Ardsley & Robin Hood is an adjacent Ward to Morley, much of which came under the auspices of Morley Corporation. There are five hopeful candidates from each of the main parties, i.e. Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, BNP and UKIP. (No Independents are standing here).

BEVERLEY, JOANNA BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY

BOYNTON, DAVID THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY CANDIDATE

DANIEL, DAVID UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY

DUNN, JACK THE LABOUR PARTY CANDIDATE (Current Member)

MOORE, PHILIP LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

The Ward currently has three Labour Councillors although there is considerable scope for a protest vote here!

Results 2004 (3 Councillors)

KAREN RENSHAW LABOUR 1993
JACK DUNN LABOUR 1775
LISA MULHERIN LABOUR 1572
KEELY JOANNE JAMIESON CONSERVATIVE 1357
DAVID BOYNTON CONSERVATIVE 1308
MARGARET SCHOFIELD CONSERVATIVE 1201
JOHN DARRELL HIRST BNP 1158
PAUL ANDREW COCKCROFT INDEPENDENT 981
BRIAN JUDGE INDEPENDENT 920
JAMES ALEXANDER SMITH LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 822
REBECCA CLAIRE SMITH LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 799
PAMELA SUSAN TEBBUTT LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 792
DEREK LAWRENCE BRADLEY INDEPENDENT 640

Results 2006: (1 Councillor)

LISA MULHERIN LABOUR 1884
DAVID BOYNTON CONSERVATIVE 1372
JOHN HIRST BNP 1182
PHILIP MOORE LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 821

I don’t know any of the candidates, other than knowing that Jack Dunn is the incumbent and Joanna Beverley is Chris Beverley’s Wife. Based on general Government dis-satisfaction, I predict a possible Conservative or BNP win here. If the deserters are split though, the Labour candidate might just scrape back in, particularly if the UKIP candidate gets a chunk of votes.

I came across this technical spec for the City Hall and another tenuous glimpse at the coving where the roadie put his foot through. I have a few photos but I can’t lay my hands on them at the moment.

There are 2,135 seats plus the choir stalls behind, if usable.

I notice it says power- 3 phase 200A, 3 phase 100A, 3 phase 30A, all onstage. In my time, we had a 30Amp supply onstage for the PA, the normal 100A lighting supply located towards the understage crossover passage and if needed, a 200A supply in the Managers office understage. (There was a 4″ circular lined hole from stage level to pass the cables down). The supply was rather heath-robinson, a very large circuit breaker about 2′ x 1′ hung onto a door with large power cables looped over to the electrics and bolted directly onto the main intake busbars. (Shrouded, fortunately!)

There was only a 3 phase 300A supply for the entire building, including the swimming baths next door, so when Genesis came and wanted a 3 phase 500A supply, they had to arrange for a generator.

I never got to see Genesis, the first few months I didn’t get to work every show as I obviously had to go to school during the week and not every band wanted follow-spot operators. From memory, I did work Wings, Supertramp, Darts, Status Quo, Eric Clapton, Barclay James Harvest, 10CC, Queen, Showaddywaddy, Gary Glitter, Blue Oyster Cult, Osibisa, Steve Harley, Brian Ferry, Rick Wakeman, Strawbs, Chi-Lites, Elton John, David Essex, Richie Blackmore’s rainbow, Lindisfarne, Morecambe & Wise, Billy Connolly, Frankie Vaughan, Richard Stilgoe, Peter Frampton, Jasper Carrott, Hawkwind, Last Exit (pre-Police), Leo Sayer, Chuck Berry, Blue Jays (post-Moody Blues), Kraftwerk, Steeleye Span, James Last, Stylistics, Barry White, Mud, Dr. Hook and… the Bay City Rollers. I also worked numerous smaller shows like the Wrestling and various charitable events.

Alas- The Who & Led Zeppelin went to the Odeon, it had 2,500 seats (& a “proper” stage, if rather shallow). Pink Floyd didn’t come to small chicken-shit venues those days either.

I don’t recall ABBA coming to Newcastle, nor David Bowie, nor Rod Stewart. Nor a zillion others.

One day I’ll take a trip to the Newcastle reference library and look at the microfilmed Evening Chronicles to see what I have forgotten.

One other improvement I noticed on the facilities list- a shower in the main dressing room.

UPDATED: I also recall Hot Chocolate, Manfred Mann, George Melly and lots of orchestral concerts by the Northern Sinfonia. (Hat tip GayMal for telling me Blue Oyster Cult was in twice).

