Unveiling of blue plaque outside the Downstairs Club (later Le Disque a Go! Go!), Bournemouth 14 September 2014

A lot of photos have been posted on the FaceBook page for Hampshire and Dorset Musicians Past and Present covering the unveiling of a blue plaque outside the old Downstairs Club (see Wikipedia page), but I thought I’d set up this page covering a bit of background to the plaque plus some more pics and a YouTube video of the unveiling (please scroll down).

Some of the pics are about as interesting as watching a band setting up its gear but maybe I can crave indulgence as it was a super day, following some stressful times during the preceding 9 months. If you’re in the pictures without being captioned and weren’t just waiting for a bus please accept my apologies.

p.s. And what a good sport the Mayor, Chris Mayne is! A far cry from the formality of Alderman Benwell, who did, however, let me wear his mayoral hat when he visited Winton and Moordown School in 1952. (We got to try it on if we answered a question correctly). NB. I assume it’s still the same hat, albeit with the brim, crown, headband, gold braid etc replaced over the years, rather like Trigger’s broom in Only Fools and Horses.

And another thing, if you’re thinking of embarking on your own blue plaque project you might be interested to read my full story of this project, which you’ll find at Blue Plaques for Dummies. It’s not intended to be a replacement for the English Heritage guidance notes but it does cover a few minor problems you might encounter that aren’t included in those notes.

When you’ve finished viewing the images you can go back to the main Downstairs Club/Big Roll Band article by clicking here.

Background

The idea of a blue plaque first crossed my mind around the end of 2013 when I sat in for a couple of numbers with Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band at the Bull’s Head, Barnes in south-west London.

The new music room there is much smaller than the old one, with a low ceiling, low stage and an upright house piano facing the wall, so when you play it you’ve got your back to the rest of the band. As I was pounding away on it, looking over my shoulder at Zoot and wondering what the hell he was going to do next (no change there, then) I had a deja vu moment of playing in similar surroundings with the first version of the Big Roll Band on our very first gig in Autumn 1961 at the Downstairs Club. (We were probably playing the same numbers too.) That was also my first gig as a piano player after switching from lead guitar.

That prompted the idea of a plaque and I briefly mentioned it afterwards to Zoot, Paul McCallum (bass) and, I think, Nick Newall (tenor), all of whom remembered the Downstairs. They seemed to think it was a good idea (or were just being polite), and of course the club later became Le Disque a Go! Go!, a well-known venue for many famous bands under Allan Azern’s ownership. I subsequently mentioned it on the “Pants and Corset” FaceBook page as above and was invited by Annie Christopher to join the Bournemouth Rock Tree committee, which is pursuing the separate and much bigger project of compiling an online tree of Bournemouth rock musicians and bands from the late 1950s onwards. So I thought maybe the idea wasn’t too daft, at least until I found out that the English Heritage and Bournemouth Corporation blue plaque schemes weren’t operating. That meant a DIY job and a lot of work, but I was lucky enough to get super co-operation and help from lots of nice people, and the cost of the plaque (which at the time of the unveiling I’d paid for myself and fully expected to bear) was later kindly reimbursed to me from part of the money we raised from a gig earlier in the year, which had been put on principally to raise money for the Bournemouth Rock Tree project. My thanks are due to the Bournemouth Rock Tree Committee (Keith Collins, Ed Roberts, Annie Christopher, Stuart Gard, Roger Deacon-Smith and the late Martin Kitcher) for that.

The Unveiling

The plaque was finally unveiled by Zoot Money on Sunday 14th September 2014. Having been asked by Bournemouth police to avoid publicising the event to keep the numbers down to 30-50 I was a bit worried when the Bournemouth Echo leaked the story in advance, but despite around 100 people turning up it all went off smoothly and I didn’t see one policeman there. (I had told the police that water cannon probably wouldn’t be required but defibrillators might.) Anyway, it was great to see such a smashing crowd of old and (to me) new faces. Here are some images of before, during and after the unveiling, when a group of the guys there kindly asked Rig and me to join them for a drink at the nearby Cumberland Hotel. (I’d been planning on just having a pint – sadly non-alcoholic – in the pub over the road.) The pics were mostly taken by my long-suffering wife, Rig, with some by my son Pete Kirtley, though the “posh” one above of the unveiled plaque, plus the one of Allan Azern, are by Neil Tungate. Click on them and they should expand eventually.

(No musicians were harmed during the making of these pictures.)

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The plaque now has an entry in the Open Plaques website and in Geograph. There’s also a video of the speeches and unveiling which you can see on YouTube by clicking here. And here are links to some of the press articles that appeared.

Bournemouth Echo

Dancing Ledge

Make it Bournemouth Facebook page

To return to the main Downstairs Club/Big Roll Band article please click here.