Podcast appearances and mentions of Frank Allen

Frank Allen, Bassist with The Searchers is on the line to tell Ray all about their upcoming tour which will see them play Glastonbury for the first and final time.

Hot Rod Blues, S3 Episode 2, With Larry Reyes & Frank Allen Smith --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shawn-young2/support

On this week's episode I have on guest Frank Allen to talk about his insane raw total as well as his background in the military and D1 football. We also discuss a bit about his training and his prep for the upcoming Reach Rumble. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/liftsmith/support

Special guest speaker, Frank Allen, continues our sermon series, Revive, and uses the passage of Nehemiah 5 to challenge and convict us to ask the Lord to ignite our hearts to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord.

2024-03-27_GaryJackson

In this episode we first discuss Wu Jien Chuan from Wen Zee and Frank Allen's books. Then we return to the Tai Chi Classics and discuss the saying "Four Ounces Defeats One Thousand Pounds". For extended episodes and bonus content visit our Patreon.

Frank Allen takes us on a journey through his time with The Searchers and Cliff Bennett and the The post Frank Allen – The Searchers appeared first on The Strange Brew .

An incredible story of heroism, patriotism, honor, and sacrifice as filmmaker Austin Rich and Frank Allen, discuss their documentary film project, Ramblings Of A Bomber Pilot. It's the story of Frank's uncle, World War II hero, Arthur Allen, Jr. who as an Army Airforce Pilot at 23 flew bombing raids over Germany in 1943. One World War II assigned to the 94th Bomb Group said after watching, Ramblings Of A Bomber Pilot, “I love that it's not Hollywood… this isn't made up. It's the real deal. It all really happened.”

"Ramblings of a Bomber Pilot" is about Captain Arthur Allen, a WWII pilot who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving his country. Arthur's nephew Frank Allen & Austin Rich, director of of the film, discuss the making of the movie on "Wake Up Memphis" See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He hasn't homered as a Met yet, and Jonathan Araúz went 0-for-3 yesterday to fall from .333 to .167 (DJ Stewart now has a .259-.256 lead on Brandon Nimmo for active roster batting average, regardless of plate appearance totals), but let's go ahead and head into the weekend with Araúz's home run chain.* Jonathan Araúz hit his first home run off Josh Tomlin, 9/27/20* Josh Tomlin gave up his first home run to José Molina, 7/31/10* José Molina hit his first home run off Rocky Biddle, 5/10/01* Rocky Biddle gave up his first home run to Joe Oliver, 8/10/00* Joe Oliver hit his first home run off Ricky Horton, 8/18/89* Ricky Horton gave up his first home run to Jeffrey Leonard, 4/7/84* Jeffrey Leonard hit his first home run off Pete Falcone, 4/25/80* Pete Falcone gave up his first home run to Vic Correll, 4/13/75* Vic Correll hit his first home run off Randy Moffitt, 7/31/74* Randy Moffitt gave up his first home run to Garry Jestadt, 6/25/72* Garry Jestadt hit his first home run off Mike Torrez, 5/14/72* Mike Torrez gave up his first home run to Adolfo Phillips, 4/19/68* Adolfo Phillips hit his first home run off Barney Schultz, 9/6/65* Barney Schultz gave up his first home run to Ernie Banks, 4/16/55* Ernie Banks hit his first home run off Gerry Staley, 9/20/53* Gerry Staley gave up his first home run to Sid Gordon, 7/11/47* Sid Gordon hit his first home run off Jim Tobin, 4/27/43* Jim Tobin gave up his first home run to Dizzy Dean, 8/22/37* Dizzy Dean hit his first home run off Ed Brandt, 7/31/32* Ed Brandt gave up his first home run to Andy Reese, 4/19/28* Andy Reese hit his first home run off Bill Sherdel, 6/19/27* Bill Sherdel gave up his first home run to Heinie Groh, 6/22/18* Heinie Groh hit his first home run off Frank Allen, 7/28/13* Frank Allen gave up his first home run to Owen Wilson, 7/15/12* Owen Wilson hit his first home run off Johnny Lush, 4/23/08* Johnny Lush gave up his first home run to Johnny King, 5/18/06* Johnny King hit his first home run off Ed Poole, 4/29/03* Ed Poole gave up his first home run to Elmer Flick, 5/16/01* Elmer Flick hit his first home run off Red Ehret, 6/1/98* Red Ehret gave up his first home run to Billy Shindle, 7/7/88This was the first home run allowed by Ehret, pitching for the Kansas City Cowboys in the American Association against Shindle and the Baltimore Orioles. Ehret was sold after the season to the Louisville Colonels for $500, and stayed there for three years. In the 1890 proto-World Series against the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Ehret pitched two complete games, winning both, and he closed out Louisville's other win in the series, which went down as a 3-3-1 tie. Ehret also was 3-for-7 with a triple in the series, but the real hitting stars were Germany Smith with two triples and seven runs batted in for Brooklyn, and Chicken Wolf, who knocked in eight of Louisville's 32 runs in the series, while going 9-for-25 with four extra-base hits and four more runs scored.Chicken Wolf's given name was William Van Winkle Wolf, and he led the American Association that year with 197 hits, 260 total bases, and a .363 average. He was Louisville's all-time leader in games played, with 1,193, and collected 1,437 hits to lead the franchise, as well as 109 triples and 591 RBI.Ehret didn't stick around that long. In 1892, he joined the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates, and in 1893 led the league with four shutouts — and 23 hit batsmen. He was traded to St. Louis after the 1894 season, and on to Cincinnati a year later. Finally, Ehret was dealt back to Louisville before the 1898 season, but the real prize for the Colonels in that deal was Billy Hoy, the deaf player who in his age 36 and 37 seasons racked up 29 triples and scored 221 runs. Hoy was previously a tangent at the end of the Jeff McNeil home run chain, so that's fun. More fun than the Mets are having. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com/subscribe

Comic Reviews: DC Lazarus Planet: Legends Reborn by Alex Segura, Clayton Henry, Marcelo Maiolo, Alex Paknadel, Christopher Mitten, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Greg Pak, Minkyu Jung, Sunny Gho, Dennis Culver, Jesus Merino Flash One Minute War Special by Jeremy Adams, Fernando Pasarin, Matt Ryan, Jason Paz, Matt Herms, Serg Acuna, Rebecca Nalty, Lisandro Estherren, Patricio Delpeche, George Kambadais Batman: Legends of Gotham by Andy Diggle, Karl Mostert, Romulo Fajardo Jr DC's Harley Quinn Romances by Alexis Quasarano, Max Sarin, Marissa Louise, Zipporah Smith, Will Robson, Andrew Dalhouse, Amanda Deibert, Adriana Melo, John Kalisz, Frank Allen, John McCrea, Mike Spicer, Raphael Draccon, Carolina Munhoz, Ig Guara, Ivan Plascencia, Greg Lockard, Giulio Macaione, Fabs Nocera, Jessica Berbey, Priscilla Petraites, Michael Atiyeh, Ivan Cohen, Fico Ossio, Sebastian Cheng DC Power: A Celebration by Evan Narcisse, Darryl Banks, Hi-Fi, Lamont Magee, Chriscross, Juan Castro, Wil Quintana, Stephanie Williams, Alitha Martinez, Mark Morales, Alex Guimaraes, Brandon Thomas, Natacha Bustos, Dorado Quick, Jordan Clark, Clayton Henry, Marcelo Maiolo, Morgan Hampton, Valentine De Landro, Marissa Louise, Chuck Brown, Petterson Oliveira, DJ Chavis, John Ridley, Olivier Coipel, N.K. Jemisin, Jamal Campbell Marvel Bloodline: Daughter of Blade 1 by Danny Lore, Karen Darboe, Cris Peter Dark Web: Finale by Zeb Wells, Adam Kubert, Francesco Mortarino, Scott Hanna, Frank Martin, Guru eFX Demon Wars: Down in Flames by Peach Momoko, Zack Davisson Silver Surfer: Ghost Light 1 by John Jennings, Valentine De Landro, Matt Milla Star Wars: Sana Starros 1 by Justina Ireland, Pere Perez, Jay David Ramos Marvel Infinity Comics Marvel's Voices 38: Moon Girl by Stephanie Williams, Julian Shaw, Ian Herring Alligator Loki 18 by Alyssa Wong, Robert Quinn, Pete Pantazis Image Almighty 1 by Edward Laroche, Brad Simpson Blood Tree 1 by Peter Tomasi, Maxim Simic, John Kalisz Dark Horse Where Monsters Lie 1 by Kyle Starks, Piotr Kowalski, Vladimir Popov AWA Black Tape 1 by Dan Panosian, Dalibor Talajic, Ive Svorcina IDW Breath of Shadows 1 by Rich Douek, Alex Cormack OGNs Avatar the Last Airbender Chibis: Aang's Unfreezing Day by Kelly Leigh Miller, Diana Sim Bonding: A Love Story About People and their Parasites by Matthew Erman, Emily Pearson, Kaylee Davis, Justin Birch Housecat Trouble: Lost and Found by Mason Dickerson Ray's OGN Corner of the Week: Growing Pangs by Kathryn Ormsbee, Molly Brooks Additional Reviews: The Nasty, SHIELD TV show, The Me You Love In The Dark, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Aliens: Fast Track to Heaven, M3GAN, Kung-Fu Panda Season 2 News: Tomb Raider show on Amazon from PWB, Omni news, Zachary Levi fiasco, DC movie slate, Reboot cancelled, Pennyworth cancelled, Criminal series in development, Azula in the Spirit Temple graphc novel coming September 2023, Hit Monkey renewed, Spider-Ham/Spider-Rex team-up, new Abrams ComicArts Marvel OGN announced, Luke Cage: City of Fire cancellation Trailers: We Have a Ghost, Boogeyman Comics Countdown: Radiant Black 21 by Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa Scarlet Witch 2 by Steve Orlando, Stephanie Williams, Sara Pichelli, Chris Allen, Elisabetta D'Amico, Matt Wilson Where Monsters Lie 1 by Kyle Starks, Piotr Kowalski, Vladimir Popov Housecat Trouble: Lost and Found by Mason Dickerson Rogue Sun 10 by Ryan Parrott, Abel, Natalia Marques Blood Tree 1 by Peter Tomasi, Maxim Simic, John Kalisz Batman: Legends of Gotham by Andy Diggle, Karl Mostert, Romulo Fajardo Jr Avengers 65 by Jason Aaron, Javier Garron, David Curiel Flash: One Minute War Special by Jeremy Adams, Fernando Pasarin, Matt Ryan, Jason Paz, Matt Herms, Serg Acuna, Rebecca Nalty, Lisandro Estherren, Patricio Delpeche, George Kambadais Silver Surfer: Ghost Light 1 by John Jennings, Valentine De Landro, Matt Milla

