36. the stars are aligning
After Nightshift, we're exactly halfway through the event. Eleven acts to go. And Ivor & Co keep getting the running order right. After a noisy rock band, lower the volume and tempo with a singer songwriter.
Ian Fyvie was at Ruskin, the trade unions college, founded to provide further education for people who couldn't afford it. It split from Oxford in the 1990s and joined the University of West London in 2021.
With a title like Honest John, maybe Ian Fyvie's song was about crooked landlords or the like, but I just don't remember it.
The next act was a jazz trio, which naturally I didn't pay much attention to.
Humphrey Crick studied zoology at St John's. He went on to gain a doctorate and 'study birds for much of my career' - which gave him something in common with me, though he became an ornithologist while I'm a twitcher.
My mind's eye confuses him with Baldy O'Brookfield above, because I seem to remember a receding hairline. And maybe he was already wearing specs.
He's been a jazz pianist all his life, and his trio played but didn't sing. An instrumental he called Phonetic.
Takes some quiet confidence to do that. In an evening loud with singers of every description, plus assorted electric bands, to let your music do the talking. My feelings about jazz are chronicled for posterity, so I'm not the man to ask - but Bernie said they were fine. His ten years of learning piano didn't make him good at it, but he knew a man who was.
*
The next act just kept things ticking over. From Queen's College, someone calling himself JW Simple, with another song my memory can't locate back there: Wind of Change.
After him, Ivor went back to fun and spectacle, with an acappella group from St Hugh's, the women's college where my first-year girlfriend went. Mascara Blues, by The Magnificent Seven, who dressed as you might expect - taffeta dresses, gloves to the elbow - and sang their hearts out. Proper harmonies, I presume, and they seemed to really enjoy themselves, so the audience did too.
Fun in their own right, and the perfect support act for another star of the gala. And I don't mean Patrick, who was in the next band. Here was another girl with a voice to remember.
*
Actually, I can't remember Pat Slade performing with his other lot that night. The weird thing is: nor can he!
'I did play trombone with Whiskers. Or did I? Now I think about it, I don't have any recollection of it at all.'
Me, I can't even remember seeing the trombone. So maybe he didn't play it. Very odd.
Even if he did, everyone's eyes were elsewhere doing that performance.
Whiskers had a lead singer called Sarah Nagourney. Short and blond in a big frock. With a voice that didn't need a microphone. I can still hear her belting out the title: Give me everything you've got. I remember a number of choruses from that night.
Like Howard Goodall, Sarah Nagourney went on to a career in music, as a singer and writer. This song contest wasn't the last time she went on stage before us.
Patrick says he can't remember playing alongside her because 'My mind must have been focused on our performance'. But at some point he turned to the rest of us.
Hey, he said enthusiastically. Wouldn't it be great if we both won? Milkins and Whiskers sharing first prize.
I looked at Bernie. Bernie looked at me. We turned back to Patrick and spoke as one.
Shattap!
Harry smiled slightly and Bill laughed, typical of both.
Apart from anything else, as I say, we didn't see this as a competition, just an opportunity to play live again. And there was no way we were going to win it. But Whiskers might.
Nightshift had been alright, but now the Magdalen Clerks had a real rival for the crown.
*
As I say, right from the start I'm looking looking around and thinking not only is this not a contest, it's not even a concert really. We're at a party.
A total of twenty-two acts, at let's say five minutes each, that's less than two hours. But of course you have gaps between them, and those gaps were quite wide at times. And everyone liked that. It stretched the evening out, and nobody wanted it to end. You got a fuckload of value for your fifty p!
Everyone was at the same university, give or take. Many of them went to college with each other or knew someone from other ones. So people mingled. Patrick and Harry certainly did. And there was always someone walking past with two or three plastic glasses of booze, a classic undergrad sight. In a way, the whole show was a soundtrack to a night out in the giant student bar Oxford didn't have at the time.
But everyone listened to everything. I mean no-one tried to find their seat while an act was on stage. When anyone performed, you'd see all five hundred heads in the crowd.
