In the mid/late 70's, the DJ downstairs at the Tay Hotel's Centre Bar was, Jimmy Low. A really good guy, always cheery, always smiling.
My crowd started going to the Centre Bar Saturday lunchtime sessions in 1976. Rock music was it's speciality, although you'd get an occasional pop tune thrown in. So he would play something like Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper" followed by a golden oldie "Can't Get Enough" by Bad Company, next to a chart tune by Rod Stewart such as "This Old Heart Of Mine".
Jimmy was particularly pleased with a discovery of his, a track by Horslips called "Fantasia-My Lagan Love". This became his signature tune throughout the summer that year, and he usually finished his set with it. It was a nice upbeat Celtic-rock instrumental.
One of the things about Saturday lunchtimes was, a few of the punters would bring in an album from their own collection and get Jimmy to play a track from it, which he always did, no matter what it was. Well, once in 1976 my mate brought in the debut LP by The Ramones and got him to play "Blitzkrieg Bop", much to the amusement of my mob and the bemusement of most of the others in the pub. It was the first time a punk type of record had been played. It wasn't particularly influential but later that year tracks like The Stranglers "Get A Grip On Yourself" and Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" were being slipped into his set.
I remember catching Jimmy out once when he had a stint as a barman in Foreigners, a couple of years later.
You know when you ask for a lager & a lager tops, and you ask the barman which is which when he brings them over because they look similar. Well, I asked for 3 ciders, 1 with a dash of blackcurrant. So when Jimmy brought them over, I asked him which one had the blackcurrant in it and as soon as he pointed to the purple pint, he realised I was having him on..!!
Tragically, Jimmy died around the early '80's in a motorbike accident.
It was good fun while it lasted.
