More from the estimable Gavin Underhill (I salute you, sir!) who kept and scanned this Echo Magazine feature about the nearly-dids of Bournemouth’s extraordinarily rich live music scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Zoom in to read if you can. If not, have a root around at Gavin’s website – great piece on the Midnight Express club, all manner of bands and clips of music too.
There was a club on a main road my Band Friends of Gavin had a residency there…but cannot remember its name.
Not Upstairs ato Eric’s. ….that was the rival club.
It was called Glasshoppers
It opened as The Downstairs in 1961, Bournemouth’s first rock and R&B club. As Le Disque a Go Go it hosted residencies by Manfred Mann, The Who and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (with Eric Clapton) as well as one-off gigs by scores of touring bands at the time and, of course, the legendary Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. in 2014 a host of venerable Bournemouth musicians gathered to watch Zoot unveil a blue plaque commemorating its history.
Interesting stuff! Great to see that the spirit and music of the 80s survived in Bournemouth. Great to find you here, Richard! I visited Bmth first in 1980 as a language student. I remember the Surfing Dave gig and the Piranhas concert. and of course the fabolous TV Slaves. Thank you for taking me there! Best time ever , the early 80s. Hope to come to Bmth again one day. Big hugs from Berlin!
A random visit to this site and look whos there !
I’ve just stumble across this and much of the stuff from Gavin Underhill today. I had no idea and very surprised to see so much of the Bmth scene has made it to 2018 ! I was I was I guess a somewhere a part of either playing in one or two mentioned and some promoting of quite a few of them . I moved to London in 1985 but still return a lot. Thank you, well done mate great to see it !
Great to see that the spirit and the music of the 80s survived in Bournemouth!And great to find you here, Richard! I visisted Bmth first in 1980 as a language student. I remember the Surfing Dave gig The Piranhas concert and of course the fabolous TV Slaves. Thank you for taking me there! Hope to come to Bmth again one day. Big hugs from Berlin!
Richard here and OMG Uta Friedrich . Big Hello.