Speaking of The Troggs, this was the first of their singles that I bought. Almost the first single I ever bought, it being two or so years since the previous one.

An example of the group’s more tender tendency.

If The Troggs were my musical vice of the 1960s the band which took that role in the 1970s was The Sweet.

Their early hits were mostly rubbish created by the songwriters Chinn and Chapman (who also were responsible for the band Mud and wrote for Suzi Quatro among others) but The Sweet began to hit their stride when they moved away from directly appealing to the young “teenybopper” market in 1973 with the harder edged Blockbuster which started off their biggest run of chart success.

Examination of their B-sides – which they wrote themselves, and leaned toward heavy rock – reveals more than a degree of casual sexism: a feature mostly absent in the bands they aspired to emulate.

Some sources have it that lead singer Brian Connolly was related to the actor who played Taggart, Mark McManus. As Wiki says that Connolly was fostered this would not quite be the case.

The Six Teens was the most lyrically interesting of their big 1973/4 hits, referencing the disturbances of 1968, but it was the start of their popular decline.

This song has been recorded many times over. The most famous of these is probably the one that gave Jimi Hendrix his first hit but I also know it from Love’s eponymous first LP. [See also Friday On My Mind 3, Alone Again Or. Btw I noticed on checking that the original video I featured there has been withdrawn so I have updated it.]

Jarvis Cocker has been playing various versions of Hey Joe on his BBC 6 Music Sunday Service programme (4–6 pm) roughly every month. The one he played last Sunday (New Year’s Day) surprised me as the performing artists Kasenetz Katz Singing Orchestral Circus are probably more widely known for the “bubblegum” hit Quick Joey Small. I had certainly not paid them more attention than that. Their Hey Joe is much better than I would have thought.

I’ve finally found an embeddable clip of Chicory Tip’s Excuse Me Baby, the original version of which I featured over two years ago.

Listening to it now, with its hints of Trad Jazz, I understand why my brother liked this. (See my Friday on my Mind category.)

I see from this that Dobie Gray, whom I featured as number five in my Reelin’ In The Years series, has himself drifted away.

He didn’t have many hits but was apparently big on the Northern Soul scene.

This is his other widely known song, The ‘In’ Crowd, from the 1960s.

Dobie Gray (Lawrence Darrow Brown): 26/6/1940 – 6/12/2011. So it goes.

Speaking of Jeff Lynne, his first brush with fame came with The Move’s Birmingham contemporaries The Idle Race.

One of my schoolmates raved about The Skeleton And The Roundabout though it didn’t trouble the charts much; and nor did other Idle Race tracks.

If you listen closely you’ll hear that the singer actually pronounces the unusual (for a song’s title) word in the song’s title “skelington.”

After Newmarket we headed just south-east of Cambridge to the not very well sign-posted village of Grantchester.

“Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?”

As you can see from the church clock in the photo below we arrived an hour too early.

I looked for the Old Vicarage but even though there was a Vicarage Lane the houses’ identities were being closely guarded. Jeffrey Archer (yes, Jeffrey Archer) bought the Old Vicarage in the 1980s. If he still lives there perhaps it’s a blessing I didn’t find it.

I did find a new(er) vicarage right beside the church. Hardly iconic.

I was, however, delighted to see the War Memorial in the churchyard of St Andrew and St Mary.

I was even more delighted to see Rupert Brooke’s name there.

Brooke greeted the Great War with some enthusiasm, in sonnets such as Now, God Be Thanked Who Has Matched Us With His Hour and The Soldier.

Brooke didn’t die in battle. He developed sepsis from a mosquito bite on his way to Gallipoli and was buried on the island of Skyros in Greece.So some corner of a foreign field is forever, if not England, then at least Grantchester.

He was a casualty of the war, though, as he would not have been in the Aegean but for that.

Passing the Green Man pub I saw a sign saying “Grantchester Meadows.” I followed the path down and took this photo.

This was because Grantchester has another famous son, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. The song Grantchester Meadows from the 1969 album Ummagumma, though written and performed by Roger Waters rather than Gilmour, was, I presume, inspired by this.

The Move was of course Roy Wood’s (and Bev Bevan’s) first brush with fame. Not content with rattling out some of the mid 60s best pop songs Roy then went on to found ELO with Jeff Lynne but quickly tired of that and formed Wizzard.

This clip (I believe from French or German TV) certainly sounds live but isn’t well synched.

Tim Rose’s cover of this song is the one I remember from the 60s. His is a powerful performance but he kind of bludgeons the song to death.

Morning Dew has been covered many times - even by last week’s featured band, Nazareth.

The song’s writer was Bonnie Dobson. Her version is completely different from either of the above.

A track from 1970. Like Fleetwood Mac’s 1960s song Man Of The World which I featured as Friday On My Mind: 7, this is more evidence of the dark state of composer Peter Green’s mind. There’s a definite air of menace surrounding this. Not to mention weird.