Singing in the reign (sorry!)

So - what happened? Where did it all go wrong?

Well as far as The Last Jubilee Festival is concerned it all depends on who you believe. The Black Flag website raises a number of doubts about the promoters - but somehow I feel as though the truth won't emerge for a while yet. In the meantime I can't remember being as disappointed by a show being cancelled; the band was sounding terrific and we were all really looking forward to getting out in front of an audience. Still plans are afoot for Ruts D.C. to be on a stage somewhere as soon as possible - more news as and when I have it, as they say.
As for Cool Britannia - well to be honest it seems that tickets just aren't selling. Whether it's due to The Diamond Jubilee, the Olympic Games, lack of publicity or the fact that no one seems to have any money these days isn't clear, but we've got a great show and the band is playing well - I for one hope that the show rises again in the not-too-distant future.


In the meantime I found myself at Tropic At Ruislip on Sunday night to see The Members supported by The Jetsonics. As I arrived I bumped into Members bass player Chris who told me that he'd been trying to find a phone number for me as he was going to invite me along to play a few songs with the band. I'd have loved to have done this, but in a weird way this seems to sum the weekend up for me - I'd depped out a gig with The Upper Cut on Friday (I thought that I had a Cool Britannia show) and a Cool Britannia show on Saturday when I was due to be on Bath with Ruts D.C. (I'm told that former Awaken guitarist Pete did a fine job in both cases) and I could have played them both. It feels a bit like things are all going wrong at the moment... oh well, let's hope John Cooper Clarke was wrong for once and that things will get better. Still it was a good gig from The Members - Rat Scabies fitted in well (I'd not seen him with them before) and 'The Sound Of The Suburbs' sounded like the classic that we all remember it to be. The 4 or 5 songs that I caught by The Jetsonics sounded good, and Tropic At Ruislip remains an excellent venue that I really must make the effort to visit more regularly.


And having managed to avoid the Jubilee celebrations for pretty much the entire long weekend I joined my buddies The Upper Cut earlier today to play at a party in Windsor Street in Uxbridge. This all came together in the last few days, and I don't mind admitting that it was a difficult one from my point of view as I've never been a fan of The Royal Family and find the hysteria surrounding the current anniversary at best baffling and at worse offensive. However in the end I decided that I like playing the guitar more than I dislike the monarchy - and anyway, all my other gigs have been cancelled... sadly it rained for much of the afternoon which made it a rather perilous situation from our point of view as this picture taken by the venerable East shows -

The Upper Cut drive a lady in pink trousers into a frenzy with their wild and crazy brand of beat music.

- yes, that's right, we're in the middle of the road. Don't worry, they'd closed the street off... but as you can see we were playing in the open air and as we all know, electricity and water don't mix; by a couple of songs into our second set it was getting too dangerous to continue playing, which was a shame as it was a very enjoyable event to be part of. I for one was amazed how many people were there and how much fun they all seemed to be having (I really must cheer up mustn't I?!?) including the Balcony Shirts team (the shop is a few yards to my right in the above picture) and most if not all of the other shopkeepers. East told me later that a lady had got up out of her wheelchair and danced - could it be that we'd somehow performed a miracle and healed her? Or was she just recuperating from an injury and felt well enough to stand? I guess we'll never know...
After we'd stopped playing Andrew the vicar (that's St. Margaret's Church behind us) set 6 white doves free which somehow added to the rather surreal nature of the day, while we packed up and went to the Queen's Head. Well, it seemed like the thing to do... and talking of the Queen's head, is this a Banksy or isn't it? 

Queen bitch. Or something.

Either way, it made me smile.