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This prompts McKee to ask what the average
age might be of a typical Fivepenny Piece
audience.
Around my age probably, you know Pam, quite
young. But some of those people will have been going to Fivepenny
Piece gigs for thirty, thirty five years. Sadly,
with all due respect to the current band, there’s only
one original member left, and that’s George
Radcliffe. But if you go back to the people who wrote
the songs, they were original band members. Colin
Radcliffe wrote the music and Linda and John
Meeks who used to do the vocals also did some writing.
Linda and John had that lovely sibling harmony,
you remember. She used to put that scarf round her head and
do all that patter, you know "George, come and meet me
mother" and enact a little play in music. John
and Linda left a few years ago and the band didn’t
play together for a while and then Brian Durkin
left as The Houghton Weavers manager and
he started the band up again about ten or eleven years ago,
sure there was still an audience for them. They only do ten
or twelve concerts a year, but it keeps The Fivepenny
Piece alive.
The concerts not only keep alive the band name but also
perpetuate the stories the band tell and the times they remember.
Warwick recalls a recent trip to the lights
at Blackpool and how disappointed his parents were that the
trams did not seem as well lit as they remembered them. All
the way down the golden mile, said Warwick,
he kept hearing in his head the chorus of The Blackpool
Belle.
Yeh, we still sing The Blackpool Belle, a
lovely song telling about that tram’s days as a "passion
wagon" for courting couples and I do the whole explanation
of how a few years ago you could go to Blackpool from any
of the Northern Stations for half a crown. That got you to
Blackpool and into The Winter Gardens for a dance, then a
walk down the prom, or if you were a bit naughty a snog under
the pier, for a bag of whelks. Have you ever chewed a whelk?
Oh God, I chewed one for three hours once and didn’t
like it. When I took it out of my mouth it didn’t even
have any teeth marks on it.
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