Circumstances forced us - mostly willingly - to hold last night's Headbang completely remotely. Steve and Malcolm had sent their apologies some time ago but Gerry became a casualty of his employer's IT department and had to be a late withdrawal. Colin was fully in attendance but remained invisible to the rest of us on Zoom due to some screen flashing problems.
One upside of remote Headbangs - for me, at least - is that the voting process is so much easier - and the results are immediately transparent and available to all. So here's the track listing and the votes cast last night - first of all, the 'GENARIANS. Each of the 8 Headbangers present (excluding me) had 2 votes to cast:
Mark Knopfler's younger brother just pipped Pink Floyd's regular saxophonist, with a respectable 3rd place to our sole Nonogenarian.
Other recent 'Genarians were noted:
That was easy enough, but the recent rash of musicians passing made the voting in the OBITUARIES section a bit trickier:
We split this in to two sections and after playing the first five, most felt that Wilko was a shoo-in to be the "Most Missed", but Christine McVie gained a healthy total of votes when the second five were played.
Other recent Obits were noted:
Theme three was a carry-over from the previous Headbang when we ran out of time - FOREIGN LANGUAGE SONGS. Only one vote per person in this section:
A predictable winner, but I recommend checking out The Hu from Mongolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hu). They're classically trained musicians who use traditional instruments and techniques. They've been touring the world, including the UK last year.
The largest, and most important, theme of the evening is, as ever, the HEADBANGERS' JUKEBOX. This time we had 13 tracks to choose from - including those from the absentees and a surprise one from the forgotten man - one time/future(?) HEADBANGER Gary Grant. Again this theme was split in two and everyone had 2 votes. The two most popular videos would then move to the next round:
The next part of the Jukebox consisted of 7 tracks - the same voting as above:
Three acts finished with 3 points, so, for the first time, I got a chance to vote and I went for the act that fullfilled the perfect wish list for the Jukebox - new video and new act.
So we now had a chance to vote which was the best from the 4 qualifiers - Tedeschi Trucks Band, Django & Stephane, Florence + the Machine and Li'l Ed & the Blues Imperials. Three votes each for Django and Florence meant I had to use my casting vote again - and I went for Django on the basis again of qualifying on both of the ideal criteria.
Theme 4 was BANDS FRONTED BY SCOTS FEMALES:
Sharleen Spiteri's group's cover of the Al Green classic, live from the Fruit Market, Glasgow, just edged this one.
We just had time to squeeze in the final theme - HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS:
Green Day won primarily due to the crowd reaction, which was infectious.
We managed to get through all 48 tracks and still finished before midnight. Phil reminded me to take the team photo:
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