There's some fabulous dinosaur box art coming next week from Rob in the US.
In the meantime here's a superb image of one of the Polish stamps I adored as a kid in 1965. This is the T. Rex.
Did you have stamps like this?
Spy belt set - wow!
Just listening to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road the album on YouTube. Corblimey, its from 1973! Gawd! So long ago and I absolutely adored it back then when I wuz just 12 years old. 2nd Year at Secondary School! Oh what a year!
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road captured the moment, the Zeitgeist. Elton John was one of the golden gang who ruled the airwaves back then along with Bowie, Rod Stewart and Marc Bolan. I was heavily into Bowie but Elton's album just blew me away. I have a sneaky feeling my old Mum liked Elton too.
I played Brick Road on my stereo until it wore out I bet. I knew about Elton of course, from beautiful singles like Your Song and the grand Rocket Man but the only LP I'd heard was Don't Shoot Me I'm only the Piano Player, which my older Brothers had. I loved Don't Shoot me and regularly listen in on You Tube. I remember seeing him sing Daniel and Crocodile Rock on Top of the Pops.
But its Goodbye Yellow Brick Road where Elton came alive for me, his masterpiece, at least during my youth. Amazingly it was his 7th LP. That's a lot of work getting there but boy, when he did! The double album has 17 or 18 tracks that I never forgot. Some are better than others but the whole thing as one is just fabulous. I certainly thought so back in '73!
Outstanding songs include the title track itself as well as Bennie and the Jets, Roy Rogers, The Ballad of Danny Bailey, Harmony and Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting. Special mention has to go to Candle in the Wind, which I sang every night to my baby daughter as she fell asleep. Despite its underlying tragedy and later becoming a royal hymn, its a song which has always meant a great deal to me and my daughter and on the occasion of her wedding we danced the Father-Daughter dance to it, tears filling our eyes!
Back when I was 12 it was also the album cover that grabbed me, when LP art was well, an art form. The small cartoons inside the gatefold were just sublime and all in all the whole package was just fantastic. I even had a sequined metallic bomber jacket and platforms like Elton on the front but who didn't in 1973! I can almost feel the sheer weight of those platform shoes as I dragged them around Preston trying to look cool with my Oxford Bags and Ben Sherman shirt! I even wore thick black prescription spex already then like Joe 90!
And so Sweet Painted Lady is starting in my earphones. Seems its always been the same. I'll bow out now and sing along to the Moonbase Mutt Blue.
Did you like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road readers?
I was in a bike shop yesterday looking at stuff for my Grandson. Staring at all those shiny bells and bike pumps brought it all back, the fab kid pushbike culture of the early Seventies. What fun!
I remember the bikes I had, a Raleigh Chopper and a Moulton Mini and maybe another 'normal' one, over those formative years. Bikes and kids were inseparable, like Romans and chariots. They were our chariots as we Ben-Hur'd through the streets to the local park!
I remember all the accessories you could get: the mirrors, the handlebar tassels, the wonderfully loud bells, the pavelco gears, the lights, the dynamos and the cool metallic decals.
Best of all were the DIY accessories, especially the spoke clickers. I adored those things, which were basically thick card attached to the bike frame with a strong clothes peg. The card would click like mad as the spokes went round. What a racket they made but wow, great fun!
I can feel the wind rushing past me now as I free-wheeled down the hill, legs high, tassels flying and the spoke clickers clacking like castanets. Get out of the way! Blimey, what great fun it was!
Did you accessorise your bike as a kid readers?
I was thinking how fabulous those old B-movies were advertised at the back of American monster comics like Creepy and Eerie.
The man with the X-ray Eyes, the Incredible Shrinking Man, Horror at Party Beach, The Mole People and so many more brilliant titles.
So many come flooding back: Tarantula, Them, The Black Scorpion, Frankenstein Conquers the World, the Black Sleep and Plan 9 from Outer Space.
I stared at them all and wondered if I would ever see any of them. My favourite titles were the She Creature and War of the Colossal Beast, the latter being one the best film titles ever in my opinion.
Like the comics they were in these old films now seem like portals to another time and place and I often think fondly of those happy times I spent browsing those pages and saying those amazing film titles out loud so long ago.
Did you look at those movie ads at the back of comics readers? Have you got a favourite?
