Hi everyone,

Breaks my heart to report this sad news but I've just learned through a friend that Harvey James of Sherbet has just passed away. He was suffering inoperable lung cancer and a benefit gig was organised for February in Sydney but now he won't make it.

RIP Harvey :-(

R.I.P. Harvey James (Sherbet).

Very sad news was also keyed up for that benefit gig in Feb. Loooks like a "Sherbet" music clip tribute is for next Saturday morning's Rage playlist.

It's sad that he died BUT I really don't want rage to pull out the Sherbet COuntdown special again which they played 2 years ago, I HOPE they don't as repeats are big this year!

Indeed Jason! We got Howzat with the James Reyne standby prog last week.

Acutally the image of Harvey playing his guitar in that clip is actually one of my earliest memories.

What a tragedy:(

Oh, that's really sad.
Used to be think him a "bit of a spunk" back in my early teenage years....

Very sad news R.I.P.

Harvey wasn't even in the band when the Countdown Sherbet special was made...he joined the following year, so it would be completely inappropriate for RAGE to show it any way.

That being said, Harvey deserves as much of a tribute on RAGE as Gerry Rafferty, Mick Karn or James Freud. In terms of domestic success Sherbet were untouchable in the early to mid '70s, they were huge...HUGE !!!Also Harvey was indeed a fine guitarist, a big star and very highly regarded for his musicianship in the industry. He deserves a very decent tribute on RAGE. The outpouring of sadness on the "Send Your Love To Harvey James" facebook page is an indication of the shock and disbelief of this awful loss

I thought Howzat was possibly the greatest Oz album ever.

It's well and truly up there amongst the best John...it's an awesome album !

Sad loss of a great Australian musician.

Ah Guru! Trading cards - I used to love having those!

Never knew there was one for Sherbet, but obviously there was. I think the trading card industry had its glory days in the 70s and 80s. I know I certainly had a huge bundle of Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi/Buck Rogers ones.

In fact that brings me to a point - did Countdown ever release their own series of trading cards? One assumes they would have - would very interesting to find out - especially if some depict shots from missing episodes.

Some trading cards are worth a fair bit now too - not that I'm sure anyone would sell any precious ones - but yes I have very fond childhood memories collecting those - again I say why did those days ever end hey?

Patrick, The card pictured is a Scanlen's Popswop card from 1977 featuring Australian bands. The set can be hard to get and sells for about $300+ as this is the only set of cards that AC/DC ever featured in and their fans from around the world pay big money for them when they appear on ebay.



The full set consisted of:
1 Marcia Hines - Statuesque
2 Marcia Hines - Elegant
3 Marcia Hines - Casual
4 Marcia Hines - Thoughtful
5 John Paul Young - Daydreaming
6 John Paul Young - At Home
7 John Paul Young - Live
8 John Paul Young - Live Again
9 Punksz - Rollin' around
10 Punkz - Lee Emmet
11 Punkz - Robin Jackson
12 Punkz
13 Punkz - Dastardly!!
14 TMG - Formal
15 TMG - Decidedly informal
16 TMG - Backstage
17 TMG - Ted with Sherbet's Garth
18 TMG - Gary onstage
19 TMG - Les onstage
20 TMG - Ted Mulry
21 TMG - Gary Dixon
22 TMG - Les Hall
23 TMG - Herm Kovacs
24 AC/DC - In surgery!
25 AC/DC - Streetlife
26 AC/DC - The Old Days
27 AC/DC - Coming home
28 AC/DC - Bon Scott
29 AC/DC - Angus Young
30 AC/DC - Mark Evans
31 AC/DC - Malcolm Young
32 AC/DC - Phil Rudd
33 AC/DC - Angus Again
34 Mark Holden - Nature Boy
35 Mark Holden - Concert 'n' Carnations
36 Mark Holden - Elegant Splendour
37 Mark Holden - Keeping Fit
38 Sherbet - The Conquerers Return
39 Sherbet - Pin-up Boys
40 Sherbet - In England
41 Sherbet - Concert Power
42 Sherbet - Daryl, Garth & Harvey
43 Sherbet - Tony Mitchell
44 Sherbet - Harvey James
45 Sherbet - Alan Sandow
46 Sherbet - Garth Porter
47 Sherbet - Daryl Braithwaite
48 Supernaut
49 Supernaut - Gary Twinn
50 Supernaut - Phil Foxman
51 Supernaut - Chris Burnham
52 Supernaut - Joe Burnham
53 Ol '55 - Explosive
54 Ol '55 - Jimmy Live
55 Ol '55 - Frankie J. Holden
56 Ol '55 - Rockpile Jones
57 Ol '55 - Geoff Peterkin
58 Ol '55 - Wilbur Wilde (Wild Kingdom)
59 Ol '55 - Patrick Drummond
60 Ol '55 - Jimmy Manzie
61 Ol'55 - Storming The Stage
62 Ol '55 - Clowning
63 Skyhooks - Live
64 Skyhooks - Welcome Back
65 Skyhooks - Bongo Starr
66 Skyhooks - Shirley Strachan
67 Skyhooks - Greg Macainsh
68 Skyhooks - Freddie Strauks
69 Skyhooks - Bob Spencer
70 Skyhooks - Camoflaged
71 Skyhooks - Contemplating
72 Skyhooks - Takin' It To The Streets



Obviously the above picture comes from a Countdown episode from around 1977 that no longer exists.

Countdown never issued their own cards, perhaps surprising as they issued records, magazines etc

They did feature in a 1994 TV Week set of All Time Classic TV shows.



Vita Brits (Nabisco) issued a fairly crap set of 11 Countdown Write-N-Wipe cards in conjunction with ABC Merchandising in 1982. They had a plastic film on the front where you could write with a texta and wipe it off again.

