Jamming!

And so it begins - I spent much of Tuesday in the labyrinth that is the Jamm club in Brixton with Segs running through possible songs for the upcoming Ruts D.C. shows. With the new Alabama 3 album being mixed in the studio a few doors down he occasionally had to leave to listen to a possible finished track, which makes the fact that we managed to run through something like 14 perspective numbers all the more remarkable. I left with a CD of 6 rough mixes of new material and some scribbly notes that detailed key changes, endings, segues and other possible arrangement ideas. I'm likely to be back over there for some more work sometime this week - I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime the return of Ruts D.C. has made it onto the Alabama 3 website, and the Aural Sculptors blog currently features a downloadable gig from 30 years ago in Edinburgh - excellent!

Last night saw an extended Chicago Blues Brothers band play at a very large house in the splendidly named Weston-Under-Lizard. We were playing for the Earl of Bradford at a party for his wife Penny's birthday; normally I end up coming away from events like this spouting left wing rants about the British class system (click here to see what I mean!) but I don't feel too bad about this one. Perhaps it's because I'm really tired as I didn't get in until after 4 a.m., perhaps it was because they all seemed like nice people - who knows? Mind you I didn't like the 'too many cats, not enough recipes' sticker on the back of a Land Rover that I saw on the way into town so maybe it's best that I keep this posting short... band-wise Andy joined us on trombone with Dave on trumpet and Jimmy depping for Richard on saxophone; Pete was added next to Tracy on backing vocals and Steve was on drums with Marc on percussion. Other than that it was business as usual with Squirrel on bass, Ian on keyboards and Matt and Mike as Jake and Elwood - add me on guitar and there was a mighty twelve (twelve!) of us on stage with Big Tel and Dave DJ-ing. Apparently the organisers wanted a 'big' line-up on stage - who said size isn't everything? We were due on at 10 o'clock but finally went on 45 minutes later - our 75 minute performance included rarely-played versions of 'Superstition' and 'Hard To Handle' and saw a fair amount of dancing from the assembled multitude. Big Tel and Dave saw the evening out until 1 a.m. with what sounded to me to be a good selection of seventies disco material although they told me afterwards that they were a bit put out by people requesting Blues Brothers material. Maybe we should have played for longer?

Well, maybe. Again.

And there's just time to mention that Kris Dollimore returns to the Load of Hay next Sunday 23rd - if you're in the area it'd be good to see you...