Channel 4 yet and nothing like SKY!!). The songs in the charts were a real mix, the likes of The Beegees weren’t doing it for me, but stuff was happening. Just too late for the Sex Pistols, but The Stranglers, The Clash and The Who were sounds I was get to like, but it would be a few more years before music was a massive part of life.

I’m going to diarise things to the date they happened, so you can search back on years and artists and reminisce yourself…..maybe you were at the same place as we were?

Where possible, I’ll let you know who the support band was and what the track listing (I’ll be trusting a great website called setlist.fm for this as I won’t remember without prompting, so apologies if you know it is slightly wrong!!) for the evening (or afternoon matinee as it was for Culture Club). Thanks for track listings will be mainly down to Google searches, but it may help me remember what happened on the night too. 🙂

So….., kick off your shoes,
Put your feet up!
Lean back and just enjoy the melodies.
After all, music soothes even the savage beast.

[Time to Relax – The Offspring – 1984 (Smash Album)]

….and of course, the fun of a soft opening like this followed by Nitro (Youth Energy) is what makes music so exciting to me…..

Favourite lyrics

---