In this episode we look at a couple more accounts of Dong's life including one from another great Ba Gua master Sun Xi Kun. Then we continue looking at the origins of Ba Gua and the teachings of Dong Hai Chuan from A Shadow On Fallen Blossoms by Andra Faulk and from Frank Allen's The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang: The Art and Legends of the Eight Trigram Palm. Patreon

Welcome to Botched: A D&D Podcast! We are joined yet again by Frank Allen from Toy Power! Channeling his inner Strong Bad, he is a legendary tag team wrestler, with no brother to tag in. That's where the plan comes in. Chonkey's brother Plonkey, his old tag team partner, is the Duke's right hand man and oversees the town. Somehow, they have to get beyond the town and get towards the Duke. They also need to reignite Plonkey's passion for wrestling, since he banned it. The group, apparently, has made a plan to achieve both goals. Step 1, let the fundead in. Step 2, deal with Plonkey Step 3, convince someone to help them get to the Duke, probably Plonkey. Will the plan work? How will they enact their plan? Will Plonkey love Wrestling again? Will the Honka-Stonka ever be a thing again? Tune in and find out! We now have a PO Box! Wanna send us something? PO BOX 3178 Gettysburg, PA 17325 All of our previous seasons can be found on our new channel! Botched Archives! A special shout out and thank you to all of our supporters over on Patreon. You help us continue to churn out “quality” episodes. With your continued support we can take our show on the road! Check out our store over at Botched Podcast where you can find tshirts, stickers, pint glasses and more! Give us a 5 star review over on Itunes. Doing so will help the show grow, but we will also read out whatever you write at the end of one of our episodes! Feel free to email us any questions, comments or suggestions at BotchedPodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, subscribe on Youtube, like us on Facebook. You can watch the show live on Twitch! Check out each of the hosts' Twitch streams! Dennis, Phil, Tristan Hosts: Dennis, Phil, Tristan, Jenna, Steve Editor: Dennis Producer: Phil and Dennis Executive Producers: James Thatcher, He Who Is Steve, Chronic Ejac, Jim Beverly, Seth Skinner, Shannon Tucker, Big Jon, Bmel, Disgruntled Furniture, Bread2287 Publisher: Phil and Dennis Art by Emily Swan Music by Gozer --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/botchedpodcast/support

Welcome to Botched: A D&D Podcast! We are joined by another special guest this week! Frank Allen from Toy Power! Granted, he is Australian, and we don't have the best track record with people from down under…but I'm sure it'll be fine right? The group has made it to the town just outside of where The Duke lives…however, The Duke has alerted everyone to their presence, so the guards are all on the lookout for the party members. However, the party just got a little bigger. They are joined by a person selling toads, and a tag team wrestler with no team. What a great combination. Who are these new characters? Why is The Duke protected by carnivorous donkeys? What is the signature move of this once great wrestler? You'll have to tune in and find out! We now have a PO Box! Wanna send us something? PO BOX 3178 Gettysburg, PA 17325 All of our previous seasons can be found on our new channel! Botched Archives! A special shout out and thank you to all of our supporters over on Patreon. You help us continue to churn out “quality” episodes. With your continued support we can take our show on the road! Check out our store over at Botched Podcast where you can find tshirts, stickers, pint glasses and more! Give us a 5 star review over on Itunes. Doing so will help the show grow, but we will also read out whatever you write at the end of one of our episodes! Feel free to email us any questions, comments or suggestions at BotchedPodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, subscribe on Youtube, like us on Facebook. You can watch the show live on Twitch! Check out each of the hosts' Twitch streams! Dennis, Phil, Tristan Hosts: Dennis, Phil, Tristan, Jenna, Steve Editor: Dennis Producer: Phil and Dennis Executive Producers: James Thatcher, He Who Is Steve, Chronic Ejac, Jim Beverly, Seth Skinner, Shannon Tucker, Big Jon, Bmel, Disgruntled Furniture, Bread2287 Publisher: Phil and Dennis Art by Emily Swan Music by Gozer --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/botchedpodcast/support

In this episode we begin our series on the founder of Ba Gua Zhang, Dong Hai Chuan. We look at Bruce's account of Dong's life and then take a dive into the Ba Gua Classics from Andrea Faulk's and Frank Allen's books. In our latest Patreon episode we follow up our Spiraling Energy Body series by beginning series on the eight energy bodies in Taoism. These eight bodies are the structure Bruce uses to map out different layers of energy in the body. It is a key element in Taoist meditation as well as Bagua Zhang. We explore their i-ching connection as well as their uses in qigong and martial arts.  Enjoy

Talks about stopping touring, starting again, and why

2022-07-13_GaryJackson

“What's this, Mr. Holmes? Man, it's witchcraft!” [VALL] Continuing on our supernatural theme, we land on witchcraft. And not just any witchcraft, either. This was a spell cast at Baker Street.   Our monthly "Mr. Sherlock Holmes the theorist" theme lands on Frank Allen's "Witchcraft in Baker Street" from the anthology Beyond Baker Street, and it looks at how some of the people we meet in "Charles Augustus Milverton" were bothered, bewitched, and bewildered. It's just a Trifle.   Full show notes: https://ihose.co/trifles284 Thank you to our sponsor, The Baker Street Journal.   Please support Trifles on Patreon: https://patreon.com/trifles  

Success with Dr. Frank Allen, author, Grand Master of multiple martial arts, zen master, and ultimate mentor. Listen to Dr. Allen's deep wisdom, humor, and glean some beautiful life lessons from this sage. Dr. Frank E. Allen is a Licensed Professional Counselor. He brings 45 years of experience to his professional practice, specializing in individual, marital, and group psychotherapy. Education & Training:  B.A. in Psychology from Rice University in 1974 M.A. in Human Development Counseling from the University of Denver in 1977 Ed.D. in Educational Counseling from the University of Houston in 1979 Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Houston Family Institute,1980-1981 Private Practice since 1982 Other Interests & Experience: Student of “A Course In Miracles” for 40 years Explorer of Eastern Philosophy for 40 years Meditation Practice for 40 years Certified Hypnotherapist and Past Life Regression Leader of psychological/spiritual workshops and retreats for 40 years Author of 8 books on Psychology/Spirituality Grand Master (10th Degree Black Belt) in several Martial ArtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.

Tisha Campbell is livid at a t-shirt company for using her likeness without her permission. Later on pastor Frank Allen will help cleanse our souls and talk about what he is doing to help the hungry.

Live with Jim Shoemaker, Bob Doll, Frank Allen, and Scott Jordan. Get an update on the Economy, What to look for when selecting an Advisor and Fundamentals of Wealth Management

WE ARE BACK! Season 2️⃣ kicks off with an interview with the new SHS Athletic Director, Frank Allen. Hunter and TJ rail against Little League Baseball and provide updates on SHS Football. The guys briefly discuss UF & FSU with a little Jaguars talk to close the episode out.

Wow! Today's game-changing episode with The Pickleball PT, Frank Allen, is NOT to be missed! Listen in as Dr. Frank answers your questions on how to play better and hurt less on the pickleball court. We cover everything from leg cramps and tennis elbow, to plantar fasciitis. Should you be treating your muscles with heat or ice? Is your indoor play affecting your body differently than outdoor play? Find out all of this in more on this episode and listen in to see if your question was answered!  About Frank:  Frank Allen graduated from the University of North Florida doctorate physical therapy program in 2013. In 2019 he started a mobile concierge physical therapy business called Your Place Physical Therapy. He started playing pickleball during the beginning of the pandemic and, like everyone else, completely fell in love with the game. He and his wife moved to Sarasota in October of last year and after seeing how big pickleball was in the area (and how easy it is to suffer an injury related to pickleball) he soon realized that this population of people needed some help that he could provide. He created The Pickleball PT concept and began focusing efforts towards helping local players as well as using social media platforms to share content to help players across the world play better and hurt less. Resources Mentioned: Follow Frank on https://www.instagram.com/thepickleballpt/ (Instagram) Check out https://yourplacept.com/the-pickleball-pt/ (Pickleball PT!) Connect with the Pickleball PT on https://www.facebook.com/thepickleballpt/ (Facebook) Check out some helpful videos on The Pickleball PT https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_SYhn5OgsABWmcG9Bpoe4A (Youtube Channel) Get your pair of https://www.zelusinsoles.com/pickleball/ (Zelus Pickleball Insoles) Learn more about https://www.prettypicklers.com/ (The Pretty Picklers) Follow The Pretty Picklers on https://www.instagram.com/prettypicklers/ (IG @PrettyPicklers ) Connect with The Pretty Picklers https://www.facebook.com/prettypicklers (on Facebook!)

