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

Your readers may not be aware that the majority of theatrical agents (bookers) are recognised as being pretty naff dart players, even though most of their decisions as to whether a band can make a gig or not are decided by throwing a dart at a wall map. If you think John O'Groats on the Monday and Lands End on the Tuesday are a joke, think again. Therefore, when we received our datesheet and itinerary from our manager Hal Carter, it came as no great surprise to realise that he is undoubtedly the world champion dart throwing agent/manager.

First we were required to drive from Liverpool to London Heathrow to catch our flight for a ten day stint at the Windsor Golf & country Club in Kenya. What's wrong with that I hear you ask? Answer, nothing, it was great!

Now this is where the darts bit comes in. We arrived back at London Heathrow on a thursday night and were immediately directed to drive to Manchester airport to stay overnight for our early morning flight to Helsinki for a series of concerts in Finland.

We flew into Helsinki aboard a British Airways flight, then changed to a little six seater light aircraft for a 1/12 hour flight up into the Arctic Circle. Roger, our intrepid sound engineer is petrified of flying, hence the moment he saw the size of the plane the suntan he had acquired in Kenya oozed through the seat of his trousers and down his leg!

We were mightily relieved to find one saving grace, in that the in-flight catering consisted of one dozen cans of beer..., who said contract riders are useless!

The venue was on the lines of Centre Parks holiday type venues we have here in the U.K. but it was a quick in and out gig as we had two shows to do the next day in Helsinki.

Due to an early 5-3Oam flight departure to Helsinki the next morning, our two pilots stayed with us. The Swinging Blue Jeans went on stage at 1-3Oam and you can imagine the panic and loss of four suntans when, half way through the act we spotted the two pilots drinking at the Bar. They later assured me they were only drinking soft drinks. Come on now, do you know any Scandinavians who only drink soft drinks?

One of the shows in Helsinki was networked live throughout the country for Finnish radio (it didn't go out in the city, just the country). The show was performed before an invited audience in the night club of the Hesperia Hotel.

The show had been on air for about 20 minutes and all was going well, then I was handed a written request for us to play Long Tall Sally. It was from an old friend who we know as Fin who now owns the Sally Line shipping company, although we,d first met him in the sixties prior to his seafaring success.

If your doing a live radio show for over an hour, you reach a point when you forget you're live and on air, hence you revert to your normal self. Suddenly, right in the middle of "Long Tall Sally", Fin decided to become a fifth Blue Jean and staggers on to the stage and quite uninvited, joins in on dual lead vocals. The sound was terrible (and it wasn't me) but it was certainly responsible for the producers suntan vanishing Fin's unsolicited involvement as part of the Swinging Blue Jeans resulted in me having to spend ten minutes trying to explain to the listeners that I was completely unaware that Dave Berry was in town, let alone that he intended to join us on stage! Anyway we're back in Finland soon, so not much harm could've been done. Next day, it was straight back to Manchester, into the cars and off back down to High Wycombe for the start of The Beat Goes On tour.

Question - Seeing as how High Wycombe is nearer to Heathrow, why did we fly back to Manchester? Get the darts out Hal, it'll soon be time for another itinerary.

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