SIMON FINN: a mystery

On March 27th an eBay seller named echo*beach sold a copy of Simon Finn's Pass The Distance, complete with its insert, for £183 to a member named rememberthethetis. The insert, however, had what the seller described as 'a diagonal cut on the top left' and 'what appear to be signatures across the three band members'. Here's his picture:

Barely a week later, another eBay seller named xxxrecords sold a copy of Simon Finn's Pass The Distance, complete with its insert, for £399. Bizarrely, this time round the insert had the same signatures as the other copy, but the lower right-hand corner was also missing. Here's his picture:

The description contained no reference to the insert having writing on it or a corner chopped off. Now, xxxrecords is renowned for his meticulous interest in being precise in his listings, and for carrying out painstaking research into his items, so he clearly believed this insert with his copy to be complete and untampered with. Therefore this question arises: are there three different variants of the Simon Finn insert? One that is square with no signatures, one that has signatures but the top left corner missing, and one with signatures and both the top left and bottom right corners missing?

By the way, here's the insert with no corners missing:

UPDATE: The eBay username rememberthethetis was torpedoed by its owner very shortly after this post appeared. He has now switched to another username.  

THE WCPAEB: "It's gone all pop art"

As is well-attested, in September 1965 the Oklahoma-raised and LA-based playboy Bob Markley hosted an end-of-tour party for the Yardbirds, at which he noticed that the kids providing music were getting more female attention than him. He therefore offered to buy them new equipment if they let him join them. Thus was born The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. I was amazed to stumble upon this account, phoned in to Record Mirror from the bash itself.

JIMI HENDRIX: "I want to turn people on"

To promote his forthcoming European tour, Jimi Hendrix gave his last ever interviews to well-known journalists such as Keith Altham, Rob Partridge and Norman Jopling at London's Cumberland Hotel on September 11th 1970. Less than a week later, Jimi was dead. Jopling's piece appeared in Music Now on September 12th. I'd never seen it before, so thought I'd post it here.

Mick Jagger: 'as he really is'

I doubt Mick was too thrilled when his spotty adolescent brother penned this for NME in June 1965:

Beatles For Sale: 'a usually reliable source'

According to Record Mirror of October 10th 1964, the cover of Beatles For Sale was originally going to show the boys lighting their ever-present 'ciggies' under the Arc de Triomphe...

David Bowie: 'stoney broke'

Issued in June 1964, Liza Jane by Davy Jones & The King Bees is one of the most valuable 45s of the 1960s. Rarity aside, there are two reasons for this: firstly, it's a terrific dose of dirty R&B, and secondly, Davie Jones was of course David Bowie. Here's the only press about it I've ever seen.

Record Mirror, June 20th 1964

Record Mirror, June 6th 1964

Record Mirror, June 6th 1964

Slightly oddly, by the way, Vocalion was still plugging the 45 on October 31st, when the listing below appeared in Record Mirror, now crediting Bowie as 'Daved Jones':

The Who: 'four hip young men'

Here's the earliest article about The Who I've ever seen - so early, in fact, that it's about The High Numbers and calls John Entwistle by his early stage name (John Allison) as well as misnaming Pete Townshend as Peter Townsed. It's from Peter Jones's New Faces column in Record Mirror of July 11th 1964 (also trumpeted on the same page is Marianne Faithfull, who apparently 'has blue blood coursing through her veins' and 'has a very big future when she passes her examinations').

And a couple of weeks later Record Mirror followed it up with this: