More video inspired recollections...

The video is just an excuse today simply because its inspired a couple of thoughts and memories, its a Bradford band called "Smokie" by the way, we used to come across them a lot drinking in pubs in that awful dirty city circa 1974 and whenever one of them walked into a pub then someone would put one of their records on the jukebox, maybe someone who was paid by the band to do just that, anyhoo...

Sad memory #1 - the lead guitarist nearest the camera on the long shots - I had hair just like his. That was my first thought immediately I saw this video, "I had hair just like his" I thought straightaway, same length same stylee, bloody hell, what happened to it - it fell out is the answer, it fell out and left me having to shave it every few weeks to make it look as if I intend to have that shaven headed look, I don't, I'd like my 1970's hair back please.

Sad memory #2 - the bass guitarist furthest away from the camera on the long shots, the one with the curly mop-haired look - he is the spitting image of an old schoolfriend of mine, Dave Maud, we would take the piss out of Dave Maud when Smokie were all the rage because he looked like the bass guitarist, which was all the more annying because Dave Maud was actually a drummer, and quite a good one.

We had two drummers in our year at school and unfortunately Dave Maud was alwasy destined to be the lesser of the two simply because the other one was John Kewley, a drumming maniac. Kewley would drum things all day long, I'm sure he had St Vitus Dance because I never saw him without he'd be tapping something, fidgeting, drumming his fingers on the desktop, "borrowing" rulers and lining up things in front of him to drum on, he'd drum on your head as you walked past him, Kewley was a drumming genius albeit a manic genius and according to his entry in "Friends Reunited" he is a professional drummer and has been for the past 30 years, so no suprises there then.

Which left Dave Maud as the second best drummer in our class, its no shame to be second best to Kewley the manic drumming genius and Maudy was good and played in several local pub bands for most of his life, a nice lad , modest, with not a breath of badness about him, I last saw his name mentioned three years ago on one of the extremely rare occasions when I had bought an evening newspaper (I never buy newspapers, fate made me buy this one this night) and read of the "tragic death" of a person of my age called Dave Maud.

It was too much of a coincidence, there aren't many Mauds in the Leeds phone directory and here was one of the same name as my old chum and the correct age to be him, I rang around a few friends and a few days later one of them found the story buried in the back of another edition of the same paper, the coroners report found that he had died from alcohol poisoning, probably self induced while suffering from depression after the breakdown of his marriage, such a waste and a shame, he might have grown up to be a right twat, I really don't know, but I'll always remember him as one of lifes nice blokes, someone who, if I'd seen him in a pub in later years, I would have walked over and reaquainted myself with, and there are many who I can't say that for.

So there you are, all of that just because I clicked on a Smokie video on YouTube, isn't memory good ?