The E.B.C. Archives -
Original articles written by Ray Ennis
and first published in The Beat Goes On magazine

For over six years, Ray Ennis of The Swinging Blue Jeans enthralled sixties music fans with his monthly article published in The Beat Goes On magazine about the antics of the legendary Elbow Bending Club. Now, with Ray's permission, we are re-running these articles on the web.

What is the Elbow Bending Club? Well, no-one really knows except for the members themselves - and membership is restricted to 60s performers and other carefully selected people from within the business!

You can guarantee not missing each new edition by completing the box on the
main Swinging Blue Jeans page

The early sixties saw the Swinging Blue Jeans visit Ireland and considering how the Irish are noted for their fame at elbow bending, it was potentially a home from home trip for us stalwart members of the EEC.

The character chosen to promote our little jaunt was a very likeable chap who answered to the name, Paul Russell,

We knew we’d get along with Paul the moment we met on arrival at Dublin Airport, his opening meet-and-greet was “Welcome to Ireland lads, what are you having?” words that were like honey to the bee, it was the start of a very exciting but equally strange ten day tour!

After we’d exercised our elbows for a while..in fact if my memory serves me correctly we exercised them for quite a long while, Paul drove us to the Gresham Hotel in Dublin's O'Connell Street. Our rooms weren’t quite ready, but there are no prizes for guessing where we chose to wait!

After a flagon or two of the local mead, Paul asked if we were hungry, and seeing as how Aer Llngus had only supplied coffee and biscuits on the short flight from Liverpool to Dublin we replied (in unison) “Starving”. He then enquired “Would you like a bit o’ curry?” to which we replied “You bet”, and seeing as how Les Braid can make a buttie (sandwich) out of anything that’s reasonably edible it seemed we’d scored game, set and match!

Paul advised us that he couldn’t join us for lunch as he had to get back to the office, but took time to direct us to the first floor restaurant where, he told us “They’ll look after you, just help yourselves to the buffet”.

There were quite a few people in the restaurant, in fact it was darn near full. A waiter immediately offered us drinks then we turned our attention to the superb buffet loading our plates to the rafters with the best that India and the Orient had to offer. As I chomped away on my chapati I could not help noticing that we were getting a few strange looks from the other buffeters. It was then I noticed that there were equally as many Indian people as Irish at the gathering. Suddenly Les, with furrowed brow gleaned from thought tore himself away from a plateful of steamed goat and enquired “Why has everyone else got a flower in their button-hole”?

Then everything fell into place when I noticed a lovely young Indian lady dressed all in white and realised that the gathering was that of a wedding reception for an Irish gentleman and his Indian bride!

Paul (The Rogue) RusseLl knew what the score was as the bride was a friend of Paul‘s Indian wife. Irrespective as to our uninvited indulgences and any possible embarrasment we suffered he was quite happy as it hadn’t cost him
a penny to wine and dine us!

Even now I often wonder if the happy couple are still trying to fathom out who the hell the four mop—headed strangers are on their wedding photo’s!

We were near the end of the tour and the the entourage of EEC members had been no match for Russell The Rogue. He could drink like a fish which was pretty worrying as he was also driving us everywhere. So, we decided to give the matter some thought and hopefully score a few home runs for the EBC. Point one — The Rogue was a promoter and promoters all suffer the same affliction, they’re tone deaf. Point two — they love the sound of money, but loath the sound of music (Editorial note: apologise to Julie Andrews, advise her no offence was intended). After a full 10 second discussion it was agreed we should bring out the heavy guns in the guise of Les Braid, if we couldn’t drink The Rogue under the table maybe Les and his piano medleys would bore him to death?

Our next appearance was at the rather unusual ‘Wellies R Us’ ballroom in Wexford. Midway through our journey, The Rogue decided it was time to stop for a drink. Seeing as how it was only 4.OOpm and all day opening hadn’t yet been introduced, we wondered what he had in mind and where we could go for it. The Rogue had it all under control and the car was brought to a halt in downtown Enniscorthy (home again thought I! As soon as we were out of the car we were led into a greengrocers shop, past the radishes and on straight through into the back, then through another door Into.. . a bar!

The clientele consisted of a couple of farriers, a couple of priests and a few look-a-likes from Ryans Daughter. We were gobamacked to say the least. Then we spotted it in the corner, an upright piano of questionable vintage but which was undoubtedly the exact size for Les ‘Mr Piano’ Braid.

Les flexed his fingers a la Charlie Kunz and we were off, Les ran through his entire and extensive catalogue of Irish Rebel songs, after which Colin Manley took the floor and gave forth with his immaculate impersonation of Joseph Locke, all of which kept things buzzing along quite nicely for the next few hours. I even joined in and owned up to having been an Alter Boy in my youth, a revelation which resulted in me being awarded a large Black Bush (Bushnills Whisky) by the two priests.

The time had flown past and quite unwittingly we had in fact got our own back on The Rogue. We were contracted to perform 60 minutes per night, but unbeknown to us and the local promoters, The Rogue had booked us into three different venues for twenty minutes each. Unfortunately for The Rogue, and due to the time in that backroom bar, we only got to one venue that night,
which not only dented the Rogue’s pocket, but didn’t do our reputation any good either,

We did return to Ireland to make it up to those promoters who missed out. Sadly, Russell The Rogue has since vacated his homeland and to date his whereabouts are unknown.

P.S.

Membership of the EBC is considered sacred, hence it upsets me to have to report that Dave Berry was seen giving away a CD at Manchester Airport, an unthinking act which has totally ruined his image. Hence I hereby advise young Berry (young Berry!!!) that 9 penalty points have been placed on his membership card — beware Berry, you’re treading on very thin ice!

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