Headbang - 24 July, 2026

Just 5 of us gathered at Dave's - on time again - last night, but we had an online audience of another 6 (eventually). Kudos to Malcolm who only missed the start by just 2 tracks, despite it being just after 5:30 am in Christchurch! Colin, understandably, was a little later to the party.

Again there were no feedback issues and Dave's sound system was excellent as usual.

The first theme was initially unnamed - participants had to guess what it was. Andy correctly deduced that is what I called NAME DROPPING - the 2nd time this theme has been used. Here's the details and the results of the WhatsApp votes:

We had our first 3-way tie, with only the late Kirsty MacColl missing out.

The 2nd theme, as ever, was SEPTUAGENARIANS - those who had reached the age of 70 since the last Headbang. Just 4 tracks again and the results were:

A clear win for Chris Isaak with his live rendition of a song that first appeared in David Lynch's Wild At Heart film.

There were a number of others who celebrated their 70th birthdays recently:

By popular demand, having been voted the top theme at the previous Headbang, KENNEDY CENTER HONORS - returned:

The mini-medley by Colombian singer Juanes, Rage Against the Machine's guitarist Tom Morello and Mexican musician Fher Olver, was a clear winner with Kings of Leon getting a big thumbs down from our assembled group - and apparently from the attending Eagles too, if looks can be believed.

The OCTOGENARIANS theme is regularly the largest - and this time was no exception, so I had to split it into 2 parts, the first of which resulted in these votes:

Pleasing to see that every act got at least one vote, but Graham Gouldman, masquerading as 10 cc, won by a stretch. The other 3 members that formed the band back in 1972 - Eric Stewart, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley - are all still alive. Godley and Creme left the band in 1976 but Stewart and Goldman continued as 10 cc for a number of years before Eric retired, leaving Graham to carry the flame.

Andy had suggested a theme of the smallest and tallest musicians. I took it a little further and split in into 2 separate themes, to the first of which I gave the (strictly non-PC) title of ROCK MIDGETS:

I guess the "tallest" won?

I have been shining a light on the various Instruments in a band for a while on my History of Rock shows for River Dee Radio, and occasionally also use it as a theme for the Headbang - like last time when Flutes featured. This time it was MANDOLINS:

Rod Stewart's breakthrough solo album, Every Picture Tells a Story, included his huge hit single Maggie May, which features a prominent mandolin part at the end (famously mimed by John Peel on TotP). Normally the sleeve notes on LP's would mention - usually thanking - other musicians who contributed, but Rod's comment about Ray Jackson's contribution was "The mandolin was played by the mandolin player in Lindisfarne. The name slips my mind"!

Now it was time for OCTOGENARIANS (2):

A 2-way tie between Roxy Music's saxophonist Andy McKay and Linda Ronstadt (backed by the Eagles). The Eagles were Linda's backing band until 1971 but they got together again in 1974 for this great version of Desperado from the Eagles' 2nd album in 1973.

Other Octogenarians and a couple of Nonogenarians were:

Tony Levin would appear in the Jukebox later on, playing bass on (and dancing with) Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.

OBITUARIES now:

Dick Parry's sax on Pink Floyd's 1994 performance of Us and Them virtually carried the track on its own, making him the clear winner here. Moya Brennan was lead singer in Clannad and Enya's sister.

Lots of other obituaries too:

On to what turned out to be our final theme of the evening - JUKEBOX (22):

Another 3-way tie, but pleasing to see that every track got at least one vote.

The original plan was to have a 10th theme - the other half of Andy's earlier suggestion, which I labelled ROCK GIANTS - but we ran out of time so this theme will automatically be carried forward to the next Headbang.

We did have time, however, for the usual team photo:

Home James arrived on time and off we went. Big thanks to Dave for hosting again.

Headbang - 13 March, 2026 - Final Votes

Final voting is now closed. I received 9.3 votes for the ranking of the Themes from 10 to 1 and the results were:

Kennedy Center did well and so has earned a repeat appearance at the next Headbang, having received top marks from 4 of those in attendance. However, it wasn't quite universal as there were also 4 lowish votes for it too - the first of the usual anomalies.

Flutes proved to be a bit of a Marmite theme with 2 top votes and 2 bottom votes. Septuagenarians was again nearer the bottom of the pile but still received one top vote and also just one bottom vote.

Today's Birthdays had previously been dropped from the list of themes, having come bottom of the voting on 3 previous consecutive occasions but was brought back by special request this time. However, it's now off to the Headbangers' graveyard of former themes.

Votes were received from all 12 present for everyone's Top 3 tracks. A total of 20 tracks were nominated, emphasising the usual divergent tastes. The results were:

Wish You Were Here was the clear winner, receiving votes from 6 of those present.

Three winners of different themes on the WhatsApp polls on the night didn't receive any votes in anyone's Top 3:

• Roger Glover (Octs 1)
• Beatles (Final Gigs)
• Jeff Beck & Imogen Heap (Jukebox - equal best)

Performances from all 7 decades from the 1960's to the 2020's received at least one nomination, with the 1970's and the 2010's the most with 5 each.

