Leigh's mad world of guitars

The Chicago Blues Brothers in Dubai, October 2011

2012-02-05T10:38:00.005Z

With Britain in the icy grip of the first snows of the winter it seems like a good time to revisit the last week of October 2011, when The Chicago Blues Brothers played five shows in hot and sunny Dubai. What follows is a 'tidied-up' version of the notes that were written at the time - they've been edited a bit here and there but basically left as they were. Enjoy.

Tuesday 25th, midday

So here I am in room 27 of The Emirates Academy. After a cup of black coffee which paranoia dictated that I made with bottled water (as we got off the bus Matt asked 'can we drink the water?' Pete's emphatic 'NO!' was met with dismay and a wonder of where we could buy bottled water at 4.30 am; fortunately there was some in our rooms) and a quick scan of the television channels (nothing on as usual) I'm sitting on the end of my bed scribbling. 'Who's Next' is playing thanks to the small iPod dock that I've bought with me ('out here in the fields, I fought for my meals...') and I'm looking out of the window, there's a small courtyard and that weird building that looks a bit like a sail is looming in the near-distance - I can only see the top of it as it's obscured by the rest of the courtyard buildings.

We arrived here around 2.45 am local time. I think we're 3 hours ahead of Britain here and we left Heathrow about 5.30 pm so we were in the air for about 6 hours, the longest flight that I've done for quite some time. As previously mentioned we're staying in The Emirates Academy which as I understand is a complex where hotel staff are trained. First impressions are good - I've got what I guess would be marketed as a 'small apartment', as you walk in there's a bathroom on the right (isn't that a Creedance Clearwater Revival song?!?) with kitchen facilities opposite it on the left. Things then open out into a room with a single bed in the far right-hand corner, a couple of tables, cupboards, wardrobes - you know the sort of thing. It's clean and comfortable although it has to said that by the time we got here I probably could have slept standing up.

After we'd got our baggage we'd made our way through Dubai International Airport to the area where we were meeting our bus. I say something like 'this is quite a building' to Pete, he just laughs - 'you ain't seen nothing yet'. He used to live here so I suppose he should know... as we leave the airport building the temperature jumps by what feels like about 20 degrees or so - 'feel the heat, baby' says Dave as I for one realise just how efficient the air conditioning has been. Fortunately the bus is air conditioned too. Our journey through the night is enlivened by Matt's somewhat animated comments ('I asked the stewardess for a tonic water, she offered me gin with it and then kept coming back...') and the inevitable 'what's that building over there?' from the people like me who have never been to Dubai before. It all looked amazing. I wonder if it is?

Today is 'set-up day'. We're due at The Al Muna Restaurant for a meal at 2 pm followed by an afternoon setting up at The Medinat Theatre (part of the Jumeriah Hotel complex) in anticipation of 5 consecutive evening shows at the venue. I've bought with me my trusty Telecaster, a Digitech Screamin' Blues overdrive pedal (to boost my solos in volume) and some cables; I'm looking forward to trying out the Fender combo that's been provided by the theatre although I'll bet now that it'll be too loud - at this sort of thing they invariably provide excellent equipment that's far too powerful for the job in hand. Oh well - let's see what the next few hours bring.

Time for a shower. More later.

6 pm

Well not only was the amp way too powerful (it was a brand new Fender Twin Reverb combo in case you were wondering) but it also appeared to have some sort of earth problem. Various attempts were made by all and sundry to lose the cracking sounds that occurred every time that let go of my strings but to no avail; 'let's try the Marshall' said the cheery stagehand - that'll be an amp that's not only too loud but that is totally inappropriate for the job in hand then. Oh well, let's give it a go... in the event the clean channel of the Vintage Modern combo sounded fine, especially when I trod on the pedal for solos. The cheery stagehand resolved to attempt to sort out the Fender combo while we set about 'set up day'. I'm not sure why we couldn't have done it tomorrow and then played a show but I suppose ours is not to realise why, as someone once said... we spent a fair bit of time running through 'Hey Bartender' which was due to make it's first appearance in our show - with it sounding good we turned our attention to a less obvious addition to our set. If you've ever seen our theatre show then you'll know that we usually play a medley of 'John The Revelator' / 'Can I Get A Witness?' / 'Higher And Higher' to end the first half, with Pete playing a particularly over-the-top preacher character called (wait for it!) The Reverend I. C. Delight. However since we're in a country where pretending to be a mad vicar is unlikely to be a particularly clever thing to do (to say the least!) an alternative idea had to be found. Pete had suggested 'We Are Family' which no one was too sure about - then one day I was listening to Sly And The Family Stone... hmmm... how about 'Dance To The Music'? We're only playing a minute or so of the song to let Pete make his entrance as 'Soul Brother Number 1' and it doesn't take too long to get together - let's see if we can remember both of the new numbers tomorrow for the first show.

Prior to that we'd all met in the restaurant for some food - and what amazing food it was. We're due back there at 8 o'clock for an evening meal - I expect to go home heavier than when I left.

Wednesday 26th, 9 am

A half hour or so ago I was awoken by a very - make that very - loud 'DING DONG! which then re-occurred another couple of times. Surely I don't have a doorbell? But if I don't have a doorbell then where is the sound coming from? When it went again I stumbled across my room towards the door, struggling with a dim recollection that Dave and Richard had said that they were off to a market today. Surely I hadn't agreed to go with them? As I looked through that weird fisheye thingy that you get on hotel (and indeed house) front doors I saw their beaming faces and realised that, yes, I had agreed to go with them. Sorry lads, I'm not awake yet. Bah! Still I'm awake now so I might as well have a cup of coffee and get myself together - after all, I can always have a sleep later if I need to.

When we stumbled back to The Academy last night after a few drinks Matt and myself had been pleased to find the shop on the complex to still be open, and so bought some milk. I've just found it - it's frozen solid. A measure of how tired I was when I went to bed is that I put it in the freezer rather than the fridge.

This day can only improve.

4 pm

And it did - well it certainly hasn't got any worse. I bumped into Matt on my way to breakfast - we arrived at the restaurant to find Pete in a state of some consternation over arrangements for the next few days. There was apparently no problem with the shows, all of which were selling healthily, but over the times and the places where the band could get food. He'd received an early morning text requesting that the band all have breakfast by 8.30 - without making us all sound like lazy sods that was at best unlikely and at worst impossible. There was also a request for a 'technical run through' before the show - didn't we do that yesterday? He looked troubled but resolved to sort everything out; I received a text message a few hours later to the effect that he had. Good man.

After eating we returned to The Academy - Matt decided to go to the gym (there's less chance of me doing that than all the band having breakfast before 8.30!) while I returned to my room to spend some time revising T.V. Smith songs for an upcoming gig at The 12 Bar Club, going through some Ruts D.C. material for the upcoming rehearsals and, well, if I'm honest, sleeping for an hour or so. I think the heat might already be getting to me a bit - it's over 90 degrees in old money and I'm just not used to it! Seriously though, I've never been one for the sun so I'm trying to drink plenty of water and not be too silly about things.

5.15 pm

It's nearly time to leave for the theatre to prepare for our first show. I've put my stage clothes and shoes in my bag. I've changed the strings on my Telecaster. I'm ready to rock.

Thursday 2.35 am

Well it turned out that whilst I was indeed ready to rock, the amplifier wasn't. Halfway through 'Do You Love Me?' it stopped working completely - with the cheery stagehand nowhere to be seen myself and Pete (with him dressed in a very loud yellow suit in anticipation of his appearance as Fab Calloway singing 'Minnie The Moocher') ended up scrabbling around backstage looking for the Fender combo that went wrong during yesterday's soundcheck. We eventually found it - as I plugged it in I wondered if the cheery stagehand had managed to fix the earth problem... I played a chord and it sounded great. Hurrah.

In the meantime while we thought it was our worst gig for ages Pete, Mike, Matt and anyone else who spoke to anyone who wasn't in the band reported that as far as the audience was concerned it had been brilliant. The customer is always right don't you think?

After the show we went to The Barzar (yes, it's really called that) for a few drinks, which probably cost us most of tonight's wages. I really must find out what the exchange rate is.

12.50 pm

I've just read back through the barely-decipherable scrawl written when I got in last night - considering the fact that a fair few drinks had been consumed it actually makes reasonable sense. And not only did I remember to put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, I also managed to set an alarm for 9.30 to make sure I was up in time for breakfast. Still it was good to go out for a few beers after a show that none of us were particularly happy with; yes it went down well, but you still have to reach your own standards. Well, I think that you do anyway.

In the meantime I've bought my guitar back with me as my strings were in a very strange state after the show. The venue had used an oil-based smoke on stage (it's often used to make a haze so that the beams from the lights show up) which in addition to causing all sorts of problems for the horn players and the singers (especially Tracy) seems to have coated my strings - they feel as though I've done too many shows with them rather than just one. It's a bit of a waste but I've just put another new set on, and I believe they won't be using that particular type of smoke tonight. Good.

So now I've got Oasis on the iPod and I don't have to be back at the venue for about 4 hours. The rest of the band have gone to Wild Wadi (whatever that is!) but I'm quite happy here on my own. I don't know - you come halfway around the World to somewhere that a lot of people would love to visit, and then you spend all your time in an air conditioned darkened room. Oh well. I'll go out somewhere tomorrow. Probably.

Friday 2.35 pm

So what went wrong during last night's show then? Any guesses?

The battery ran out in my Screaming Blues pedal. I discovered this when I trod on it for my solo in 'Hey Bartender' and it got quieter rather than louder. Bugger! I'm sure - sure - that I changed it before we came out here. Oh well - compared to the amp stopping working the previous night it was pretty simple to deal with; I changed the battery in the interval and it sounded great. Overall it seemed to be a better show than Wednesday's although the audience were more laid back. Maybe it's third time lucky tonight?

I decided to visit Wild Wadi after all yesterday afternoon - yes, I'm surprised too. Well it's over the road from us and we've been given free passes so I decided to make a heroic effort and go and see what it was all about. It turned out to be a water park with various rides which look as though they ranged from relaxing to terrifying. I didn't have a go on any of them (sadly I'm far too self-conscious to take my shirt off in public) but I wandered around the park for 20 minutes or so before deciding that (a) I'll never fit into a world where something like this is regarded by many if not most people as a reasonable pastime, and (b) I probably looked like a middle-aged bloke walking around ogling a lot of scantily clad young women. Time to go back to revising T.V. Smith songs then!

After the show we returned to Barzar for the second night running as we'd been told the night before that we could buy a card which allowed us to get cut price drinks. For 90 Dirhams (about £15 or £16 pounds I think) we could have any 5 drinks from the allotted list - I fear that we were paying nearly that for 2 drinks the previous night! Heroic restraint from Matt and myself meant that we had 2 1/2 pints each, a good move as an excursion was planned for this morning...

After breakfast two taxis took us (Marc, Pete, Jayne, Chris, Mike, Phil and myself) out to the gold and spice Souks of Deira and Bur Dubai, perhaps best described as the 'old' parts of town. They couldn't have been more different to the area that we were staying and indeed working in. Gone are the fake buildings (and indeed fake people) only to be replaced by, well, fake goods. Men accost you every few seconds (and it's definitely a man's world, there are very few if any women to be seen) offering you the best (i.e. best fake) watch / camera / phone (delete as applicable) on the market. The more they try the more you want to walk away. Well, I do anyway. It's a totally different experience to the virtual Disneyland of the big hotels and shopping malls that so many would associate with Dubai, and it's one that's well worth having if only to keep things in perspective.

It's clearly not an easy life out here for most people.

Pete suggests a visit to The George and Dragon English bar in The Ambassador Hotel, it was a favourite of his when he lived here but it's changed - when he asks for the music to be turned down he's told that it's on the television and that it's 'automatic'. In the corner two Arabic-looking gentlemen nurse pints of beer (are they supposed to do that?!?) and some of the band play pool, but Pete looks hurt and upset. They say that you should never go back don't they?

We take another couple of taxis to The Al Kamara shopping area to meet up with Squirrel, Dave and Richard who have been out to the harbour. Absolutely everything that you see on sale is fake - shops proudly proclaim 'GENUINE MASTER COPIES' of every famous name on clothing and jewellery that you can think of. Some of the shop names are even spent incorrectly - either that or there's a colour out here called 'voilet' and a place called 'Aladin's Cave'. Sadly the Liverpool F. C. shop was closed, as I'd love to have seen what they had in there. As we walked around I found myself thinking of Johnny Rotten of all people - 'a cheap holiday in other people's misery', 'your future dream is a shopping scheme'... I for one have seen enough and when Chris and Mike suggest a taxi back to The Emirates Academy I jump at the chance of going with them. As we drive along the roads gradually get wider, the buildings get taller and the shops get more colourful as the skyscrapers of the promised land are looming in the middle distance. But they're not just a few miles away - they're in another universe.

Saturday 2.30 am

Third time lucky indeed - a great show and I didn't break anything. Good

Once again I found myself buying a Barzar-card-full of drinks, and I'm now sitting in my room with Bob Dylan on the iPod. He's just said something about having a 'head full of ideas that are driving me insane...' I think I know how he feels.

3.25 pm

At the end of what was undeniably a good show last night I realised that my strings were once again in a bit of a mess. I can normally do 3 or 4 theatre shows before they need changing, but that's because I generally have a spare guitar with me and so can take a bit more of a chance with things. Also we're not usually in a country where air conditioning is pretty much everywhere - not last night though, as it had either failed on stage or not been switched on. The resulting heat coupled with the return of the oil-based smoke (that'd have been a good title for a 1940s horror film wouldn't it?!?) meant that my strings were all but worn out by the end of the show. Rather than take the guitar out drinking with me (!) I decided to pick it up this morning after breakfast - I returned to the theatre to find it open but with no staff anywhere to be seen. I strolled through the auditorium into the unlocked backstage area where I retrieved my precious instrument, all the while reflecting on the fact that anybody could have done exactly the same thing. Not good frankly. I then decided to get some money from a nearby ATM - a nervous moment occurred when it told me that it was 'unable to dispense' and I feared that I might not get my card back, but fortunately this wasn't the case and I was able to get some cash from another machine.

Back here in my room I've changed my strings and did some more work on the T.V. Smith material; I've received an email from him adding a few songs to the set I was expecting so this seemed like a good chance to run through them, as well as do a bit on the Ruts D.C. stuff too. I've just made a cup of coffee. Rock 'n' Roll eh?

Sunday 10.45 am

I decided not to write anything when I got in last night, not least because I suspect that there's been enough semi-drunken rambling here in these hallowed pages already. But we once again returned to Barzar before Matt and myself sat in my room until the early hours ranting and raving about something or other. I also recall a few 'you've got to hear this' moments with the iPod (well he's got the next door room so I knew I wasn't going to wake him up!) which he gamely put up with. Good man.

It had been a good show - not a great one but certainly not a bad one either. Band members were using words like 'steady' to describe our performance which thinking about it now seems like a fair observation. A rather laid-back audience took a while to get going, and as a result so did we; that said 'Hey Bartender' is sounding excellent, and the 'Dance To The Music' section is sounding much better than it did in the first couple of shows. As I say a good show rather than a great one, but that's no bad thing. However Jayne injuring her foot after the show is definitely a bad thing - I'm not sure what happened but hope she's ok.

It's our last show tonight - have we really been here nearly a week? Amazing. It's gone so quickly. There's nothing planned today until 4 o'clock when a bus will take us and all our luggage the short distance over to the theatre; it's a 6.30 show tonight (the others have all been 8 o'clock kick-offs) before food at 9.30. We're then due to leave for the airport at midnight for the 3 am flight home. Gulp!

Monday 2.45 am

And here we are on board flight EK 007 (oh yes!) Our last show here was a bit of a weird one, with Dave being struck down with food poisoning (well that's what he thinks he's got, from a salmon quiche eaten earlier in the day) that meant that he spent much of the show backstage lying down or being sick. Meanwhile the smallest audience of the week made up for what they lacked in numbers by dancing for most of the show and making as much noise as possible.

I spent most of the day doing, well, not very much at all; that said I did rough out a blog piece on John Saxon as well as reviewing these notes and reading some of the Keith Richards autobiography 'Life' that I've been working my way through during my time here. Now we're on the plane home. It'll be good to get back.

So what of Dubai then? Well... it's a nice place to visit, but you (or to be more accurate, I) wouldn't want to live there. For a start it much too hot for a wimp like me - I think the average daytime temperature while we were there was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and it didn't go below 70 at night. I believe it gets even hotter in the summer.

The area that we were staying and working was relatively well-to-do, as evidenced by it's close proximity to The Burj Al Arab Hotel. All well and good - but what were we really seeing? Elaborately ornate buildings that look as though they could be old (but of course they aren't) are almost an artist's impression of what Dubai 'should' look like. Well that's what they seemed to be like to me.

Compare this with our visit to the Souk districts - is that the 'real' Dubai? If it is then it's a long way from hotels with tennis courts on the roof and the World's tallest building. The contrast could hardly be greater - but there are areas of London that are just as unalike. I suppose that ultimately it's all down to opinion and how you yourself view the place. As someone who sees themselves as a left wing person I found it very hard to reconcille the sights of the Souks with the area that we were staying in or indeed the places that you pass through to go between the two places. The inequality is astonishing, although again you could say the same about London or indeed any big city. From what I read there is a dark side, with many people there bearly surviving on low wages, living many to a single room. How many people think about that while they're basking on the man-made beaches that I saw being rebuilt every night? Then again they're on holiday in a land where money can (probably) get you anything you might want so why should they be bothered?

Near the end of our stay Pete asked everyone if anybody would be coming back for a holiday next year. Much as I had enjoyed my time in Dubai, I figured that the question wasn't really aimed at me.

Cast and crew -

Matt and Mike - Jake and Elwood

Squirrel - bass

Marc - drums

Chris - keyboards

Dave - trumpet

Richard - saxophone

Tracy - vocals

Pete - tour management and vocals

Phil - sound man

Jayne - wardrobe

and your humble narrator on the electric guitar

The iPod soundtrack to my visit, in no particular order -

The Beatles - various, especially 'Rubber Soul' and 'Revolver'

The Sex Pistols - 'NMTB' plus b-sides, particularly after visiting the gold and spice souks

The Faces - 'A Nod's As Good As A Wink' and 'Ooh La La' plus various tracks including their version of 'The Stealer', for John Saxon

Free - various tracks, once again with John in mind

The Clash - 'London Calling'

Dr. Feelgood - mostly with Wilko Johnson on guitar, but some of the Gypie Mayo stuff too

Noel Gallagher - 'High Flying Birds'

Oasis - 'Stop The Clocks'

R.E.M. - a few tracks from 'Document', after 'Disturbance At The Heron House' came into my head one day

The Godfathers - 'Hit By Hit'

The Rolling Stones - tracks from whichever part of their career that I was reading about at the time

The Who - 'Who's Next' and more, including the classic early singles

Bob Dylan - a few tracks after a few drinks

- plus the Ruts DC and TV Smith tracks that I was learning or revising, and probably some other stuff as well.

I read 'Life' by Keith Richards, and the 'Fender Electric Guitar Bible' edition of Guitar And Bass magazine.

I wore a variety of Balcony Shirts, along with a straw hat and some very ill-advised shorts.

Ruts DC revisited

2012-01-27T12:37:00.007Z

With no gigs this week (bah! Again!) I thought about doing a belated look back at 2011's high and lows but decided that (a) I'm still trying to forget that horrific Chicago Blues Brothers show at the end of November and screaming on about it here won't exactly help me drive it from my mind, and (b) Ruts D.C. have been confirmed as appearing at this year's Rebellion Festival in August, and that seems a much better thing to write about. So here's a look back at last year's Alabama 3 support shows with backstage passes, a setlist and a few pictures from the Forum gig taken by Abbie Jenkinson mostly from the photography pit in front of the stage. They're good aren't they?

The setlist managed to survive all 4 shows without getting lost / ripped / trodden on (delete as applicable) although it was only correct for the first two gigs (Manchester and Bristol) as 'London Dub' was dropped (it's on the forthcoming album) with 'In A Rut' coming into the set after 'Fools' for the Bournemouth and London shows.