You'd never see them all that well, which was good. Your eyes got used to the half-dark, but there really wasn't any light except on the stage, so the place was atmospheric throughout. We loved every minute of it.
*
That includes the one or two acts who - with respect - were just filler really. To me, with my tastes in music, that meant the odd solo singer - but it was true of one of the bands too. They knew it themselves. Ivor definitely did. He was in it. Time for his big moment on stage.
Interesting that he put himself on near the end, not early to get himself out of the way. Quite right too. He earned it for his organising.
I don't know if Piston Broke were all from Wadham College like him. They gave us the song Freedom - though fuck knows if it was about that, or anything.
Apart from Humphrey Crick, I think they were the only act that didn't sing. If they did use a microphone, I don't remember it. All I can picture is quite a lot of guitarists running through a number like a sound check. They stopped and started and Ivor kept checking the amplifier.
Tell the truth, I'm not even sure he played at all!
I saw a dramatised documentary about the Beatles once. Not my thing, but the history of any band is worth watching, the way men get together. There's a scene where they're auditioning for a record company, and Stu Sutcliffe keeps his back turned to the man they're trying to impress - to hide the fact he can't play the bass. The company rep susses this and aggro ensues. Ivor looked like that to me.
Obviously it's more likely he did play that guitar, but either way it was fine. I knew exactly how he felt.
To perform live with a rock band, just once in your life. That was me six months earlier. My first gig was meant to be my last. Of course, I was an old hand by now! But when you can't sing, or play guitar very well, that early feeling never leaves you. The whole audience understood, because Ivor got their full reaction, with people calling out his name.
They said you could measure that applause. There was a thing called a clapometer, which first appeared on british TV in the mid Sixties, a programme called Opportunity Knocks, with a hammy presenter and cash prizes. The more an audience applauded, the higher up a dial a needle went.
It was a nonsense, just a box on a table, and the host told us so. 'Remember, folks: the clap-o-meter is just for fun!' I can't remember where this box was at the song contest, if it even existed at all, but Ivor must've scored highly on it. If he never played on stage again, or did it a thousand times, take it from someone as knows: this was a big moment for ever.
*
I can't picture the next act, the Kritics from Oriel, singing From general to particular. They may have been another rock band, but that would've meant three in a row, because they were followed by Blowback, with A jolly good song, which it was - especially from a bunch of schoolboys.
I'd played cricket at Magdalen College School. It was posh, with big leafy grounds and sports pitches. Not exactly an inner city comprehensive.
The evil boarding school my dad sent me to, it was so small you got into teams just by wanting to. Actually I hated cricket, but there was nothing else to play in the summer (I was top at tennis but we'd have lost if we'd ever played other schools).
As a batsman, I never lasted very long. At Magdalen, I was out first ball for the second time that season, though I was happy with a catch at short leg. The year after that, they made me captain of the juniors and we won a few games despite my batting average of under two!
Blowback were from Magdalen School. No idea how much cricket they played but they were impressive on stage. Quite a serious band, a bit like Underdrive from Keble, though maybe that was just youthful shyness or concentrating on their playing.
The judges rated them. 'Quite accomplished musically. Not bad material...Good Drummer and Solo Guitar. "Cool" bass.' You could imagine them carrying on after school, especially their singer guitarist, again like Underdrive.
But their track was quite heavy and pretty intense, and it occurred to me that none of the rock bands had played anything you could've danced to. Whatever else people thought of the Milkins, Ivor was right in believing we'd liven up the end of the night.
Talking of which.
The organisers really had gone into minute detail with the sequence. One Christchurch act following another, now the same with Worcester, our place. Just before us, someone calling himself Mr Wright.
No idea if that was his real name. I knew hardly any other students in my own college. He named his entry Writing on the wall, which may have been a joke about university toilets. One of the judges called it a pop ballad. His marks weren't great, but one of them did write 'Very pretty!' which I presume meant the song.
We didn't see or hear him. By then we were backstage and things had fallen into place.
The event had been going on a long time, so people were ready for some rock 'n roll to send them out into the night. Ivor really did deserve his moment on stage. He got the running order exactly right.