Once Upon a Time in The '70s

Nostalgia & Memories of The 1970s

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Rootbrook Returns

(Getting Ye Olde Band Back Together) John Allan: January 2026 After the gluttonous excesses of the Xmas and New Year holidays, I was basking on my recliner watching the 5th Ashes series between Australia and England. Two names were prominent on the bottom left hand corner of the television. England batsman Joe Root and Harry Brook. In my near slumber I thought the two names together sounded…

Rootbrook Returns

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Hard Work

John Allan: January 2026 This year marks ten years since I retired, downed tools, clocked off, called it a day, what ever you want to call it. I gave over forty years of hard graft to both the public and private sectors in two continents. From golf club greenkeeper, musical instrument salesman, musician (p/t), registered nurse, staff development nurse, acting nurse manager to rural and…

Hard Work

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War (What Is It Good For ?)

John Allan: December 2025 War, huh, yeahWhat is it good for?Absolutely nothing, uhhWar, huh, yeahWhat is it good for?Absolutely nothingSay it again, y’allWar, huh (good God)What is it good for?Absolutely nothing, listen to me, oh With the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and the Ukraine and the worlds largest warship, the USS Gerald R Ford, looming off the coast of Venezuela, it appears we have…

War (What Is It Good For ?)

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Driving Mr Rea

Mark Arbuckle: November 2025 Driving Home For…… Don’t panic people, this is NOT about Christmas Songs! It’s still a bit early for that. Although I did see my first TV Crimbo Ad on 2nd of November! No it’s an appreciation of one of my favourite 70’s singer/songwriters and Middlesbrough’s favourite son. The very talented, but vastly underrated Christopher Anton Rea. Although the ‘underrated’…

Driving Mr Rea

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Here's One I Prepared Earlier

John Allan from Bridgetown, Western Australia – October 2025 If you are familiar with that phrase then you like me grew up in sixties and seventiesBritain and watched the children’s TV show Blue Peter. It was first broadcast inOctober 1958 – the year of my birth – on the British Broadcasting Company and tomy knowledge is still running today though no longer live.The show had then a…

Here's One I Prepared Earlier

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These Days

Mark Arbuckle: August 2025 When I first began writing this piece I fully intended it to be a comprehensive summary on the music of the exceptional Jackson Browne….. Not surprisingly the more research I did the bigger the task became.  After studying his 60 year musical career and the huge amount of material he has written. Plus the extensive list of collaborations he’s been involved in. I had…

These Days

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First Job Interviews

Russ Stewart: July 2025 They offered me the office, offered me the shopThey said I’d better take anything they’d gotDo you wanna make tea at the BBC?Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?“Career Opportunities” – The Clash 1977I successfully used my time at university to postpone a working career.  Not through laziness, rather a consequence of not having the foggiest notion of what career…

First Job Interviews

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Still On The Line

John Allan of Bridgetown, Western Australia – July 2025 When I was about fifteen or sixteen I used to babysit for my neighbour Mr. H orHamish as he preferred to be called. He was a widower after his wife tragically lost her short battle with breast cancer in her mid thirties. He had two kids under ten. Hamish didn’t go out much but when he did he would ask me to look after them for a few hours.…

Still On The Line

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Yee Haw

Paul Fitzpatrick: June 2025 I read this week that tickets for Beyonce’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ tour are no longer selling like the proverbial hotcakes. Whilst Beyonce’s PR team are blaming resellers and touts for scooping up thousands of tickets and reselling them for exorbitant prices, industry insiders are speculating that it’s a backlash towards Bey’s new Country-Pop direction…. with claims that…

Yee Haw

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Hot Fun in the Summertime

Paul Fitzpatrick: June 2025 There’s a song by Joni Mitchell about growing up and the passage of time called “The Circle Game’.  In the song Mitchell homes in on a boy’s journey to adulthood – when he’s 10 he yearns for a future that’s just out of reach.“words like when you’re older must appease him”.The boy turns 16, attaining all the freedoms he wished for but people keep telling him to slow…

Hot Fun in the Summertime

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Blue Eyed Soul.

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I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band

Paul Fitzpatrick: April 2025 Rain, sleet or snow, I rarely miss my early morning dog walk, a daily meander through bluebell woods and a picturesque parkland golf course. Just Cooper and I, the wonders of nature, and whatever playlist I’m singing along to. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet or anything, but it never ceases to amaze me just what an amazing singer I become on this daily jaunt. If…

I'm Just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band

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Loves Me Like a Rock

Paul Fitzpatrick: February 2025 I lost my mum a few weeks ago.It’s tough to lose someone you love, especially when they’ve been there since you first opened your eyes, but I console myself with the fact that she had a happy life, lived to 95 and passed peacefully.Something I suspect most of us would settle for. I learned that you don’t get a lot of time to make decisions when someone passes…

Loves Me Like a Rock

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No Nude Bathing Please - We’re From Bearsden

By Alan Fairley: January 2025 ‘A Mini Woodstock – Right on your Doorstep’That was the headline that residents of the well-heeled Glasgow suburb of Bearsden woke up to as the local newspaper dropped through their letter boxes one morning in the autumn of 1970. The article was publicising the plans for an all day music festival, featuring a number of largely unheralded local bands, to be held in…

No Nude Bathing Please - We’re From Bearsden

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Snakebites & Love Bites

Paul Fitzpatrick: December 2024 I’ve always felt there are four stages to the Christmas journey.Stage 1 is reindeers, elfs, letters to Santa and how does the big lad get down the chimney?Stage 2 is ‘we know Santa’s a hoax but we’re still getting gifts & holidays, so we’re over it’Stage 3 is ‘I’m getting too old for this, it’s a capitalist racket and the primary cause of ulcers’Stage 4 is seeing…

Snakebites & Love Bites

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Finger Flickin' Good.

(Pic by Subbuteoworld.co.uk) It’s December – the one month of the year when children the world over fret their behaviour throughout the preceding eleven may have tested the patience of their parents. Hasty and repentant prayers will be offered up, not to the baby Jesus or his heavenly Father, but to the jolly, red-suited Big Daddy – Father Christmas! Promises to keep their rooms tidy, be more…

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All I Want For Xmas.....

Paul Fitzpatrick: December 2024 Is a bloody Johnny Seven gun!Yep, six decades on I have a recurring dream of waking up and finding that magnificent howitzer under the Xmas tree. I’m not sure why as kids we were so obsessed with guns, weapons and general warfare in the era of ‘Give Peace a Chance’, perhaps it was a way of bonding with parents & grandparents who’d all experienced the war in some…

All I Want For Xmas.....