In this episode we discuss the third and final swing of the Opening the Energy Gates set but first we talk about the Boxer Uprising of 1900 and its connection to Bagua history featuring an article by Frank Allen. Our interview with Frank will be available on our Patreon soon. You can check out Frank's podcast here.   www.theneijiaquanpodcast.com  www.watertradition.com   

This week’s episode looks at “Needles and Pins”, and the story of the second-greatest band to come out of Liverpool in the sixties, The Searchers. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many recordings by the Searchers.  My two main resources for this episode have been the autobiographies of members of the group — Frank Allen’s The Searchers and Me and Mike Pender’s The Search For Myself.  All the Searchers tracks and Tony Jackson or Chris Curtis solo recordings excerpted here, except the live excerpt of “What’d I Say”, can be found on this box set, which is out of print as a physical box, but still available digitally. For those who want a good budget alternative, though, this double-CD set contains fifty Searchers tracks, including all their hits, for under three pounds.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Last week we had a look at the biggest group ever to come out of Liverpool, and indeed the biggest group ever to play rock and roll music. But the Beatles weren’t the only influential band on the Merseybeat scene, and while we won’t have much chance to look at Merseybeat in general, we should at least briefly touch on the other bands from the scene. So today we’re going to look at a band who developed a distinctive sound that would go on to be massively influential, even though they’re rarely cited as an influence in the way some of their contemporaries are. We’re going to look at The Searchers, and “Needles and Pins”: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Needles and Pins”] The story of the early origins of the Searchers is, like everything about the Searchers, the subject of a great deal of dispute. The two surviving original members of the group, John McNally and Mike Pender, haven’t spoken to each other in thirty-six years, and didn’t get on for many years before that, and there have been several legal disputes between them over the years. As a result, literally everything about the group’s history has become a battlefield in their ongoing arguments. According to a book by Frank Allen, the group’s bass player from 1964 on and someone who took McNally’s side in the split and subsequent legal problems, McNally formed a skiffle group, which Mike Pender later joined, and was later joined first by Tony Jackson and then by a drummer then known as Chris Crummey, but who changed his name to the more euphonic Chris Curtis.  According to Pender, he never liked skiffle, never played skiffle, and “if McNally had a skiffle group, it must have been before I met him”. He is very insistent on this point — he liked country music, and later rock and roll, but never liked skiffle. According to him, he and McNally got together and formed a group that was definitely absolutely not in any way a skiffle group and wasn’t led by McNally but was formed by both of them. That group split up, and then Pender became friends with Tony Jackson — and he’s very insistent that he became friends with Jackson during  a period when he didn’t know McNally — and the group reformed around the three of them, when McNally and Pender got back in touch. The origin of the group’s name is similarly disputed. Everyone agrees that it came from the John Wayne film The Searchers — the same film which had inspired the group’s hero Buddy Holly to write “That’ll Be The Day” — but there is disagreement as to whose idea the name was. Pender claims that it was his idea, while McNally says that the name was coined by a singer named “Big Ron”, who sang with the band for a bit before disappearing into obscurity. Big Ron’s replacement was a singer named Billy Beck, who at the time he was with the Searchers used the stage name Johnny Sandon (though he later reverted to his birth name). The group performed as Johnny Sandon and The Searchers for two years, before Sandon quit the group to join the Remo Four, a group that was managed by Brian Epstein. Sandon made some records with the Remo Four in 1963, but they went nowhere, but they’ll give some idea of how Sandon sounded: [Excerpt: Johnny Sandon and the Remo Four, “Lies”] The Remo Four later moved on to back Tommy Quickly, who we heard last week singing a song the Beatles wrote for him. With Sandon out of the picture, the group had no lead singer or frontman, and were in trouble — they were known around Liverpool as Johnny Sandon’s backing group, not as a group in their own right. They started splitting the lead vocals between themselves, but with Tony Jackson taking most of them. And, in a move which made them stand out, Chris Curtis moved his drum kit to the front line, started playing standing up, and became the group’s front-man and second lead singer. Even at this point, though, there seemed to be cracks in the group. The Searchers were the most clean-living of the Liverpool bands — they were all devout Catholics who would go to Mass every Sunday without fail, and seem to have never indulged in most of the vices that pretty much every other rock star indulged in. But Curtis and Jackson were far less so than Pender and McNally — Jackson in particular was a very heavy drinker and known to get very aggressive when drunk, while Curtis was known as eccentric in other ways — he seems to have had some sort of mental illness, though no-one’s ever spoken about a diagnosis — the Beatles apparently referred to him as “Mad Henry”. Curtis and Jackson didn’t get on with each other, and while Jackson started out as a close friend of Pender’s, the two soon drifted apart, and by the time of their first recording sessions they appeared to most people to be a group of three plus one outsider, with Jackson not getting on well with any of the others. There was also a split in the band’s musical tastes, but that would be the split that would drive much of their creativity. Pender and McNally were drawn towards softer music — country and rockabilly, the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly — while Jackson preferred harder, stomping, music. But it was Chris Curtis who took charge of the group’s repertoire, and who was the group’s unofficial leader. While the other band members had fairly mainstream musical tastes, it was Curtis who would seek out obscure R&B B-sides that he thought the group could make their own, by artists like The Clovers and Richie Barrett — while many Liverpool groups played Barrett’s “Some Other Guy”, the Searchers would also play the B-side to that, “Tricky Dicky”, a song written by Leiber and Stoller. Curtis also liked quite a bit of folk music, and would also get the group to perform songs by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary. The result of this combination of material and performers was that the Searchers ended up with a repertoire rooted in R&B, and a heavy rhythm section, but with strong harmony vocals inspired more by the Everlys than by the soul groups that were inspiring the other groups around Liverpool. Other than the Beatles, the Searchers were the best harmony group in Liverpool, and were the only other one to have multiple strong lead vocalists. Like the Beatles, the Searchers went off to play at the Star Club in Hamburg in 1962. Recordings were made of their performances there, and their live version of Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s” later got released as a single after they became successful: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Sweet Nothin’s”] Even as every talent scout in the country seemed to be turning up in Liverpool, and even bands from nearby Manchester were getting signed up in the hope of repeating the Beatles’ success, the Searchers were having no luck getting any attention from the London music industry. In part that was because of one bit of bad luck — the day that Brian Epstein turned up to see them, with the thought of maybe managing them, Tony Jackson was drunk and fell off the stage, and Epstein decided that he was going to give them a miss. As no talent scouts were coming to see them, they decided that they would record a demo session at the Iron Door, the club they regularly played, and send that out to A&R people. That demo session produced a full short album, which shows them at their stompiest and hardest-driving. Most of the Merseybeat bands sounded much more powerful in their earlier live performances than in the studio, and the Searchers were no exception, and it’s interesting to compare the sound of these recordings to the studio ones from only a few months later: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Let’s Stomp”] The group eventually signed to Pye Records. Pye was the third or fourth biggest record label in Britain at the time, but that was a relative matter — EMI and Decca between them had something like eighty-five percent of the market, and basically *were* the record industry in Britain at the time. Pye was chronically underfunded, and when they signed an artist who managed to have any success, they would tend to push that artist to keep producing as many singles as possible, chasing trends, rather than investing in their long-term career survival. That said, they did have some big acts, most notably Petula Clark — indeed the company had been formed from the merger of two other companies, one of which had been formed specifically to issue Clark’s records. Clark was yet to have her big breakthrough hit in the USA, but she’d had several big hits in the UK, including the number one hit “Sailor”: [Excerpt: Petula Clark, “Sailor”] The co-producer on that track had been Tony Hatch, a songwriter and producer who would go on to write and produce almost all of Clark’s hit records. Hatch had a track record of hits — we’ve heard several songs he was involved in over the course of the series. Most recently, we heard last week how “She Loves You” was inspired by “Forget Him”, which Hatch wrote and produced for Bobby Rydell: [Excerpt: Bobby Rydell, “Forget Him”] Hatch heard the group’s demo, and was impressed, and offered to sign them. The Searchers’ manager at the time agreed, on one condition — that Hatch also sign another band he managed, The Undertakers. Astonishingly, Hatch agreed, and so the Undertakers also got a record contract, and released several flop singles produced by Hatch, including this cover version of a Coasters tune: [Excerpt: The Undertakers, “What About Us?”] The biggest mark that the Undertakers would make on music would come many years later, when their lead singer Jackie Lomax would release a solo single, “Sour Milk Sea”, which George Harrison wrote for him. The Searchers, on the other hand, made their mark immediately. The group’s first single was a cover version of a song written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, which had been a top twenty hit in the US for the Drifters a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Sweets For My Sweet”] That had become a regular fixture in the Searchers’ live set, with Tony Jackson singing lead and Chris Curtis singing the high backing vocal part in falsetto. In much the same way that the Beatles had done with “Twist and Shout”, they’d flattened out the original record’s Latin cha-cha-cha rhythm into a more straightforward thumping rocker for their live performances, as you can hear on their original demo version from the Iron Door sessions: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Sweets For My Sweet (live at the Iron Door)”] As you can hear, they’d also misheard a chunk of the lyrics, and so instead of “your tasty kiss”, Jackson sang “Your first sweet kiss”. In the studio, they slowed the song down very slightly, and brought up the harmony vocal from Pender on the choruses, which on the demo he seems to have been singing off-mic. The result was an obvious hit: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Sweets For My Sweet”] That went to number one, helped by an endorsement from John Lennon, who said it was the best record to come out of Liverpool, and launched the Searchers into the very top tier of Liverpool groups, their only real competition being the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers — and though nobody could have known it at the time, the Pacemakers’ career had already peaked at this point.  