I am fortunate enough to be able to state that the first live music concert I attended was the midnight double bill of Frank Sinatra and The Count Basie Orchestra at London’s Royal Festival Hall in May 1970.

//The headliners at the RFH, May 1970. Photo: Getty//

//At The RFH, May 1970. Photo: Getty//

I was 10 years old. My resourceful mother wangled tickets for the entire family, with one of my sisters selling programmes. That gained her access to the artists’ area; she gave me the backstage pass which I duly placed in the school project autobiography I wrote the following year.

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Tags: Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, I Got You Under My Skin, Live At The Sands, Royal Festival Hall, Sinatra At The Sands

//From top: Stunt rider, Hines Farm motorcycle rodeo + The Atomic Pirates motorcycle club.//

A chat with photographer/Men’s File publisher Nick Clements at the opening of his show Revival –  which looks at the re-enactment of the styles surrounding American bike culture of the 50s for his Royal College Of Art research project – put me in mind of original black motorcycle clubs the Atomic Angels and the Gypsy Pirates.

I first came across them a decade or so ago when covering another academic study, Matthew Donahue’s I’ll Take You There, for Mojo magazine. Donahue’s book focused on a true cultural phenomenon: Hines Farm in Swanton, Ohio, whose owners Frank and Sarah Hines were the first African-Americans in the region to be granted a liquor licence.

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Tags: Allen Love, Art & Roman Griswald, Atomic Pirates, Big jean Mitchell, Chiquieta, Count Basie, Frank and Sarah Hines, Gypsy Angels, Henry Griffin, Hines Farm, I'll Take You There, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Journalism, Little Esther Phillips, Matthew A. Donahue, Mojo, Ohio, Toledo, Valerie Compton