The photos show Molara on vocals and percussion, Segs on bass, Dave Ruffy on drums, Seamus Beaghen on keyboards and your humble narrator (wearing Dave Ruffy's hat!) on the electric guitar. I still can't believe it sometimes but, yes, it's really me.

The splendid Aural Sculptures blog has a favourable revue of the Forum show (Adrian has also given a plug for these hallowed pages - top man!) although I'm pleased to say that I've not really seen or heard any bad reports from any of the gigs. Good!

Incidentally I'm also playing Rebellion 2012 with the mighty T.V. Smith; this is more good news as our show there was my next-favourite gig of the year, and it makes the festival something for me to really look forward too. So I'm really looking forward to it!

'I'm so mean I make medicine sick'

2012-01-22T16:29:00.005Z

Muhammad Ali was 70 years old on Tuesday.

I'm too young to remember him as Cassius Clay but I remember Ali's omnipresence in the late '60s and throughout the '70s very well. My dad and my brother are both big boxing fans (and I often wonder if I would be if I hadn't been surrounded by it at home, or had to endure my would-be-World-champion brother offering me out every 5 minutes or so) which meant that his fights with the likes of Henry Cooper, Joe Frazier (The Fight Of The Century and The Thrilla In Manila) and George Foreman (The Rumble In The Jungle) assumed legendary status in our house almost before they had taken place. And not without reason - watch the amazing 'When We Were Kings' and you'll see Ali in his element, with everyone from the local kids to the World's media falling under his spell.

As a man he was a sports reporter's dream, being charming, witty and erudite with a quote for every occasion - but none of this would matter if he wasn't a great sportsman, a fearsome fighting machine who's outrageous predictions of which round he would knock his opponent out in earlier in his career only made his achievements in the ring seem all the more extraordinary.

Then there was his stance against the Vietnam War - his refusal to be drafted ('I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger') cost him over two years of his boxing career but made him a hero to anyone who shared his point of view. It's difficult to realise now what a powerful statement it made.

For what my opinion is worth - and as I said earlier I'm by no means the World's biggest boxing fan - he had a few fights too many (which may or may not have contributed to his ongoing Parkinson's Syndrome) but if you look at footage of his earlier bouts it's hard not to believe that he wasn't indeed 'the greatest'. And let's face it, anyone that can deliver a line like 'I'm so fast that last night I turned of the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark' is more than a little bit ahead of the game...

And Etta James died on Friday - I must admit that I knew her name but didn't know much about her until I saw her fabulous rendition of 'Rock And Roll Music' in the film 'Hail Hail Rock 'n' Roll' I soon realised that her Chess Records recordings were what her legend was based on. There was much more to her than 'I'd Rather Go Blind' and 'I Just Wanna Make Love To You', although if she'd only released those two recordings she'd still be one of the most important blues artists of them all. Another sad loss.

No gigs for your humble narrator this week (bah!) but I did see two great shows, the first of which featured the mighty Henry Rollins at The Academy in Oxford. I last saw him way back in August 2008 (doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!?) and if Wednesday's show is anything to go by he's showing no signs of slowing down, with his astonishing work schedule giving him even more subjects to comment upon. Bizarre tales of eating rats (urgh!) sat alongside hilarious stories of shopping in Costco with his scary-sounding assistant Heidi during a 2 1/2 hour show (imagine standing on a stage and talking for that length of time!) which had the capacity crowd enthralled throughout. I managed a few words with him afterwards and he was as courteous as ever - rather than get straight onto the tourbus after talking to me he stood out in the rain signing autographs and chatting to fans. Top man.

And last night myself and the long-suffering Shirley made our way over to Sutton to see The Kast Off Kinks at The Boom Boom Club. Chicago Blues Brothers keyboard maestro Ian Gibbons is a member of said combo, and it was great to see him play from the audience perspective rather than from a couple of yards away on stage. He's very good you know!

The first person we saw as we walked in was Steve Simpson, a very welcome sight since the last conversation I had with him was when he phoned to cancel his appearance at the Load Of Hay back in November due to ill health- he's still not 100% fit but is back playing again which is good news. And The Kast Off Kinks were terrific - I last saw them in Ruislip back in July 2009 when I thought they were excellent, but they've got even better in the interim period. Mick Avory prefaced his vocal performance of 'Dedicated Follower Of Fashion' by holding up a pint of beer which he proclaimed to be 'vocal petrol' (I'm definitely stealing that line!) and much audience dancing and merriment ensued throughout. A fine evening.

His-tory repeating

2012-01-15T20:20:00.005Z

I was stumbling around first thing on Thursday morning attempting to wake up when an item on Breakfast TV caught my (half open) eye. It seems that some local ladies had led a protest outside a cinema in Chesterfield that was showing 'The Iron Lady' - they were angry at the film's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher as some sort of feminist icon rather than as the inhuman monster that she so obviously is. They had one of the protesters in the studio, along with a film critic - the protester admitted that she hadn't seen the film which unfortunately weakened her argument somewhat, but the item raised some interesting points about the re-writing of history that seems to be happening around the dark days of the '80s. I must say that I haven't seen the film either (mostly because the clips that I have seen show Meryl Streep's performance to be such an uncannily accurate recreation of the harridan herself that I wouldn't be able to watch it without breaking something) but in my not-so-humble opinion the Conservative government of the time all but destroyed this country, and any attempt at recasting the leader of that government as a hero has to be spoken out against. Chesterfield was very badly effected (and indeed continues to be effected) by the closure of the coal mines in the mid-'80s, hence the protest there - it'll be interesting to see if there are any other protests along similar lines anywhere else.

Time for the first Uppercut gig of 2012, and it's at a new venue for us, The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham. It's one of those pubs that seems to reveal a new part of it every time you turn a corner (if you know what I mean) and from our point of view the show was very definitely a game of two halves. We began uneventfully enough with '(Sittin' On) Dock Of The Bay' (we find that it's often a good idea to start with a relatively laid back song, especially at somewhere that we've not played at before) but during 'Under My Thumb' some very strange noises started coming from the P.A. system. And no, I don't mean my backing vocals - more like a high pitched foghorn which we assumed was feedback and which had at least one audience member putting his fingers in his ears. It got so bad that we had to abandon our third song 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' to try to find out what was causing it - by a process of elimination (plugging and unplugging things!) it revealed itself to be coming from my microphone. Bah! We unplugged it, re-started the song and played the rest of our first set without incident to the increasing approval of those present. Good.

In the interval I decided to put some music over the P.A. for a bit of atmosphere - when I plugged my phone into the same channel that my microphone had been in the high-pitched foghorn noise re-appeared. So it wasn't feedback... time for a visit to the repairman then!

The second set went better than the first, helped by the boisterous presence of a bunch of lads who sang along lustily at every opportunity (often into Terry's microphone) and a fair bit of dancing from the locals. We even played a request of 'Johnny B. Goode' as a second encore which we don't normally play but managed to get through without too many problems. A good gig - in the end.

And it was definitely a good gig last night, when The Good Old Boys returned to The General Elliot in Uxbridge for the second time in less than a month. The show before Christmas was enjoyable but this one really was excellent - Nick Simper returned on bass meaning that 'Hush' was back in the set, and the whole band were on top form throughout the show. Alan, Pete and myself have a couple of upcoming gigs for our acoustic trio The Rikardo Brothers which I'm really looking forward to; various rehearsal dates and perspective new songs were discussed before myself and East joined Hud at the bar for a few drinks and a discussion that went on well past my bedtime - details are sketchy but East's declaration of intent to form a band called Ned's Acoustic Dustbin to play a song called 'Kill Your Tunnel Vision' shows that the producers of 'The Iron Lady' may not be alone in rewriting the history of the 1980s...

Occupation : unemployed

2012-01-08T18:49:00.011Z

Bob Holness has died - shame. Let's face it, we all loved 'Blockbusters' didn't we? And I was particularly fond of his sax solo on 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty - well, I'm particularly fond of the story anyway...

Three imminent birthdays today - Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Stephen Hawking. Not a bad day to be born on then? And talking of Mr. Bowie the 1977 Top Of The Pops stuff on BBC4 was most enjoyable, capturing the flavour of the times well. I remember my mum used to say 'those girls are too thin' whenever Legs & Co. appeared on screen - looking at them now (ahem!) I can (almost!) see what she was getting at!

My first gig of 2012 took place yesterday evening, with The Chicago Blues Brothers at The Pizza Express in Maidstone. We've played here many times before - it always seems an unlikely venue for us, and it always goes better than I for one think that it's going to. I'd been working in Balcony Shirts all day and so didn't arrive until about 6.30, by which time everyone else was set up and ready to rock. It's A-Team band - Marc on drums, Squirrel on bass, Ian on keyboards, Richard on saxophone and Dave on trumpet, with the only dep being Pete in place of Matt as Jake, with Mike as Elwood as always. I set my gear up as quickly as I could and we soundchecked without too many problems - it's always hard to get the volume right, and this time we tried to play as quietly as we could which meant that neither Squirrel or myself were miked up. I'm never sure that this is a good idea as when the place fills up with people the sound changes dramatically but this time it all seemed to work well.

With everything sounding good it's time for pizza (obviously!) and to catch up on what everyone has been doing since we last all saw each other. It's been quiet. Very quiet. No one seems to have been working very much at all. Bah! Still the pizza is good as is the mood - Richard triumphantly brings out a birthday cake for Dave, who thanks him then says that it's not his birthday until March. Richard says that he knew that, but he doesn't know when he'll next see him, and he didn't want to forget it then. Hmmm...!

The show is nearly sold out, and considering that we haven't played together for ages the band play well. Pete forgets a few words and takes a few wrong turns here and there (I can't remember the last time he fronted the band) which lead to a rather peculiar performance from him, but the audience love our efforts, and after the show there are enquiries for booking the band from several people. This is good news, as we have no other gigs booked for this year. None. Not good frankly. First gig of the year, only gig of the year - surely not?

T.V. on TV

2012-01-04T20:37:00.010Z

I don't know about you (obviously!) but I've been really enjoying the BBC re-broadcasts of 'Top Of The Pops' from way back in 1976. I'm surprised at how well I remember some of the shows - I used to watch them every week in the increasingly vain hope of seeing something interesting, a rather rare sight since the glory days of glam rock a few years earlier. Easily the best clip so far has been Eddie And The Hot Rods playing 'Get Out Of Denver' live in the studio - but all of that is about to change as the shows now move into 1977, a landmark year for rock music as punk rock reared it's spiky head. On BBC4 this Friday at 9 pm 'Top Of The Pops : The Story Of 1977' focuses on the year that the likes of The Jam and The Stranglers made their first appearances on the show, and when people like The Tom Robinson Band and The Saints made people like me go 'ARGH!' (or words to that effect). I particularly remember a blistering live version of 'Lights Out' by Dr. Feelgood (not exactly punk I know, but it was my first sighting of then-new guitarist Gypie Mayo) all but blowing the roof off the studio. The documentary also features interviews with the likes of Paul Cook and John Otway as well as T.V. Smith and Gaye Advert, which means we should hopefully see 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' and / or 'No Time To Be 21' by The Adverts; then again if we don't see them in this show we should see them sometime in the not-too-distant future when the 1977 shows are repeated.

Good news all round then!

Ska-diff!

2012-01-01T20:25:00.015Z

My last gig of 2011 was with Utter Madness in Cardiff headlining The Calennig New Year celebrations. It's a yearly event (obviously!) held outside The City Hall - the band played it back in 2001 when according to Ian the saxman there was 'horizontal rain' and freezing temperatures; he suggested 'a hat, long coat, fingerless gloves if you've got them' as stage wear... in the event the temperature was a lot higher than freezing and the rain had stopped earlier in the evening. Good!

We'd soundchecked at 5 pm - lots of echo from the cold concrete in front of us. 'Don't worry' said Matt the stage manager, 'there should be thousands of people here by midnight'. And there was - when I left the stage with my amp and guitar after the show an impressively long conga line was. er, congaing to 'Enjoy Yourself' by The Specials. And why not?

We were all staying at The Holiday Inn (I dread to think how much 7 rooms on New Year's Eve cost the organisers!) where food was served at 7.30; as I made my way up to room 329 Batman and Robin were haranguing guests in the bar while scantily-clad young ladies mused on the festivities to come. I got changed for the show then met everyone (Tony on vocals, Jon on bass, Dan on drums, Richard on keyboards, Ray on vocals and the afore-mentioned Ian on sax) in the lobby to head back to the City Hall. When we arrived Botown were halfway through their set; they mix soul classics with Bollywood songs which is an interesting idea although the audience reaction generally consisted of recognition for the soul song ('Sex Machine' for example) and confusion for the Bollywood song (sadly I've no idea of the title) that it morphed into. The massed dancing and singing along that accompanied their last number 'Valerie' was all dissipated by 30 or so seconds into the unidentified song that it became. Like I say it's an interesting idea but I'm not sure how it will work in practical terms, although now that I've said that they'll no doubt now sell millions.

'Don't watch that, watch this!' Tony started 'One Step Beyond' to a huge cheer from the rapidly-swelling crowd; I dropped my plectrum a few seconds into the song which suggested that my hands may well have been colder than I thought that they were. I wonder if my moment of madness (sorry!) was seen on the big screens that were either side of the stage? It's probably on YouTube by now... (well if it is I haven't found it yet - but I did find this!) As the clock at the side of the stage showed 6 minutes of 2011 left we swung into 'Baggy Trousers' - when the song ended we downed tools as chap from S4C and the compare (sorry I didn't catch either of their names) came on stage and counted down alternately in English and Welsh; fireworks heralded the start of 2012 as band members made good use of their mobile phone cameras. It all went out live on TV - you can see it here on the S4C website for the next month, we're on from about 16 minutes into the clip and the picture you can see me taking at midnight is the one at the start of this posting. Really!

We came back on to a jammed version of 'Auld Lang Syne' (I found this and the countdown on YouTube too - there are more clips appearing all the time!) and few more songs before 'Our House' ended a great gig. I'm told there were around 10,000 people there at midnight - now that definitely counts as a happy new year! I hope you have one too.

'Charlie! Help!'

2011-12-29T19:37:00.006Z

Sad news - Cheeta, the chimpanzee in the original Tarzan films has died. Or has he? After all the 'character' was apparently played by several chimps, and on at least one occasion by a child in a monkey outfit...

In the meantime the YouTube clips just keep on coming - East found this extraordinary item which is simply too good not to post here. If you cancel out the onscreen advert you get subtitles for the lyrics, thereby ensuring that 'Start Me Up' will never sound the same again... I first encountered StSanders back in November 2007 when their spoof videos managed to annoy the people parodied in them so much they they were removed from YouTube by the powers that be; maybe all that money and acclaim takes away your sense of humour?

And I've even managed to do a couple of gigs in between watching YouTube clips -

Christmas Eve gigs are almost always a bit weird. I think there's a sense of anticipation that almost always isn't lived up to; either that or people just get too drunk too quickly... I've not played a Christmas Eve gig for a few years but this year saw your humble narrator appearing with Big Al Reed at The Kings Arms in Harefield. Al's pretty fearless when it comes to material - he phoned me the day before to ask if I 'could have a look at that Joe Jackson song, you know the one...' that'll be 'Is She Really Going Out With Him?' then. And he hasn't got a backing track 'but you'll be ok doing it on guitar won't you?' Yes Al, of course I will... in the event it sounded rather good somewhere towards the end of our second set, which also included another guest appearance from Pete from Awaken on several songs, any number of people asking for 'Mustang Sally' (Al couldn't get the backing track to work so me and Pete played it) and a young lady asking for us to play 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town' - we didn't know it so Al put the track over the P.A. while we were packing our gear away, and as we were leaving she came over and thanked us for 'singing it for her'. Oh and the fight that everyone thought was going to happen didn't happen - until right at the very end when a father and son squared up at each other. Happy Christmas Harefield.

The Uppercut played at The Dolphin in Uxbridge on Boxing night - Noel the guv'nor had originally intended it to be an 'invite only' show for pub regulars although somewhere nearer to the day it became a 'standard' gig. And a good gig it was, with the band playing well (I thought it was a better show than the one at the Load of Hay the previous weekend) and our set including a few new songs and a couple that we hadn't played for ages. It's always a good band to play in so let's hope we can get a bit more work next year.

Talking of work (or at least what passes for work in my little World) I have spent much of today revising songs for an Utter Madness gig on New Year's Eve; I've not played with them since July so there's been a fair bit to get through. I'll let you know how it goes... and I don't remember the last year that I gigged on Christmas Eve, Boxing Day and New Year's Eve - if only the next couple of months were as busy as this!

Who'll love Aladdin Sane?

2011-12-23T19:38:00.001Z

Hmm... I don't remember this photo being taken. And who's that guy on the far left?

Ladies and gentlemen, behold the Balcony Shirts Christmas card. And why not?

It's been very - make that very - busy in the shop, not least on Saturday when your humble narrator found himself to be more than a little worse for wear after a night at the General Elliot watching The Good Old Boys. My condition had little to do with the band (who gave a typically excellent performance) but was more to do with the oceanic quantity of lager consumed by myself and East - perhaps his one word text message to me the next morning said all that needs to be said... and we've continued to be busy all week, which is good news in these troubled times.

The Upper Cut played at The Load Of Hay on Sunday for the first time since my birthday back in July. From my point of view we took a while to get going, with our first set feeling a little bit too much like hard work although the audience reaction suggested otherwise. Pete from Awaken joined us on guitar for several numbers, and with us being called back for several encores even I had cheered up (a bit) by the end of the show. We're playing again on Boxing Night at a secret regulars / invite only show in Uxbridge - it's like being in the Pistols!

And following on from the last posting's YouTube-fest a momentous televisual event occurred during a Top Of The Pops Christmas special broadcast on Wednesday evening, when footage of David Bowie performing 'The Jean Jenie' was shown for the first time since 1973. It was thought to have been lost forever thanks to the BBC's ridiculous policy of wiping recordings, but cameraman John Henshall kept a copy so that he could show how a camera lens that he'd developed was working. The story even made the evening news, and you can see why here - it features Bowie and The Spiders From Mars playing live, with the band in their glam rock finery and the mighty Mick Ronson at his magnificent best. Boy could he play guitar. It doesn't get much better than this - but I wonder what else Mr. Henshall has in his loft?

Well that clip is enough to give me a happy Christmas! I hope that you have one too.

'And oh I don't know why...'

2011-12-15T18:47:00.005Z

No gigs for your humble narrator this week, which is not a good situation for someone who's attempting to make a living out of playing the guitar. Bah! I can't remember a December that was this quiet... anyway here are a few YouTube clips that I've seen lately - after all, who wants to play the guitar when you can watch other people doing it? (Well, actually, I do... which reminds me, The Uppercut play an 'it's-nearly-Christmas' gig at The Load of Hay this coming Sunday - if you're in the area why not come along?)

When I was a lad there was a band called The Clash. They were very good. Very good indeed. In fact I've been known to say that one of the best things about being old is that you were able to see The Clash play. (On bad days I've been known to say that one of the ONLY good things about being old is that you were able to see The Clash, but that's another story...) Some amazing film of the band at The New York Palladium in 1979 has recently surfaced - originally silent, it has been painstakingly synced up with a bootleg audio recording of the show, the full story of which can be found on The Clash Blog along with the footage which is also on YouTube here. It's a famous show in the history of the band as it's the night that Paul Simonon smashed up his bass guitar, as immortalised on the cover of their 'London Calling' album. While it's not the greatest quality it captures the fearsome power of the band at their brilliant best, and I for one wish there was more of it, not least for the rare sight of Mick Jones playing 'English Civil War' on acoustic rather than electric guitar.

(Incidentally if you've never seen the electric version then here is - I told you they were very good...)

