Off-topic on a Wednesday? You betcha.

When Sideburn goes to a show with a booth the first rule is to entertain ourselves, and the best way is to have a great soundtrack. Luckily we have friends with incredible taste in music that are often happy to come to a launch or a bike show and hang out. Dave Taylor, Katie B, Johnny Alpha and jack of all trades, Dave Skooter Farm all man the decks from time to time.

I know Dave Skooter Farm's show selection records back to front and this one by The Easybeats stuck in my mind after our recent outing to the Revival Show in Rotherham. I always thought The Easybeats were one of the Liverpool explosion, but they are cited as being the 'greatest pop band to hail from Australia' (talk about damning with faint praise...).

The band formed in 1964 and had some great hits, including Friday On My Mind, and were all first generation immigrants. Three of the band were born in the UK, the other two were born in the Netherlands.

Enjoy lead singer Stevie Wright's chimp-like posturing, while not entirely mastering miming, and the chainsaw strum of the twin Gretsches while the studio dancers frug wildly. Yeah! G

Tommy Rockwood styling on a BSA Gold Star in a Sonicweld chassis.
Apparently he set an Ascot Park lap record on this bike. No rear brake, so pre-1970.
Photographer unknown, but almost definitely Mahony. G

I was really lucky when I turned 16, because I coerced my mum into getting me what I reckoned was the best moped of the lot, a Fantic Caballero. She wasn't best pleased when my O level results came through a while later, though.

Kirk Gee in LA has previous with this blog, usually involving sending us links to barmy videos. His taste for the odd is impeccable and he never disappoints. Here's a recent exchange between Kirk and GI.

It's been a heavy week in flat track world, so let the teenage France Gall sing you one of my all-=ime top ten 7in singles, and, hopefully, lighten the mood. This song was written by Serge Gainsbourg and Anglicised and covered by April March, and featured in Quentin Tarantino's otherwise strangely forgettable Deathproof.
The original title translates as Don't chase the girls.
Enjoy. G

The Big Bear Motorcycle Run was first held in the 1920s and involved a 100-mile ride that started with a 50-mile loop in the Mojave Desert and ended at Big Bear lake, 5000ft up in the mountains.

These shots, from the Life archives, where you can see lots more, were shot by Ralph Crane in 1961. That year, when around 1000 riders lined up, saw a series of cock-ups, beginning with a pre-meditated jump-start from one club, that rendered the results void. That, as far as I know, was the last of the classic Big Bear runs as the ever-growing entry prompted the authorities to shut it down.

Read more about the Big Bear, and other classic US desert races in issue 18 of Sideburn. MP

EDIT: As I finished writing this, I realised that issue 18 has sold out, which just emphasises why you need to get hold of your copies of Sideburn as soon as possible. Leave it and you'll miss out. However, eBay is your friend.

Oh, yea, off-topic Sunday! There are few things I like more than some well mashed potatoes (and there are few thing more disappointing than a dollop of bad mash in a good restaurant), so I was intrigued to find what Dee Dee Sharp had to say on the subject.
Unfortunately, I didn't catch a word of Ms Sharp's lecture, because I was completely mesmerised, hypnotised, perhaps even emulsified by those backing dancers. Enjoy! G

Off-topic Sunday time, because this is just too bonkers not to share.

During some research for a book I'm writing the word 'ekranoplan' came up. It's the Russian for ground force and was mentioned in reference to the radical aircraft, the KM, of 1966. This enormous mutant aircraft was designed to be too heavy to fly conventionally, but could carry huge loads, much bigger than conventional cargo planes of the day, because it used the pressure of ground force to keep it above the surface of the sea. It was the world's largest plane for it's whole lifespan, and only bettered by the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, an enormous, but regular aircraft that first flew in 1988.