Their first album, Meet The Searchers, featured “Sweets For My Sweet”, along with a selection of songs that mixed the standard repertoire of every Merseybeat band — “Money”, “Da Doo Ron Ron”, “Twist and Shout”, “Stand By Me”, and the Everly Brothers’ “Since You Broke My Heart”, with more obscure songs like “Ain’t Gonna Kiss Ya”, by the then-unknown P.J. Proby, “Farmer John” by Don and Dewey, which hadn’t yet become a garage-rock standard (and indeed seems to have become so largely because of the Searchers’ version), and a cover of “Love Potion #9”, a song that Leiber and Stoller had written for the Clovers, which was not released as a single in the UK, but later became their biggest hit in the US (and a quick content note for this one — the lyric contains a word for Romani people which many of those people regard as a slur): [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Love Potion #9”] Their second single was an attempt to repeat the “Sweets For My Sweet” formula, and was written by Tony Hatch, although the group didn’t know that at the time. Hatch, like many producers of the time, was used to getting his artists to record his own songs, written under pseudonyms so the record label didn’t necessarily realise this was what he was doing. In this case he brought the group a song that he claimed had been written by one “Fred Nightingale”, and which he thought would be perfect for them. The song in question, “Sugar and Spice”, was a blatant rip-off of “Sweets For My Sweet”, and recorded in a near-identical arrangement: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Sugar and Spice”] The group weren’t keen on the song, and got very angry later on when they realised that Tony Hatch had lied to them about its origins, but the record was almost as big a hit as the first one, peaking at number two on the charts. But it was their third single that was the group’s international breakthrough, and which both established a whole new musical style and caused the first big rift in the group. The song chosen for that third single was one they learned in Hamburg, from Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, a London group who had recorded a few singles with Joe Meek, like “You Got What I Like”: [Excerpt: Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, “You Got What I Like”] The Rebel Rousers had picked up on a record by Jackie DeShannon, a singer-songwriter who had started up a writing partnership with Sharon Sheeley, the writer who had been Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend and in the fatal car crash with him. The record they’d started covering live, though, was not one that DeShannon was the credited songwriter on. “Needles and Pins” was credited to two other writers, both of them associated with Phil Spector.  Sonny Bono was a young songwriter who had written songs at Specialty Records for people like Sam Cooke, Larry Williams, and Don and Dewey, and his most famous song up to this point was “She Said Yeah”, the B-side to Williams’ “Bad Boy”: [Excerpt: Larry Williams, “She Said Yeah”] After working at Specialty, he’d gone on to work as Phil Spector’s assistant, doing most of the hands-on work in the studio while Spector sat in the control room. While working with Spector he’d got to know Jack Nitzsche, who did most of the arrangements for Spector, and who had also had hits on his own like “The Lonely Surfer”: [Excerpt: Jack Nitzsche, “The Lonely Surfer”] Bono and Nitzsche are the credited writers on “Needles and Pins”, but Jackie DeShannon insists that she co-wrote the song with them, but her name was left off the credits. I tend to believe her — both Nitzsche and Bono were, like their boss, abusive misogynist egomaniacs, and it’s easy to see them leaving her name off the credits. Either way, DeShannon recorded the song in early 1963, backed by members of the Wrecking Crew, and it scraped into the lower reaches of the US Hot One Hundred, though it actually made number one in Canada: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, “Needles and Pins”] Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers had been covering that song, and Chris Curtis picked up on it as an obvious hit. The group reshaped the song, and fixed the main flaw with DeShannon’s original.  There’s really only about ninety seconds’ worth of actual song in “Needles and Pins”, and DeShannon’s version ends with a minute or so of vamping — it sounds like it’s still a written lyric, but it’s full of placeholders where entire lines are “whoa-oh”, the kind of thing that someone like Otis Redding could make sound great, but that didn’t really work for her record. The Searchers tightened the song up and altered its dynamics — instead of the middle eight leading to a long freeform section, they started the song with Mike Pender singing solo, and then on the middle eight they added a high harmony from Curtis, then just repeated the first verse and chorus, in the new key of C sharp, with Curtis harmonising this time: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Needles and Pins” (middle eight on)] The addition of the harmony gives the song some much-needed dynamic variation not present in DeShannon’s version, while repeating the original verse after the key change, and adding in Curtis’ high harmony, gives it an obsessive quality. The protagonist here is spiralling – he keeps thinking the same things over and over, at a higher and higher pitch, getting more and more desperate. It’s a simple change, but one that improves the song immensely. Incidentally, one thing I should note here because it’s not something I normally do — in these excerpts of the Searchers’ version of “Needles and Pins”, I’m actually modifying the recording slightly. The mix used for the original single version of the song, which is what I’m excerpting here, is marred by an incredibly squeaky bass pedal on Chris Curtis’ drumkit, which isn’t particularly audible if you’re listening to it on early sixties equipment, which had little dynamic range, but which on modern digital copies of the track overpowers everything else, to the point that the record sounds like that Monty Python sketch where someone plays a tune by hitting mice with hammers. Here’s a couple of seconds of the unmodified track, so you can see what I mean: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Needles and Pins”] Most hits compilations have a stereo mix of the song, and have EQ’d it so that the squeaky bass pedal isn’t noticeable, but I try wherever possible to use the mixes that people were actually listening to at the time, so I’ve compromised and used the mono mix but got rid of the squeaky frequencies, so you can hear the music I’m talking about rather than being distracted by the squeaks. Anyway, leaving the issue of nobody telling Chris Curtis to oil his pedals aside, the change in the structure of the song turned it from something a little baggy and aimless into a tight two-and-a-half minute pop song, but the other major change they made was emphasising the riff, and in doing so they inadvertently invented a whole new genre of music.  The riff in DeShannon’s version is there, but it’s just one element — an acoustic guitar strumming through the chords. It’s a good, simple, play-in-a-day riff — you basically hold a chord down and then move a single finger at a time and you can get that riff — and it’s the backbone of the song, but there’s also a piano, and horns, and the Blossoms singing: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, “Needles and Pins”] But what the Searchers did was to take the riff and play it simultaneously on two electric guitars, and then added reverb. They also played the first part of the song in A, rather than the key of C which DeShannon’s version starts in, which allowed the open strings to ring out more. The result came out sounding like an electric twelve-string, and soon both they and the Beatles would be regularly using twelve-string Rickenbackers to get the same sound: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Needles and Pins”] That record is the root of jangle-pop and folk-rock. That combination of jangling, reverb-heavy, trebly guitars and Everly Brothers inspired harmonies is one that leads directly to the Byrds, Love, Big Star, Tom Petty, REM, the Smiths, and the Bangles, among many others. While the Beatles were overall obviously the more influential group by a long way, “Needles and Pins” has a reasonable claim to be the most influential single track from the Merseybeat era. It went to number one in the UK, and became the group’s breakthrough hit in the US, reaching number sixteen. The follow-up, “Don’t Throw Your Love Away”, a cover of a B-side by the Orlons, again featuring Pender on lead vocals and Curtis on harmonies, also made number one in the UK and the US top twenty, giving them a third number one out of four singles. But the next single, “Someday We’re Gonna Love Again”, a cover of a Barbara Lewis song, only made number eleven, and caused journalists to worry if the Searchers had lost their touch. There was even some talk in the newspapers that Mike Pender might leave the group and start a solo career, which he denied. As it turned out, one of the group’s members was going to leave, but it wasn’t Mike Pender. Tony Jackson had sung lead on the first two singles, and on the majority of the tracks on the first album, and he thus regarded himself as the group’s lead singer. With Pender taking over the lead on the more recent hit singles, Jackson was being edged aside. By the third album, It’s The Searchers, which included “Needles and Pins”, Jackson was the only group member not to get a solo lead vocal — even John McNally got one, while Jackson’s only lead was an Everlys style close harmony with Mike Pender. Everything else was being sung by Pender or Curtis. Jackson was also getting involved in personality conflicts with the other band members — at one point it actually got to the point that he and Pender had a fistfight on stage. Jackson was also not entirely keen on the group’s move towards more melodic material. It’s important to remember that the Searchers had started out as an aggressive, loud, R&B band, and they still often sounded like that on stage — listen for example to their performance of “What’d I Say” at the NME poll-winners’ party in April 1964, with Chris Curtis on lead vocals clearly showing why he had a reputation for eccentricity: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “What’d I Say (live)”] The combination of these musical differences and his feelings about having his place usurped meant that Jackson was increasingly getting annoyed at the other three band members. Eventually he left the group — whether he was fired or quit depends on which version of the story you read — and was replaced by Frank Allen of Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers.  