If you've ever been mad enough to attempt to learn to play a musical instrument then you'll know that it can be a very rewarding experience; you'll also know that it can be extremely frustrating, not least when you know what you're supposed to be playing but can't quite manage to get the sound out of the instrument. My good friend and Awaken guitarist Pete sent me a link for a clip of 'The Angriest Guitarist in the World' - it seems as though he's known as The Treeman and has been getting quite a lot of attention on YouTube. I of course have never heard of him before and therefore can heartily recommend this clip of the man himself in action - the moment at 2 min 18 sec where an edit cuts to our man holding an acoustic guitar that's being held together with what looks like masking tape is well worth savouring. There's a second clip here, and various other links to actual songs (as opposed to violent sweary rants) including the one that he's attempting to get right in the first clip can also be found - I'm not sure that it's not all a little bit contrived here and there, but it's certainly very entertaining.

I found this extraordinary clip of an English language class at The Sullivan School Kindergarten in South Korea on the ever-excellent Monkey Picks blog; I wish this sort have thing had gone on at our school, although of course when I was their age The Ramones were still several years in the future. I guess we could have had a teacher with an electric guitar leading us all in Beatles songs? Anyway it's a brilliant clip, especially the bit where the kids at the front can't wait to sing 'third verse, different from the first' and get back to the pogoing... and here are Da Brudders themselves playing the same song 'Judy Is A Punk' on The Don Kirshner's Rock Concert TV show in 1977. Analysis is futile my friends, other than to say something along the lines of 'that's rock 'n' roll'...

Sittin' on top of the world

2011-12-13T19:06:00.008Z

I've just found out that the great Hubert Sumlin died on December 4th. It's his funeral today.

If you don't know the name then buy yourself any compilation album of recordings Howlin' Wolf made for Chess Records in the 1950s and '60s. That's him on lead guitar. Put simply it's some of the best electric blues guitar playing of all time. He also worked with Muddy Waters, but it's the Wolf's recordings that have won him a place in history - and rightly so. They are fabulous.

In latter years he's been a regular contributor to the Crossroads Guitar Festivals organised by Eric Clapton, who has made no secret of his fervant admiration of Sumlin's playing. (Here is a great clip from last year's festival - note E.C. singing along!) And the fact that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards paid for his funeral speaks volumes for his influence on them and therefore subsequent generations of musicians.

I met him once. I never tire of retelling the story, as is evidenced by the fact that I told it here as early as October 2006, just after I started blogging. You can read it here if you like - I hope my writing has improved since then... but the profound nature of his comments have never left me, and in times of self doubt (of which there are many) they come back to me along with his enthusiasm for music and the kindness and encouragement that he showed to me, a total stranger among the many that someone like him must have met. My brief encounter with him showed him to be a absolute gentleman, and I've not heard or read anything anywhere that contradicts that.

His importance in the story of the electric guitar cannot and must not be underestimated.

Thanks Hubert.

One step backwards, two step forwards

2011-12-08T19:16:00.007Z

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of it's noisiest authorities insisted on it's being received, for good or evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only'

- 'A Tale Of Two Cities' (1859) by Charles Dickens

Back in the Middle Ages it was illegal to use the musical interval of a tritone in a composition. Medieval ears liked to hear perfect intervals when listening to music (for an explanation of the musical terms used in the ranting that follows then please click here, and I apologise in advance if I'm even more pretentious than usual in the next few paragraphs) so the sound of a flattened fifth was considered to be the most dissonant of them all as it split the octave exactly in half and therefore was as far away from home as could be imagined. Some (so-called) learned folk found the sound so offensive that they named the interval in question diabolus in musica - the 'devil in music' and wanted anyone who used it in a composition to be put on trial for witchcraft. It sounds crazy, but, incredibly, it's true.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the 1960s and the sound of the flattened fifth has been picked up by those well-known purveyors of witchcraft The Jimi Hendrix Experience whose classic single 'Purple Haze' starts with a tritone between Bb on the guitar and E on the bass; soon after Black Sabbath are using it in songs like 'Symptom Of The Universe' and 'Black Sabbath' itself, and bands like Metallica and Slayer use it extensively to this day, with Slayer even going so far as to name one of their albums 'Diabolus In Musica'. I suppose heavy metal musicians and indeed fans like the idea of being allied to Satan and all his little wizards although as far as I know no one involved has ever been put on trial for witchcraft; I must admit I always thought was a rather extreme thing to suggest for simply putting two musical notes next to each other, but what do I know?

Well I thought it was a rather extreme thing to do until sometime around 9.30 pm last Wednesday, when I found myself gripped by an unreasonable desire to inflict pain, torture, painful torture, even death on Phil Collins and Lamont Dozier for writing 'Loco In Acapulco'. If you've got five minutes have a listen to it here and tell me if I'm being unreasonable. You might disagree but I cannot for the life of me work out how The Four Tops, one of the greatest Motown acts of all time, managed to get involved with such unspeakably unlistenable tosh. Or am I wrong? Is it actually better than classics like 'Reach Out I'll Be There', 'Standing In The Shadows Of Love' and 'Bernardette'? What do you think? There's not a flattened fifth in sight but as far as I'm concerned it's proof that The Devil exists. No punishment is too great for anybody who had anything to do with the production of this song. Kill 'em all! Now! Argh!

In case you were wondering what I was up to as I contemplated such murderous violence, I was on stage with Pete and Matt (Jake and Elwood) and Richard (saxophone) playing a Chicago Blues Brothers playback show in front of a room full of people who couldn't have cared less whether we were there or not. I've more or less driven from my mind where we were and what we were doing there, and I have absolutely no idea why we were playing the song in question as it's got about as much to do with the Blues Brothers as, say, 'I Can't Help Myself'. Mind you we played that as well. As I put my guitar down at the end of the show I thought to myself 'that was my least enjoyable show of 2011'. And it was. It was horrific. The only thing that got me through it was the thought of the next two nights with Ruts D.C....

...which thankfully didn't let me down. (I don't know what I would have done if they had!) The Bournemouth Academy show was great but the London show at The Forum in Kentish Town was something else again. We'd bought 'In A Rut' into the set at Bournemouth - when we ran through it at the soundcheck we got a round of applause from The Alabama 3 members and crew who saw it, which bode well for the performance of the song that evening. The show was the best one so far, but the next night pushed things to greater heights; with the venue pretty much full before we started well with 'Whatever We Do' followed by two songs from the new album 'Mighty Soldier' and 'One Step'. Molara's fine vocal on 'Jah War' got a great reaction from the dancefloor before a medley of a new song 'Smiling Culture' and the old Ruts classic 'S.U.S.' led us into 'Fools'. Next it's the afore-mentioned 'In A Rut'; Segs had invited Ainsley (who sings on some of the new album) to join us for the middle section which you can see here - he's very good isn't he? We prefaced 'Babylon's Burning' with a short section from 'Weak Heart' - as I put my guitar down at the end of the show I thought to myself 'that was my most enjoyable show of 2011'. And it was. It was terrific. Does that mean that I've just proved that God exists?!?

Back to basics on Saturday night, with The Uppercut returning to The Dolphin for the first time in a while; the evening marked the 24th anniversary of Noel and Bridie first taking the pub over, and was a suitably wild 'n' wacky affair. We hadn't played together for a while (they'd played some shows while I was away in Dubai with Pete depping on guitar) and so were a bit loose here and there but the energy of the performance more than made up for the odd mistake. Well, I think it did... Noel took to the microphone towards the end of the evening to thank everyone for coming and then to lead everyone in what he referred to as 'the universal football song', 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. A cracking evening.

My third Sunday afternoon gig in four weeks (I don't think that's ever happened before!) saw myself and Big Al Reed return to The Feathers in Chalfont St. Giles. No sign of the chap with Tourettes Syndrome this time (apparently he'd been out the night before) but everyone there seemed to enjoy our efforts despite Al suffering from a bad throat. He's invited a mate of his called Barry along to play a few songs on slide guitar - when I asked him what he was going to play he didn't really know as he was not used to playing solo, and would I like to join him on lead guitar? Of course I would... as he started the first song I realised that I had no idea what he was going to play, or indeed if he was able to play at all - fortunately he was excellent, and it was really good to play some blues with him.

With Christmas looming it's all systems go at Balcony Shirts, meaning that I've been in the shop every day this week. But The Uppercut were out again last night, at The Six Bells in Brentford celebrating bass maestro Terry Peaker's 60th birthday. He'd invited a lot of his musician friends along, many of whom got up to play a song or two - it all got a bit chaotic in places with far too much hippie-ish jamming for my not-at-all hippie-ish liking, but everything went well and Terry was well pleased with the evening.

So there you have it - in the course of this posting I've played my best gig of the year, my worst gig of the year, and proved that God and The Devil both (probably) exist. Not a bad week's work then...

The director's cut

2011-11-28T18:42:00.009Z

I was saddened by the news that Ken Russell has died, aged 84. Always a controversial figure, he turned the already reasonably bonkers story of 'Tommy' into one of the maddest films any of us are ever likely to see; mind you most of his films managed to annoy people in one way or another, but it always seemed to me that said people either wanted to be annoyed, or indeed deserved to be annoyed by them. In these days of mediocrity we are sadly unlikely to see his like again, which is a great shame.

On a lighter note I had an absolutely splendid time on Music Scene Investigation last night - Tom, Ian and Rich were all on good form and I managed to ramble on about all sorts of things for what seemed like ages. If you'd like to see the show then click here but be warned - I've got those big headphones on again, and I still can't hear the bass... I could definitely hear the bass at The Load Of Hay where I managed to catch the last few numbers from Pimp My Jazz who feature Terry from The Uppercut on said instrument - you can always hear him! From what I saw an heard the band sounded tighter and more together than their first show there back in June (which was their debut gig) and it'll be interesting to see where they go from here. It's The Undersound this Sunday 4th, then The Uppercut on December 18th - come on down, as someone once said...

Time for another Ruts D.C. gig supporting The Alabama 3, this one on Saturday at The Academy in Bristol. The Static Jacks started the evening, and from what I saw of them they started it very well indeed; they certainly got the energy level up and got a lot of attention in the rapidly-filling venue. We walked out onto the stage to a fair amount of applause (and at least one shout for 'Babylon's Burning' - we finished the show with it) and played a tighter set than in Manchester, with audience reaction building up to the extent that we probably could have done an encore. It's good when that happens! Both Dave and Segs seemed to be pleased by the way things went for us, which bodes well for this week's shows in Bournemouth and London. And I managed to see most of the Alabama 3's set, and very good it was too.

It was my first Uppercut gig for what feels like ages on Friday, at The Half Moon in Harrow. The gig was originally supposed to feature Awaken who have since broken up in the interim period between booking the gig and now leaving guitarist Pete (who deps for me in The Uppercut when I'm elsewhere) with a gig but no band. Rather splendidly he suggested that we could do the show, which I'm pleased to say that our new friend Hetty (who books the gigs at the venue - she's Ginger Baker's daughter! Really!) thought was a good idea. To repay Pete's generosity in putting us up for the gig we invited him to come along to play a few songs with us, and with this in mind he and I got together on Thursday evening to see what songs would sound good with two guitars rather than one. In no time at all we'd written ten or so songs on a piece of paper - at which point we decided that we'd done enough work and went down the pub. It could all have gone tragically wrong at this point, but it actually went very right indeed (I wouldn't have been writing about it here if it had been terrible!) with Pete ending up playing with us for most of the evening, dep drummer Geoff excelling himself and Hetty offering us three gigs in the new year. As I said earlier, it's good when that happens!

More gigs this week, then it all get worryingly quiet...

'Well begun is half done'

2011-11-24T18:47:00.007Z

This guitar-lark is a very strange job sometimes. Thursday night I'm with Ruts DC, Sunday afternoon I'm at the Village Hall in Lockerley, Hampshire with The Briefcase Blues Brothers. The event was a 'combined 100th birthday party', a concept that I hadn't previously encountered although it's apparently becoming quite popular. Well, the BBB band had played one before... anyway the idea is that the couple in question (Sue and James) are aged 51 and 49 - a total of 100. Clever huh? Well I though it was! We were to be a surprise to all apart from the couple's 4 daughters and so were secreted in The Reading Room until it was time for us to go on - judging by the looks that I saw as the curtains opened at 2.15 pm and we swung into 'I Can't Turn You Loose' (probably best described as ranging from bemusement to horror) I think we'd certainly remained a secret... our first set actually went down very well all things considered, with a bit of dancing and not too many people leaving the room with their fingers in their ears. We returned to The Reading Room for the interval to be met by the daughters telling us that we were 'really brilliant' but everyone was going home now as they weren't expecting the event to go on past 3 o'clock so we might as well not do our second set. We'd had plenty to eat, been looked after really well, they'd all been really nice people - oh well, off home then! In the meantime Adam the drummer told me that I should try crunchy nut cornflakes with banana for breakfast ('with a cup of coffee it's like banoffee pie!' I tried it - he's right!) and everyone realised that several hours in an area where there's no mobile phone signal for anyone happens very rarely these days.

I was expecting to have to rush home and then on to the Load of Hay for the Steve Simpson gig, but sadly Steve had to cancel the show due to illness. Let's hope he's ok and we can get him to play in the new year. In the meantime it's Pimp My Jazz this coming Sunday (27th) evening, which I'll be late for as I'm making my second appearance on Music Scene Investigation. Full details can be found on the MSI website, and it all starts at 9 pm; they're currently having a poll to find the 'best guest of 2011' in the MSI awards - if you feel like voting for me (or indeed anyone else) then you can do so here Excellent!

Last night myself and the long-suffering Shirley attending the 2011 Prince's Trust Rock Gala at The Royal Albert Hall - not the type of event that your humble narrator would normally attend (you'll see why in a minute!) but the lure of a solo performance from Pete Townshend proved too much for me to resist. The man himself was on good form, playing a 5 song set (since you've asked - 'I'm One', 'The Acid Queen', 'Corrina Corrina', 'Drowned' and 'Won't Get Fooled Again') and sounding great to my admittedly rather biased ears. He seemed to be in a good mood too (for once!) explaining the meanings behind the songs more than he normally does, and previewing his version of 'Corrina Corrina' which is due to be released next year on an Amnesty International benefit CD collection of Bob Dylan songs. The rest of the evening was a (mostly) enjoyable mixture of stuff from a suitably eclectic mixture of performers - I must admit I'm normally not really a fan of this type of thing as there's far too much fawning to the Royal Family for me, but that was minimal here. And Shirley had a good time, and I liked a lot more than I thought I would... I think I'd better stop now before I start slagging off some of the other acts... there, I've stopped. Trust me, it's for the best. No really, it is.

21st Century Ruts D.C.

2011-11-18T14:16:00.021Z

Last night, Thursday 17th November 2011, I played with Ruts D.C. at The Ritz in Manchester.

How the hell did that happen?

I last saw Ruts D.C. in 1981 and 1982. It was the same show as it was New Year's Eve (clever eh?) at The Fulham Greyhound. It was an incredible evening. Details are a bit sketchy here and there (you know why...) but I'm pretty sure the support band were Auntie And The Men From Uncle (very strange but oddly compulsive, with Esso on drums) followed by Captain Sensible, Segs and Rat Scabies giving an impromptu performance of 'What Do You Give The Man Who's Got Everything?' from the Captain's solo single 'This Is Your Captain Speaking' before Ruts D.C. came on. They were amazing. Amazing. AMAZING. As good as any band I've ever seen. I've got a signed setlist somewhere. And that was almost exactly 30 years ago. Amazing.

I was a fan. I'm still a fan. But now I'm playing in the band. How the hell did that happen?

I asked myself that very question as I sat in Frank's Cafe in Uxbridge Station at 9 o'clock yesterday morning. The waitress had just bought me some beans on toast. I'd asked for brown bread, but she'd bought white. It didn't matter.

'When I'm up North I like to spend a couple of hours in a Little Chef - you know, extra beans, do a crossword or two, let my food go down and then get stuck into the Arctic Roll, you know what I mean'.

We're on the M40 - Seamus is less-than-seriously planning the next few hours while attempting to make sense on the passenger seat climate control, Dave is behind the wheel being highly amused by Seamus's comments and I'm sitting behind Dave reading the latest edition of Guitar and Bass magazine. Manchester is around 3 hours away; it's a lovely bright afternoon, we've got the soundtrack to 'Pulp Fiction' on the CD player and the mood is good - and why not?

So how the hell did that happen? How the hell am I playing for a band that I used to follow 30 years ago? Well for a start there was the rehearsal for the Paul Fox benefit show with Henry Rollins on vocals, when I discovered that all those hours playing along with 'The Crack' and 'Grin And Bear It' (and indeed 'Animal Now' and 'Rhythm Collision volume 1') meant that I could play the songs almost without thinking. I discovered I could do the same thing for the same reason with The Sex Pistols material when I depped with The Sex Pistols Experience and The Pistols. And The Commitments and Blues Brothers stuff wasn't hard either. Weird. Some people would call it wasted youth - but what do they know?

I used to talk to the band members at gigs. They were always friendly, always had a bit of time for the fans. I liked that. It stuck with me. I decided that if ever I was ever lucky enough to be in a band then I'd talk to anyone that ever wanted to talk to me. And I've been lucky enough to be in quite a few bands - I hope I've always been as friendly to people as Ruts D.C. (and indeed The Ruts) were to me.

Somewhere on the M6 Dave's car started playing up. A barrage of swearing from all concerned wouldn't make the dashboard light go off - 'they said that they'd fixed this' said Dave as we shuddered towards the hard shoulder, 'it's done this a few times, it might clear in a minute...' As he said that, it cleared. Good.

We arrived in Manchester just before 5 o'clock. We passed the Peace And Love Barbers (run by Mohammad Ali) and The Red Sea Coffee Shop; as we turned into Whitworth Street Dave gestured - 'The Hacienda - I remember it well'. After a bit of manoeuvring we parked on the double yellow lines outside the front doors of The Ritz to unload after which Dave went off to park the car as I ask Seamus if he'd played at the venue before - 'late '80s I think, with Iggy Pop'. I'd been watching The Stooges on DVD earlier - a good omen.

The Alabama 3 are soundchecking - a sample of Ray Winstone's voice booms out into the cavernous auditorium as I'm fixing the guitar strap in place. Segs is on bass, he makes a comment that it's 'time for the support band to have a go, after all we don't want any trouble from them now do we?' He smiles at me, a bit weakly, he looks as nervous as I fell i.e. a bit but not too bad.

We set up across the front of the stage. My amp is on the keyboard riser and I'm standing next to Steve the guitarist's pedalboard. London Transport still haven't found my pedalboard (and I fear they never will) so I've borrowed a Carbon Copy delay pedal from ex-Awaken guitarist Pete (thanks mate) and I've dug out a Bad Monkey overdrive pedal (which I have as a spare for the Tube Screamer that I use with the Blues Brothers shows) and a Micro Amp as a volume boost for solos. They sound good, but I really miss my old Boss Chorus pedal. If I don't get the board back, that's the one that I'm going to have to replace first.

I'm stage left (on the right as you look from the audience) with Molara in front of me - she suggests that I move a bit to the right so that people can see me, which I do. Segs is on my right, Dave is next to him and Seamus is way away from me on the other side of the drum kit. We're using loops on two tracks so Dave has his computer on a table to his left, after a bit of monitor adjustments it all sounds good. We also run through 'Babylon's Burning' with John Robb on vocals who's joining us for that number, it goes a bit wrong at the end with John saying that he was waiting for a guitar cue that's on the recording and Segs saying that I'm playing it just like the recording, we try to run through it again but there's no time as they're about to open the doors...

In the dressing room there are a few cans of coke and bottles of beer which go down well with all concerned. With Dave suggesting that we dress 'in suits, a bit gangster-ish' there are hats to try on, I settle on a flat cap which John describes as having 'an Andy Partridge look' - I thought he said Alan but cheer up when I realise he didn't.

Suddenly it's 7.30 and we're on stage - I'm sure they didn't used to go on that early when I used to watch them. It's a breathless 30-odd minute performance to a room that looked fairly full by the time we finished. We played well - there was a real 'first gig feel' about the show but it was still a great thing to be part of. Well it certainly was for me.

How did we sound? Click here to find out!

It would have been great to stick around, have a drink and a chat, see The Alabama 3 - but Dave had to get back so we had to leave promptly after the show. Shame. As we pulled away the touts were touting, the queue was queueing - oh well, there's always the Bristol show next week. I'll see them play then.

