Origins of the 70 Shilling T Shirt

Some people wonder about the phrase "70 Shilling T Shirt" that crops up on this site and in conversations with the band, after all they're not that old surely? Well, no they're not, but the story does go back 20 odd years to the original Travelling Shoes T shirt. The band were playing upstairs at the Nags Head (exact date unclear but we are talking the early eighties here) and Anne (a long time fan and now married to new guitarist Chris Wright) decided she wanted a permanent reminder of the band so recorded the gig using a Sony Walkman hiden inside her crash helmet.Given the circumstances the recording was surprisingly listenable and for the next 20 years recieved much use. Of course cassette tapes have a limited life span so Chris decided to convert it to digital format to preserve it for ever and to present each member of the band that he could find with a copy (this was before he was in the band himself) on CD. As it happened, that gig was where the band were selling their new T shirt for the first time and between numbers Julian announced that there was a man at the back selling T shirts "with Travelling and Shoes written on them" and since the price was £3.50 (those were the days) as an off hand comment said that they cost 70 shillings each (pre decimal equivalent of £3.50). This throw away line was picked up on as a great idea for the album title, rather than just Live at the Nags Head or similar and a photo of an original 70 shilling T shirt was found and used for the front cover.Since then any reference to the original T shirts had always included the words 70 shilling!