The school concert, a major performance by Walter Tottle and the Expanding Liberals by the sound of it, and of our pre-match nerves. And it seems to have gone rather well. Obviously we were robbed of the great success we deserved, but you'll find a video of our efforts elsewhere on this blog and, I'm sure you'll agree, we could've been contenders. In fact we were contenders, as today's gig was a talent contest.
There's a photo of us at this gig somewhere, remind me to dig it out sometime. Oh, here it is.
(Left to right: Kev Moore, Peter Scott, Steve Fletcher, Kev Sutherland, Nick Tyson. I'm sure Nick or my Mum will update me as to the identities of everyone else in the picture when they see this blog.)
Nifty artwork from my attempt at a Six Million Dollar Man strip, too. I seem to recall sending this off to Look-In and getting it back with some kind comments. I don't think I used to photocopy artwork in those days, just sent off the originals, so this one's lucky to have survived as long as it did (before I cut it up to stick in my diary, obviously).
Records For The Day are quaint, one from a movie and one not. One about being able to be anything that you wanted to be, one about someone who once cut a record but it didn't make it. What sort of crystal ball was I using?
Check out that Record For The Day. "Blog". Remember where you heard it first.
Now it might not have strictly been a record, being a song by our band Walter Tottle and the Expanding Liberals. And it may not have been For The Day since, unless we recorded it, which I very much doubt we did, it'd be lucky to be a record for much more than the during of our singing it. I imagine it's a fun song we made up while jamming, then promptly forgot. It certainly never became part of any performing set that I can recollect.
But could this be the first recorded use of the word Blog? The OED has its first recorded use as being in the 1990s, as an abbreviation of web-log. But we used it in 1977, and I recorded it in my diary. Does this mean I own it or something? How much can I claim?
To be honest, it was Nick's song (as the diary, or if you will web-log) notes, so anything that's coming our way copyright-wise, goes to him. (I see that we were going to be visited by school music teacher Mrs Borem, for whom we were to do a recording. We held the session in my back room where we began the tape recording and, before we could play a note, Nick said "This is for you, Mrs Blob". We collapsed in fits at this and probably never recovered. The name Mrs Blob stuck, and perhaps she is the origin of the name Blog?)
Elsewhere I see i'd written to Marvel comics complaining that, I dunno, they weren't as funny as they used to be? And I've drawn myself ski-ing, from a strip I was doing based on the school ski-ing trip from the previous year that had clearly left its mark on me. And emotional scenes with Jasmine and Tony who, I can reveal (spoiler alert) got married some years later. Happily ever after.
The Record For The Day, other than our own long-forgotten Blog, was the Muppets' Mahna Mahna (whose spelling I just had to look up, so I'm forgiven for getting it wrong having never seen it written down).