The dashboard light came on again on the way home but I must admit I'd dropped off to sleep at that point. During the course of our journey Dave and Seamus bought far too many pork pies (the sight of them scouring a service station for mustard was something to behold, particularly when they were advised to try W.H. Smith...) and I'd bought some chocolate that was on a special offer, then didn't eat any of it. Rock 'n' Roll eh? In the meantime an ecstatic Segs had roared his approval of the show to us all on the speakerphone and we all agreed that although our first show had indeed been a good one, the best is very definitely yet to come. And that's a really good feeling to have.

Well I'm still not sure how the hell it all happened. But I'm really glad that it has.

I swear I was there

2011-11-14T19:09:00.005Z

I'm bound to say that the worst thing about leaving something on a train isn't leaving something on a train - it's feeling like an idiot. Well, it is for me anyway. On Monday morning I called The 12 Bar Club to check that I hadn't left it there (even though I have a recollection of struggling through the front door with both hands full and my bag over my shoulder) and then attempted to call the London Transport Lost Property Office. After what felt like ages on the phone waiting to get through I decided to try their website - it didn't take too long to fill the form in so let's hope it's as easy for them to find my pedal board...

In the meantime I spent most of Sunday attempting to do very little - I actually managed to run through a fair few songs for next weekend's Ash Bash show so it wasn't a completely lost day although I also fell asleep on the settee... I felt a bit better in the evening and so made it down to the Load of Hay to see The Bullet Blues Band, and very good they were too. I even managed to join them for a few songs at the end of their performance - I got up from my seat to go to the bar and Eddie the singer said something like 'let's get Leigh up to help us with this one'; it's difficult to say no in situations like that (well maybe it's more accurate to say that it's difficult for ME to say no in situations like that...) and it was good fun to say the least. They're a great band, and they deserved a bigger audience than the one that they had. It's Steve Simpson on the 20th then Pimp My Jazz on the 27th - if you're in the area why not come along?

Tuesday it was back to Brixton for the last Ruts D.C. rehearsal before the upcoming gigs. I arrived at Jamm just as Dave was finishing setting his kit up; Seamus arrived soon after me (Molara sadly couldn't make it) and with Segs marshalling the troops we were set up and playing in no time. There were a few last minute arrangement changes here and there but it all sounded good to me - the first show is in Manchester this coming Thursday followed by Bristol on the 26th then December 1st in Bournemouth and Kentish Town on the 2nd. With the album still to be finished Dave from Balcony Shirts has done some design work on the 5-track sampler CD that will be available at the gigs, and we're also making some t-shirts to sell at the shows - it's all getting nearer by the minute. Excellent!

A long day Wednesday saw The Briefcase Blues Brothers return to Bibi's Italian restaurant in Leeds. I travelled up with Adam the drummer - we arrived to find Rob (keyboards) and Kylan (bass) more-or-less set up, with Mario and Matt (Jake and Elwood) getting the P.A. system up and running. After a quick soundcheck it was time for some food - I certainly ate far too much but it was so nice I couldn't help myself! We then walked around to Becketts Bank for a drink (As we passed The Queens Hotel Matt and myself reflected on the fact that if we'd been there a day earlier we could have seen Jimmy Saville lying in state) before returning to the venue for a boisterous show in front of an audience that danced a lot more than I would have been able to after the amount of food that I'd eaten. A good gig.

A fairly quiet Saturday in Balcony Shirts (the calm before the storm methinks... hopefully...) was enlivened no end by a visit from Big Al Reed who (a) bought some strings and (b) asked the ever-interesting question 'are you working tonight?' When I said that I wasn't he said he needed someone to do a duo gig with him in Chalfont St. Giles - was I interested? Of course I was...

When we arrived at The Feathers we were greeted by a barrage of shouting and swearing from a chap sitting at the bar. 'He's a bit loud' said Al, eyeing him suspiciously. Well that was one way of describing him. Meanwhile a somewhat over-refreshed but very cheery Irish lady asks if she can sing a song - we're hardly set up before she's wowing her friends and the sweary man with 'Summertime'. Al takes it all in his stride, singing a few swing numbers before inviting me to join him for a few songs. He plays some on acoustic and others on electric guitar, some with backing tracks and some without, and he was excellent. I don't think he needed me there, but I'm glad he invited me along. Then again we were invited back in December so we must have done something right.

As we were leaving we met the over-refreshed but very cheery Irish lady out at the front of the pub. She loved us, as did John, one of the locals. 'Did you meet ''Tourettes''?' he asked with a smile. It was fairly obvious who he meant. 'We call him "Tourettes" 'cos he's got Tourettes'.

Ah, that explains it.

And Sunday it was Ash Bash 5 - as previously mentioned I'd missed last weekend's rehearsal so had been attempting to learn the songs on my own but was glad to have a run through with Simon on drums and most of the band (fellow Flying Squad members Andy on vocals and guitar and Mike on bass with Tina on vocals; Max joined us on keyboards at the venue) before heading off to The Forest Suite at Bracknell Leisure Centre. After loading in and setting up we had a quick (and I mean quick - a verse or two at most) soundcheck with each student before Simon introduced the show. The idea of the event is that some of Simon's drum students get chance to play one or two songs with a live band (us!) and as such it's a very enjoyable event to be part of. In all too many cases the students knew the songs much better than the band (!) but we managed to get through it all without too many mishaps; at the end Simon joined us for a very enjoyable romp through 'Children Of The Revolution' (oh yes!) to bring a splendid event to a close. Great stuff.

Right. My next gig is with Ruts D.C. Here we go...

Anarchy in the uke - eh?

2011-11-11T15:09:00.010Z

As the Autumn nights draw in it's time for another song from Balcony Shirts - having shown us all how to bake bread and extolled the virtues of the then-recently promoted Queens Park Rangers our resident songwriting genius Scott has turned his attention to the humble ukulele. He's written a song to show you how to play it, and he's somehow got Iain Lee to appear in the video - it's on YouTube now, so click here to see all sorts of people strumming in the shop, Scott Dave and Chris trying their best to look bored while standing in a line pretending to play, and your humble narrator in an undersized lab coat showing you 3 chords. They're the only 3 that I know, so it's fortunate that they were the ones that the song needed. Perhaps they're the only ones that Scott knows too?!?

Incidentally we've just made some t-shirts for the afore-mentioned Mr. Lee, and they're currently available from his website. We're also producing some shirts for the upcoming Ruts D.C. gigs, but more about that next time.

Pedal to the metal

2011-11-05T20:49:00.018Z

I'm not well. I've got ManFlu. Again. Bah!

How rough do I feel? Well earlier today I asked former Awaken guitarist Pete to stand in for me at tonight's Upper Cut gig at The Misty Moon in Bethnal Green - I don't remember the last time I missed a gig through illness... and I was due to be rehearsing tomorrow for Ash Bash 5 (I played at Ash Bash 4 back in June 2008, you can read about that by clicking here) but I'm not doing that either. The show is next Sunday afternoon so I'll do some work on the songs in the meantime.

I started to feel unwell yesterday - by the time I got to The 12 Bar Club where I was playing with T.V. Smith I was feeling rough and it got worse as the evening went on. As soon as the show started I felt fine then within a few minutes of the last song finishing I felt terrible. This can only mean one thing - T.V. Smith cures all ills! We'd not had chance to rehearse together but despite the odd mad moment it was a good show in front of an enthusiastic audience of familiar faces and new converts. I'd like to have seen a bit more of Eastfield who were on after us as they sounded really good so I must make an effort to catch them next time.

I've spent much of this week rehearsing with Ruts D.C. at The Music Complex in Deptford. Even though I say so myself it's sounding good - we're getting together again next week for one more session before Segs begins rehearsing with The Alabama 3 for the tour. I guess going to South London and back every day with little time for a decent meal or much sleep most days has contributed to my downfall? Still at least I was able to leave my guitar and effect pedal board at the studio for most of the week although I took my electric guitar (the Lemon Drop) home on Thursday evening and took my acoustic guitar with me yesterday for the T.V. gig so Segs leant me his (excellent) Gibson 335 for the rehearsal. It still seems a bit unreal to be playing with Ruts D.C. - there were a lot of people there last night who are looking forward to the shows almost as much as I am!

After last night's show I got the tube home; as it was late I had to get a train to West Ruislip then a U1 bus rather than getting a train directly to Uxbridge, I felt so awful when I got home that I didn't bother putting any of my stuff away, I just left it all in the front room with a view to sorting it all out in the morning. As I was in the shower this morning I realised how ill I was feeling - I also couldn't recall seeing my effect pedal board when I came upstairs last night. I went downstairs fearing the worst - I couldn't see the board anywhere. I must have left it on the train. Or the bus. Or something. Bugger.

It's Sunday morning and I've just read this posting through; sorry that it's not very well written but I really wasn't feeling too good last night... incidentally the Misty Moon gig didn't happen as it was double booked again! And I asked at Uxbridge Station about my pedal board - they told me that I'll have to call the lost property office on Monday morning...

Dubai blues

2011-10-31T10:51:00.010Z

I have just - just! - returned from doing 5 shows in Dubai with The Chicago Blues Brothers! We nearly made it there around this time last year, and to be honest I was half expecting this to be cancelled right up to the moment we walked on stage for the first show, but it was all ok in the end. Full story to follow as I made diary-style notes throughout our time there which I intend to reproduce here in one form or another in the not-too-distant future. But there's a more important thing to write about today...

We left Heathrow Airport last Monday afternoon; as we were walking towards the departure lounge CBB mainman Pete suddenly stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

He looked serious. He was serious.

'I need to talk to you mate - about something bad... I was on the phone to Paul Cope yesterday - who links me, you and Paul?'

As I said the name John Saxon I had a horrible feeling that I knew what was coming next.

'He's...' Pete hesitated '...no longer with us.'

When I asked what had happened he just said 'he walked into the sea.'

I first met John in the early 1980s, around the time that I first met Pete. They were in a band called The Immediate - Pete was on bass, Paul was on guitar and Alan was on drums. John sang and played occasional lead guitar. He was amazing. He and Paul were a fine songwriting team and the band were good but with no disrespect to them it has be said that it was John that you had to see. For a start he looked great - with his collar-length hair, leather jackets, beaten up jeans and scarves he was completely at odds with the fashions of the time but looked so cool that it didn't matter. He was good looking (as someone put it to me once, 'he could win a Mel Gibson look-a-like contest; Mel would come second') with a cheeky chappy grin that had woman literally falling at his feet - even my mum fancied him! Of course none of this would have mattered if he couldn't sing, but he had a voice that was somewhere between Paul Rodgers and Rod Stewart. Yes, that good. He liked blues, soul, rhythm and blues, even '60s pop and he could sing any of it. In short he was brilliant. We got on well (and it must be admitted that not everyone did get on with him, or he with them...) and he seemed to like me, possibly because then as now I was something of an outsider and so was he. We got talking one day about guitar players and he revealed that he'd been a friend of the late and undeniably great Paul Kossoff, a player who has always loomed large in my record collection. When said that I was a big fan he'd met him when Koss came up to him one day to ask him where he'd got his jacket from. If ever you needed to sum John up in one line it's that an internationally famous rockstar guitar hero had asked him where he got his clothes from rather than the other way around. John was very proud of his friendship with Paul.

There was an aura about John that I've rarely if ever encountered before or since. If you ever asked him how he saw himself he'd invariably give you a very simple answer. He was a bluesman. And he was. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the music and the people who made it. Put simply, he loved it and indeed lived it, maybe even lived for it. Maybe that's why he was so good. He looked like a rock 'n' roll star, sounded like one, acted like one - but if I've learned anything in this life it's that you don't get something for nothing, and John was living proof of that. He suffered terribly from anxiety, depression, lack of confidence - I talked to him about that almost as much as I did about the music. While I was in The Price he, Paul and I (later with Simon Thompson on harmonica) formed an acoustic trio called The Diving Ducks, who regularly confused and confounded folk club audiences for a few years in the late '80s. Working with him I saw first hand just how hard he sometimes found performing, how it could leave him crippled with insecurity while all those around him including the band told him how great he was sounding. And he did sound great - if I've ever worked with a better singer than I can't think of their name at the moment. I'll let you know if I ever do... later he sang with The Chain Gang, Raw Deal and M.G.M. (including a show at The 1987 Reading Festival) and it looked as though he was going to get the success that he so richly deserved - but for whatever reason it was not to be. He formed an alliance with Duffy Power, another great talent who never fulfilled his potential, but then drifted away from performing and disappeared from view.

And then, suddenly, out of the blue sometime in the mid '90s he got back in touch with me, writing letters that showed that he'd lost none of his humour (there are off-the-cuff recordings of him from the Immediate days as 'Art Vincent' a bizarre comedy character that defies any attempt at analysis here!) and intellect, pouring scorn and derision on the then-current music scene (we never could quite agree on Oasis!) as well as sending me compilation cassettes and later CD's of everything from song demos to rare blues and soul recordings that meant so much to him. I would occasionally suggest that we could get together and play some music, but he never said yes. Shame. The last time I saw him was when he and his wife Cathy came to a Chicago Blues Brothers show in Rochford back in December 2006 - he looked apprehensive as we shook hands but within a few minutes the old John started to return. After the show he told me that I was playing 'better than ever' which was a compliment and a half coming from him. I said how great it would be to see and hear him singing again and he looked sad, saying 'no' with a resigned shrug before cracking a half- smile - 'well, you never know...'

Alongside old blues material The Diving Ducks played a version of 'Ooh La La' by The Faces. John was a massive fan of the band and always loved to sing the song - but he would never perform anything by Free. It always got the impression that it was almost too close to him, or something. One day in his flat I was doodling on my guitar as he left the room, I think to get a drink. When he came back in I happened to be playing the riff from 'Be My Friend' - he looked a bit shocked so I stopped but he said 'you play that really well, do it again'. He then sang the song beautifully; I started 'Love You So', one of my favourite songs of all time, I thought he stop me but he joined in and gave one of the most emotional performances that I've ever been part of, just me and him in a small room. We never played either of them again but I'll never forget it.

As I type this sentance The Faces's live version of 'The Stealer' by Free is playing in the background. I first heard it on one of his compiliation tapes so it seems appropriate. I love it, but it'll never sound quite the same again.

My little world is sadder for knowing that John is no longer part of it. God bless you Jonno - I hope you've found some peace at last.

And here is Cathy's very moving tribute to him.

Cool Britannia rehearsal photos

2011-10-29T19:22:00.001Z

Here are a few shots from August's Cool Britannia rehearsal -going from left to right in the last picture that's me with Chris Teeder on keyboards, Matt Hewitt on vocals, Dave Ruffy on drums and John Sorrell a.k.a. Johnny Squirrel on bass guitar. There are theatre shows being booked for next year but I for one hope we do something before then - after all if we sound half as good as we look here it should really be something to look forward to...

The tracks of my tears

2011-10-23T11:32:00.005Z

I've just had a message from Kris Dollimore to say that he won't be able to do tonight's gig at the Load of Hay due to family illness. Curses!! There was a lot of interest in his performance and I was really looking forward to it - oh well, it's more important that his family are well don't you think? We'll reschedule the date as soon as we can; in the meantime the next Sunday night show there features The Bullet Blues Band (guess what type of music they play?!?) on November 6th - they feature The Chicago Blues Brothers band's very own Johnny Squirrel on bass alongside the vocal and harmonica talents of the excellent Ed Stacey, and it should be a cracking evening.

Thursday night saw myself and Matt from The Chicago Blues Brothers appear at the Bacchus Bar in Bishop's Stortford as The Rock Show. We've talked about doing something like this (a duo with backing tracks) for a while so when the opportunity arose (thanks Mike!) it seemed like a good chance to try the idea out. We'd talked through some song ideas over the last few weeks; we then set about obtaining backing tracks and working separately on the material. Unfortunately we didn't get chance for a rehearsal (we tried to arrange something but time and circumstances conspired against us as so often happens) which was a shame as we got lost here and there, although in our defence your honour the onstage sound was a little unusual... actually the stage itself was pretty odd, being set back into the wall several feet up in the air. This resulted in the music being for want of a better word 'contained' in the alcove making it extremely loud and overpowering (well that's what it was like where we were, I've no idea what it was like out the front) which took a few numbers to come to terms with. Mind you I'm sure every other act that appears there has the same problem and they no doubt cope with it so I'll stop making excuses and just say that it's given us a few things to think about if we're going to take the duo idea further. From my point of view I'm going to have a think about guitar sound - I used a Pod plugged straight into the P.A. system which didn't sound too bad in itself but had to be played back though the monitor for me to hear what I was playing. All well and good - except that it's been ages since I played a show with that sort of set up and I found it difficult to get the balance between the guitar and the backing track right. This also made timing difficult (hence my comment above about getting 'lost here and there') as well as making it hard for me to hear my backing vocals (I'm not the best singer and I need all the help I can get!) In the future I think I'll use an amplifier - I'm just more used to hearing the guitar coming from behind me! - although I guess the use of the Pod is another thing that could be sorted out at a rehearsal. In the meantime we've got to find some higher quality backing tracks, I've got to get more confidant with the backing vocals (this could take some time!) and, let's face it, we've got to learn the songs better, as the sound balance wasn't the only reason we 'got lost here and there'. Nevertheless every journey starts with the first step, and The Rock Show have made theirs. Let's see where we find ourselves next.

Friday it was time for another Ruts D.C. rehearsal - myself, Segs and Seamus spent a few hours in the latter's kitchen (rock 'n' roll eh?!?) running through quite a few of the songs from last week's Brixton bash. Seamus sounded great and Segs and myself were so enthused that we had to go to the pub afterwards to, er, discuss tactics. Everything's moving in the right direction, interest in the shows is starting to increase - good news all round!

Following on from the (ahem) success of our bread and Q.P.R. songs the next Balcony Shirts song extolls the virtues of the ukulele - to this end yesterday morning your humble narrator found himself in a several-sizes-too-small lab coat playing the only 3 chords that he knows on a SpongeBob SquarePants ukulele (yes, you read that bit correctly!) for the benefit of Scott's video camera and to the bemusement of several customers. I'll let you know when the finished film is available for viewing - in the meantime I'd better stop blogging and start phoning people who might be coming along tonight... bah!

Jamming!

2011-10-16T16:38:00.010Z

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...

The Eton Rifles

2011-10-09T18:51:00.003Z

It was the 75th anniversary of the Battle Of Cable Street on Tuesday - given some of their more dubious links there's a peculiar irony about it taking place during the Conservative Party conference don't you think? I somehow doubt that there were any commemorative events being held at the conference... still I did see an item on the London News about it, and The Mirror had quite a big article on it so at least it wasn't completely bypassed by the media. Back in the late 1980s The Price did a few gigs for Cable Street Beat (perhaps best thought of as the musical arm of Anti-Fascist Action) at a time when it seemed that extreme right wing politics were everywhere; at a show at The Electric Ballroom in Camden Town (we weren't playing - I think it was The Men They Couldn't Hang among others?) I met Solly Kaye whose memories of the day itself really were extraordinary and whose speech from the stage redefined the word 'inspirational'. In the meantime the ever-excellent Daily Mash summed up the Tory gathering better than I ever will - many a true word spoken in jest, as they say...

In the meantime 2 great - make that great - guitarists have recently left the building -

I only saw Bert Jansch play once (at a blues festival in Oxford since you ask) but he I'll never forget it. I'd heard his name a million times but had not really heard him play - as he hunched over his acoustic guitar playing finger-busting chords whilst singing with a chilling other-worldy voice I realised why the likes of Jimmy Page always name-checked him as one of the all time greats. Along with Davy Graham he defined acoustic guitar playing for many, and he'll be very sadly missed.

I never got to see Marv Tarplin play but I've certainly heard him. And so have you although you might not realise it - his work with Smokey Robinson And The Miracles mark him out as one of the great players and indeed songwriters of what for many was Motown's golden era. That's him on 'Tracks Of My Tears' and 'Going To A Go-Go' for instance, and if that's not proof of his brilliance then I for one don't know what is. Another sad loss.

And away from music Steve Jobs has died, although I'm sure that you're aware of that as it's been in the news rather more than the above two stories. As I sit here typing on my MacBook I feel that even I owe him something, although I'm not really sure what. I'll have a think about that and let you know if I come up with an answer!

The Chicago Blues Brothers returned to The Theatre Royal in Windsor this weekend for 3-shows-in-2-days - previous visits have been for longer which I guess is indicative of how quiet things are for the band these days compared to the last few years. Still they were 3 good shows with Friday evening probably just edging Saturday evening in the 'best of the bunch' stakes; the Saturday matinee (hey, that rhymes!) was a bit odd to say the least, with only a hundred or so people in the audience and although we still gave a good show it was difficult to 'get going', if you know what I mean. Ben was depping for Dave on trumpet on Saturday (it was the A-Team all round apart from that) and he did a wonderful job, particularly on 'Minnie The Moocher'. Around halfway through the second Saturday show Squirrel and myself both realised that the black dots that were appearing on the stage were sweat that was dripping from Matt - that man's energy never ceases to amaze. After Friday's show Mike, Matt and myself decided to go for a drink - sometime after 2 a.m. we left The Old Ticket Hall in a rather more confused state than the one we had arrived in. Maybe that's why we decided to walk though Eton to the Slough Travelodge where we were staying rather than get a cab? Maybe that's why the matinee show was a little odd? Maybe that's why the last section of this posting is somewhat disjointed?

Well, maybe.

The dreams of children

2011-10-07T11:32:00.002Z

Back near the start of July I mentioned in these hallowed pages that I'd recorded some guitar for somebody but didn't say who - this was because I'd been asked not to say what I was doing and who I was doing it for by the people that I was doing it for. Confused yet? But now dear reader the story can at last be told...

I was recording with Ruts D.C. - or to be pedantic, Segs and Dave Ruffy. As mentioned in the last posting the band emerged from The Ruts after the death of singer Malcolm Owen; they released a single 'Different View' / 'Formula Eyes' and an album 'Animal Now' for Virgin Records followed by a dub album 'Rhythm Collision Volume 1' for their own Bohemian Records before calling it a day in 1983. Now nearly 30 years after the first installment it's time for 'Rhythm Collision Volume 2' - incredibly I was asked to contribute to the album (I think I'm on about half of the tracks) and from what I've heard I can honestly say that it's going to be a great album. It's being mixed at the moment (literally at the moment as I type this!) and should be finished shortly. But the really exciting news is the prospect of some live shows in November and December as special guests of The Alabama 3 - well it's certainly exciting from my point of view as I'm in the band for the gigs! No, really, I am! Joining Dave on drums and Segs on bass are Molara on vocals, Seamus Beaghen on keyboards and me on guitar. Me!

The full story (and indeed the gig dates) can be found in an excellent article on John Robb's 'Louder Than War' website. To say I'm looking forward to this is the understatement of the year. Rehearsals are due to start next week - I'll keep you posted...

'Vinyl Rules!' Episode 3 - Laurel Aitkin / The Screamin' Lobsters / Choir Militia

2011-10-04T11:38:00.000Z

Time at last for a very belated episode 3 of 'Vinyl Rules!' - here are three 7" singles, all of which feature the talents of Paul Fox on guitar.

Spring 1980, and with The Ruts in limbo as singer Malcolm Owen battled heroin addiction Paul, Segs (bass) and Dave Ruffy (drums) backed Laurel Aitkin on two singles - 'Rudi Got Married' / 'Honey Come Back To Me' and 'Big Fat Man' / 'It's Too Late'. The band were credited as The Unitone, and both were released on Secret Affair's label I-Spy Records; I've not got the first one but I have the second one, which was produced by Paul and John Sparrow. It's something of a curio from my point of view (I'm not much of a ska fan to be honest) but the band play it well, and if nothing else it shows that they were capable of turning their hands to pretty much any style of music with ease. They also recorded a John Peel session with him around the same time, although things changed irrevocably for the band in July when Malcolm died from an overdose. They regrouped as Ruts D.C. and made some very fine music - but that's another story for another time...

When Ruts D.C. finished in 1982 Paul formed the splendidly-named Foxes And Rats with Rat Scabies from The Damned on drums and Martin from Watford (!) on bass; I saw them at (you've guessed it!) The Fulham Greyhound where their psychedelic power trio set (think Hendrix, Cream and, er, Steppenwolf and you'll get the idea) left the mainly punk-powered audience somewhat bemused. After that he and Martin stayed together in The Screamin' Lobsters, who were basically a rock'n'roll band that mixed a few original numbers among the old classics. One such original song was 'Lobrock' which emerged on a single in 1983. It rocks along in a suitably cheery 'we're-not-taking-this-too-seriously-and-nor-should-you' manner as did the doo-wop styled B-side 'Oh Oh I Love You', and as such is a good representation of the band. I saw them a couple of times (I bet you can guess where!) and they were an entertaining bunch although once again Ruts fans were seen leaving the venue with furrowed brows.

Paul's next move was to team up with the Lob's singer Harry Matthews to form a rather more commercially orientated act which went through several names (The Cut, Wildlife and The Big Boys among them) before settling on Choir Militia. Their only single 'Sharpen The Knife' / 'Nothing That Would Interest You' came out in 1986. The A-side is interesting in that it's a re-write of an unfinished Ruts D.C. song that was colloquially known as 'Jangly Boo' when it opened their live sets in an instrumental form in late 1981. The single itself follows the same basic structure (it's since been issued as 'Last Exit' on various Ruts compilations) and sounds very much 'of it's time', with slap bass, string synthesizer and a huge 'gated reverb' drum sound that could only have been recorded in the mid-80s. To my ears it sounds a bit dated next to the stripped-down sound of 'Lobrock' which ironically hasn't dated quite as much, but it's still a pretty good record with some great playing from Paul. The b-side's not bad either, although the band had several better songs like 'Bombs Away' and 'Take It Out On You' that would have made better records in my opinion - I remember hearing studio recordings of them at the time but I fear they'll never get heard now. Shame! Oh and before you ask, yes I did see them at The Fulham Greyhound (and very good they were too) and indeed The Price supported them a few times early on in our (ahem) career which meant a great deal to me personally as Paul was and indeed still is one of my all-time favourite guitarists. (I stayed in touch with him right up to his untimely death and was involved in his final gigs, the story of which can be found in the July 2007 section of these hallowed pages.) In the meantime these singles show a very different side to his playing in than was heard in The Ruts, and are all far better than their current obscurity suggests.

And it's the 4th annual Paul Fox tribute night at The Breakspear Arms in Ruislip on Saturday 15th October - I can't be there myself but it should be a good night...

R.I.P. R.E.M. / T.O.T.P. / O.G.W.T etc

2011-09-28T18:01:00.001Z

Well I for one was sad to hear that R.E.M. have decided to 'call it a day as a band'. I've not always liked their music but I've always liked them if you know what I mean - given their immense level of success they seem to me to have remained as independent as possible (always a good thing don't you think?) as well as supporting environmental and human rights causes (something that's often a controversial move particularly in the U.S.A.) and, let's not forget, producing some very good music. For what my opinion is worth I think Peter Buck is one of the great alternative rock guitarists - his anti-guitar-hero approach to playing (perhaps best summarised as 'do what's right for a song rather that what might make you look good') is something that a lot of musicians could learn from; Michael Stipe has always been a fabulously eccentric frontman as well as being a brilliantly original singer (not sure what some of those lyrics are about though!) while the original rhythm section of Mike Mills and Bill Berry are as good a combination as any that you care to name. Since Berry's departure due to illness in 1997 the band have perhaps struggled to reach their earlier heights (although I personally think that 'The Great Beyond' is as good a song as anything from their earlier catalogue) but they remained a classic live act, and as their comments on their website regarding their decision to disband confirm they're a band that will be missed in a rock music world that sadly often devoid of the kind of principals and intelligence that they had in abundance.

No gigs for me this weekend (and none next weekend either - bah!) which meant I was able to catch a typically splendid performance from The Good Old Boys at The General Elliot in Uxbridge on Friday evening. Alan, Pete and myself all agreed that The Rikardo Brothers should chase some more gigs (we haven't been able to get together through the summer due to us all having other work etc) so we're all going to get busy looking for gigs. I've also had time to catch a bit of music on the television - B.B.C. 4 have been re-showing episodes of 'Top Of The Pops' from 1976 over the last few months and I've seen as many of them as I can and apart from the odd appearance from the likes of T. Rex it's been as dreadful (make that dreadful) as you might think it would be. But this week it featured none other than Eddie And The Hot Rods whose barnstorming live performance of Bob Seger's 'Get Out Of Denver' was witnessed by your humble narrator back in the day. I witnessed it again on Thursday night and it was simply fantastic, and a portent of punkier times to come over the next couple of years. I really hope that they continue to show further programmes as some remarkable performances could well be on the horizon. And the same station also showed a compilation of 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' footage this weekend too, some bad, some good, all of it a priceless reminder of the role played by the show in giving many people their first television exposure. And if that wasn't enough 'Later... with Jools Holland' last night featured Wilko Johnson - yes, the King Of Canvey Island live in your own front room. If you missed it then here it is - and there's hopefully more from the great man and his cohorts on Friday evening's show! Maybe I should watch the telly more often!

Double Trouble

2011-09-22T20:07:00.010Z

A coupe of contrasting gigs for your humble narrator since the last posting :-

Saturday night it was time for The Uppercut to return to The Misty Moon in Bethnal Green. As Roger (drums) and myself pulled up outside we saw the two Terrys (vocals and bass) talking to a young man in a suit - Terry the bass greeted us with the words 'double booked' which are never good words to hear when you arrive at a venue. It turned out the young man was Ian March and it was indeed his name on the poster on the pillar which presumably holds the pub up; a quick conversation between Terry the voice and Gerry the guv'nor ended with the news that both acts could play 'on full money'. Oo-er! Oh well - this should be an interesting evening...

We set up in the alcove as we normally do then Ian set up his P.A. and MiniDisc player in front of our gear. The pub has a 1.30 a.m. licence so it was decided that Ian would do 45 minutes from 10 o'clock then we'd go on for the same length of time; he'd then do another set with us finishing the evening. As we got ourselves some drinks we noticed that there was a poster advertising future gigs - we're due back there on October 15th but, you've guessed it, it wasn't our name on the poster, it was Nataya... Terry came back from another conversation with Gerry saying 'he's not got his laptop with him, I've got to call him Monday'. Hmm... by now Ian had started - there are a few likely lads who look and indeed behave as though they've been drinking all day, dancing comically in front of Ian as he forces a weak smile in their general direction. His Buble - inspired act goes down well enough with the barflies although he looks as though he'd be happy to be virtually anywhere else in the World.

We start our first set with '(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay' to general indifference - we sound good but somehow different to the other times that we've played there. I'm wondering if it's because I'm using my spare amp (a Fender Blues Deluxe) as Roger the amplifier repair man hasn't been able to look at my main amp yet, but it's the overall sound that's changed... eventually we realise why - there's a curtain around the alcove that wasn't there before (presumably to keep the sound in the building rather than it escaping and annoying the neighbours) and it's deadened the sound considerably, with Roger being particularly bemused by the 'new' drum sound. Still we're playing well although no one seems to be interested in our antics. Nights like this can be very hard work, although sometimes they improve for no apparent reason - sadly this wasn't to be one of those nights, and I reach the end of the show without breaking sweat. I don't like it when that happens, it feels like I've not tried as hard as I can and that's a bad feeling to have. Still, I guess you can't win 'em all.

Last night's show on the other hand couldn't have been more different, when the Chicago Blues Brothers visited The Queens Theatre in Hornchurch. A nearly-sold-out crowd saw a nearly-the-A-team band (Matt and Mike as Jake and Elwood, Squirrel and Marc on bass and drums, Tracy on vocals, Ian on keyboards and Dave on vocals with Ian depping on sax for Richard being the only interloper) deliver an energetic show which definitely made me sweat. That's more like it! And if that wasn't good enough I noticed when I walked along the High Street that the Hogshead pub was advertising ROCK 'N' ROLL BINGO - you can imagine the caller can't you? Well I can - U2, Alabama 3, Mega City 4... excellent!

Time gentlemen please

2011-09-15T20:04:00.006Z

Bad news - it wasn't 'a bit of a cold' it was manflu, that most terrible of illnesses. Many are the ladies that say that manflu doesn't exist, but they are of course sadly deluded - I didn't feel too bad on Monday but by Tuesday I was in it's evil clutches with a headache from hell, all sorts of nasty stuff pouring out of my nose and a voice that sounded like I'd been gargling with paint stripper. Not good frankly. After taking mountains of paracetamol and drinking gallons of water (I only exaggerate a couple of million times a day) throughout Tuesday and Wednesday I heroically dragged myself down to The Crown And Sceptre for the Good For Nothing performance by Scott from Balcony Shirts - as I stumbled around trying to plug my acoustic guitar into the P.A. system Scott asked me if I would like to play on the whole set rather than just the bread and Q.P.R. songs as we'd originally planned. I thought I'd said something like 'I would if I was feeling better, and anyway I don't know your songs' although I think I actually said something more like ' Argh were ef Iwa fellin bitter' then coughed for about 40 seconds; either way he played a couple of his own songs (and very good they were too) before beckoning me up to join him. The bread song went well before he introduced another of his own songs -pausing to say 'it's just C, F and G with a capo at the second fret' to your humble narrator he launched into a song that I'd not heard before. After listening to the first verse I started with a few tentative notes; by about halfway through I'd more or less got the hang of it and would have tried a few more bits than I did if my nose hadn't started running during the last verse. Then he started strumming with the words 'Chas And Dave' - I recognised 'Ain't No Pleasing You' but made a dreadful mess of the chord sequence. Bah! Still never mind, it's time for the Q.P.R. song, he's changed the key (actually come to think of it he changed the key to the bread song too!) but I can play this one and it ends to cheery applause. Excellent. Even though I'm feeling rough (did I mention that I had manflu?) it was good fun although it would have been good to have been familiar with the other songs. Still if I've learned anything from playing this music lark it's that once you've made a mistake then it's gone forever and there's not much point in worrying about it. Time for a drink then...

'Last orders at the bar'.

The manager (I think he's the manager, he seemed to be running the place) walked around to tell everybody personally. It was just after 10.30. We hadn't been that bad had we? Mind you there weren't many people in... looks like I'd attended the only two Good for Nothing club nights at the Crown And Sceptre. Shame. Oh well, it might be a good thing to go home early, after all I'm not feeling too well... as I was leaving Darren thanked me for playing then added 'Simon bootlegged it'. Bugger! What was that I was saying about mistakes being gone forever?

P.S. - I found out on Saturday morning that they will be carrying on with the club night on Wednesdays after all - good news!

Tools of the trade

2011-09-11T18:34:00.003Z

I take a lot of things with me when I play a gig. Well, I think I do. If I'm using an electric guitar I take a guitar (or two) along with an amplifier (obviously!) and several leads (you've got to have some spares haven't you?) along with effect pedals if needed; I also take some tools (screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters etc) along with things like spare fuses and valves. I've only got one acoustic guitar so as there's no spare for that I always make sure that I've got plenty of strings with me - mind you I take plenty of strings with me even when I've got a spare guitar. Part of this neurotic attention to detail is probably that I'm neurotic (!) while the rest is the ever-popular 'if I take it, I won't need it' syndrome - a bit like thinking that if you take an umbrella with you it won't rain... and normally that line of thinking seems to work, as I rarely need to use any of the myriad spares that I take with me. I'd like to think that I look after my equipment, and generally I try keep everything in good working order - which is why when something does go wrong it comes as something of a shock...

I was halfway through my solo in 'Maggie May' (the first song of The Uppercut's second set at The Halfway House in Rickmansworth) on Friday night when a very strange sound came from my amplifier - a kind of spitting, crackling noise which lasted a few seconds then stopped. On the one hand I was pleased that it had stopped, on the other hand I was somewhat dismayed to find that everything had stopped and no sound whatsoever was forthcoming. Not good. Worse still, the little red light on the top on my amplifier (a Fender Blues Deville in case you were wondering) had gone off. Not good at all. I took my guitar off as the rest of the band ground to a halt; I made a quick 'erm, my amplifier's gone wrong' announcement, and then made myself concentrate on the optimistic thought that 'it must be the fuse' - which was 'optimistic' because that was pretty much the only thing that I knew how to fix...

As I undid the screw on the plug I wondered what I would do if changing the fuse didn't solve the problem; when it didn't solve the problem I swore a bit. Quite a bit if I remember rightly. When that didn't make the amplifier work it was time for another approach. In one of the compartments in the top part of my toolbox (which is so unfeasibly large that I can also keep all the leads and pedals in it) were some other, smaller fuses. I remembered buying them from Maplin in Uxbridge, ooh, 15 years ago, maybe more, they're for the fuse that's inside the back of the amplifier where the valves are. I'd better try that one then.

I took the fuse out of the amplifier and held it up to the light. It's one of these little glass ones that you can see through, and even through the tinted glasses that I wear when I'm gigging I could see that the wire in the fuse had broken - in other words it had blown. Great. I'll replace it and then we're back in business - provided of course that there isn't a fault somewhere in the amplifier and it blows the replacement fuse. If that happens then we're in trouble.

As I went to switch the amp back on I looked around to the rest of the band, all of whom were looking at me with what I took to be a mixture of apprehension and optimism; I said something like 'as Dave Allen would probably have said, if you have a God then hope that he is with you now' and switched the amp back on. The red light lit up, a beautiful sight. I waited a few seconds... it was still on. Now the moment of truth - try the guitar... I thought it crackled a bit, but maybe that was just me. The red light was still on. Good.

We debated what to do next, eventually reaching the slightly bizarre decision that we should restart the song from the guitar solo rather than from the beginning. So we did. The guitar sounded great, better than before. Surely a fuse can't make any difference to the sound? Of course it can't.

'That was a good fuse that you put in there' said Roger cheerily. We'd finished a fine show and were feeling great. He went on to say that he thought the guitar had sounded better than before the fuse had blown. I told him that I thought it sounded good too. Strange. I looked at the control panel on the top of the amplifier. The volume was higher than I'd had it earlier in the evening. A lot higher. I must have knocked it when I was leaning over it to change the fuse. So that's why it sounded better!

I was in the shop all day yesterday and didn't feel too well when I got home; I woke up today with what feels like a bit of a cold. Bah! Still I thought I'd plug my amp in this afternoon to see how it was sounding - it made a horrible high pitched screaming noise, and that was before I'd even plugged a guitar in! Looks like I'd better ring Roger the amplifier repair man in the morning...

In the meantime a splendid time was had at The Crown And Sceptre in Uxbridge (now that's something that I never thought that I'd ever write!) on Wednesday evening when Darren and Simon hosted their first Good For Nothing club evening. I met Esso from The Lurkers there just after 9.30; sometime after 10 o'clock Colour Me Wednesday played an excellent acoustic set to an increasingly appreciative audience. The rest of the evening saw slightly bewildered pub regulars recoiling in confusion as their requests for tracks from the likes of Pink were met with replies along the lines of 'sorry we haven't got anything by them'; Esso and myself were approached by a less-than-sober chap who asked us to feel his biceps (I'm not making this up, honest) and when the music was over the pub guv'nor seemed optimistic about upcoming Wednesday gatherings, which should hopefully bode well for the future. This week Scott from Balcony Shirts is playing an acoustic set, aided and abetted by at least one other member of the shop staff. It should be fun.

'In other news...'

2011-09-05T21:12:00.004Z

No gigs for your humble narrator this weekend (although I did manage to catch a fine set from Larry Miller at Tropic At Ruislip on Friday) so it's time for another commercial break :-

Following on from their Ace! club night a couple of months ago Darren and Simon have started GOOD FOR NOTHING at The Crown And Sceptre in Uxbridge. They're looking to be there every Wednesday evening starting this week playing 'pop, soul indie and rock 'n' roll from the '50s to now' (sounds good doesn't it?) with occasional solo live music sets (Scott from Balcony Shirts is playing at next week's gathering - I might even do a bit myself!) with full details to be found on the ever-excellent 'What's On In Uxbridge' website.

There's also time for a quick plug for my good friend and Blue Five partner-in-crime Pete a.k.a. Voltarol who is promoting (and indeed performing in) a series of shows featuring Brazilian singer Silvia Nicolatto and a band of Anglo-Cornish musicians put together especially for the project. They're gigging throughout September and October in Cornwall and Dorset, and full details of the gigs and their progress towards them can be found here. They're writing songs over the Internet and everything!

Keith Moon died 33 years ago on Wednesday; he would have been 65 last month and to mark that occasion the mod-tastic Monkey Picks blog featured some previously unseen pictures of the great man. I've written of my admiration of The Who in these hallowed pages many times so I won't do any of the usual over-emotional dribbling here - instead I'll just point you to these three clips of the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band In The World (quote unquote) at their incomparable, untouchable best. Nobody did it better, nobody does it better and I personally don't think anybody ever will. Cheers Moonie.

Cool Britannia

2011-09-01T18:22:00.009Z

So let's start as we mean to go on, with a sneak preview of something that should be happening in 2012 if not before. 'COOL BRITANNIA' will (ahem!) attempt to tell the story of British rock music from the 1960s to the present day. Myself and some very familiar faces (Matt on vocals, Squirrel on bass, Chris on keyboards and Dave on drums - trivia fans may be interested to know that the drum kit in the photo is the one that he used on all the Ruts and Ruts D.C. recordings among many others. Oh and that's my Lemon Drop guitar just visible on the corner of the drum riser, and Pete Townshend on the back projection - not sure we'll get away with that!) spent much of yesterday at the excellent Clifftown Studios in Southend running through several songs with the intention of making a promotional film for the show. I'm sure that it will make it on to YouTube at some point in the not-too-distant future, and when it does I'll put a link on here. There are already theatre shows booked for next Spring (it seems a long way off but it'll soon come round!) and I for one am really looking forward to it.

And talking of YouTube links, click here for a Rebellion Festival video diary courtesy of Louise Distras - the short clip from our gig gives me chance to mention that I'm playing with T.V. Smith at the 12 Bar Club on Friday 4th November. Again it seems a long way off, but it'll soon come round...

Six of one and half a dozen of the other

2011-08-30T19:16:00.000Z

So let's start my sixth year as a blogger with Friday's Uppercut gig at The Dolphin which saw the first appearance of my recently acquired Vintage Lemon Drop guitar. It sounded good although it's going to take a bit of getting used to - I generally use my Relic Stratocaster for our gigs and this has a much 'heavier' sound. It also features an unusual wiring system as it's intended to emulate Peter Green's famous Gibson Les Paul which was also owned by Gary Moore. Depending on which story you believe the guitar in question was either being repaired or cleaned - either way the neck pick-up ended up being put in the wrong way round and wired out of phase. This makes no difference to the sound when either of the pick-ups are selected individually, but when both pick-ups are on at the same time the resultant 'hollow' sound is very different to how you might expect from a Les Paul. Add to that the fact that turning either of the pick-ups down by even a small amount alters this dramatically and also makes the guitar louder (yes, you just read that bit correctly - when you turn one of the pick-ups down it gets louder! Really!) and you have a situation which as I say will take a bit of getting used to. Admittedly I'd not had as much time to practice with the guitar as I'd have liked (excuses excuses!) but I will have to sort myself out before our next show as the guitar played well and seems to suit our style better than the Strat. Overall however it was a great gig, very well attended and with much dancing and merriment all round. It's good when that happens!

And it was a great gig at The Pelton Arms in Greenwich yesterday afternoon when your humble narrator and his Telecaster (that's better, I can work one of those!) made his depping debut in The Duplicates. With ace guitarist Matt Percival away elsewhere I joined Seamus Beaghen (Hammond Organ) and Dave Ruffy (drums) for two sets of songs, instrumentals and theme tunes and songs which I managed to get through without too many mishaps. Mind you I'd spent a fair bit of time working on the material so I'm glad that I did! I particularly enjoyed playing the theme tune from 'The Dave Allen Show' (five points if you can tell me the title?!?) where I managed to use a wha-wha pedal without falling over (although it was close a few times!) and judging by the number of people who told me that it that I made a good job of the show I, well, made a good job of the show. It's good when that happens too! In the meantime Segs exercised his DJ-ing skills with some old funk and reggae tracks, and Tom from The Phobics surprised me by coming up over at the end of the show with the words 'what are you doing with this bunch of reprobates?' It turns out he lives locally and knows the band well - which reminds me The Phobics are playing at The 100 Club on September 7th with The Bermondsey Joyriders which should be well worth catching. And The Pelton Arms is a great - make that great - pub; any place that serves a chip butty with a side order of chips ('all sandwiches come with chips and salad') has got to have something going for it don't you think?

So - year six then...

96 Tears

2011-08-24T10:51:00.007Z

In these days of evil presidente there isn't much good news to be had, so it's great to be able to report that the Hillsborough Online Petition has reached the required 100,000 signatures to call for the release of Government papers pertaining to the 1989 disaster. Let's hope this brings justice for the 96 a bit closer.

Two great songwriters have sadly left the building since the last posting - Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford both contributed immeasurably to popular music, Leiber with Mike Stoller (with whom he worked for the best part of 60 years) and Ashford with his wife Valerie Simpson. Leiber and Stoller wrote any number of classic songs for the likes of Elvis Presley and The Drifters in the '50s and 60s as well as 'Stuck In The Middle With You' (I didn't know they wrote that!) and 'Pearl's A Singer' (or that!) in the 70s. Ashford and Simpson wrote countless Motown hits for other artists as well as having several in their own name. If they'd only written 'Hound Dog' and 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' they'd be two of the best songwriting teams of all time. Two very sad losses to the music world.

The Chicago Blues Brothers journeyed to Maidstone on Saturday evening for our first show at The Pizza Express since last New Year's Eve. With Squirrel away Pete made a rare appearance on bass, Martin makes his debut with us on sax and returning for the first time in ages it's T. Rextasy drummer John Skelton, who was the drummer in the CBB's when I first started playing with them all those years ago. Chris is on keyboards, Dave on trumpet and Matt and Mike are Jake and Elwood for a show that featured '634-5789' for the first time in a very long while. It also saw Dave play the trumpet solo in 'Minnie The Moocher' from up on the balcony, and your humble narrator cutting his hand on his guitar at the end of the solo in 'Sweet Home Chicago'. Well. Matt was egging me on, and I thought I'd be fun to try a bit of a windmill... I never learn do I? Nevertheless it was a good show overall, and it sounded like it was a good show next door at Earls judging by the songs I heard Vince Vortex play - 'Seventeen', 'I Fought The Law', 'New Rose', '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais'... time I formed a punk covers band methinks!

In the meantime there are two potentially excellent shows on the horizon this weekend - The Uppercut return to The Dolphin in Uxbridge on Friday, and I'm depping in The Duplicates at The Pelton Arms in Greenwich on Monday. I started this blog on August Bank Holiday Weekend 2006 - hopefully these shows should be two very good ways to celebrate...

See how I suffer for my art!

2011-08-18T19:06:00.000Z

Well I thoroughly enjoyed my time on Music Scene Investigation, and I'm pleased to say that I will hopefully be appearing again later in the year. (Well, fairly obviously I won't be appearing again earlier in the year but you know what I mean.) Ian, Tom and Rich were all very helpful, I managed to work Skype correctly (and what an amazing thing that is!) and if you didn't catch it then click here to see me wearing unfeasibly large headphones and sounding almost as though I know what I'm talking about. Excellent!

And apologies for the Warhol-esque nonsense above; having had one of these MacBook thingys for Gawd knows how long I've only just worked out how to take pictures with it!

In the meantime that was my first weekend for a while without any gigs (bah!) and although I never think I'm particularly busy I've just had a look back through the last few months worth of postings and considering these dark days of recession and depression I've not had a bad run overall. I've spoken to quite a few musicians lately who have had nowhere near as much work so I'm not going to complain (for once!) Still it's got me thinking about the nature of what it is that I do...

For quite a few of the shows over the last few months I've been obliged to learn songs specifically for the performance, or to learn different arrangements of otherwise familiar material. This has been both good fun and not a little daunting - I'll say now that the Killers song 'Mr. Brightside' which we played at the York show back at the start of May is one of the most difficult songs I've encountered in ages. It might not sound too hard but the intro and verse chords feature some enormous stretches (have a look at this clip of them performing it and see you'll see what I mean) which have never been a strong point of mine. Their guitarist must have very big hands, or very long fingers, or both! I also learned a Michael Buble song for that show which was easier to play but had the added pressure of being the couple's first dance, with all the scrutiny that that entails. From my point of view this sort of thing normally means a fair bit of time listening to the original tracks, looking at You Tube clips and generally attempting to work out what's going on in the song. There are numerous guitar tablature sites on the Internet, many of which can be very useful and save quite a bit of time although their accuracy is sometimes questionable as anybody can post onto them.

At the other end of the scale there was the Upper Cut gig in Staines a couple of days earlier where we were billed as a Rod Stewart tribute band - faced with a number of requests (!) we busked a reasonable version of 'The First Cut Is The Deepest' which went down well with the Rod fans. Something like that depends on several factors - fairly obviously some songs are easier to play than others even if you all know the song well it can still catch you out; there's also things like how well you can all hear each other to take into consideration, as well as how good the band is in the first place. Then there's how good your ear is - can you anticipate a chord change correctly if you've never played it before? Most of us have good days and bad days at this so you can only hope that it's one of your good days when you need to do it!

And then there was 'The Servant' at last weekend's gig with T.V. Smith which I managed to make a mistake in before the vocals had even started - and we might never play it again so I can't make amends!

So what's the alternative to spending hours in front of a CD player or computer screen? Well for the jobbing rock guitarist there really isn't one. Horn players are invariably excellent sight readers with their parts written out for them - guitar and bass players rarely if ever have anything provided for them, and most of them don't sight read conventional music anyway. I suppose this gives rise to a vicious circle where players don't learn to read music as they're never given anything to read, but parts aren't provided because most players can't read them. A notable exception to this are West End theatre shows and the like, but that's another subject for another time (and let's face it, another guitarist!)

And then there's the question of sound. It's fairly obvious to even the most casual listener that the guitars on a heavy metal recording sound a lot different to those on a funk tune. Playing the correct notes is only part of the story, you've got to sound right as well. Leaving aside the fact that this could be seen as spurious justification for owning a large number of guitars, amplifiers and effect pedals (perish the thought!) there's actually a serious point here - I agonised over which guitar to play at the afore-mentioned York show for quite some time, eventually choosing my SG as it was the easiest guitar to play the scary 'Mr Brightside' chords on. I nearly went for a Stratocaster (I needed a guitar with a double cutaway so that I could play chord high up the neck; there wasn't much in it to be honest) but I think I chose correctly in the end. This might seem like nitpicking but it's something that I find is spending a bit of time thinking about and indeed trying different instruments - the right guitar can make the gig, the wrong one can literally break it.

With regards to effect pedals, I've never owned a great number of these as I like to try to keep things as simple as possible, and the ones that I do have are fairly traditional types like booster pedals (to make solos louder), distortion, chorus, echo etc. I was talking to a guitarist recently who had a huge array of processors on a custom built pedal board because, as he put it, 'I might need play "Livin' On A Prayer" one minute and then "Mustang Sally" the next'. Hmm... I've had to do that sort of thing too but I've still only got a pedal or two wired up at any one time. This is not to say that I'm right and he's wrong (far from it - he's a lot more successful than I am!) but it does indicate a different approach to the same situation. As I say there's no right or wrong here - I just prefer to get different sounds out of the guitar and amplifier. With that in mind I'm starting to realise that I could do with a more versatile amp to go with my Fender combo which are great for clean sounds but not quite so effective on rockier material. Then again I could just get myself a decent overdrive pedal... actually haven't I got one of those somewhere?

Anyway I can't sit here typing, I've got work to do - I'm depping in The Duplicates at the end of the month and have nearly 2 hours of material to learn. The circle is unbroken... better get on with it then!

Critical mass

2011-08-12T20:53:00.005Z

So - while I'm away in the company of (so-called) anarchists at a punk rock festival there is rioting on the streets and insurrection everywhere you look. I don't know, you turn your back for five minutes... to this end my first day back in the real World on Tuesday was spent clearing the shop windows in grim anticipation of organised trouble in the Uxbridge area. Word had got around on Twitter that there was a meeting planned at 4 o'clock outside the station with havoc and chaos to follow - mind you it also said that there were overturned cars on fire at Brunel University and hundreds of hoodie - wearing youths amassing in Fassnidge Park preparing to take over the town, which judging by the number of people tweeting things like 'well I've just walked my dog through there and there's no one about' was either panic or wishful thinking depending on your point of view. For what my opinion is worth it always saddens me to see working class people attacking other working class people and their property and possessions - it just gives those in power more reasons to say that they need to have more power over us. Look out for a right wing backlash from the 'hang 'em / flog 'em / deport 'em' brigade any time soon.

Incidentally two more clips have surfaced from last weekend's 'T.V. and Leigh' gig - along with 'Lion And The Lamb' which featured in the last posting 'Coming In To Land' and 'Man Down' (in black and white - excellent!) capture the atmosphere well, or certainly the atmosphere as I remember it. It would be nice to have the whole show - I wonder if the feeds to the screens were recorded?

Let's get back to the unreal World for a while, or more specifically the online World. Ian Husbands came into the shop this week - he's an old mate that I hadn't seen for a while (I think I last saw him when he helped us find a venue for a Price reunion gig way back in 2006) and it was good to catch up on things. Somewhere in the course of our conversation he revealed that he's involved with a podcast called Music Scene Investigation, in which three new songs by up-and-coming acts are reviewed by a panel of musicians and / or music industry people who then vote their favourite as 'Song Of The Week'. Somewhere else in the course of our conversation I somehow agreed to appear on this Sunday's addition, which goes out at 9 p.m. on the msi website. If nothing else it should be fun, if only to see if I can get to grips with using Skype...

Rebel Rebel

2011-08-08T21:40:00.007Z

'If you don't go now you'll miss breakfast...'

Wise words at the best of times, but at 2.15 a.m. this morning they were particularly pertinent. Your humble narrator was musing on the merits or otherwise of staying at the after show party for yet another drink when the former bass player of popular punk rock combo The Adverts made the above observation. I thought for a few seconds before deciding that she was probably correct, bade everyone a cheery farewell and stumbled off into the Blackpool night in the general direction of my hotel. As I neared my quest I ruminated on the fact that (a) should I find myself at The Rebellion Festival again I'll book somewhere that's a bit nearer to The Winter Gardens than The Ambassador Hotel, and (b) that was the best night out I'd had for ages.

The journey to Blackpool had been simple enough - a tube train to Euston Square, walk around the corner to Euston Station with enough time for a vegetarian breakfast in The Britannia before catching the 12.25 p.m. Glasgow Central train to Preston where I changed onto the Blackpool North train. Arriving in Blackpool around 3.40 I rather extravagantly got a cab to The Ambassador Hotel - I've got room 312 in what is a classic old fashioned seaside hotel, as I'm checking in the jolly lady behind the counter asks me if I'm 'one of the turns down at that festival' and tells me that she recently went to see 'that Katherine Jenkins, she's really good and really young looking'. As I'm sorting my stuff out in my room I hear a jet aircraft roaring overhead, it sounds like you'd imaging one of The Red Arrows would sound if it had flown over the hotel. As I begin my walk along the promenade in the general direction of the venue I realise that it hadn't been one of The Red Arrows making all that noise - it was actually two of them. Excellent.

It was about a 20 minute walk to The Winter Gardens ('turn left at "Harry Ramsden's", you cant miss it') which is far enough with an acoustic guitar and a bag of leads but it's bright and breezy and there's something about the seaside that always makes me smile. As I get closer to The North Pier the ratio of punky-looking people starts to increase, and by the time I get to the venue there are multi-coloured Mohicans everywhere. The atmosphere is good and the policemen and women don't seem to have much to do - I picked up my A.A.A. wristband from the box office and climbed the stone steps into the main part of The Winter Gardens. I was last here when I depped in Foxy's Ruts way back in August 2007 and I'm here to play with T.V Smith this time, nothing much has changed from what I remember and I find T.V. behind his merchandise table doing a roaring trade. He shows me to the backstage area of The Bizarre Bazaar where we're on at 6.30, I drop my gear off while Captain Sensible soundchecks with 'Astronomy Domine'. We agree to meet up at 6 o'clock so there's time for a look around - I catch a couple of songs by Goldblade in The Empress Ballroom before saying hello to Arturo of The Lurkers whose merchandise stall is by the Bizarre Bazaar backstage door. Then it's back into The Empress for Glen Matlock And The Philistines, Matlock's playing guitar alongside James Stevenson which is a bit of a shame as I've always thought of him as one of rock's great bass players although 'Burning Sounds' and 'God Save The Queen' both sound pretty good to me. Meanwhile over in The Olympia Neck are setting up; I played in the band around 10 years ago and would love to have seen their set but sadly they're on at the same time as us although I managed a few words with Leeson and agreed to meet him later for a drink. I see their first song 'Loud 'n' Proud 'n' Bold' before I had to leave to meet up with T. V. - time to go to work...

We start with 'No Time To Be 21' at exactly 6.30. The room looked full when we started and was definitely full by the end of 'Bored Teenagers' with somewhere between 800 and 1,000 people in depending on whose estimate you believe watching our set. Longtime T.V. fan Kevin had asked for 'The Servant' which I'd like to have made a better job of (I messed up the opening riff - bugger!) although it goes well enough overall. By 'Expensive Being Poor' things are really hotting up and the audience are really on our side - before 'Lion and The Lamb' begins T.V. introduces Pascal Briggs who joins us for the rest of our set, they've worked together out in Germany although I met him for the first time as I shook hands with him on the stage. His arrival pushes us on to even greater heights and 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' even gets a bit of pogoing, a strange sight at an acoustic show. We finish with 'One Chord Wonders' to audience pandemonium and decidedly non-punky onstage hugs. There's no time for an encore but it didn't matter - we'd been great. Great. Sorry if that sounds big headed but you know when you do a good gig and this wasn't a good gig, it was a great gig. There, I've said it again. I'll stop now. There, I've stopped.

Out on the merchandise stall I shake what seems like the entire audience's hands and T.V. signs CD's and poses for fan photos with Gaye Advert. I grab a few words with John Robb who's on the neighbouring stall before getting asked by several people if The Price will ever play at the festival - I reply as best I can along the lines of 'maybe one day...' I'm talking to Tom from The Phobics as the band in The Bizarre Bazaar are playing 'Louie Louie' it's only when they play 'Love Lies Limp' that it dawns on me that it's A.T.V. so go in for a listen, and very good they are too.

Meanwhile I realise I've left my glasses back at my hotel room and while it's tempting to continue posing in my (prescription) sunglasses it would also be nice to see where I'm going so while it's still light I decide to walk back to get them and to drop my guitar off while I'm there. I'm away for about an hour which give me a chance to clear my head a bit as well as catching up on phone calls and getting something to eat. Well the phone calls went well but the seemingly endless chip shops and takeaways are all closed or closing and there's a huge queue at the afore-mentioned Harry Ramsden's so I go back to The Empress Grill in the venue for the inevitable chips. While I'm there Malcolm from The Price calls, he's at a pub quiz and can't remember the name of the character that Barry Humphries plays that isn't Dame Enda Everage and wonders if I know the name - to my surprise I do! I tell him off for cheating (!) then say something like 'actually I was just talking about you...' before telling him where I am - he's very enthusiastic about a possible gig for us so I decide that I'll see what I can find out a bit later on.

In the meantime there are bands to see - The Lurkers roar through 'I Don't Need To Tell Her' in The Arena, Slaughter And The Dogs are blasting out 'Boston Babies' in The Ballroom and The Beat are skanking their way through 'Twist And Crawl' in The Olympia. I decide to spend most of my time in The Ballroom as I'd not seen Slaughter And The Dogs before, they're very good with their final encore of 'Cranked Up Really High' reminding me what a great song it is even if the singalong end section got a bit to 'showbiz' for my liking.

Out in the bar I bump into Steve Drewett from The Newtown Neurotics who's bemoaning the fact that they've run out of lager; as we're talking I get a call from Leeson who's in the backstage bar (what backstage bar?!?) at The Olympia and Jello Biafra's on soon - meanwhile there are more hands to shake and more Price enquiries, not least from Peter who used to write 'Murder By Fanzine' all those years ago, and a tall Geordie chap called Malcolm - maybe we could get a gig here?

With the lager deficit getting more acute by the second I go back into The Ballroom in search of a drink where The Adicts are doing their stuff - I was never their biggest fan but what they do they do very well. Captain Sensible is on soon in The Bizarre Bazaar but the main event for me is in The Olympia where Jello Biafra And The Guantanamo School Of Medicine delivered a show which was a good as any gig I've ever seen. Biafra has been always one of the great punk orators and his performance here showed that he's showing no sign of mellowing with age. The band were astonishing, he was incredible and by the final encore of 'Holiday In Cambodia' it was obvious that I'd just seen one on the greatest gigs I'll ever be lucky enough to witness. Yes, it was that good. In fact it was better than that. Inspirational stuff.

When I meet up with T.V. and Gaye back at The Bizarre Bazaar Captain Sensible is playing 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' - Paul Gray is on bass, Dave Berk is on drums and Monty from The Damned is on keyboards and it's a great way to end proceedings. The encores of 'Wot' and 'Happy Talk' bring a smile to everybody's faces, T.V. and Gaye are surrounded by well-wishers and I finally get to have a few words with Pascal. 'If we never do anything together again then we did that' he says proudly. Good man.

There's an after show party up in The Spanish Bar where I'm introduced to Jennie who's one of the festival organisers - I brave asking 'the Price question' and to my amazement she seems to be interested in us playing. We agree to e-mail each other to see what can be done. Well - maybe, just maybe...

Incidentally I didn't miss breakfast. But it was close.

The Italian Job

2011-08-01T19:35:00.002Z

So - I end a posting with a bit of unbridled optimism for once and then spend the latter half of the week just gone feeling terrible. Well not terrible exactly, but not too good - the long-suffering Shirley thinks I might have some sort of virus which is making me feel very tired with an intermittent headache, aching muscles and a few stomach problems that I won't go into here. Yes I know it sounds like a hangover but I can assure you that it's not... this wouldn't have happened when I was in my forties!

There have been three gigs since the last posting, the first of which was in Leeds with The Briefcase Blues Brothers. Now I've heard a lot about Bibis Italianissimo, an Art Deco-styled Italian Restaurant (really!) that has been the scene of many eventful BBB performances, not least around the Christmas period. Well it's certainly an extraordinary place, and if Wednesday's gig was anything to go by it's reputation as a venue is more than justified. Adam's on drums, Kylan's on bass, Rob's on keyboards and Mario and McGoo are Jake and Elwood - I'd not worked with Rob before, he uses headphones rather than an amplifier with a small mixing desk to control his sound and to enable him to hear himself and the band. It's an unusual idea but it certainly seemed to work for him. And I'd not seen McGoo for ages; since we last spoke he's been to America to record some solo material and very good it is too (check out his website here, his Facebook page here, and if you like the music it's available on iTunes now!)

After a straightforward soundcheck it's time for an excellent - and I mean excellent - meal (vegetarian ravioli makes a welcome change from coleslaw and potatoes I can tell you!) Mario, McGoo, Adam and myself walked around the corner past The Cockpit to the Yates's for a drink and to be amused by the fact that 2 poles have been fitted in the pub... there was might best be described as a 'guerrilla busker' outside who seemed to be rushing up to unsuspecting passers-by and singing to them (or maybe more accurately 'at them') which seemed to create a bit of consternation but which looked quite funny from where we were sitting.

Back at the venue there are plenty of people in, and our 90 minute set seems to last no time at all - always a good sign. A young lady called Lizzy who I think was out on her hen night was cajoled by her mates into joining us on stage (although we did nothing to stop her!) to add some impressive vocals to 'Mustang Sally', and there's plenty of boisterous banter between the Brothers and the audience. Great stuff.

After the show I made a visit to the Gents (like you do!) and was followed through the door by two young ladies. 'You can see I'm not local can't you?' said the first cheerily and they both giggled. I doubt that either if them had seen me. 'Well I don't know about that but I'm not sure that you should be in here' said I for the want of anything wittier to say; 'Oooh it's a men's one' said the second young lady amid even more giggling, and then they were gone. Wednesday night in Leeds eh?

Two Uppercut gigs this weekend, the first of which was on Friday when we made our second visit to The Anglers Retreat in Staines. I'd been in the shop that day but had left feeling rough - I went home and slept for 2 1/2 hours, which with hindsight probably got me through the show. As Roger and myself arrived we found the two Terry's in the car park - 'someone's just said ''you're that band that plays all the Rod Stewart stuff aren't you?'' ' said Terry the bass somewhat ruefully. At least we weren't billed as a tribute band this time. It wasn't as busy as our first show there (it was Royal Wedding Day which I guess could have accounted for the large turnout?) but it was still pretty crowded by the time we started playing. After our first set I was at the bar talking to arch Flying Squad fan Tony and his mate Martin who had come along to check us out (good boys!) a chap came up to me and said that he liked the band but that 'as a Clapton fan I have to tell you that your version of 'Layla' was crap'. I briefly considered saying something along the lines of 'as a Clapton fan I have to tell you that I think your opinion is crap' but instead contented myself with 'oh, we like it', which must have really annoyed him as I later found he went round to the rest of the band and told them that he'd 'just told your guitarist that as a Clapton fan...'

Our second set saw a young lady called Sally (it was her birthday - can you guess which song we played for her? Well, we had to didn't we!?) got all her mates up to dance which made backing vocals a dangerous proposition (you only need to get a microphone in the teeth once to know that you never want to get one again!) but a gang of girls going mad in front of the band is just the thing to guarantee that the band gets a bit of attention. We played well, went down really well and encored with 'It's All Over Now' and 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'. Good job we didn't make a mess of another one of Eric's songs eh?

Sunday we returned to The Ivy Leaf Club in Uxbridge for a gig with a difference - we were on between 3 and 6 in the afternoon. Time was when quite a few venues would put on Sunday afternoon gigs but that seems less common these days and I for one was surprised when Kevin at the club suggested it but it turned out to be a good call on the club's behalf. I was feeling a bit better than I had at Staines and so found it an easier show to play even though we made a couple of wrong turns here and there - a shaky version of 'You Never Can Tell' (normally play that one rather well!) was eclipsed in the 'dodgy song stakes' by 'All Or Nothing' (again, it's normally ok) which went completely wrong before the second chorus for no apparent reason. Maybe it's just as well that we didn't play 'Layla' or anything could have happened... someone asked for a Dr. Feelgood song (he caught me in the wrong band! We played him a Pirates song instead!) and our encore of 'Jumping Jack Flash' (yeah, that one again!) was immediately followed by a game of 'Play Your Cards Right'. Now there's something I never thought would ever happen.

Vintage and rare guitars

2011-07-27T12:19:00.010Z

And it was indeed a very long day. By lunchtime it was becoming all too apparent that I was developing the hangover that I'd up until that point managed to keep at bay with toast and coffee (either that or I was sobering up!) and by talking total gibberish to customers. Somehow I got through the afternoon - just! - and then went home and fell asleep. You knew I'd say that didn't you? But it really was a great night, with The Upper Cut giving a fine show which ended with a worrying amount of young people dancing wildly and quite a few drinks being drunk. Several kind souls bought me cards and presents, Mad Jock and his mates Brian and George came down all the way from Glasgow for the occasion (really!) and, well, quite a few drinks were drunk. The long-suffering Shirley eventually got East and myself out of the building sometime before 2 a.m. (oh yes!) by which time quite a few more drinks had been drunk. And why not?

The day itself had been relatively quiet (although you may argue that pretty much anything was 'relatively quiet' compared to the evening) with my Dad and brother coming round for the afternoon and your humble narrator showing heroic restraint when it came to alcohol. Given the mayhem that followed this was definitely a good move - I didn't have anything alcoholic to drink before 8.30 in the evening which might seem a bit serious, even (gulp!) sensible but I wanted to be able to play a decent show. Ooh, I am getting old... in the meantime Shirley and her family managed to surprise me - and I mean surprise me! - by getting me a Vintage Lemon Drop electric guitar, which was sitting on the front room table when I stumbled downstairs in the morning. Hmm... that'll be the same guitar that was in the shop a few weeks ago; given the amount of subterfuge that has clearly gone on over the last few weeks I may never believe anything that anybody anywhere ever says to me ever again!

The last gig of my 40s (sounds dramatic doesn't it?!?) was with The Chicago Blues Brothers in Sutton Courtenay near Abingdon, at the same venue / enormous house that we played at last August. As Richard arrived to pick me up around 6 o'clock the news of the death of Amy Winehouse came on the car radio - another casualty, another member of the dreaded 27 Club. Sad. I saw her at 'The Strat Pack' concert where I heard that voice for the first time - the guitar obsessives around me complained that she shouldn't have been there as she wasn't a guitar hero or something, I thought she sounded extraordinary. I wasn't sure if I liked her or not, but she certainly sounded extraordinary. There seems to have been a grim inevitability about her death, which it seems no one around her could do anything to prevent. A great shame.

It was the first CBB show for ages to feature a 3 man horn section - joining Richard on sax is John on trumpet who's not played with us before, and Andy on trombone who last played with us at Leeds Castle back in July 2007 when he distinguished himself by falling over on stage whilst pretending to be galloping around on horseback. Strange but true. Roger returns on keyboards, Tracy's on vocals, Marc and Squirrel are on drums and bass, Pete and Mike are in the hats 'n' glasses and our 90 minute set goes down well with the assembled multitude, quite a few of whom had clearly been enjoying the hospitality of the host to the full. Well the ones dancing in front of and indeed on the stage certainly had been. I seem to remember this happened last time too. Excellent!

Yesterday I had a rehearsal with T.V. Smith for our gig at the Rebellion Festival next weekend, today I'm playing a Blues Brothers show in an Italian Restaurant in Leeds. No, really, I am. This 'being 50' lark is off to a good start...

The morning after the night before

2011-07-25T08:14:00.004Z

It's Monday morning, and it's far too early for me to be awake. But I am, because I'm working in the shop today. This could be a mistake.

I was a great night last night. I'll write about it here when I can remember what happened, or indeed when somebody tells me what happened.

I fear that it's going to be a very long day.

Humble pie

2011-07-19T20:11:00.002Z

Well well well - 2 high ranking police officers resign, the scary woman with the red hair is arrested then appears alongside the senior and junior Murdochs in front of a commons select committee, the 'whistleblower' is found dead - can all this really be happening? As previously mentioned here I doubt that this will bring the whole Murdoch empire down but these are certainly extraordinary times. I watched a bit of the hearing - it seems that nobody knows anything about anything. I had a feeling that might be the case. And as for the 'comedian' that couldn't even manage to put a custard pie in the right place - you would have thought a clown could have managed that? Anyway well done Johnnie Marbles, you've just given all the right wing toadies in the media a chance to write pages and pages of sympathy along the lines of 'brave and humble 80 year old is protected by his loyal wife in the face of a senseless guerrilla attack by previously unknown and unfunny alleged comedian'. I bet they're writing that while I'm writing this. But here's a thought - these days it's practically impossible to take a tin of shaving foam onto an aircraft, so how on Earth did he manage to get some into somewhere with a name like Portcullis House?

Meanwhile back in the real world it was sad to hear of the death of former Motorhead guitarist Wurzel earlier this month. I spoke to him briefly at the Paul Fox benefit gig back in July 2007 (can that really be 4 years ago?!?) and he seemed to be a really nice chap - and anybody who played on a track as great as 'Killed By Death' is alright as far as I'm concerned.

It was a cracking evening on Friday when The Flying Squad supported The Small Fakers at the Tropic At Ruislip. For reasons best known only to the little pixies that live in the madder parts of my mind I decided to wear a suit, t-shirt and hat for the gig; the same little pixies also told me that it was a good idea not to take the hat or suit jacket off during the show (don't worry, I'd have kept my t-shirt on - the little pixies aren't that mad!) meaning that I was the hottest on stage that I can remember being for some time. With Phil the usual soundman (presumably) busy elsewhere Mick the surrogate soundman insisted on my guitar being quieter on stage than usual (I learned a long time ago that the last thing you do at a gig is get in the soundman's bad books so I didn't argue the point; with hindsight I think I should have asked to play louder as I was only on 2 out of 10, and valve amps sound better when they're turned up, honest!) but I guess there's no point in worrying about that now is there? It wasn't easy for me to hear what I was playing which could have accounted for some of the more, shall we say, experimental moments of my performance (along with the sweat in my eyes) but again there's no point in worrying about that now. Overall we played better than at last month's show with Andy on particularly good form up front, and we went down well enough to get an encore, which is always a moment for a support band to savour. And The Small Fakers were terrific, playing some very - make that very - obscure material next to the expected hits and classics, while their set finisher 'Tin Soldier' (surely one of the greatest pop songs of all time) had grown men fighting back tears such was it's excellence. The Small Faces were a fabulous band, and the Fakers made the job of playing their music look easy. Great stuff, and it was wonderful to see so many people at the gig, a testament to the Tropic team's dedication to live music.

The Rikardo Brothers played at The Load Of Hay last night, a little loose here and there (Pete couldn't make Tuesday's rehearsal) but still sounding good to me. We sounded good to the people I spoke to afterwards too - it's interesting to play songs more usually heard performed by much bigger bands with a relatively simple vocals-and-two-guitars line-up. Some songs inevitably work better than others, and it's definitely a case of 'less is more' on most occasions. We're starting to get offered a few gigs here and there, and all three of us enjoy playing together so there will hopefully be quite a bit more to come from The Rikardo Brothers in the future - even if I'm still not sure about the name...

I'm playing again at The Load Of Hay this Sunday evening with The Upper Cut. It's my 50th birthday. Now there's a sentence that I'd never thought that I'd write... if you're in the area then please drop in - it should be fun. Well, I intend to have a good time anyway!

Fantasy island

2011-07-14T18:37:00.012Z

Last night myself and Big Andy journeyed to Southend to see Roger Daltrey perform 'Tommy' at The Cliffs Pavilion. As we neared Southend I saw a motorway sign that made me suddenly ask the big man the immortal question 'have you ever been to Canvey Island?' When he said that he hadn't we both realised that it was time to leave the script (and indeed the A127) for a while...

As we negotiated the magic roundabout that takes you to the road to the island I remembered one of the other times that I'd visited what is an almost mythical place for Dr. Feelgood fans like myself. We were playing a Blues Brothers show at, I think, a 50th birthday party (I can't remember where it was either; it's at moments like this that I'm reminded that one of the reasons why I started writing this blog was so that things like these wouldn't get forgotten!) and Squirrel and myself were outside the venue; as we stood talking a car came around the corner on the opposite (rather wide) pavement. This stuck me as a little odd and I was about to say as much, when another one followed it round. They weren't going slowly. Squirrel (a local lad) looked at me with a slight smile - 'things like that happen on the island'.

As we pulled up in the car park I was babbling on to Andy about the classic photos on the cover of 'Down By The Jetty', and that maybe he could take one of me for use on the Flying Squad website; as we walked up the slope to the sea wall a young man walked across our path. He was wheeling a bicycle and had a slightly scary-looking dog on a lead. He was wearing a vest and shorts, and it was therefore easy to see that he was tattooed pretty much from the top of his shaven head to his sandaled toes. He looked extraordinary, and Big Andy looked astonished. I was tempted to use Squirrel's line, but didn't.

After taking a few photos looking out across the estuary and getting a bit of (very) fresh air we got back into the car and drove around a while. Andy loved it, and so did I. The Monico, The Oyster Fleet, The Pandora's Box Guest House, the sign saying TANK FOR HIRE - Canvey Island really is a one-off. Fantastic, and as good a reason as any to watch 'Oil City Confidential' again. Not that I, or indeed you, really need an excuse...

We made our way back to the mainland (now I am getting a bit over-romantic don't you think?!?) and found The Cliffs Pavilion reasonably easily, although it certainly helped having Squirrel on the end of a phone line. After getting a lucky parking space on the road near the venue we walked along the seafront into town - Andy hadn't been to Southend before and I hadn't been there for what seems like ages so it was good to have a bit of time to look around. Squirrel had reminded me that occasional Chicago Blues Brothers keyboard man Dave Dulake runs a pub in town - once again we needed a bit of moblie phone help but found The Railway Hotel without too much trouble. As we walked in Chuck Berry was blasting out from the record player on the bar (yes, you read that bit correctly) and a young lady with blue hair came over to serve us. I ordered a couple of drinks and then asked if Dave was about; she said he was busy but he'd be out shortly - when he did emerge he looked rather worried, came over for a few minutes then said words to the effect of 'we might not be here much longer'. This would be a shame as it's an extraordinary place. Let's hope it keeps going.

Back at the venue we meet up with Squirrel and his wife Lindsay (and bumped into Rick Dawson, another sometime CBB keyboard player; we really get through them!) before catching a bit of the support act. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar Paul Freeman played a half hour or so of his own material with a cover of 'Handle With Care' thrown in a couple of songs from the end. He was a bit sweary, very Welsh and shouldn't have played the Traveling Wilburys song as it showed up how relatively ordinary his own songs were in comparison. That said he worked hard and got the audience on his side when he invited a young lady called Kelly up to join him on backing vocals, so I won't be too cruel about him here.

At 8.30 Mr. Daltrey and co. walked on stage to a warm if not over-enthusiastic reception; as the band readied themselves the man himself explained how that after the show at the Royal Albert Hall earlier this year he'd realised that 'there isn't any other music like 'Tommy'' and so he'd decided to carry on singing it. A simple enough sentiment, and one which over the next 70-odd minutes was pretty much proved to be true. The band sounded much more familiar with the songs, the back projections worked well and Daltrey was in fine voice. The audience stayed fairly subdued throughout, politely applauding until the end of 'Listening To You' when they all stood up together and went crazy. Even Daltery seemed a bit taken aback. The next hour-and-a-quarter saw rarely heard gems from the Who back catalogue (an excellent version of 'Going Mobile' with Simon Townshend on lead vocals was a real standout) alongside Daltery solo songs, a Johnny Cash medley and songs from the likes of Taj Mahal. It got a bit chaotic in places - some songs sounded more rehearsed than others, the backing track for 'Baba O'Riley' played too fast and 'The Kids Are Alright' went completely wrong in the middle when the guitarist broke a string - but both Daltery and the band seemed to be really enjoying themselves and that feeling certainly translated across to the audience who gave them a great reception. The show ended with Daltery playing 'Blue Red And Grey' on a ukulele, and somewhere during the show I decided that the afore-mentioned guitarist looked a bit like Mickey Dolenz. I also decided that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Well, it's not is it?

None for ages and then two come along at once

2011-07-11T19:31:00.004Z

So - the News Of The World has been closed down by it's owner, who in doing so has once again shown a typically callous disregard for the men and women unfortunate enough to be in his employment. Presumably it's an attempt to avoid further scandal - rather ironic given the nature of said publication don't you think? - and to save his own (and no one else's) skin. However you look at it this is a sad state of affairs - each day a new revelation, a new victim, a new reason to never buy anything that Rupert Murdoch has anything to do with ever again. There's an old saying along the lines of 'you can't keep a good man down' - I fear it's even harder to keep a bad one down, which is why Mr. Murdoch will no doubt evade prosecution personally and re-emerge from the whole business completely spotless. Still, we can always hope that commonsense prevails and people stop supporting him and his empire. In the meantime here are a few words from Attila The Stockbroker (actually rather a lot of words, this is Attila after all!) on the subject - excellent!