US spy planes spotted it being tested on the Caspian Sea and gave it the nickname, Caspian Sea Monster. It wasn't the only Soviet ekranoplan, but it is the most incredible. Later iterations showed it laden with, and using, top-mounted missile launchers. It seems the monster crashed due to pilot error in 1980 and sunk without chance of retrieval. More recently Boeing were toying with GEV, ground effect vehicles, with the Pelican ULTRA, a not to distant relative of the KM, that never progressed beyond the drawing board. G

DJ Dave Taylor, who will be spinning rare grooves at Dirt Quake this weekend, sent this beauty through to get me even more in the mood for this weekend's party.
There were some incredible Hammond groovers coming out of Britain in the late-60s, but this one, played by Auger, clearly a cross between Marty Feldman and Malcolm Allison takes the cake.
Start practising your choreographed dance moves NOW! G

'She's terrific, she's cute, she's talented and she's also my daughter...'
Famous drummer Buddy Rich introduces his 12-year-old offspring to sing a big favourite of mine. I think I originally heard the All Seeing I version of this, but regular Sideburn event DJ Dave Taylor clued me up on this video.
The visual quality is poor, the lyrics are gobbledook, but it's well worth four minutes of your time.

Don't worry, motorbikes tomorrow. G

Great footage of scrambling and indoor short track from 1960s Canada. Watch the wild lines and berm riding on the indoors.
Thanks to Norm for the link. G

In a way, I can't believe I haven't seen this before, but then, I'm a busy man, and there are over one billion videos on YouTube, with over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, so it's hardly surprising.

I've picked this less than three-a-half minute clip to share because it is so heavy in significance that it blows my tiny mindholes. When filmed it was just over 21 years since Hitler shot himself in a Berlin bunker. American GIs and British Forces are stationed in Germany. Five of those US soldiers form a band called The Monks and make it big enough to appear on German TV, but don't make much of a blip elsewhere at the time. This clip is so clear and good quality that it looks like a modern recording trying to pass itself off as old, but it's totally legit. The host is like something out of a Coen Brothers film.

Look at the bright young things in the audience, late-teens most of them, born into a wrecked country, but not born into the hateful totalitarianism of the Third Reich. Would a band like The Monks have made it onto TV in mainland Europe if the Germans had won? Would they hell. Because it was filmed in Germany, watching this reminds me we only just got away with it.

The Monks, still serving soldiers at the time, made this avant-garde punk slop with strained vocals and strange time signatures leaving few clues where their influences came from. And they shaved the centre of their heads to look like, yes, monks. They'd go on to become cult heroes. The best description I've ever heard of them was by Denver Dan, one of the founders of Sideburn supporters, The Speed Merchant. He called them The Anti-Beatles.

I love The Monks. If you think you do too, buy the LP Black Monk Time. G

Dug this out when going through a load of stuff recently. It was sent to me more than ten years ago by an old mate who lives in France, who'd spotted it on a market stall (he has a keen eye for sweating boy scouts grappling with unruly thumpers). Strangely enough, there's no Tintin strip in the mag, from July 1964. I think it ran for years, having spotted this site. Lovely artwork by Mittéï. MP

Caroll Resweber won his first AMA Grand National championship in 1958, aged 22. The Texan went on to win four in a row, a record that stood until Scott Parker won his fifth on the trot in 1998. And between 1957 and 1961, Resweber won half of the 30 National championship races. He died back in May this year, but his place in flat track history has long been assured. MP

We've featured artists and photographers since the very early days of Sideburn, but since issue 20 we've introduced regular portfolios of artists and photographers who influence us, or have worked with us or both.

Sideburn 20 Dimitri Coste (photos)
Sideburn 21 Vince Perraud (photos)
Sideburn 22 Emroca (art)

And for issue 23 we have UK artist, Raid71. One of his pieces we chose to feature is Jane Fonda as Barbarella.
See more of his great work in Sideburn 23 out now. G

As if The Seeds weren't weird enough, here they are appearing as The Warts in American sitcom, The Mothers-In-Law, in an episode first broadcast in April 1968. Sky Saxon in your living room? Pass the microdots. Such misplaced rampant psychedelia reminds me of the first time I tackled magic mushrooms, eating as I picked straight from the field. Thinking they'd had no effect, I went home for my tea with mum and dad. It was only when the newsreader's tie started strobing and the orange flowers on the wallpaper began streaming up and down in rows that I realised it was going to be a trying time around the table. I struggled to make any sense at all of chops and mash. MP

A pleasing dose of nostalgia as spotted on the Britbike forum. The pics are from the collection of the late Joe Ward, who from 1959-'64 was a field rep for the West Coast BSA importer, Hap Alzina, based in Oakland, California. They were posted by Joe's nephew and you can see more here. What's that frame on the A10 TT bike? MP

Denny and Larry styling.

What's Dirt Quake, you ask? Oh, please. MP