A beautiful female extraterrestrial (Shirley Kilpatrick) – dressed in a skintight metallic suit with high heels, lipstick, and jet-propelled eyebrows – lands in the Sierra Madre mountains and goes around killing by touch and glowing mysteriously (thanks to her “deadly…
The rock and roll magazine Trouser Press first appeared in 1974 in New York as a mimeographed fanzine by Ira Robbins, Karen Rose and Dave Schulps under the name Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press (a reference to a song by the Bonzo…
Founded in 1926 by Leicester-born composer and music publisher Lawrence Wright, Melody Maker was one of the earliest British weekly music newspapers. The publication mainly covered jazz until Chris Welch and Ray Coleman applied deeper perspectives to American-influenced local rock and…
First published as Fabulous in January 1964 (with The Beatles on the cover) and aimed squarely at the teenage market, the magazine’s big selling point was the full-page colour pin-ups not yet found anywhere else. At its peak, Fabulous enjoyed…
First published in 1958, Disc (renamed Disc and Music Echo in 1966) focussed on the music charts and was the first British music newspaper to feature colour covers. Penny Valentine reviewed singles (or “45s”), and superstar radio DJ John Peel had…
Launched two years after the NME, and founded by former Weekly Sporting Review editor Isidore Green, Record Mirror never attained the circulation of its rival, though it published the first UK album chart in 1956. By the end of 1960, circulation…
British music paper Sounds appeared in 1970 with a weekly colour centrefold and robust rock music coverage. Sounds came early to the punk scene thanks to John Ingham and Giovanni Diadomo. Other significant contributors included Garry Bushell, Sandy Robertson, Mick Middles, Phil Sutcliffe,…
Los Angeles group The Beethoven Soul formed around 1966 and released their sole (self-titled) album in 1967 – a glorious collection of baroque-tinged sunshine pop. The band broke up in 1970, with bassist John Lambart, keyboard player Dick Lewis and…
1 9 6 0 – Current (UK) Millions x 30 minute episodes The most successful soap opera in the history of British television is set in a gloomy street in Weatherfield, a fictitious town in Lancashire in the north of England.…
1 9 6 3 – Current (USA) 13,800+ x 30/45/60 minute episodes A long-running popular US daytime soap detailing the professional and personal lives of the doctors and nurses working at Port Charles General Hospital in Upper New York. Created by…
1 9 8 4 – 1 9 8 9 (UK) Wide Awake Club debuted on Saturday 13 October 1984, as the first live kids show on TV-am. Airing for an hour each Saturday morning at 8.30 (and later, at 7.30), the lively…
1 9 6 6 – 1 9 6 9 (USA) 79 x 50 minute episodes The original Star Trek series was clever and engaging, and now, it is campily classic. Having said that, the series almost did not get made. NBC dismissed…
1 9 5 2 – 1 9 8 0 (UK) 667 x 25/50 minute episodes Watch With Mother – a general title for a series of five individual programmes – was the first planned combination of entertainment and education on British television, specifically…
1 9 6 6 (UK) 13 x 5 minute episodes 1 9 7 1 (UK) 13 x 5 minute episodes Originally part of the Watch with Mother children’s series, Joe was a lovely little still frame animation concerning the titular little boy and his family.…
1 9 7 3 – 1 9 7 6 (UK) 39 x 30 minute episodes Chrissy (the dark-haired one) and Jo (the blonde one, prone to rambling illogicalities) find a man in the bath after their party and invite him to…
1 9 5 6 – 1 9 6 2 (UK) 209 x episodes This forerunner to Name That Tune was hosted in turn by Ken Platt, “Desmond” O’Connor, Alfred Marks, Jackie Rae, Ted Ray, Billy Raymond (at 23, the youngest host on British…
The Pleasers formed in Surrey at the end of 1976 and spent most of the following year playing in and around London, using a regular Saturday night gig at The Stapleton Hall Tavern in Crouch End as the springboard for…
This Detroit punk-pop outfit – formed in 1977 – was led by the candy-voiced rocker Nikki Corvette (born Dominique Lorenz) and Romantics guitarist Peter James. They had a sound somewhere between The Go-Go’s and The Ramones, with bubblegum teenage libido maxed…
In 1981, a folk-rock singer named Susanna Hoffs rang up a couple of garage-rocking sisters from Northridge on the northern rim of the San Fernando Valley called Debbi and Vicki Peterson. The Peterson girls had placed an ad in a…
Formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1986, The Hummingbirds comprised singer/guitarist (and principal songwriter) Simon Holmes, singer/guitarist Alannah Russack, singer/bassist Robyn St Clare and drummer Mark Temple. Their debut single Alimony (July 1987) was followed by three more singles, Get On Down (January…
Beginning in 1969, Greg Shaw’s Who Put The Bomp was a fanzine for aficionados of such then-unfashionable future New Wave building blocks as Surf Music, Girl Groups, Power Pop and Garage Rock. Many of the mag’s contributors were inspired to…
The brainchild of a young Berkeley dropout named Jann Wenner (pictured above), Rolling Stone magazine was founded in 1967 with a mere $7,500 and a few volunteers on the second floor of a San Francisco print shop. Debuting on 9…
It remains the defining assembly of rock music – an unprecedented gathering of at least 300,000 young, long-haired, raggedy-clad Americans “going up the country” in New York’s Catskill Mountains, searching for answers, hoping for transcendence . . . and finding,…
Purveyors of super-slick pop, this UK band derived their unusual name from a friend called Johnny, who – you guessed it – literally did not like jazz. Johnny Hates Jazz were the perfect late-80s band. Perfect because they sounded super…
Hot on the heels of box office successes with Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Not Of This Earth, young producer/director Roger Corman presented his 23rd feature film, The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of…
Ned Brainard (Fred MacMurray) is an eccentric Medfield College professor who is so engrossed in conducting experiments in his garage/lab, he forgets to turn up for his own wedding – three times. Tiring of this, Ned’s lovely fiancée Betsy starts…
Richard Buronn plays Episcopal minister Reverend Laurence Shannon, who is drummed out of his little church in Virginia after only one year of active ministry for going from the kneeling position to the reclining position with one of his parishioners…
Based on the Sinclair Lewis novel, which blew up a storm of controversy when it was published in 1927, Elmer Gantry stars Burt Lancaster in the title role as a hard-drinking appliance salesman in the Mid-West who turns revivalist preacher – although…
A sex-hungry Australian (pardon the tautology) gets into all kinds of trouble on a visit to the Mother Country in a movie which is funny, crude and tasteless – just like Australians. But if you’re a fan of Antipodean bad…
Watching Barry McKenzie Holds His Own today it’s difficult to believe that as a kid I was allowed to show this movie at my high school. The 1974 sequel to The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) is packed with lines like “Our dear little stunted,…
David McCallum took time off from his hit TV series The Man from UNCLE to star in this travelogue comedy set on the Riviera. McCallum plays Stanley Thrumm, an English travel courier whose life is changed one night when he…
The legend of Faust provided the inspiration for this charming fantasy about Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore), a short-order cook in a Wimpy Bar who is prevented from killing himself for love of Margaret the waitress (Eleanor Bron) by the Devil…
There has always been fast food of sorts, but 1950s America put mass-produced, flavour-rich but nutritionally-poor fast food on the culinary map. It was the decade that quick-service restaurant chains began to open and franchise, heralding a seismic shift in…
Tiger Beat was founded in September 1965 by Charles “Chuck” Laufer, his brother Ira Laufer, and television producer and host Lloyd Thaxton. Marketed primarily to adolescent girls, the magazine featured teen idol gossip and articles about movies, music and fashion.…
From humble beginnings in 1952 when publisher Maurice Kinn bought the title The Musical Express & Accordion Weekly for £1000 and re-branded it as New Musical Express, the NME became an essential weekly purchase for generations of music fans, populated by characters as notorious…
Kiddies construction toy “Stickle Bricks” was invented by Denys Fisher in 1969. The colourful plastic shapes – squares, rectangles, triangles and circles – could be interlocked using “teeth” and joined together in many different ways.
