Lindisfarne Christmas Concerts Newcastle City Hall 1978 to 1982
The Lindisfarne Christmas concerts became annual events from 1976 onwards. I went along for several years, joining in the festive celebrations. The concerts were immensely successful with the band playing for multiple nights at the venue to satisfy demand, and fans travelling from far and wide. In total the band performed 132 shows at Newcastle City Hall. However, as time went on what started as great fun concerts started to lose their magic, at least for me. It was just getting too routine, and too much like going to the pantomime. I’m afraid I began to lose faith, and 1982 was the last year that I attended. 
Looking back through the programmes today I notice that Chas and Dave, Chris Rea, Maxie and Mitch and Mike Elliott all get mentioned as support acts. I aslo saw the band perform at the Rock on the Tyne Festival and supporting Bob Dylan at St James Park in 1984. The band were still fun to see, but over the years they seemed to lose some of the magic that was there in those early days. The Christmas concerts continued for several years, until 1990 I think.
There are of course returning to the venue this year in the form of Ray Jackson’s Lindisfarne and I plan to go along. The publicity for this year’s show tells us: “Ray Jackson, whose unique mandolin, harmonica and vocal styles helped create the original sound of Lindisfarne in 1970, is returning to the City Hall in December 2013 with Ray Jackson’s Legendary Lindisfarne Christmas Show. 
Newcastle City Hall’s audience can swing together again to Ray Jackson’s faithful recreation of the original 1970s Christmas Show…..complete with decorated stage, Santa compere…..party hats….sword dancers…..the traditional organ overture…..and nothing but songs from the band’s best selling 1970’s chart albums….Nicely Out of Tune; Dingly Dell; Fog On The Tyne and Back and Fourth…a full show of the best loved Lindisfarne music with an interval, no support and with part of the audience on the stage itself.” Sounds like this is going to be pretty authentic. Could be just like old times 🙂
22 Sep
Vintagerock's Weblog. 
Posted by paul hartley on December 12, 2020 at 1:26 pm
Yeagh, I went from around 79-83; couldn’t agree more
Posted by vintagerock on December 12, 2020 at 2:31 pm
Thanks Paul “The Winter Song” was always my favourite Happy days Peter