Jackson didn’t take this replacement well, and publicly went round telling people that he had been pushed out of the band so that Curtis could get his boyfriend into the band, and there are some innuendoes to this effect in Mike Pender’s autobiography — although Allen denies that he and Curtis were in a relationship, and says that he doesn’t actually know what Curtis’ sexuality was, because they never discussed that kind of thing, and presumably Allen would know better than anyone else whether he was in a relationship with Curtis.  Curtis is widely described as having been gay or bi by his contemporaries, but if he was he never came out publicly, possibly due to his strong religious views. There’s some suggestion, indeed, that one reason Jackson ended up out of the band was that he blackmailed the band, saying that he would publicly out Curtis if he didn’t get more lead vocals. Whatever the truth, Jackson left the group, and his first solo single, “Bye Bye Baby”, made number thirty-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: Tony Jackson and the Vibrations, “Bye Bye Baby”] However, his later singles had no success — he was soon rerecording “Love Potion Number Nine” in the hope that that would be a UK chart success as it had been in the US: [Excerpt: Tony Jackson and the Vibrations, “Love Potion Number Nine”] Meanwhile, Allen was fitting in well with his new group, and it appeared at first that the group’s run of hits would carry on uninterrupted without Jackson. The first single by the new lineup, “When You Walk In The Room”, was a cover of another Jackie DeShannon song, this time written by DeShannon on her own, and originally released as a B-side: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, “When You Walk In The Room”] The Searchers rearranged that, once again emphasising the riff from DeShannon’s original, and by this time playing it on real twelve-strings, and adding extra compression to them. Their version featured a joint lead vocal by Pender and Allen: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “When You Walk In the Room”] Do you think the Byrds might have heard that? That went to number three on the charts. The next single was less successful, only making number thirteen, but was interesting in other ways — from the start, as well as their R&B covers, Curtis had been adding folk songs to the group’s repertoire, and there’d been one or two covers of songs like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” on their albums, but “What Have They Done to the Rain?” was the first one to become a single.  It was written by Malvina Reynolds, who was a socialist activist who only became a songwriter in her early fifties, and who also wrote “Morningtown Ride” and “Little Boxes”. “What Have They Done to The Rain?” was a song written to oppose nuclear weapons testing, and Curtis had learned it from a Joan Baez album. Even though it wasn’t as big a success as some of their other hits, given how utterly different it was from their normal style, and how controversial the subject was, getting it into the top twenty at all seems quite an achievement. [Excerpt: The Searchers, “What Have They Done To The Rain?”] Their next single, “Goodbye My Love”, was their last top ten hit, and the next few singles only made the top forty, even when the Rolling Stones gave them “Take It Or Leave It”. The other group members started to get annoyed at Curtis, who they thought had lost his touch at picking songs, and whose behaviour had become increasingly erratic. Eventually, on an Australian tour, they took his supply of uppers and downers, which he had been using as much to self-medicate as for enjoyment as far as I can tell, and flushed them down the toilet. When they got back to the UK, Curtis was out of the group. Their first single after Curtis’ departure, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody”, was given to them by the Hollies, who had originally written it as an Everly Brothers album track: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody”] Unfortunately for the Searchers, Chris Curtis had also heard the song, decided it was a likely hit, and had produced a rival version for Paul and Barry Ryan, which got rushed out to compete with it: [Excerpt: Paul and Barry Ryan, “Have You Ever Loved Somebody”] Neither single made the top forty, and the Searchers would never have a hit single again. Nor would Curtis. Curtis only released one solo single, “Aggravation”, a cover of a Joe South song: [Excerpt: Chris Curtis, “Aggravation”] The musicians on that included Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Joe Moretti, but it didn’t chart. Curtis then tried to form a band, which he named Roundabout, based on the concept that musicians could hop on or hop off at any point, with Curtis as the only constant member. The guitarist and keyboard player quickly decided that it would be more convenient for them if Curtis was the one to hop off, and without Curtis Jon Lord and Richie Blackmore went on to form Deep Purple. The Searchers didn’t put out another album for six years after Curtis left. They kept putting out singles on various labels, but nothing came close to charting. Their one album between 1966 and 1979 was a collection of rerecordings of their old hits, in 1972. But then in 1979 Seymour Stein, the owner of Sire Records, a label which was having success with groups like the Ramones, Talking Heads, and the Pretenders, was inspired by the Ramones covering “Needles and Pins” to sign the Searchers to a two-album deal, which produced records that fit perfectly into the late seventies New Wave pop landscape, while still sounding like the Searchers: [Excerpt: The Searchers, “Hearts in Her Eyes”] Apparently during those sessions, Curtis, who had given up music and become a civil servant, would regularly phone the studio threatening to burn it down if he wasn’t involved. Unfortunately, while those albums had some critical success, they did nothing commercially, and Sire dropped them. By 1985, the Searchers were at breaking point. They hadn’t recorded any new material in several years, and Mike Pender and John McNally weren’t getting on at all — which was a particular problem as the two of them were now the only two members based in Liverpool, and so they had to travel to and from gigs together without the other band members — the group were so poor that McNally and Pender had one car between the two of them. One of them would drive them both to the gig, the other would drive back to Liverpool and keep the car until the next gig, when they would swap over again. No-one except them knows what conversations they had on those long drives, but apparently they weren’t amicable. Pender thought of himself as the star of the group, and he particularly resented that he had to split the money from the band three ways (the drummers the group got in after Curtis were always on a salary rather than full partners in the group). Pender decided that he could make more money by touring on his own but still doing essentially the same show, with hired backing musicians. Pender and the other Searchers eventually reached an agreement that he could tour as “Mike Pender’s Searchers”, so long as he made sure that all the promotional material put every word at the same size, while the other members would continue as The Searchers with a new singer. A big chunk of the autobiographies of both Pender and Allen are taken up with the ensuing litigation, as there were suits and countersuits over matters of billing which on the outside look incredibly trivial, but which of course mattered greatly to everyone involved — there were now two groups with near-identical names, playing the same sets, in the same venues, and so any tiny advantage that one had was a threat to the other, to the extent that at one point there was a serious danger of Pender going to prison over their contractual disputes. The group had been earning very little money anyway, comparatively, and there was a real danger that the two groups undercutting each other might lead to everyone going bankrupt. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Pender still tours — or at least has tour dates booked over the course of the next year — and McNally and Allen’s band continued playing regularly until 2019, and only stopped performing because of McNally’s increasing ill health. Having seen both, Pender’s was the better show — McNally and Allen’s lineup of the group relied rather too heavily on a rather cheesy sounding synthesiser for my tastes, while Pender stuck closer to a straight guitar/bass/drums sound — but both kept audiences very happy for decades. Mike Pender was made an MBE in 2020, as a reward for his services to the music industry. Tony Jackson and Chris Curtis both died in the 2000s, and John McNally and Frank Allen are now in well-deserved retirement. While Allen and Pender exchanged pleasantries and handshakes at their former bandmates’ funerals, McNally and Pender wouldn’t even say hello to each other, and even though McNally and Allen’s band has retired, there’s still a prominent notice on their website that they own the name “The Searchers” and nobody else is allowed to use it. But every time you hear a jangly twelve-string electric guitar, you’re hearing a sound that was originally created by Mike Pender and John McNally playing in unison, a sound that proved to be greater than any of its constituent parts.

