Re-members

The first gig of this run of work saw The Price make their Tropic At Ruislip debut on Friday night on a bill that also featured The Members and The Attendants. I'd been really looking forward to this one but must say it was a bit anti-climatic from my point of view - maybe I'd been looking forward to it a bit too much? It wasn't that we played badly, we just didn't play as well as we can although things weren't helped by my guitar going badly out of tune during 'Matter Of Time' and us having to cut our set down as things were over-running. Still we went down well and even got offered another gig with The Members so perhaps I'm just being a bit miserable (for once!)
The Attendants kicked things off in fine fashion with a great set that took me right back to 1980-ish when I last saw them; Bert's as mad as ever on vocals, Malcolm still nearly pulls the neck off his SG during every solo and Ken and Russ keep it all moving in the bass and drums department. And I enjoyed The Members too (and I'm not just saying that because we might be playing with them again, honest!) who I also last saw in the very early Eighties; they're a trio these days with drummer Nick Cash joining original, er, members J.M. Carroll and Chris Payne - Nicky Tesco and Nigel Bennett perform with them occasionally. 'The Sound Of The Suburbs' is still a classic as is 'Solitary Confinement' although I'll be very brave and say that me and my Flying Squad friends do a better version of 'Police Car'...

Last night Youngblood played at the unusually named Pear and Partridge in London Colney - or rather they didn't. When myself and Roger the drummer arrived we were greeted by the sight of a large board proclaiming TONIGHT LIVE! THE 4 FACES - looks like Terry's thought of a new name for us then... the barman let us in through the side door, telling us how many complaints they'd been getting about the noise, never a good thing to be greeted with when you arrive at a venue but he was friendly enough and agreed with us that DJ's are normally louder than bands anyway. With the 2 Terry's (one on vocals, one on bass) in place we played our first set to 20 or so lads and lasses and our second to the barman (who requested 'Need Your Love So Bad' which we played and all agreed should go into the set) and a couple of couples - it was one of those 'everyone-was-in-earlier-for-the-football' evenings. Still we played well and it's better than rehearsing... well, actually , it's more or less the same as rehearsing but that's another story.

Talking of which I'd better get my guitar out - Pete from The Blue Five is here soon to prepare for tonight's gig. We've not played together since, oh I don't know, last century I think - is this what they call 'leaving it all until the last minute'?!?