Can't pay, won't pay

Ravi Shankar, master of the sitar, has died. His influence on George Harrison and The Beatles (and therefore on The 1960s generally - witness the reaction to this performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival) has been well documented, but how many of us have actually heard one of his albums all the way through? I must admit that I haven't... still it's always sad to loose a musician of his stature, and it's certainly sad in this case.

Two gigs for your humble narrator the weekend just gone, the first of which was the much-looked-forward-to (by me at least!) Flying Squad show at Tropic At Ruislip with Dr. Feelgood. Since we usually play a fair few Feelgoods songs (to the extent that we're often billed as a tribute to them) we worked up a different set of songs especially for this show - indeed of the 11 songs played we'd only played 3 of them in public before. As such it was a very interesting show from our point of view, not least because a couple of things didn't go according to plan... 
As we carried our gear into the venue Dr. Feelgood were soundchecking with 'Down At The Doctors' and were sounding, well, pretty much exactly like Dr. Feelgood. When we went to set our stuff up we discovered that they didn't want to move any of their gear, meaning that Andy was obliged to set his drums up stage left rather than in the centre; a bit annoying, but worse still his snare drum wires worked loose as we soundchecked. Attempts to secure them proved at best semi-successful, and as a result our set was something of a nightmare for our drummer man with him having to attempt a repair after virtually every song. That said our efforts went down extremely well with the assembled multitude, to the extent that we even played an encore. And Dr. Feelgood were good too - I know there is a certain amount of controversy about the band continuing to play with no original members, but they're still a great night out and that's all right by me. And this was a great night out, right up to the point where I asked Dave the co-promoter about the band's money - as he said something like 'you'll have to talk to Philip about that' I got a bad feeling about what might be coming next...
'I never said there was any money in the gig' said Philip, sounding less-than-friendly. I hoped he was joking. He wasn't. He went on to say that he'd had to pay Dr. Feelgood a large percentage of the door money, then pay for the P.A., and reiterated that he had never said that he was going to pay us anything. Well that may or may not be the case, and maybe I was naive for not checking exactly what was going on - but he definitely didn't say that the band wouldn't get any money for the show. I got the feeling that we were supposed to feel honoured that we'd been allowed to play; what he didn't (and indeed doesn't) know is that I'd turned down a well-paid Blues Brothers show as this one had been in the diary for a long time and I hadn't want to let him and the venue down. Add to that the fact that the band (the other members of which travel a fair distance to play in Ruislip) had scheduled extra rehearsals to learn the afore-mentioned new material and you have an idea of how badly this went down with The Flying Squad. Maybe a bit of petrol money could have been found from somewhere? 'I'll make it up to you next time' said he walking - make that scurrying - off. Next time? We'll see if there is one.

On a more positive note Saturday evening saw myself and my good mate and former Cane Toads guitarist Pete journey up to Solihull for a Blues Brothers playback show at The Slug And Lettuce with Born In Chicago. Odd as it sounds the venue had specified two guitarists for the show (well I think they had - I can't think of any other reason that we were both there!) which is an especially strange situation as there were already guitars on the backing tracks. Weird! Tony and Guy (they're really called that!) were checking the P.A. when we got there - after running through a couple of tracks we were all ready to rock, and with a couple of hours to go before showtime we decided to go out for a look around. After walking through the Touchwood shopping centre we found The Mason Arms where drinks were ordered and stories were told. We also chanced upon the extremely interesting-looking Sporting Barbers... 
9.45 pm and our first set begins with Pete and myself strumming along with 'I Can't Turn You Loose' before Tony & Guy join us for 'Gimme Some Loving'. Playback shows are generally a strange affair from my point of view - add in the fact that there were two of us on guitar instead of just me and this should perhaps have been doubly strange but it was actually really good fun, not least due to T&G's fearless performance which saw them spend almost as much time in the audience as on the stage. A chap asked a girl to marry him, we sang 'Happy Birthday' a couple of times and a lot of people looked as though they were very drunk indeed - a good gig.

And it was a good if somewhat surprising gig (I didn't know I was going until around 4 pm in the afternoon) last night, when I accompanied Pete 'Manic Esso' Haynes to The Forum in Kentish Town to see Rancid supported by Cock Sparrer. Pete was going up to meet Lars Frederiksen of Rancid to give him a copy of the GLM album 'Chemical Landslide (incidentally here is a review of said album on Louder Than War, and a very good review it is too) as Lars is a big Lurkers fan; he invited Pete to the gig, and he asked me if I'd like to go too. Result! 
We'd just ordered a couple of drinks in The Bull And Gate when the familiar figure of Attila The Stockbroker approached us. Yes, him again! The next 40-odd minutes saw Esso and Attila debate everything from The Velvet Underground to Rock Against Racism with great gusto - I even got the odd word in here and there myself.
We met Lars outside the backstage doors where he was making himself available to sign posters, tickets etc. He seemed like a nice chap, and Pete delivered the GLM album which Lars was very interested in. From there it was back into the venue where Cock Sparrer were beginning their set. I'd not seen them before, not least because they seemed to have a rather dubious right wing following, but that didn't seem to be in evidence at this show. I enjoyed them although they played for a bit too long in my opinion, and I for one could have done without 'England Belongs To Me'... Rancid on the other hand were excellent, and I for one was amazed by the fanaticism of the majority of the audience, most of whom seemed to know every word of every song. A great show.

Right - three rehearsals and four gigs on the horizon over the next week or so. That's the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it...