This week's episode looks at "Needles and Pins", and the story of the second-greatest band to come out of Liverpool in the sixties, The Searchers. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Farmer John" by Don and Dewey. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many recordings by the Searchers.  My two main resources for this episode have been the autobiographies of members of the group -- Frank Allen's The Searchers and Me and Mike Pender's The Search For Myself.  All the Searchers tracks and Tony Jackson or Chris Curtis solo recordings excerpted here, except the live excerpt of "What'd I Say", can be found on this box set, which is out of print as a physical box, but still available digitally. For those who want a good budget alternative, though, this double-CD set contains fifty Searchers tracks, including all their hits, for under three pounds.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Last week we had a look at the biggest group ever to come out of Liverpool, and indeed the biggest group ever to play rock and roll music. But the Beatles weren't the only influential band on the Merseybeat scene, and while we won't have much chance to look at Merseybeat in general, we should at least briefly touch on the other bands from the scene. So today we're going to look at a band who developed a distinctive sound that would go on to be massively influential, even though they're rarely cited as an influence in the way some of their contemporaries are. We're going to look at The Searchers, and "Needles and Pins": [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] The story of the early origins of the Searchers is, like everything about the Searchers, the subject of a great deal of dispute. The two surviving original members of the group, John McNally and Mike Pender, haven't spoken to each other in thirty-six years, and didn't get on for many years before that, and there have been several legal disputes between them over the years. As a result, literally everything about the group's history has become a battlefield in their ongoing arguments. According to a book by Frank Allen, the group's bass player from 1964 on and someone who took McNally's side in the split and subsequent legal problems, McNally formed a skiffle group, which Mike Pender later joined, and was later joined first by Tony Jackson and then by a drummer then known as Chris Crummey, but who changed his name to the more euphonic Chris Curtis.  According to Pender, he never liked skiffle, never played skiffle, and "if McNally had a skiffle group, it must have been before I met him". He is very insistent on this point -- he liked country music, and later rock and roll, but never liked skiffle. According to him, he and McNally got together and formed a group that was definitely absolutely not in any way a skiffle group and wasn't led by McNally but was formed by both of them. That group split up, and then Pender became friends with Tony Jackson -- and he's very insistent that he became friends with Jackson during  a period when he didn't know McNally -- and the group reformed around the three of them, when McNally and Pender got back in touch. The origin of the group's name is similarly disputed. Everyone agrees that it came from the John Wayne film The Searchers -- the same film which had inspired the group's hero Buddy Holly to write "That'll Be The Day" -- but there is disagreement as to whose idea the name was. Pender claims that it was his idea, while McNally says that the name was coined by a singer named "Big Ron", who sang with the band for a bit before disappearing into obscurity. Big Ron's replacement was a singer named Billy Beck, who at the time he was with the Searchers used the stage name Johnny Sandon (though he later reverted to his birth name). The group performed as Johnny Sandon and The Searchers for two years, before Sandon quit the group to join the Remo Four, a group that was managed by Brian Epstein. Sandon made some records with the Remo Four in 1963, but they went nowhere, but they'll give some idea of how Sandon sounded: [Excerpt: Johnny Sandon and the Remo Four, "Lies"] The Remo Four later moved on to back Tommy Quickly, who we heard last week singing a song the Beatles wrote for him. With Sandon out of the picture, the group had no lead singer or frontman, and were in trouble -- they were known around Liverpool as Johnny Sandon's backing group, not as a group in their own right. They started splitting the lead vocals between themselves, but with Tony Jackson taking most of them. And, in a move which made them stand out, Chris Curtis moved his drum kit to the front line, started playing standing up, and became the group's front-man and second lead singer. Even at this point, though, there seemed to be cracks in the group. The Searchers were the most clean-living of the Liverpool bands -- they were all devout Catholics who would go to Mass every Sunday without fail, and seem to have never indulged in most of the vices that pretty much every other rock star indulged in. But Curtis and Jackson were far less so than Pender and McNally -- Jackson in particular was a very heavy drinker and known to get very aggressive when drunk, while Curtis was known as eccentric in other ways -- he seems to have had some sort of mental illness, though no-one's ever spoken about a diagnosis -- the Beatles apparently referred to him as "Mad Henry". Curtis and Jackson didn't get on with each other, and while Jackson started out as a close friend of Pender's, the two soon drifted apart, and by the time of their first recording sessions they appeared to most people to be a group of three plus one outsider, with Jackson not getting on well with any of the others. There was also a split in the band's musical tastes, but that would be the split that would drive much of their creativity. Pender and McNally were drawn towards softer music -- country and rockabilly, the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly -- while Jackson preferred harder, stomping, music. But it was Chris Curtis who took charge of the group's repertoire, and who was the group's unofficial leader. While the other band members had fairly mainstream musical tastes, it was Curtis who would seek out obscure R&B B-sides that he thought the group could make their own, by artists like The Clovers and Richie Barrett -- while many Liverpool groups played Barrett's "Some Other Guy", the Searchers would also play the B-side to that, "Tricky Dicky", a song written by Leiber and Stoller. Curtis also liked quite a bit of folk music, and would also get the group to perform songs by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary. The result of this combination of material and performers was that the Searchers ended up with a repertoire rooted in R&B, and a heavy rhythm section, but with strong harmony vocals inspired more by the Everlys than by the soul groups that were inspiring the other groups around Liverpool. Other than the Beatles, the Searchers were the best harmony group in Liverpool, and were the only other one to have multiple strong lead vocalists. Like the Beatles, the Searchers went off to play at the Star Club in Hamburg in 1962. Recordings were made of their performances there, and their live version of Brenda Lee's "Sweet Nothin's" later got released as a single after they became successful: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Sweet Nothin's"] Even as every talent scout in the country seemed to be turning up in Liverpool, and even bands from nearby Manchester were getting signed up in the hope of repeating the Beatles' success, the Searchers were having no luck getting any attention from the London music industry. In part that was because of one bit of bad luck -- the day that Brian Epstein turned up to see them, with the thought of maybe managing them, Tony Jackson was drunk and fell off the stage, and Epstein decided that he was going to give them a miss. As no talent scouts were coming to see them, they decided that they would record a demo session at the Iron Door, the club they regularly played, and send that out to A&R people. That demo session produced a full short album, which shows them at their stompiest and hardest-driving. Most of the Merseybeat bands sounded much more powerful in their earlier live performances than in the studio, and the Searchers were no exception, and it's interesting to compare the sound of these recordings to the studio ones from only a few months later: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Let's Stomp"] The group eventually signed to Pye Records. Pye was the third or fourth biggest record label in Britain at the time, but that was a relative matter -- EMI and Decca between them had something like eighty-five percent of the market, and basically *were* the record industry in Britain at the time. Pye was chronically underfunded, and when they signed an artist who managed to have any success, they would tend to push that artist to keep producing as many singles as possible, chasing trends, rather than investing in their long-term career survival. That said, they did have some big acts, most notably Petula Clark -- indeed the company had been formed from the merger of two other companies, one of which had been formed specifically to issue Clark's records. Clark was yet to have her big breakthrough hit in the USA, but she'd had several big hits in the UK, including the number one hit "Sailor": [Excerpt: Petula Clark, "Sailor"] The co-producer on that track had been Tony Hatch, a songwriter and producer who would go on to write and produce almost all of Clark's hit records. Hatch had a track record of hits -- we've heard several songs he was involved in over the course of the series. Most recently, we heard last week how "She Loves You" was inspired by "Forget Him", which Hatch wrote and produced for Bobby Rydell: [Excerpt: Bobby Rydell, "Forget Him"] Hatch heard the group's demo, and was impressed, and offered to sign them. The Searchers' manager at the time agreed, on one condition -- that Hatch also sign another band he managed, The Undertakers. Astonishingly, Hatch agreed, and so the Undertakers also got a record contract, and released several flop singles produced by Hatch, including this cover version of a Coasters tune: [Excerpt: The Undertakers, "What About Us?"] The biggest mark that the Undertakers would make on music would come many years later, when their lead singer Jackie Lomax would release a solo single, "Sour Milk Sea", which George Harrison wrote for him. The Searchers, on the other hand, made their mark immediately. The group's first single was a cover version of a song written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, which had been a top twenty hit in the US for the Drifters a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Sweets For My Sweet"] That had become a regular fixture in the Searchers' live set, with Tony Jackson singing lead and Chris Curtis singing the high backing vocal part in falsetto. In much the same way that the Beatles had done with "Twist and Shout", they'd flattened out the original record's Latin cha-cha-cha rhythm into a more straightforward thumping rocker for their live performances, as you can hear on their original demo version from the Iron Door sessions: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Sweets For My Sweet (live at the Iron Door)"] As you can hear, they'd also misheard a chunk of the lyrics, and so instead of "your tasty kiss", Jackson sang "Your first sweet kiss". In the studio, they slowed the song down very slightly, and brought up the harmony vocal from Pender on the choruses, which on the demo he seems to have been singing off-mic. The result was an obvious hit: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Sweets For My Sweet"] That went to number one, helped by an endorsement from John Lennon, who said it was the best record to come out of Liverpool, and launched the Searchers into the very top tier of Liverpool groups, their only real competition being the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers -- and though nobody could have known it at the time, the Pacemakers' career had already peaked at this point.  Their first album, Meet The Searchers, featured "Sweets For My Sweet", along with a selection of songs that mixed the standard repertoire of every Merseybeat band -- "Money", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Twist and Shout", "Stand By Me", and the Everly Brothers' "Since You Broke My Heart", with more obscure songs like "Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya", by the then-unknown P.J. Proby, "Farmer John" by Don and Dewey, which hadn't yet become a garage-rock standard (and indeed seems to have become so largely because of the Searchers' version), and a cover of "Love Potion #9", a song that Leiber and Stoller had written for the Clovers, which was not released as a single in the UK, but later became their biggest hit in the US (and a quick content note for this one -- the lyric contains a word for Romani people which many of those people regard as a slur): [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Love Potion #9"] Their second single was an attempt to repeat the "Sweets For My Sweet" formula, and was written by Tony Hatch, although the group didn't know that at the time. Hatch, like many producers of the time, was used to getting his artists to record his own songs, written under pseudonyms so the record label didn't necessarily realise this was what he was doing. In this case he brought the group a song that he claimed had been written by one "Fred Nightingale", and which he thought would be perfect for them. The song in question, "Sugar and Spice", was a blatant rip-off of "Sweets For My Sweet", and recorded in a near-identical arrangement: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Sugar and Spice"] The group weren't keen on the song, and got very angry later on when they realised that Tony Hatch had lied to them about its origins, but the record was almost as big a hit as the first one, peaking at number two on the charts. But it was their third single that was the group's international breakthrough, and which both established a whole new musical style and caused the first big rift in the group. The song chosen for that third single was one they learned in Hamburg, from Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, a London group who had recorded a few singles with Joe Meek, like "You Got What I Like": [Excerpt: Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, "You Got What I Like"] The Rebel Rousers had picked up on a record by Jackie DeShannon, a singer-songwriter who had started up a writing partnership with Sharon Sheeley, the writer who had been Eddie Cochran's girlfriend and in the fatal car crash with him. The record they'd started covering live, though, was not one that DeShannon was the credited songwriter on. "Needles and Pins" was credited to two other writers, both of them associated with Phil Spector.  Sonny Bono was a young songwriter who had written songs at Specialty Records for people like Sam Cooke, Larry Williams, and Don and Dewey, and his most famous song up to this point was "She Said Yeah", the B-side to Williams' "Bad Boy": [Excerpt: Larry Williams, "She Said Yeah"] After working at Specialty, he'd gone on to work as Phil Spector's assistant, doing most of the hands-on work in the studio while Spector sat in the control room. While working with Spector he'd got to know Jack Nitzsche, who did most of the arrangements for Spector, and who had also had hits on his own like "The Lonely Surfer": [Excerpt: Jack Nitzsche, "The Lonely Surfer"] Bono and Nitzsche are the credited writers on "Needles and Pins", but Jackie DeShannon insists that she co-wrote the song with them, but her name was left off the credits. I tend to believe her -- both Nitzsche and Bono were, like their boss, abusive misogynist egomaniacs, and it's easy to see them leaving her name off the credits. Either way, DeShannon recorded the song in early 1963, backed by members of the Wrecking Crew, and it scraped into the lower reaches of the US Hot One Hundred, though it actually made number one in Canada: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "Needles and Pins"] Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers had been covering that song, and Chris Curtis picked up on it as an obvious hit. The group reshaped the song, and fixed the main flaw with DeShannon's original.  