(I’ve had to dick about to get this as a jpeg as it was originally a spreadsheet and blogger didn’t like the HTML version. I’ve put BNP as deep blue as their leaflets seem to be that colour, although they are red white & blue of course, which if mixed togetehr give a sort of pinkish colour!)

The grey column shows current councillors who are re-standing.

Click on it to see a bigger version.

Let me tell you the story of my first ever (paid) Gig. I had befriended Moose, the Newcastle City Hall stage Manager (or more officially, Custodian as far as the City Council was concerned) at my reccy visit for an upcoming school prizegiving and subsequently on the actual event in the summer of 1974. (Or was it 75? I’m starting to get confused when I search for references on ‘t’internet!)

He casually mentioned that he was looking for Humpers for the Sensational Alex Harvey Band that weekend and possibly a follow-spot during the show.

Now, as I’d never been paid for a show before at that stage (I was in 5th form at school) I said yes before I even knew what the rates were, or indeed what my plans were. It was £5 for humping- (Getting the flight cases out of the truck and then back in again afterwards) and £2 to be a showman.

It was all cash in hand, of course. The resident show crew were actually paid as part of the “Stewart list” (i.e. the door staff, otherwise known as Bouncers.)

The get-in was reasonably uneventful- a zillion wheeled flight cases to be trundled down the ramp, in the stage door, up a crude wooden board over the first three steps, through the stage left doorway, up another couple of steps onto the platform itself then to be left where the roadies wanted it. (Most went onstage but some went out to the mixing position, a few down to the dressing rooms and a couple of big heavy ones up to the back of the balcony. Whilst I wasn’t familiar with the subtleties of rock & roll touring, I was able to recognise the purpose of much of the equipment once the lids came off.

Once the van was empty, the road crew would dismiss the house staff but welcomed those that wanted to hang around and lend a hand. The sort of jobs we would get were fairly typical at the time- help assemble the lighting trusses, Get the CSIs (follow-spots) rigged up onto their stands and tested, help roll out the Multicores. (The multicore was the thick sausage cable that linked the mixing position and the stage. It was generally ran out for both lighting and sound, often with sundry intercom cables as well.)

Running the multicore involved using up at least a roll or two of “Gaffa tape”, generally grey or silver, single sided, fabric base, very sticky and relatively easily removable afterwards. We would put carpet strips over the cables in the main aisles and then ensure they were very well stuck down so that people didn’t trip up.

The crew were very amiable, mostly Scots and very good at what they did. (SAHB were a scottish band).

For the actual show, this was my first introduction to wearing headphones with a boom mic on an intercom system, We wore a beltpack which also had a cue light on it to get your attention if you were “off cans” (e.g. during the interval). The cues and directions were called by the lighting designer (the LD),who was also operating the lighting desk. There were four of us that night (the two regular guys on the Hall followspots and another two of us on the brought-in followspots).

The actual show was a fairly easy one to work. I don’t remember who the support was (or if we had to light them) but the LD explained who the band were, what they played and assigned us each to a musician. (I was given Zal Clementson, the outrageous Guitarist who wore a sort of cat suit, had white clown makeup and strutted). He called the lighting cues well to the point that we were able to second-guess them for great visual timing. We were also rather good at opening up on the right place without having to jerk scrappily into position or flash golfball-sized beams to check beforehand.

There was one big visual lighting cue, where the Band played “Delilah”. In the middle 8, the band turned their backs on us and strutted their bums and our cue was to go tightly in onto their arses and follow them accordingly. We managed to pull it off seamlessly and we received high praise from the LD. Indeed he gave us tour T shirts afterwards as a thank-you.

One thing I didn’t expect though, was how noisy it was wearing headphones. With 2,100+ frenetic fans screaming their lungs off we were having to shout to each other over the cans. At first it hurt, then you tuned in and got used to it. (Turning off our own boom mics unless we needed to say anything also helped). I didn’t realise how loud it had been until I rang home from backstage after the gig- and thought the phone was faulty as I could hardly hear my mum.

I was also lined up for another Gig that night- SAHB were playing the Newcastle Mayfair Ballroom a few weeks later and it was such a notoriously bad get-in (being two floors underground with a goods lift the size of a filing cabinet) that the crew arranged for eight of us to participate in the Gig. I had really enjoyed them and I looked forward to a chance to see them again.

I didn’t get a free Album on that occasion but I did buy “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” from Callers a few weeks later. SAHB also released delilah as a “Live” Single and I was delighted to see that the cover photos featured them at the City Hall, although I don’t know if the recording was ours. One of those big white beams had me on the other end of it.

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