Corbyn, Tchaikovsky and Hello Sailor

I wish I still had my poster of Hello Sailor in, I think, 1975 or 1976, playing a benefit for Gay Lib in Auckland University’s cafeteria. It was a great gig: the poster featured a louche young gentleman in a lounge chair wearing a dressing gown and wielding a cigarette holder, beneath the legend “Relax With a Fag”. This behaviour was illegal in New Zealand then and for another 10 years until, thanks to Labour MP Fran Wildse advocacy, 1986’s Homosexual Reform Act. It is because of things like this that those of us who despair of today’s party wish Labour well but…

From the Economist’s Bagehot column of 2 January on England’s Labour Party:

Mr Corbyn’s leadership should force his moderate MPs to take on a reality that even Mr Blair ducked: Labour has always been two parties, one social democratic and the other anti-capitalist. Over the years it has muddled through, as concessions, feints and tactical battles have postponed a decisive confrontation. No longer: as Mr Corbyn bears down on the moderates, they will have to decide whether to push back, concede the party to him or quit—en masse, not in a dribble, as did their predecessors in 1981 when Labour last swung left—and form a new party.

Yes. One wishes Labour well, but…

Above we see, via Composers Doing Normal Shit, the composer Peter Tchaikovsky relaxing with a fag. I wonder if, by any chance, he could be related to Jeremy Corbyn, below:

So here are Hello Sailor at the Whiskey A Go Go in c1979 with “Blue Lady”. I had no idea this was on YouTube until reading pp 175-6 of Dave McArtney’s memoir Gutter Black. The band sound pretty much as they did at the Globe Tavern in Auckland the year before, i.e. awesome: