International Eurythmics Convention 2011 Report

Well Saturday already seems a long time ago, and writing this short piece has made me realise just how wonderful the Annie and Dave community of fans is.  A room full of people who many had never met, some who hadnt seen each other for 20+ years, but above all, a group of people who all had a shared passion for the music and memories of Dave and Annie.

 

International Eurythmics Convention

Over 30 people from all over the world attended the first Eurythmics convention to be held in London.  Fans had traveled to London for the opening weekend of Annie Lennox’s House Of Annie Lennox exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  People had come from Brazil, The USA, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands  and from all over the UK.

 

The Location was The Forest Room at Dave Stewart’s  The Hospital Club in the centre of Covent Garden.  Here’s a video of Dave playing with Anne Marie Calhoun in the same room from last year.

Everyone spent the first few hours just sharing precious items from their collections, chatting, and finally meeting virtual friends from the online communities for the first time.

 

We had use of the fantastic audio and visual facilities of the room so were able to share rare and unusual tracks, different versions and some true rarities that had never been heard before.  Some of the great things on show included Annie’s first ever single recorded at Aberdeen Railway Station, and Dave Stewart’s first single with Brain Harrison, The Girl EP.  Last Christmas we also showed on our website the alternate artwork for Savage, and the collector who owns these items very kindly allowed us to put them on display for everyone to see.  Pictures are in the gallery below.

 

We were also very lucky to be joined in the afternoon by JC001, who used to be signed to Dave’s Anxious Records label.  JC spoke about his 8 years with Dave, recording at The Church, working with all of the other Anxious artists as well as Shakespeares Sister.   JC was also featured on the re-release of Love Is A Stranger to support the Greatest Hits album, and on the remix 12″, there is a JC Meets The Obsessor Mix. Images below.

 

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JC shared with us some amazing anecdotes of working with Dave, and how Dave had recently tracked him down to a pub, leaving a message with a cleaner to get JC to call him.  JC revealed he had been asked to help work the character of the Underground Ghost from Ghost The Musical, in fact he appeared in the workshop as well.

 

JC also brought with him a selection of large photographic prints that he had recently found in storage that were all taken by Dave, but had not been used.  Dave Stewart took photos of many of the bands that were signed to Anxious, and were often used on the single and album covers.  This one here is one of Dave’s pictures featured on the cover of Never Again.

 

JC finished by performing Never Again, one of the tracks he released with Anxious, you can see the video below. JC is now in the successful French band Le Peupe Le Herbe, having being brought in for one album, 6 albums later he is still there.

 

 

We finished the day with a raffle of prizes that had been donated by various people including some signed items as well as an autographed copy of Mathew Chojnackie’s new book, Put The Needle On The Record.  Everyone attending received a set of 3 badges and 2 A3 posters that we had produced, we have a few left over that we will be selling on ebay shortly with proceeds going to Sing and Stand Up To Cancer.

 

 

A huge thanks to everyone who supported the day, we had 30 people attend during the day, and everyone agreed that we should do this again.

 

If you took photos, email them to me and we’ll put them in the gallery!