Groundhogs

Credit: Aaron J Hill from Pexels Persuaded by pomp and pageantry, people across the nation are more likely to put faith in a Pennsylvania groundhog's weather predictions than those made by local woodchucks, according to a national survey query made on behalf of a University of Virginia researcher. Thomas Guterbock, UVA sociology professor emeritus and…

The comic strip cover of the 1972 album Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs depicts the trio as a band of superheroes – Powerful Pustelnik, Quick Cruickshank and Marvellous McPhee – battling villains determined to overpopulate and pollute the world. But there’s a sting in the tale. The superheroes are a dismal failure. Limping away from their victorious enemies, they transform into their “secret identities”: a “curiously contrived blues and rock group whose name coincidentally happens to be the Groundhogs”. The…

Tony McPhee, the singer and guitarist who led British blues and rock group the Groundhogs across six decades, has died aged 79.A message was posted on the group’s Facebook page confirming that he died peacefully at home” on 6 June from complications after a fall last year. He had also suffered a series of strokes in later life.McPhee was grounded in the early 1960s British blues scene that had taken hold in clubs including the Marquee in London’s Soho, where he watched musicians such as Cyril Davies. He joined a south…