YES - CAIRD HALL - 1971

Prog rockers, Yes, were on stage at the Caird Hall on 10th October 1971 - along with support act Jonathan Swift.
The artwork on the poster would appear to confirm that this would be before they teamed up with their long time collaborator, graphic designer, Roger Dean.

SUPERTRAMP - CAIRD HALL - 1975

The unique sounds of Supertramp were to be heard in the Caird Hall at a gig that took place on 25th November 1975.

Special guest was Joan Armatrading.

DARTS - CAIRD HALL - 1979

Darts were in town, throwing down a bit of doo-wop at the Caird Hall on 9th October 1979.
Did they have a No1 hit? I was just thinking, that is the lowest score you can get on a dartboard!

THE JAM - CAIRD HALL - 1979

Jute, The Jam and Journalism - here's an article from the NME mentioning the tour dates for The Jam.
Included on the list is their gig at the Caird Hall which was on the 9th December 1979.
There is a recording of this show doing the rounds, but I haven't been able to get my mitts on it yet!

DUNDEE'S DUFF PISTOLS POSTER - 1976

It has been in circulation as a fact that, the Sex Pistols cancelled this 1st December Dundee gig "at the last minute" to appear on the infamous Bill Grundy TV show.
Well here below is a factual timeline sequence published in the music press that suggests otherwise...

On 13th November 1976 the music press published details of a punk tour to be co-headlined by Sex Pistols and The Ramones, with Talking Heads, Chris Spedding & The Vibrators the other acts.

The Dundee date arranged being 1st December.

Then on 20th November 1976 the music press published an announcement that all of the acts had pulled out of the tour except the Sex Pistols. The tour was then revamped with Sex Pistols the headline act and support bands being Johnny Thunder's Heart Breakers, The Damned and The Clash.

The 16th December was now the date for Dundee as a result of the revamped tour.

As you can see, the 1st December date on the poster has the second choice of bands (Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunder's Heart Breakers, The Damned and The Clash), but these acts weren't confirmed until the revamped tour dates for 16th December.   

If the gig poster WAS for the 1st December, it would have had the first choice of acts on it (The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Chris Spedding & The Vibrators).

This confirms the Sex Pistols did not cancel the 1st December Dundee gig "at the last minute" to appear live on the Bill Grundy TV show because the revamped dates were confirmed 2 weeks before the TV show aired.

The only reason Sex Pistols appeared on Grundy was because Queen had to cancel their scheduled appearance the day before the show and Sex Pistols replaced them at the last minute.

There is no Dundee gig connection with Pistols on Grundy.

Furthermore, a different music press article from 13th November had Newcastle the date for 1st December punk tour package, so there was never anything definitely secured for that date. 

The real Anarchy In The UK tour officially started on 3rd December after the first attempt was scrapped.

The poster's date and support acts don't go together at all - the information is meaningless.

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The above is only a small sample of evidence.

There is much more wrong with the poster than just the date & support bands.

To read the detective work about it, you can download the full 13 page PDF in the link below.

Confirms that the poster is not connected to a gig, Tech College, Caird Hall or Pistols.

It's FAKE..!!

Pistols poster PDF

Or if you would prefer to read about it online, here is the link to Grant McPhee's summary of it.

Pistols poster online

Click items to enlarge images above.

DURAN DURAN IN DUNDEE - 1982

October 1982 saw Duran Duran arrive in town to play a gig at the Caird Hall.
Although I was well familiar with their chart hits, I didn't get round to going to the show.
I do, however, actually have an unofficial recording of this very concert which reveals that not only did they have a good quality sound live on stage, the recording, needless to say, also has lots of screaming girls on it.
Dundee lassies were not the only ones in the crowd though because interestingly, the Caird Hall gig was the first date that kick-started this particular tour off, and Simon Le Bon says during the recording "Thanks to all the Londoners who came to see us" -  so this was obviously a group of devoted fans who had travelled all the way up to Dundee eager to catch the band on their opening night!
The ad above with the tour dates is from a music paper.

NATIONAL HEALTH - DUNDEE UNI - 1976

I remember this particular event very clearly because this was the first ever Dundee University gig I went to.
None of my mates were into jazz so I ended up going to this one on my own.
It also turned out to be the only time I've ever had a "sneaky in" at University!
My uncle was the caretaker there and we had arranged to meet at 7.00pm on the night.
So along I went on this dreary Sunday evening in November 1976, and sure enough my uncle came to the main door as arranged, let me in, then locked it again. I was unaware that the doors didn't officially open until 8.00pm and so I had the University all to myself for an hour.
When the main guy turned up at 8.00 to open the doors, he clapped eyes on me already inside and wondered what the hell was going on. I then explained to him about my uncle and he was ok about it, although he did say it was a bit naughty!
All the University gigs I went to after that were done properly - getting signed in at the door.
Anyway, National Health put on a good show. They were a very technical band of musicians, using complex structures in their compositions, typical of the prog-jazz associated with the Canterbury scene in fact.
Dundee's jazz-rock outfit, Europe, were the support act.
The tour dates above are from an old NME I have from '76.

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - ARDLER

Built on a section of the Downfield Golf Course, this photo of Ardler doesn't bear much resemblance to how it looks nowadays. The main streets are still there, but that's about it.
Bottom left has the prefabs running along the length of Harrison Avenue. All appear to be lived in judging by the washing hanging out!
The school in between the white blocks of flats cutting diagonally across the photo, is Blackshade Primary School. The other school in front of the multis is St Fergus.
The image does remind me of how stark the place looked back then, this being how I remember it when visiting relatives who lived in the flats off Turnberry Avenue. In fact, one of the relatives I visited then still lives in Ardler. My Auntie Bette, who this year received Dundee's "Citizen of the Year" award for her work helping transform the area into becoming the award winning Ardler Village as it is now known. A more visually appealing place to live these days, in comparison.