By the late 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons had become a favourite pastime of certain types of too-smart-for-their-own-good, socially awkward adolescents who preferred to think of themselves as Chaotically Good Elves in a mystic realm rather than as the Chaotically Dressed…
“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” From 1960 onwards, while teaching psychology at Harvard, Timothy Leary began experimenting with drugs on prison inmates and then on himself and his friends. Leary was soon dismissed by Harvard and set up his…
American born promoter Lee Gordon arrived in Sydney in 1953, after a chance meeting with an Australian used car salesman, and immediately put his American know-how to work. Gordon was responsible for bringing 472 American entertainers (including Nat King Cole,…
Harold Edward Holt was born in Sydney in 1908 and educated at Melbourne University. He worked as a solicitor and entered the federal parliament in 1935 for the United Australia (later Liberal) Party. He was minister of labour in 1940/1941…
January 01 – Chinese and North Korean forces advance across the 38th Parallel and through UN lines. 01 – First episode of The Archers is broadcast nationally on the BBC Light Programme. 01 – Bill Byford (Saxon) born. 04 – Communist…
In 1966 England hosted the World Cup, in a climate of football fever generated in-part by the much-loved mascot World Cup Willie. The cartoon lion appeared on everything from beer to breakfast cereals. Of the 16 nations that reached the final…
January 01 – The US gives $216 million in aid to South Vietnam. 01 – The 1955 Cotton Bowl Classic American football game is won by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. 02 – President José Antonio Remón Cantera is assassinated…
January 01 – Groucho Marx dies in Los Angeles. 02 – Legendary jazz pianist and composer Erroll Garner dies. 03 – Former Home Secretary Roy Jenkins announces he is leaving Westminster to become President of the European Commission in Brussels. Conservative…
January 01 – French singer Maurice Chevalier dies (b. 1888) in Paris. He is 83. 03 – An IRA bomb injures 55 women and children when it explodes in a Belfast department store. 04 – Rose Heilbron is the first…
January 01 – Britain, Denmark and Ireland join the European Economic Community (the “Common Market”) bringing the total number of member states to nine. 01 – Baseball star Roberto Clemente is killed in a light plane crash off Puerto Rico.…
Infamous ‘Granny Killer’ John Wayne Glover began his reign of terror at Mosman in Sydney’s north, murdering six elderly women over a 13-month period in 1989 and 1990. Each time the calculating serial killer struck he would force his victim…
January 01 – In Britain, Alf Ramsey is knighted and Bobby Moore gets an OBE in the New Years Honours. 01 – 48-hour ceasefire ends in Vietnam with B-52s attacking the DMZ. 01 – All Night Rave at The Roundhouse…
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Steptoe and Son (1962 – 1965) The Morecambe and Wise Show (1961 – 1964, 1966 – 1976, 1980 – 1983) Upstairs Downstairs (1971 – 1975) Happy Days (1974 – 1984)…
Trying to define the Midlands is like trying to define “the underground”, and so it can be appreciated that defining the Midlands underground is extremely difficult. But even the complete…
Brian Clemens, the thriller writer who gave The Avengers its glossy coat, drives his blue Ferrari to a suite of offices in Pinewood Studios, gets behind a desk of gothic proportions,…
We are sticklers for a spot of nostalgia, whether that’s the return of former Saturday night fave Stars in their Eyes or the constant rumours that Miranda Hart is bringing…
From the halcyon days of flying-V guitars, pink trousers, silver satin jackets and glitter on the cheekbones, I present here for your listening pleasure the Nostalgia Central Glam Top 20.
