Monday, September 14, 2009

Bloatermog We Meet Again: The main reason wife Jane and I travelled to Motorhead's West Runton Pavilion gig in March 1980 was not only to add another fine and trusty Motorhead concert to our list, but also to meet Brian 'Hawkfan' Tawn.
Brian lives in Wisbech, and the West Runton Pavilion venue at Cromer, almost adjacent to The Wash, was a favourite for Motorhead during their very early days, and even when they achieved greater fame, they would play the venue as a 'warm-up' gig preceeding a UK or European tour.
On March 15th, 1980, the date at Runton was sandwiched between Bremen's Aladdin on the 10th, and Aalst's Zaal Okapi on the 20th. Jane, 3 months pregnant with our son, Steven, played map-reader on this madcap drive, which we had noticed in very tiny print in the 'What's On!' gig listings in Sounds music paper, and had decided to go at the all-too cliched drop of a hat. Brian was the main instigator in bringing my wish to print a fanzine about Motorhead into the reality it has been since early 1980, when he arranged through then manager, Douglas Smith, for a friend and I to meet the band over 4 dates on The Bomber tour of 1979.
It was great meeting Brian and his wife, Anne, at The Pavillion, and they were most kind in providing us with, at extremely short notice as it was indeed a 'surprise' visit in that we hadn't told them we were going to be there, a camp bed and a sofa for the night in their front room.
The rest, as they say, is history. Of course, we have regularly kept in touch ever since, but only the week before last, Brian emailed to say "We're holidaying near Weymouth, can we drop in to see you one evening?" Of course they could! And that evening was September 9th 2009 - only a mere 29 years later, with us being just another 29 years older, and our kids had long grown up and made us grandparents, yet inside we are just as enthusiastic about our music as we were then, with only the outer shells showing signs of wrinkles and crumbling - but in our Hearts we are always will be aged between 18 and 21!
So we had an excellent couple of hours together, and reminisced and Anne took a couple of photos, which are or will be uploaded onto www.alanburridge.freeuk.com at an opportune moment by Sarmad, and placed in the 'Scrapbook' category.
So it was a jolly fine day indeed!