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - HILLTOWN TO BLACKSCROFT

This view takes in an area of the Hilltown, and goes down to as far as Blackscroft.
Some of the main streets to be seen are - Alexander St (with Jamaica Towers & Wellington Towers) - Ann St (with primary school?) - Wellington St - William St - Dens Rd - Lyon St - Victoria St - Victoria Rd - Princes St - Constable St - Blackscroft, plus a few others in between.
The photo shows the demolition clearance that was taking place at the time, and although many (probably most) of the buildings have since disappeared, one or two of the old buildings did survive, for example the jute mill building down Princes Street was converted into flats in the 80's.
To have a look around the area, click onto the image to enlarge.

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - DOUGLAS

To end part one of the aerial photo sequence, we now fly over one of my old hangouts, Douglas.
Another 2 schools on show here that haven't survived the passing of time. Bottom right is Balerno Primary, my school. The wee hoose to the left of the school in Balerno Street belonged to the Janitor, Mr Bowman. He was a friendly chap. Always good fun when he picked you out to help carry the crates of milk around all the classrooms.
The other school, centre right, is the old St Pius.
At the middle left of the photo, you can make out the flat roof of the shops in Ballindean Road. Been on top of there a few times, mostly to get our ba'. Borzoni's chippie was one of the shops we most visited.
Although I lived in Craigie, a lot of my schoolmates lived in Douglas, and one quirky thing I can recall from Douglas in the early 70's when we were secondary school age, was Dundee's "Magic Circle..!!". A mob would pick out a victim (usually a mate!), the mob would encircle him...and then commence to rough him up. The victim wouldn't get his head kicked in, but he would be on the end of kicks up the backside, dead legs, knuckles on the head, that kind of treatment. Although it ached, the victim would accept his fate without a fight, then once the ordeal was over, he would dust himself down and join back in with the mob. I've been on the receiving end and have dished it out. Organised bullying, with no damage done!

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - LONGHAUGH QUARRY

Don't Panic!!!....the plane wasn't a bomber...this huge crater is in fact the Longhaugh Quarry, located at the "border" of Fintry and Whitfield. I recall being told the quarry had been there before Fintry was built, so it was obviously doing business for quite a few decades. It is now completely filled in.
The 2 schools in Longhaugh Road would be Longhaugh Primary and St Lukes.
At the bottom left corner, in amongst all the trees is Longhaugh Hotel. For a while, the staff in the lounge/bar would dress up as cowboys and had a kind of Western theme going on there, long before dressing up for line-dancing became a craze. The hotel was another victim of the bulldozers and has since been flattened.

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - DOCK ST / PRINCE'S ST AREA

Continuing the mid 70's flight over Dundee, here we are at the area around Dock Street, Arbroath Road & Prince's Street (all the way up Albert Street).
The green patch, bottom left, is Corporation buses parked in the depot.
Quite a lot of demolition being done around here too as you can see by all the voids where there were once buildings. One such building that I used to go to that is not in this image was located in Robertson Street, just off Arbroath Road nearest to Prince's Street crossroad. This was the late 60's period. There was a large works called Taybridge Products and in this building they had the "Dundee Alsatian & Training Club". Well the room the club used also doubled as a 5-a-side football venue. I used to go there once a week in the evenings, which was organised by the BB, and had some brilliant games of football there. The photo just has it as wasteland but it is now the site of Taybank Medical Centre.
You can also make out the red & cream Tay Spinners mill in Arbroath Road which is now flats.

MID 70'S AIR SHOT - CITY CENTRE

In the mid 70's, my brother went on a flight around Dundee. Luckily for us he had his camera with him and managed to capture quite a lot of the city, some of which looks much different to how it is now. I must have around 40 aerial shots from the session but I'll just put up 6 over the coming days to give you a reminder of how the toon looked back in the day.
So settle down in your seats and get ready for take off...
Starting off bang in the centre of town, where you can see by all the workers huts around it that they were still putting the finishing touches to the new Tayside House at the bottom right of the picture. The most obvious observation though is the giant gap where they demolished the old Wellgate and South side of Victoria Road.
The fact that the photos were taken out of the plane's window means they are not going to be high definition clarity but they are still good enough to make out where you are and what's what, so I recommend for those who would like to do a kind of Retro Google Earth on them, to click on the image to get the large version, then right click to "save picture as" and save it onto you pc, and then you can use your zoom & pan to have a wee nosey around.

DAVID BOWIE - CAIRD HALL - 1973



A few months ago, my brother unearthed a batch of photographic slides he took at a David Bowie concert in the Caird Hall on 17th May 1973.
It wasn't a gig I was at but I do remember a few Craigie High schoolmates went to it.

This was a period when Bowie haircuts were very popular in school at the time too!
I did make up for missing out on this event a few years later, going to his 1978 gig at the Glasgow Apollo.
Anyway, the above colour images are the very ones from Bowie's '73 Dundee appearance, with quite a variety of costume changes during the concert as well, as you can see!
His backing band on stage were of course "The Spiders from Mars" and featured Mick Ronson on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums.

Click onto the photos to bring up the enlarged versions.