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.