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Fifty mighty Argonauts, bending to the oars Today will go adventuring to yet uncharted shores Fifty young adventurers today set forth and so we cry with Jason “Man the boats,…
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Hailing from Australia and having been formed in 1978 by New Zealand-born psychiatric nurse Graeme Revell and Neil Hill (one of Revell’s schizophrenic patients), SPK set out to expose the…
In a dark 1940s-style future, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub in a hotel room in a surreal and gloomy city, suffering from amnesia. In the room…
1 9 7 6 (UK/Australia) 13 x 60 minute episodes In 1829, following the tragic death of his wife, retired naval officer Jason Firbeck (James Condon) takes his three adult children…
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1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 6 (Canada) 30 minute episodes This long-running Canadian children’s television series – produced in Ottawa by CBC – was set in the mythical…
Hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia, The Great Scots formed in 1963. They were initially known as The Shadows, but they changed their name to The Beavers (and all wore Mohawk…
1 9 6 8 – 1 9 7 1 (Canada) 36 x 30 minute episodes Targeted at young people, the French language Canadian series Sol et Gobelet was written by…
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This should be great 🙌😎At last… See The Beatles in the 1970 film, Let It Be, fully restored for the first time, streaming May 8 only on Disney+.
Read the full story on www.thebeatles.com/let-it-be-last
#letitbe
Tonight from 18:00 UK time (13:00 EDT, 12:00 noon CDT, 10:00 PDT and 03:00 AEST), we'll be running through a live rehearsal of the first few hours of our upcoming launch day of NC Radio.
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We'll be back soon. Thank you for your patience! In the meantime, you can listen to us live here.qthemusic.com/p/the-beach-boys-documentary-will-begin-streaming-on-disney/
New 'The Beach Boys' Documentary Coming to Disney+
qthemusic.com
#TheBeachBoys are the subjects of a new documentary from streaming service Disney+.
Another sad loss ☹️ RIP Steve Harley
Steve Harley: Cockney Rebel singer dies at 73
www.bbc.co.uk
The rock star had been forced to pause touring to undergo treatment for cancer.What sad news, Cockney Rebel were a firm favourite of mine. Make me smile was C12 on the jukebox when courting, it was played a lot.
RIP Steve you were one of my favourites
R.I.P. man great memories
Saw him perform at the California ballroom Dunstable 1975, Absolutely brilliant night. RIP Mr Cockney Rebel
Rest in peace 😞 🙏 🕊
So sad , he was a great talent. Thanks for the music Steve
Steve Collins😞
Sad news, RIP.
RIP
Rest In Peace Legend.
RIP - one of my favourites as a teenager
R.I.P
😪😪😪
RIP
He died too young!
😢😢😢
Eric Carmen, Raspberries Frontman and ‘All by Myself’ Singer, Dies at 74
variety.com
Eric Carmen, who rose to fame fronting the Raspberries before establishing a successful solo career in the '70s and '80s, has died at 74.That is so sad 😞 All by myself is one of my favourite songs. My deepest sympathy to your family and friends 🙏 😢 rest in peace 😞 🙏 🕊 xx
He had a great voice.
😎😎😎😎
The Beatles: Sir Sam Mendes to direct four films - one about each band member
www.bbc.co.uk
Four separate films will tell the story of the band from the perspectives of all four members.
"Don't tell him, Pike!" 😢
Ian Lavender: Dad's Army star dies aged 77
www.bbc.co.uk
Birmingham-born Lavender became a household name thanks to his role as Private Pike in the BBC sitcom.That is very sad news 😢 a great actor 🙏 rest in peace Ian 🙏 🕊 my deepest sympathy to your family and friends xx
The end of an era.
That’s very sad
RIP Melanie 🫶
Brand New Key singer Melanie Safka dies as family says 'our world is dimmer'
www.mirror.co.uk
Melanie Safka, best known for her hit Brand New Key and performances at Glastonbury and Woodstock, has died at the age of 76
Mary Weiss: Shangri-Las lead singer dies aged 75 😢
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68040491
Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 1999 and contains some words and references which reflect the attitudes of those times and which may be considered culturally sensitive, offensive or inappropriate today.