There's really only about ninety seconds' worth of actual song in "Needles and Pins", and DeShannon's version ends with a minute or so of vamping -- it sounds like it's still a written lyric, but it's full of placeholders where entire lines are "whoa-oh", the kind of thing that someone like Otis Redding could make sound great, but that didn't really work for her record. The Searchers tightened the song up and altered its dynamics -- instead of the middle eight leading to a long freeform section, they started the song with Mike Pender singing solo, and then on the middle eight they added a high harmony from Curtis, then just repeated the first verse and chorus, in the new key of C sharp, with Curtis harmonising this time: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins" (middle eight on)] The addition of the harmony gives the song some much-needed dynamic variation not present in DeShannon's version, while repeating the original verse after the key change, and adding in Curtis' high harmony, gives it an obsessive quality. The protagonist here is spiralling – he keeps thinking the same things over and over, at a higher and higher pitch, getting more and more desperate. It's a simple change, but one that improves the song immensely. Incidentally, one thing I should note here because it's not something I normally do -- in these excerpts of the Searchers' version of "Needles and Pins", I'm actually modifying the recording slightly. The mix used for the original single version of the song, which is what I'm excerpting here, is marred by an incredibly squeaky bass pedal on Chris Curtis' drumkit, which isn't particularly audible if you're listening to it on early sixties equipment, which had little dynamic range, but which on modern digital copies of the track overpowers everything else, to the point that the record sounds like that Monty Python sketch where someone plays a tune by hitting mice with hammers. Here's a couple of seconds of the unmodified track, so you can see what I mean: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] Most hits compilations have a stereo mix of the song, and have EQ'd it so that the squeaky bass pedal isn't noticeable, but I try wherever possible to use the mixes that people were actually listening to at the time, so I've compromised and used the mono mix but got rid of the squeaky frequencies, so you can hear the music I'm talking about rather than being distracted by the squeaks. Anyway, leaving the issue of nobody telling Chris Curtis to oil his pedals aside, the change in the structure of the song turned it from something a little baggy and aimless into a tight two-and-a-half minute pop song, but the other major change they made was emphasising the riff, and in doing so they inadvertently invented a whole new genre of music.  The riff in DeShannon's version is there, but it's just one element -- an acoustic guitar strumming through the chords. It's a good, simple, play-in-a-day riff -- you basically hold a chord down and then move a single finger at a time and you can get that riff -- and it's the backbone of the song, but there's also a piano, and horns, and the Blossoms singing: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "Needles and Pins"] But what the Searchers did was to take the riff and play it simultaneously on two electric guitars, and then added reverb. They also played the first part of the song in A, rather than the key of C which DeShannon's version starts in, which allowed the open strings to ring out more. The result came out sounding like an electric twelve-string, and soon both they and the Beatles would be regularly using twelve-string Rickenbackers to get the same sound: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] That record is the root of jangle-pop and folk-rock. That combination of jangling, reverb-heavy, trebly guitars and Everly Brothers inspired harmonies is one that leads directly to the Byrds, Love, Big Star, Tom Petty, REM, the Smiths, and the Bangles, among many others. While the Beatles were overall obviously the more influential group by a long way, "Needles and Pins" has a reasonable claim to be the most influential single track from the Merseybeat era. It went to number one in the UK, and became the group's breakthrough hit in the US, reaching number sixteen. The follow-up, "Don't Throw Your Love Away", a cover of a B-side by the Orlons, again featuring Pender on lead vocals and Curtis on harmonies, also made number one in the UK and the US top twenty, giving them a third number one out of four singles. But the next single, "Someday We're Gonna Love Again", a cover of a Barbara Lewis song, only made number eleven, and caused journalists to worry if the Searchers had lost their touch. There was even some talk in the newspapers that Mike Pender might leave the group and start a solo career, which he denied. As it turned out, one of the group's members was going to leave, but it wasn't Mike Pender. Tony Jackson had sung lead on the first two singles, and on the majority of the tracks on the first album, and he thus regarded himself as the group's lead singer. With Pender taking over the lead on the more recent hit singles, Jackson was being edged aside. By the third album, It's The Searchers, which included "Needles and Pins", Jackson was the only group member not to get a solo lead vocal -- even John McNally got one, while Jackson's only lead was an Everlys style close harmony with Mike Pender. Everything else was being sung by Pender or Curtis. Jackson was also getting involved in personality conflicts with the other band members -- at one point it actually got to the point that he and Pender had a fistfight on stage. Jackson was also not entirely keen on the group's move towards more melodic material. It's important to remember that the Searchers had started out as an aggressive, loud, R&B band, and they still often sounded like that on stage -- listen for example to their performance of "What'd I Say" at the NME poll-winners' party in April 1964, with Chris Curtis on lead vocals clearly showing why he had a reputation for eccentricity: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "What'd I Say (live)"] The combination of these musical differences and his feelings about having his place usurped meant that Jackson was increasingly getting annoyed at the other three band members. Eventually he left the group -- whether he was fired or quit depends on which version of the story you read -- and was replaced by Frank Allen of Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers.  Jackson didn't take this replacement well, and publicly went round telling people that he had been pushed out of the band so that Curtis could get his boyfriend into the band, and there are some innuendoes to this effect in Mike Pender's autobiography -- although Allen denies that he and Curtis were in a relationship, and says that he doesn't actually know what Curtis' sexuality was, because they never discussed that kind of thing, and presumably Allen would know better than anyone else whether he was in a relationship with Curtis.  Curtis is widely described as having been gay or bi by his contemporaries, but if he was he never came out publicly, possibly due to his strong religious views. There's some suggestion, indeed, that one reason Jackson ended up out of the band was that he blackmailed the band, saying that he would publicly out Curtis if he didn't get more lead vocals. Whatever the truth, Jackson left the group, and his first solo single, "Bye Bye Baby", made number thirty-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: Tony Jackson and the Vibrations, "Bye Bye Baby"] However, his later singles had no success -- he was soon rerecording "Love Potion Number Nine" in the hope that that would be a UK chart success as it had been in the US: [Excerpt: Tony Jackson and the Vibrations, "Love Potion Number Nine"] Meanwhile, Allen was fitting in well with his new group, and it appeared at first that the group's run of hits would carry on uninterrupted without Jackson. The first single by the new lineup, "When You Walk In The Room", was a cover of another Jackie DeShannon song, this time written by DeShannon on her own, and originally released as a B-side: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "When You Walk In The Room"] The Searchers rearranged that, once again emphasising the riff from DeShannon's original, and by this time playing it on real twelve-strings, and adding extra compression to them. Their version featured a joint lead vocal by Pender and Allen: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "When You Walk In the Room"] Do you think the Byrds might have heard that? That went to number three on the charts. The next single was less successful, only making number thirteen, but was interesting in other ways -- from the start, as well as their R&B covers, Curtis had been adding folk songs to the group's repertoire, and there'd been one or two covers of songs like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" on their albums, but "What Have They Done to the Rain?" was the first one to become a single.  It was written by Malvina Reynolds, who was a socialist activist who only became a songwriter in her early fifties, and who also wrote "Morningtown Ride" and "Little Boxes". "What Have They Done to The Rain?" was a song written to oppose nuclear weapons testing, and Curtis had learned it from a Joan Baez album. Even though it wasn't as big a success as some of their other hits, given how utterly different it was from their normal style, and how controversial the subject was, getting it into the top twenty at all seems quite an achievement. [Excerpt: The Searchers, “What Have They Done To The Rain?”] Their next single, "Goodbye My Love", was their last top ten hit, and the next few singles only made the top forty, even when the Rolling Stones gave them "Take It Or Leave It". The other group members started to get annoyed at Curtis, who they thought had lost his touch at picking songs, and whose behaviour had become increasingly erratic. Eventually, on an Australian tour, they took his supply of uppers and downers, which he had been using as much to self-medicate as for enjoyment as far as I can tell, and flushed them down the toilet. When they got back to the UK, Curtis was out of the group. Their first single after Curtis' departure, "Have You Ever Loved Somebody", was given to them by the Hollies, who had originally written it as an Everly Brothers album track: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Have You Ever Loved Somebody"] Unfortunately for the Searchers, Chris Curtis had also heard the song, decided it was a likely hit, and had produced a rival version for Paul and Barry Ryan, which got rushed out to compete with it: [Excerpt: Paul and Barry Ryan, "Have You Ever Loved Somebody"] Neither single made the top forty, and the Searchers would never have a hit single again. Nor would Curtis. Curtis only released one solo single, "Aggravation", a cover of a Joe South song: [Excerpt: Chris Curtis, "Aggravation"] The musicians on that included Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and Joe Moretti, but it didn't chart. Curtis then tried to form a band, which he named Roundabout, based on the concept that musicians could hop on or hop off at any point, with Curtis as the only constant member. The guitarist and keyboard player quickly decided that it would be more convenient for them if Curtis was the one to hop off, and without Curtis Jon Lord and Richie Blackmore went on to form Deep Purple. The Searchers didn't put out another album for six years after Curtis left. They kept putting out singles on various labels, but nothing came close to charting. Their one album between 1966 and 1979 was a collection of rerecordings of their old hits, in 1972. But then in 1979 Seymour Stein, the owner of Sire Records, a label which was having success with groups like the Ramones, Talking Heads, and the Pretenders, was inspired by the Ramones covering "Needles and Pins" to sign the Searchers to a two-album deal, which produced records that fit perfectly into the late seventies New Wave pop landscape, while still sounding like the Searchers: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Hearts in Her Eyes"] Apparently during those sessions, Curtis, who had given up music and become a civil servant, would regularly phone the studio threatening to burn it down if he wasn't involved. Unfortunately, while those albums had some critical success, they did nothing commercially, and Sire dropped them. By 1985, the Searchers were at breaking point. They hadn't recorded any new material in several years, and Mike Pender and John McNally weren't getting on at all -- which was a particular problem as the two of them were now the only two members based in Liverpool, and so they had to travel to and from gigs together without the other band members -- the group were so poor that McNally and Pender had one car between the two of them. One of them would drive them both to the gig, the other would drive back to Liverpool and keep the car until the next gig, when they would swap over again. No-one except them knows what conversations they had on those long drives, but apparently they weren't amicable. Pender thought of himself as the star of the group, and he particularly resented that he had to split the money from the band three ways (the drummers the group got in after Curtis were always on a salary rather than full partners in the group). Pender decided that he could make more money by touring on his own but still doing essentially the same show, with hired backing musicians. Pender and the other Searchers eventually reached an agreement that he could tour as "Mike Pender's Searchers", so long as he made sure that all the promotional material put every word at the same size, while the other members would continue as The Searchers with a new singer. A big chunk of the autobiographies of both Pender and Allen are taken up with the ensuing litigation, as there were suits and countersuits over matters of billing which on the outside look incredibly trivial, but which of course mattered greatly to everyone involved -- there were now two groups with near-identical names, playing the same sets, in the same venues, and so any tiny advantage that one had was a threat to the other, to the extent that at one point there was a serious danger of Pender going to prison over their contractual disputes. The group had been earning very little money anyway, comparatively, and there was a real danger that the two groups undercutting each other might lead to everyone going bankrupt. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Pender still tours -- or at least has tour dates booked over the course of the next year -- and McNally and Allen's band continued playing regularly until 2019, and only stopped performing because of McNally's increasing ill health. Having seen both, Pender's was the better show -- McNally and Allen's lineup of the group relied rather too heavily on a rather cheesy sounding synthesiser for my tastes, while Pender stuck closer to a straight guitar/bass/drums sound -- but both kept audiences very happy for decades. Mike Pender was made an MBE in 2020, as a reward for his services to the music industry. Tony Jackson and Chris Curtis both died in the 2000s, and John McNally and Frank Allen are now in well-deserved retirement. While Allen and Pender exchanged pleasantries and handshakes at their former bandmates' funerals, McNally and Pender wouldn't even say hello to each other, and even though McNally and Allen's band has retired, there's still a prominent notice on their website that they own the name "The Searchers" and nobody else is allowed to use it. But every time you hear a jangly twelve-string electric guitar, you're hearing a sound that was originally created by Mike Pender and John McNally playing in unison, a sound that proved to be greater than any of its constituent parts.