The 2 themes that didn't receive any Top 3 votes were Today's Birthdays and Octogenarians (1), compared with Kennedy and Obituaries who each had 4 nominations in the Top 3 votes. Even the relatively poorly regarded Septuagenarians theme had 3 nominations here.

The Headbangs started in the late 1980's but I only started keeping attendance records from November, 2003 and themes only started in December, 2008. Over the course of those 73 Headbangs, we've had 18 different attendees, with Harry the latest "newbie".

There have been 170 different themes since 2008, of which 39 have been played more than once.

The date of the next Headbang is Friday 24th July - get it in your diaries now.

Headbang - 13 March, 2026

7 of us gathered at Dave's - on time - and wolfed down the curries. All except Jayne, whose additional order of Vegetable Balti had somehow been omitted.

The remote attendees all - with the exception of Phil - logged on at various times. Malcolm from sunny Christchurch, Rob G and Rob D from not-so-sunny Midlands and Highlands respectively, Aidan from Edinburgh and Colin, after his regular evening hospital visit, from Banchory.

Thankfully, at Dave's we had no feedback or echo isues on the evening although the Teams menu baffled a little and we were unable to "mute all" or "share screen". Aidan, however, had to dip out mid-evening as his IT connection seemed to be playing up.

Ten themes coming up, the first of which was:

It's now half a century since the early days of punk, which is reflected in those appearing in theme 2:

Everyone got at least one vote but the narrow joint winners were Gary Valentine and Peter Hook.

Others who had recently reached the biblical three score years and ten were:

A new theme was the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual year-end bash attended by the sitting President. (The present incumbent has now renamed it the Trump Kennedy Center Honors):

I don't know why Beth Hart and Jeff Beck chose I'd Rather Go Blind to honour Buddy Guy but they were clear winners anyway.

Theme 4 was part 1 of those who had recently turned 80:

Roger Glover's bass solo at the introduction of Black Night was a narrow winner.

Spotlighting various instruments played in bands has been a bit of a recurring theme - Saxophones, Violins, Twin Guitars etc have previously featured but this time it was Flutes, which seemed to bring out all the performing weirdos:

We all thought Ian Anderson's one-legged performance and appearance at the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus was pretty much out there, but Thijs Van Leer and Peter Gabriel took it to a whole other level. Sanity prevailed in the voting, however, as Ian McDonald, with the help of fellow musos Steve Hackett and John Wetton, reprised his performance on one of the stand-out tracks on King Crimson's debut album, to win.

A previous theme had been Comebacks so I thought it was time to look at some of the Final Gigs played by various performers:

Bowie announced, to the surprise of the fans and his band-mates, the "death" of his Ziggy Stardust character before playing the appropriate final song at Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. Of course, he then went on to other characters - Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke etc.

The Band's performance was at the Last Waltz, filmed by Martin Scorcese, with appearances from a host of mega-stars - Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Bob Dylan etc.

Cream did do a few reunion gigs at the Royal Albert Hall in 2005 but that was largely to help Jack with his medical bills, having had liver cancer causing a transplant.

A clear winner was the Beatles' legendary rooftop gig, with Billy Preston guesting on keyboards.

Theme 7 was the second part of the Octogenarians:

 

Dolly's performance of Jolene was when she was inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. She sang the first verse and then other guests took on the vocals in turn. The task here was to identify each of those guest singers - in turn, the answer was Pink, Annie Lennox, Simon LeBon, Pat Benatar, Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Sheryl Crow and Brandi Carlisle.

The location of David Gilmour's 2024 gig was correctly identified by Harry as Circus Maximus, Rome and the track was a clear winner.

Other Octogenarians - plus a few Nonogenarians and one notable Centenarian were:

On now to the Obituaries:

The Steve Cropper medley was a comfortable winner.

Others who had recently passed were:

There were 6 entries for the Jukebox. The nominators were not revealed prior to voting and, ethically, were asked not to vote for their own nomination:

A dead heat between Dave's and my nomination - and Jeff Beck's second win of the evening, having earlier taken the Kennedy Center Honors one.

To round off the evening, the final theme was another short one of 4 tracks with Zero being the common factor:

Just one more thing - the team photo. Jayne did the honours and I asked her to try it with the overhead lights on and then with them off:

The latter one highlights the screen a little better.

I mention the "broad church" and the "catholic" tastes of the group a lot and this Headbang demonstrated that - I reckon that there were performers from as many as 13 musical genres featured: Pop, Rock, Prog, Punk, Soul, Post Punk, Country, Ska, Reggie, Indie, Opera, Electronic and Blues.

Headbang - 14 November, 2025 - Final votes

Votes now received from the 9 who watched all 49 videos at Friday's Headbang. A total of 15 tracks  were nominated and this was the final pecking order:

Nigel Kennedy's stellar performance with The Who was the clear winner with 4 nominations, scoring 10 points in all. Arcade Fire's lively performance at Austin City Limits tied with The Jam's cover of Ray Davies' David Watts with bass player Bruce Foxton in fine voice on one of his rare lead vocals with the band.