Wow that's great! I love seeing stuff like that - again I fondly recall swapping/buying trading cards like that back in the day.

I'm still curious as to whether Countdown ever had their own series though - surely they would have?

Anyway once again this is totally off topic - to Harvey James' many fans, he'll never be forgotten and I'm glad Rage have played some fine clips featuring him today. RIP Harvey.

Hi Guru Bob,
Thank you for sharing the trading cards here. I have never been able to find these, do you own the whole set? If you do, would it be too much trouble to ask if you'd consider scanning the Sherbet ones? I'd really appreciate it, I am not from Australia, but a big fan of Sherbet and it would be really special to see all of their cards. :)

Take care,
sherbet_girl

Ps. It is heartbreaking that we have lost Harvey and Clive barely within years of each other. :( Gone much too soon. They are highly missed.

Both of these cards are on my Countdown Media page thanks to Guru :-)

Hi
Happy to guide you in the right direction as they turn up frequently and there are currently well over 100 items listed on ebay, many of which will show the images on the cards - including a full set
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/1970s-SCANLENS-AUSTRALIA-POPSWOPS-FULL-CARD-SET-72-72-/130709396097?pt=AU_CollectableTradingCards&hash=item1e6ee31a81

Just type in "Popswops" in an ebay search.

A lot of 44 cards sold recently for $22 so that's only 50c per card.

The full set would be value for money if it sold for less than $200 (currently at $60 with 2 days to go). Most cards in this set are only worth $2-$5 each. Card No.1 is worth about $15 as it is often damaged as kids would have it on top of their piles and the AC/DC cards are worth about the same due to their ongoing worldwide popularity.

I am happy to upload images for all the Sherbet cards if you are still interested as I have them all.

Another set of Scanlens music cards that were issued were the 1976 ABBA cards which came in a pink and blue set.

Guru,

Can you email me the Sherbet and Abba cards etc so I can put them all on my website? :-)

Thank you very much for your help. And for the ebay link. However at this time I don't know that I could afford that. I would love to buy them and have them someday. It is certainly something to save for. I hope you still would consider scanning the Sherbet ones. It wouldn't be the same as having the cards, but seeing the pictures on them would be pretty cool too.
Thank you again for your help and guidance.
Sherbet_Girl

Jason,
Doing a quick scan for here is about a 5 minute job but doing entire sets of cards would take a little longer. At the moment the footy (yes I know, that vile game) is taking up all my spare time. For the last 2-3 months I have traded around 300 hours of rare footage and I am nearly finished - although I did just get another request today. It was all football, no music, so nothing to get excited about - I even managed to find, on ebay, an original 30min reel of 16mm footage that was broadcast in 1968 and has never been seen since. When I catch up with all that I will see what I can do.

Neither of the card sets are directly Countdown related as they were independent releases from Scanlens, although one of the Skyhooks cards I reproduced earlier in this thread was taken in the Countdown studios. The Popswops would be very suitable I guess as those artists were all regulars on the show.

Countdown, as a major music show within Australia in 1975, assisted in helping break ABBA here, and in turn the world, so it would fit in I suppose when looking at the following quotes from Bjorn.

‘‘Australia was the first country that took ABBA to heart and we never forgot about that. We always felt a lot of love from audiences there,’’ Ulvaeus said from Stockholm.

‘Britain and America didn’t take us seriously and it wasn’t until S.O.S became a huge hit in Australia that other countries took notice,’’ recalled Ulvaeus.

I have nearly the complete set of Popswops, just missing No.1, but I only have about 40 ABBA cards and the full set is 144. I'll see if I can track down the rest of them, which should only be about $300-$400 so it's not too bad as many collectables dealers have them - probably just take a little time to get the last few. Hopefully by then I'll have a bit more time and I'll do the scans.

Just saw that the complete set of Popswops, including postage, that was listed on ebay sold for $242.30 which is a good buy in mint condition for whoever got them.

Very interesting scans and history about the cards Gurubob and always great to hear you have more rare football footage.

Interesting to hear those comments from Bjorn - and he is quite right - it was Australia that really established Abba before anyone else. Although Waterloo was a minor hit in 1974 both here and in the UK, it was the release of film clips for the 1975 tracks "Mamma Mia" and "I Do I Do I Do" and their exposure on Countdown that saw the group really hit the big time. The only thing Bjorn is not quite right about is the record that really broke them here - it was not "SOS" (that came later), but rather "Mamma Mia" - and Countdown screened the clip before the record company had even issued the song on a 45. The incredible response to that track, and the airplay it received here was quite extraordinary and I still remember this vididly to this day!!

SOS came later in 1975, and was also the track that broke the group into the big-time in the UK. In the USA, the group was largely ignored until 1976 when "Dancing Queen" finally broke them and it topped the Billboard charts.

In Australia, just about everything Abba released topped the charts immediately, in the years 1975, 1976 and 1977. The 45 "Fernando" topped the charts after just 2 weeks and did not debut at No. 1 as RCA could not press enough records to keep up with demand, whilst "Money Money Money" entered the charts at No. 1 - a very rare feat indeed during those times when vinyl record sales were huge.

All this was heavily promoted on Countdown of course, although 99% of the shows from this period are gone to the graveyard in the sky.

Thanks for the info Brett. I was fairly sure Countdown was greatly involved in ABBA gaining popularity in Australia which then continued around the world after having just been another Eurovision novelty act until that time.

I just heard a rumour that it wasn't correct and I just wasn't sure anymore where I had heard it originally as I was only a kid at the time and those sort of statistics weren't huge with me.