Tá an comhlacht loingseoireachta Stena Line ag cur an dara seirbhís farantóireachta ar fáil inniu idir an tír seo agus an Fhrainc ionas nach mbeidh ar leoraithe a dhul chun na Breataine.

Shane Adamczak is a writer and performer who regularly can be found on the world's Fringe circuit. Based in the West of Australia, they're founding a member of Weeping Spoon an Independent Theatre Company who have worked with Greg Fleet in show he wrote called 'This Is Not a Love Song', as well developing their own creative scripts in to performances - to name just one - the popular 'The Ballad of Frank Allen'. Returning for an anniversary tour of their Zack Adams' character at Tuxedo Cat Shane spoke to radionotes inside the Adelaide Botanical Gardens for this extended chat. Show Notes: https://radionotespodcast.com/episodes/shane-adamczak/

We have not one but two awesome people on with us tonight - Frank Allen and Bill Fairchild! And in this volume Bill steps up and takes his shot! Bill wanted to know what movies we LOVED as a kid that just don't make it today. Movies like The Punisher and Masters of the Universe come up, but Phil was personally hurt by Flight of the Navigator. As we do the hope and loving side come out and we confirm some older movies that absolutely hold up. Perhaps sometimes you just need to watch through the vision of your memories to find what you first loved and sometimes things just don't hold up. Make sure to check your pod-catcher for the other three volumes to hear the topics of discussion. The show is recorded Wednesday nights on twitch.tv/gstumedia at 8 pm eastern. Email us BTP@giantsizeteamup.com Guest: Frank Allen & Bill Fairchild Support us Patreon.com/breakingthepanel The Humble Hit – Incall collection Humble Choice - http://tiny.cc/btpchoice Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

We have not one but two awesome people on with us tonight - Frank Allen and Bill Fairchild! And in this volume Bill steps up and takes his shot! Bill wanted to know what movies we LOVED as a kid that just don't make it today. Movies like The Punisher and Masters of the Universe come up, but Phil was personally hurt by Flight of the Navigator. As we do the hope and loving side come out and we confirm some older movies that absolutely hold up. Perhaps sometimes you just need to watch through the vision of your memories to find what you first loved and sometimes things just don't hold up. Make sure to check your pod-catcher for the other three volumes to hear the topics of discussion. The show is recorded Wednesday nights on twitch.tv/gstumedia at 8 pm eastern. Email us BTP@giantsizeteamup.com Guest: Frank Allen & Bill Fairchild Support us Patreon.com/breakingthepanel The Humble Hit – Incall collection Humble Choice - http://tiny.cc/btpchoice Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

We have not one but two awesome people on with us tonight - Frank Allen and Bill Fairchild! They both bring excellent topics to the table but we like to warm things up with one of our own so Phil starts us off by asking "What's Cookin' Good Lookin'?” He brings up some of his favorite dishes to make, there is a lot of curry talk, we get responses from our social media, and then we get weird. Yeah, I said it - somebody likes eating cold chef Boyardee ravioli and some people like eating uncooked Ramen noodles. WHAT IS THAT?!?!? Anyway, lots for great stories and moments but there is always room for yours. Make sure to check your pod-catcher for the other three volumes to hear the topics of discussion. The show is recorded Wednesday nights on twitch.tv/gstumedia at 8 pm eastern. Email us BTP@giantsizeteamup.com Guest: Frank Allen & Bill Fairchild Support us Patreon.com/breakingthepanel The Humble Hit – Incall collection Humble Choice - http://tiny.cc/btpchoice Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

We have not one but two awesome people on with us tonight - Frank Allen and Bill Fairchild! They both bring excellent topics to the table but we like to warm things up with one of our own so Phil starts us off by asking "What's Cookin' Good Lookin'?” He brings up some of his favorite dishes to make, there is a lot of curry talk, we get responses from our social media, and then we get weird. Yeah, I said it - somebody likes eating cold chef Boyardee ravioli and some people like eating uncooked Ramen noodles. WHAT IS THAT?!?!? Anyway, lots for great stories and moments but there is always room for yours. Make sure to check your pod-catcher for the other three volumes to hear the topics of discussion. The show is recorded Wednesday nights on twitch.tv/gstumedia at 8 pm eastern. Email us BTP@giantsizeteamup.com Guest: Frank Allen & Bill Fairchild Support us Patreon.com/breakingthepanel The Humble Hit – Incall collection Humble Choice - http://tiny.cc/btpchoice Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

Podcast Episode

Host:  Jim Shoemaker  Guests:  Kurt Czarnowski, Frank Allen and Scott Jordan

In 1859, prostitute Julia Bulette was beloved by the town of Virginia City Nevada. She was a charitable woman who donated money to the firefighters for new equipment and supplies and also worked as a seamstress. But on January 20th, 1867, Julia would be brutally murdered leaving the town in mourning and begging the question: Who would kill this folk town hero? In 1990, Frank Allen would begin the process of selling his dream retirement home in Henderson, Nevada, to the Smith Family. When he arrived home in the early hours of October 6th to pick up some money from the Smith family patriarch Joe, Frank would be viciously attacked forcing him to jump out of a window and flee. What the police discovered when they arrived were the bodies of Judith Smith and her two daughters Kristy and Wendy. What took place that night? Who attacked Frank? Only Joe Smith would have those answers. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Tina Zhang was born in China and lived in a home on the grounds of the Imperial Palace. She studied martial arts in school, and continued her studies in the United States after moving here as a student. In this interview, Tina talks with Ken Gullette about the internal arts and her thirst for learning, which led her to shoot, edit and write a great documentary, "Tai Chi Club," which is available for streaming on Prime Video. It is the story of Frank Allen's Wutang Physical Culture Association on the Lower East Side of New York City, and the story of Tina's journey. Tina teaches qigong, Northern Wu style Tai Chi Chuan and Cheng style Baguazhang. She is a disciple of Northern Wu style Grandmaster Li Bing Ci and Cheng style Baguazhang Grandmaster Liu Jing Ru.

Frank Allen is a disciple of Chent Style Baguazhang Grandmaster Liu Jingru and also a disciple of Northern Wu Style Taijiquan Grandmaster Li Bing Ci. Frank began studying martial arts in 1973 and is celebrating the 41st anniversary of his school on the lower east side of New York City, the Wu Tang Physical Culture Association. His website is www.wutangpca.com. He has written books with Tina Zhang, including "The Whirling Circles of Ba Gua Zhang" and "Classical Northern Wu Style Taijiquan." In this interview Frank talks about the early days of training in New York City, what it is like to study with Liu Jingru, and he gives a history lesson on the development of Taijiquan. Frank has also studied with B.P. Chan, Bruce Frantzis and others, and he provides colorful stories about them in this interview. Frank Allen, like most of Ken's guests, is truly dedicated to the internal martial arts.

This week Frank takes a new angle on being a neighbor by tackling one of our cultures' biggest barriers to the community: hurry! Give it a listen at your leisure!

Today, Pastor Frank shared about the barriers that we face when it comes to loving our neighbors!

Frank continues to share his heart on vision with a message about healing and spiritual blindness.

This week, pastor Frank shares a frank reminder about loving our neighbors

In this episode, Frank announces his proposal to construct a youth center in the Park Meadows Safeway building. Feat. A word from Pat Robinson

December 24, 2019 | Frank Allen |(Season 2, Ep. 17) by Weekly Sermon Podcast From The Lethbridge Christian Tabernacle

January 5, 2020 | Frank Allen |(Season 2, Ep. 18) by Weekly Sermon Podcast From The Lethbridge Christian Tabernacle

Welcome Panelteers, we’re Breaking the Panel! Happy Christmas to you all! This is our last official show of 2019 and we wanted to do what we do best - share the love we have for fandom. This episode covers what either was released this year or (and sometimes better yet) what we just discovered this year. These are our favorite things and we would love to hear yours. Frank Allen from Toy Power sent us his in time for the edit, but if you get inspired go to giantsizeteamup.com/breakingthepanel and leave us a voice message. Movies TV Music Games Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom Breaking the Panel is brought to you by the Giant Size Team Up Network --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

Welcome Panelteers, we’re Breaking the Panel! Happy Christmas to you all! This is our last official show of 2019 and we wanted to do what we do best - share the love we have for fandom. This episode covers what either was released this year or (and sometimes better yet) what we just discovered this year. These are our favorite things and we would love to hear yours. Frank Allen from Toy Power sent us his in time for the edit, but if you get inspired go to giantsizeteamup.com/breakingthepanel and leave us a voice message. Movies TV Music Games Hosts: Charles McFall, Paul Klotz, Phil Keating, Chris Wisdom Breaking the Panel is brought to you by the Giant Size Team Up Network --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingthepanel/support

Today, Frank talked about patience as a fruit of the Spirit, and how it ties back to love.

This week, Frank talks Faith! Take a listen to hear what he had to say!

Frank Allen joins us to talk about blessing as a part of the way of love. Even though we may not feel like we have as many gifts to offer as others might, we are still called to bless all those we come in contact with.