5 of the nominated tracks were live performances in the 70's, despite video and audio technologies not being as good as they are now. The 15 tracks were spread across 8 of the 10 themes with the 2nd theme - Violins - receiving nominations for 4 of their 5 tracks.

Voting for the ranking of the themes was:

For a change, voting in the polls on the night was fairly consistent with the final votes above.

As regards the date for the next Headbang, Friday 13th March is the only date when all 12 of us appear, at this stage, to be available. 

Headbang - 14 November, 2025

Andy and Steve were otherwise engaged but the other 10 of us participated in last night's Headbang - 5 at Dave's and 5 remote. No problems this time with logging in to Teams but there was a persistent echo/feedback that was very annoying and made the usual banter/conversation well nigh impossible.

A partial solution to the echo was to mute all the remote participants whenever any of us at Dave's were speaking - but that was to the detriment of the usual interaction. Dave and I are planning to do further research before the next Headbang to try to find suitable solutions.

Anyway, Gerry, Jeb and me - at the Douglas for a quick pre-match beer - were joined by Aidan who had a late change of plan to attend in person. Curries collected then Gerry drove us over to Dave's - on schedule - where all the remote participants - including Malcolm at breakast time in Christchurch - were already online - about 20 minutes early!

Once curries were consumed we tried to resolve the feedback issue - to no avail - so we just decided to proceed with the music, by now about 15 minutes later than planned.

The usual start was SEPTUAGENARIANS - and the votes for the 4 tracks played were:

 Other Septuagenarians - no tracks played - were:

The second theme was VIOLINS - tracks where violins had a strong presence:

(Phil was having technical difficulties so didn't manage to vote via WhatsApp and soon had to leave the meeting).

Theme 3 was OCTOGENARIANS. Just as the last time there were so many who had recently reached the age of 80 that I had to split this theme in two - this was part 1:

No casting vote so a tie between Ian Gillan and Jose Feliciano.

The 4th theme was an acknowledgment of the pending centenary of the GRAND OLE OPRY - an American institution since 1925. Initially just a country music radio show, for 3 decades from 1943 the broadcast came from a live concert venue - the now legendary and esteemed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The radio show now comes from a new purpose built venue but the Ryman, after refurbishment, is a much sought-after concert venue - and not just for country music stars. We played 4 examples and the voting was very even:

I think that's our first ever 3-way tie. Incidentally, Gerry's phone battery had now died so his vote was manual and, as a result, the WhatsApp polls don't tell the full story.

Next was OCTOGENARIANS (2):

Neil Young's second appearance was a clear winner.

There were plenty of others with recent big birthdays too:

Not to mention some Nonogenarians and even a Centenarian:

It still being officially AUTUMN, that became our next theme - just as we did at this time last year:

Green Day are real live crowd pleasers and regularly go down well with the Headbangers too.

Time for the OBITUARIES. First of all a few short entries in a continuous medley:

Then the main men:

There were others who had recently passed as well:

I decided it was time for another vote on some more songs from the past that would probably be NO LONGER PC in today's woke times. The votes this time were for the one that is thought to be most offensive to the audiences of today:

(Our) Andy put in a late remote vote for Killing an Arab, which would have tied it with Blue Mink's "curly black and kinky, mixed with yellow Chinky". The only surprise is that, in a time of the Jeffrey Epstein/Andrew/Trump/Guiffre stories in the news, that Wishbone Ash's subject matter didn't gain more votes.

So now we come to the JUKEBOX and it's confession time for me. The track with my name against it was put in to see if anyone would smell a rat - and nobody did. The alleged Eminem & Jelly Roll track is not real - it's AI created. nobody seemed to like it anyway:

The final theme was 4 tracks from JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!. He's an American late night show host and comedian who usually ends his shows with a live music performance. Think Letterman (now retired). Like the other networks - Jimmy Fallon (NBC) and Stephen Colbert (CBS) - his ABC show regularly mocks Trump, but one of his recent comments so offended the Donald that he got on to ABC's owners (Disney) and managed to get Jimmy Kimmel's show taken off air. Thankfully it's back on now. Anyway, here's the votes:

Just time for the usual team photo:

Headbang - 8 August, 2025 - Final votes

Votes now received from all 11 who attended last Friday. There were a total of 21 nominations for everyone’s top 3 tracks – over 40% of the total tracks played received at least one vote. Here’s the details:

 Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets received votes from 4 Headbangers – the most of all. Talking Heads and Carly Simon were next best with 3 each and there were 5 more tracks who each received 2 nominations, leaving 13 tracks with just one nomination each.

These tracks originated in 6 different decades with the 1970’s being more than half of the total. All 9 of the themes had at least one track in this list.

The voting for the themes wasn’t so straight-forward. For years, the ranking has covered all the themes in descending order but this time, for some reason, 3 of our group chose to cut the scoring back to just their top 3. Accordingly, the following results may be a little skewed:

What is clear, however, is that the top 3 in the list above are well ahead of all the others.