Friday in Uxbridge saw The Good Old Boys playing at The General Elliot while Midnight were gigging across the road (literally!) at The Dolphin. This presented a situation that was too good not to take advantage of - your humble narrator (aided and abetted by Pete from Awaken, Roger from The Uppercut and the venerable East) journeyed back and forth between the two venues in an attempt to catch both bands, on a night perhaps best described as 'bass dep evening'. The Good Old Boys featured Bill on bass in place of Nick Simper while Midnight had Terry from The Uppercut on 4-string duties, and both bands sounded excellent to me, although how much of this had to do with the 'lets-have-a-quick-pint-here-and-then-go back-over-the-road' nature of the evening is difficult to ascertain. We finished up in The Dolphin where Simon and Darren of Ace! club fame were enjoying proceedings; Simon enjoyed it even more when I introduced him to Midnight keyboard player Chris Holmes who played in '60's cult heroes Timebox. Chris gave him a DVD of Timebox clips (I must get one of them myself!) as well as regaling us with tales of the likes of Mike Patto, Ollie Halsall and John Halsey. Great stuff.

Talking of depping I found myself in the wonderfully-named Preston Bagot (sounds like the name of a member of the House Of Lords that's just had his phone hacked doesn't it?) on Saturday evening for an Utter Madness gig. Tony's on vocals and Jon's on bass but aside from them it's deps all round - I'm on guitar (obviously!?!) while everyone else (Aaron on vocals and dancing, Dan on drums, Liz on saxophone and Dave on keyboards) are all from the ska covers band Big 10, and all of whom made a great job of what turned out to be a very enjoyable show. As Jon and myself pulled of junction 15 of the M40 Tony phoned to ask where we were; as I said 'just a few minutes away' the sat.nav. sent us off down the wrong road which we were unable to turn off for several miles.This was doubly unfortunate as we then were informed by Tony that we were supposed to be set up by 5.30 - we thought we had to arrive at 5.30 and were therefore late. Bugger! When we eventually arrived at The Crabmill we could set our gear up but were unable to soundcheck or rehearse anything as the guests were already arriving. It's a 50th birthday party for Andrew organised by his brother Steve - waitresses wearing t-shirts with the letters AFO and the words 'Alcohol Facilitation Operative' on them dispensed free drinks (always a dangerous thing with 2 1/2 hours to showtime!) and cheery smiles. Food on the other hand is thin on the ground for the band; eventually an AFO brings us several bags of very gratefully received crisps. Hot dogs appear not long before we're due on stage - when I look sad at the lack of a vegetarian option the crisp-bearing AFO brings me a spicy lentil sausage version. Excellent!

Andrew makes a short speech just before our set, explaining how an accident when he was 17 had left him confined to a wheelchair and how among the many things that it had affected in his life it made him realise that family and friends are more important than material processions and that it was 'great to see so many of you here tonight'. He handed over to us with the words 'Now let's get pissed!' - Tony was straight in with 'don't watch that...'

As we began 'One Step Beyond' I was suddenly aware that although I'd only done the show a few times that was a few times more than the majority of people on the stage. Situations like this can go either way - triumph and disaster are almost as likely as each other, and there's no telling which one you're heading for. This time it was the former rather than the latter, with everybody playing well and plenty of dancefloor action throughout. A chap repeatedly asked for 'Michael Caine' (sadly we didn't know it) but we managed 'Happy Birthday' at the start of our second set and judging by the comments we received in the interval and after the show it all went according to plan. A good gig all round.

And it was a good gig last night too, when The Load of Hay was host to Joseph Porter and Wob. I think I first met both gentlemen when The Price supported Blyth Power some 20-odd years ago - Joseph is the band's omnipresent songwriter and frontman and Wob was then playing guitar, a position that's held these days by Stephen Cooper who I met when I was gigging with T.V. Smith just before Christmas. It had been quite a hot sticky day which might have accounted for the low-ish (20 or so) audience turnout, but those who were there saw a fine show from both artists. They arrived just as I finished setting the P.A, system up which gave us plenty of time for soundchecking before Joseph asked the question 'do you know where I can buy some apples?' I directed him to a petrol station not far from the venue - he returned looking pleased with himself and with the words 'I can have these now so that I won't spend the gig burping into the microphone'. He's a brilliant songwriter although I don't recall having seen him play a solo show before - with some very funny and indeed thought provoking introductions the songs came over brilliantly in guitar-and-vocal format. Wob then gave a splendidly energetic performance which concluded with him walking around the audience singing 'Has Anybody Seen My Gal?' accompanying himself on a ukulele whilst attempting to cajole people into doing the Charleston. Strange but true. They then joined forces for a set of Joseph's songs to begin a highly enjoyable evening to a close. The only downside to the things were the 5 or 6 blokes at the bar who insisted on bellowing things like 'OOOH LOOK 'EE'S GOT 'IS BANJO AHT!' at every available opportunity. 'I see you've double booked the gig with a Mensa meeting' said East ruefully; I decided that they'd been drinking all day to mourn the loss of their favourite newspaper. Scandalous.

I'm a hog for you baby

2011-07-06T16:10:00.015Z

Following on from our time in Belfast it's been 3 gigs in 3 days with 3 different bands for your humble narrator...

Friday evening saw The Uppercut return to The Dolphin for the latest in our 'once-every-six-weeks-or-so' series of gigs. We'd ran through several potential additions to the act in rehearsal on Monday night - in the event we added 'You Wear It Well' (a bit scrappy I thought) 'Feel Like Making Love' (much better) and 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' (the best of the bunch) as well as bringing back several songs that we'd not played there for a while. It had been a very hot day and with Wimbledon on the telly audience numbers were down a bit on our last gig there but there were still more than enough people to make it all worthwhile - indeed as we were leaving Noel the guv'nor asked me to call in the next few days to add some more dates through the Autumn; he aslo said that he'd been running the pub for 24 years on December 3rd and that he'd like us to play on that night so I guess we must have done something right. I thought Roger played particularly well - his drumming in 'Superstition' drew a lot of compliments from all and sundry, and the number is becoming a real highlight in our show with much improvisation from all concerned.

A hog roast may not be the most obvious event for a mamby-pamby poncey vegetarian like myself to say that they found enjoyable, and it's fair to say that I probably wouldn't have found myself at such an event if I hadn't been playing at it; that said Andover Rugby Club on Saturday night was the scene of much merriment, due in part to the appearance of The Briefcase Blues Brothers. Joining Mario and Chris (Jake and Elwood) were Kylan on bass and Wayne on keyboards, along with Scott on drums (he normally plays for Pendragon!) and Gabriel on trumpet. There was also an anonymous saxophone player who didn't seem in the least bit interested in talking to me, even when I told him during the interval that I thought he was playing well. Perhaps I wasn't jazz enough for him? ('I'm a blues trumpeter' said Gabriel cheerily when I recounted this to him. Good man.) The promoter Steve distinguished himself by referring to the Elvis act that was on before us as 'Dave The Plumber'; Dave himself was a bit of a character who told me afterwards that he recently did a 10 hour Elvis show in aid of Help For Heroes. When getting changed for the show Chris discovered that he'd forgotten to bring a white shirt (essential for a Blues Brother if you think about it) and at one point it was looking as though he'd have to go onstage wearing Wayne's grey polo shirt. Eventually the asking around paid off and a suitable garment was found, and with him and Mario at the helm we played 2 sets to an increasingly appreciative audience, many of whom began our performance sitting on bales of hay neatly arranged in rows in front of the stage and ended it dancing wildly down the front. Judging by some of the audience antics I'd guess that the all-day bar had been popular... excellent!

It's been ages since the last Chicago Blues Brothers theatre show (come to think of it, it's been ages since any CBB show!) but Monday night's gig at The Eden Court Theatre in Inverness was a great show to come back with. Our flight from Luton Airport was delayed for an hour but was generally fairly uneventful apart from that - well, I thought it was, although the couple with the sporadically noisy baby in the same row as me declared it to be the 'worst they'd ever experienced'. We did land with a it of a bump but I didn't think it was too bad apart from that. When we went through to collect our baggage an announcement informed us that the 'baggage belt had jammed' - Squirrel and myself joked weakly about it being caused by our guitars, which fortunately turned out to be untrue although the security man wouldn't let us have them until we'd opened them to 'show him what was inside the case'. Not necessarily a bad thing I suppose, but a very serious chap all the same.

Matt and Mike are in the hats and glasses, Squirrel's on bass, Chris is in for Ian on keyboards, Steve's behind that drums instead of Marc, Pete's along to keep everything running smoothly and for the first time we've got local lads Matthew and Glenn on saxophone and trumpet. Equipment has been provided by the excellent Highland Backline Company - I've got a Fender Hot Rod Deville combo to use, a fabulous-sounding amplifier which inevitably proves to be too loud for the job in hand. It ends up with the volume set at just over one out of ten, with the soundman worried that 'it still might be a bit loud'. Bah! In the meantime with four deps in the band (albeit with two that have played the show many times) sound check is more of a rehearsal which seems to take ages, although we all agree that it's worth it to get things sounding good. We finish with an hour-and-a-bit to spare before the show is due to start so there's time to get something to eat and drink before getting ready for the show - and what a show it is. Matt and Mike are on fine form, getting the audience involved more-or-less from the word go, and the band rise to the occasion giving a performance that has pretty much the whole audience on it's feet by the end. Great stuff.

After getting changed and saying goodbye to the theatre staff it's off out to see if anywhere is still open. Mike was in town a couple of months ago and suggests we try The Hootanany which turns out to be a good choice - when we arrive a young man called Fash is entertaining the audience (who are once again seated in neat rows) with an acoustic guitar and what were presumably his own songs. For his last song a couple get up to dance which amuses both him and the rest of the assembled multitude. It seems that we weren't the only act in town to have a good night.

Monday morning and after a few hours sleep at the local Travelodge it was back to Luton once again - this we were asked to open our guitar cases before they'd let them on to the aircraft - and after a slightly bleary afternoon it was time for a Flying Squad rehearsal. We're supporting The Small Fakers at Tropic At Ruislip next Friday (15th) and if we play as well as we did in the studio we should be in for a good show, although somewhere in the back of my mind is the saying 'good rehearsal - bad show, bad rehearsal - good show'. Something like that, anyway. I think I'll leave it in the back of my mind. Best place for it.

And yesterday I recorded some guitar for... well, more about that another time.

Ships in the night

2011-07-01T11:19:00.014Z

This posting was written more-or-less as soon as I arrived home, and it's somewhat disjointed structure reflects my tiredness at the time. I've thought about re-writing it but it seems to sum the previous 2 days up for me. See what you think...

Arriving at an airport at 6.45 on a Wednesday morning isn't always an enjoyable thing to do; on this occasion it wasn't too painful, and as I picked my way through several gangs of holidaying lads I half expected them all to wearing t-shirts that we'd printed in the shop. (We've been doing rather a lot of that lately!) I was just paying a small fortune for a thimble full of coffee and a plastic croissant from The Stansted Landslide (that's what it said it was called on the till, honest! You may know it better as this...) when a text message arrived from Pete - 'How are you doing mate?' was the cheery question; my reply of 'bored, tired, fed up - usual Wednesday morning, except I'm at Stansted Airport' seemed to go down well. I was sat attempting to drink coffee that was hotter than the surface of the sun when Pete, his wife Jayne and P.R. man Paul arrived. When we checked in with B.M.I. Baby I received the surprising news that I was allowed to carry my guitar on to the aircraft as hand luggage. I don't recall ever being able to do that before, although it may have had something to do with the fact that there were only 30 or so people on the flight. The flight to Belfast passed quickly due in no small part to the latest copy of 'Vive Le Rock!' magazine, and it was strange to walk straight out through arrivals without having to look for outsize baggage. A short taxi ride later we were checking in at The Stormont Hotel - I'm sharing room 234 with Matt who's arrived on another flight, and we've got everything from Them Crooked Vultures and Howlin' Wolf playing on the iPod dock in our room before very long. We're here for a showcase performance of 'White Star', a new musical based on the story of The Titanic. Pete and Paul are involved in promoting this and another show called 'Celtic Dreams' which is also being showcased at the same event at The Andrews Memorial Hall in nearby Comber. The music for the show has been written by Sam Davidson and John Wilson, both of whom play in the reformed version of Rory Gallagher's old band Taste. (John is the original drummer in the band.) I met Sam when we played in Belfast a couple of years ago (click here for the story) and had been given some demo recordings to learn the songs from as well as talking to him a couple of times on the phone. I spent much of the afternoon with Sam at Holywood Studios (which he and John run) going through the multi-track recording of 'The Road To Paradise' deciding which guitar parts we would play live and which ones would be left on the backing track. He also played me some recent Taste recordings - they're about to change their name to WMD and release a new album which judging by what I heard should be well worth hearing.

After returning to the hotel and catching up on some phone calls we all went to The Ganges Indian restaurant in Holywood where my vegetable masala was both very red and very nice. Myself and Matt then spent a couple of hours in the hotel bar (oh yes!) before retiring to our room for some cans of lager (Matt bought them earlier - good boy!) and to watch an excellent live set from Beady Eye on the television.

Hay fever meant that I woke up on Thursday morning with sinus-induced deafness. Matt bellowing 'BREAKFAST FINISHES IN 15 MINUTES!' finally got through to me and a stumble down to the restaurant more-or-less woke me up. A lazy morning followed (good!) with punk rock on the iPod and tennis on the telly before Walter the driver took Matt and myself to The Andrews Memorial Hall for our allotted 3 o'clock arrival time. As we arrived 'Celtic Dreams' were running through their part of the evening so I walked down to the shops to get something to eat. Back at the venue everything's set up and ready to go - we're D.I.-ing into the P.A. rather than using amplifiers and after a couple of run throughs 'The Road To Paradise' is sounding good.

The evening's event lasted about an hour; I was on stage for around 4 minutes, by far the shortest performance I've ever been part of. Pete gave a short introduction during which he referred to the show as 'Maiden Voyage' - looks like he's changed the title? - before leaving the stage. He walks past us with the words 'listen out for the seagulls'; on our cue we walk out on to the stage, pick up our instruments and await the start of the track. As it begins we exchange anxious looks when we realise that our guitars aren't audible - they finally come on during the second verse to our collective relief. Our harmonised solo goes well, and then suddenly the song is over and we've completed our part of proceedings. As we walk around to the front of the hall we smile and shake hands - it went well. Good. With an audience largely consisting of potential investors it was a night to give a good performance, and from what I saw and heard everyone did.

Back at our hotel there's food and drink a-plenty; I'm given a bowl of something that's supposed to be a vegetarian meal although it looks and smells a bit fishy (literally!) to me. I end up with a few roast potatoes, a dollop of coleslaw and, since there's no cutlery left, a teaspoon. Sitting in a roomful of millionaires (well, that's what I decided that they were!) I felt angry, sad, depressed - eventually I retired hurt to room 234 where Pete came and found me, asking if I was alright, looking really worried... yes I'm alright, just want to be on my own for a while. I laid on the bed gazing absentmindedly at an episode of 'The Mentalist' on the T.V. - I reflected on the previous day or so, mostly spent in a very expensive hotel for a few minutes on stage followed by a plate of lukewarm spuds. What was all that about? And why hadn't I noticed how good looking the woman that plays the head detective in 'The Mentalist' is before now?

Matt arrived back in the room and snapped me out of my introspection with the suggestion that we go for a drink. Good man.

As I fought to switch my alarm off at 5.15 this morning I realised that it probably hadn't been a particularly good idea to finish working your way through several pints of Guinness less than 4 hours before you're due to leave for the airport to catch your flight home. Oh well. I shook myself awake and decided that with a flight this early it doesn't matter what time I'd gone to bed, I'd still be tired. Probably. We weren't quite so successful at getting my guitar to qualify as hand luggage this time, although that may have something to do with the flight being nearly full. One of the check-in girls tell me that they can walk it on for me and if there's a spare seat then it can go in that, otherwise it will have to go in the hold. Hmm... I once read somewhere that B.B. King always buys an airline ticket for his guitar in the name of Lucille King and sits next to it during the flight - when I was asked if I'd like to move from my seat in row 19 to sit next to my guitar in row 3 I jumped at the chance. Childish? Me? Yeah, right... as I fastened the seatbelt around it I thought about asking the stewardess to take a picture of me and my guitar for a laugh but instead contented myself with a bleary smile. It's a simple life sometimes.

Just before 8 a.m. I was back at The Stansted Landslide (why on Earth is it called that?!?) paying a small fortune for a thimble full of coffee and a plastic croissant; I then sat in the same seat that I'd been sitting in when I met up with Pete, Jayne and Paul just over 2 days earlier. And so it goes.

I got home just after 10 a.m. - I'll let you know what happens with the projected production of 'White Star' (or whatever it ends up being called) as soon as there's any news...

Let it bleed

2011-06-26T18:29:00.007Z

Did you want to be old when you were young? I don't mean 'old' old, like your nan or grandad or the people who lived a few doors down, I mean old as in 'grown up' so that you could do the things that the grown ups do, like stay up late. I certainly wanted to stay up late when I was a kid, although thinking back I don't know why I thought that would make things better or more exciting. Strange... maybe one of the differences between being old and young is that when you're young you want to be older and when you're old you want to be younger? Anyway when I was about 8 or 9 I had a nosebleed. It was a Saturday evening and I had really bad hay fever (still have!) I blew my nose rather a lot before I went to bed, and I woke up a little after going to sleep thinking that my nose was running. When I looked down there was blood everywhere. Everywhere. It literally felt like it was pouring out of my face, which I suppose it was if you think about it. My mum screamed when she saw me. She and my dad tried to stop it with all the usual methods - cold flannels, holding the bridge of your nose etc - but to no avail. After about an hour things were getting serious, and mum called the doctor out. He was an old (and therefore allowed to stay up late) chap called Dr. Fenton - when he examined me he said that I'd burst a blood vessel in my nose and that it would eventually stop and that I'd be 'ok in the morning'. I think it finally stopped after just over 2 hours. I still get nosebleeds today, in fact I had one earlier this week. Horrible things.

So - why am I telling you this? Well, by the time the nosebleed had stopped, 'Match Of The Day' was about to start on the television. This was a mythical programme to me as some of my school mates were allowed to stay up late enough to watch it, and they said that it was better than 'The Big Match' which was the Sunday afternoon football programme that I used to watch with great enthusiasm. Anyway because I was still awake (and feeling rather weird as I recall) I was allowed to watch 'Match Of The Day'. It was good, but not worth losing half of the blood in your body for.

I had another nosebleed on Friday morning. It was nearly 6 a.m. and once again I'd woken up thinking that my nose was running; it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the one I've described above but it was still pretty unpleasant. By the time it had stopped I realised I wasn't going to get back to sleep and so decided to go downstairs for a cup of coffee. After I'd made it I decided to put the telly on, which caused a moment of mild panic as the volume was quite high and I had to turn it down quickly so as not to wake anybody up. When the picture came on 'Columbo' was playing - strange, why is that on at this time of day? It's normally shown in the afternoon on one of those weird channels that never seem to work properly. You know the ones. When I was a lad I remember avidly watching 'Columbo' on television, where the scruffy little chap in the raincoat would outwit the bad guy every time. I loved the way that he'd zero in on the murderer, seeming to be naive or even stupid then wearing them down with his peculiar mannerisms and stories of his wife, or his cousin, or his wife's cousin, or Burt who serves him chili, then leaving the murderer (who therefore thought they'd got away with it) before reappearing with the words 'just one more thing...' when they thought they'd seen the last of him. Great stuff. I even enjoyed the later episodes although the '60s and '70s ones are still the best for me. It was and remains one of the best television series ever created, and as such it was sad to turn on Breakfast Television on Friday morning to see a clip of it being played, because that could only mean that Peter Falk had died. Shame.

Last night I depped in The Repertoire Dogs. I'd been looking forward to this gig since I got a call a while back from Good Old Boys / Ali Mac Band guitarist Simon Bishop, who asked me if I'd be interested in playing with said band. Well of course I would, not least because their regular guitarist is none other than Mick Ralphs. Yes, that Mick Ralphs, the bloke out of Mott The Hoople and Bad Company. Strange but true. Anyway not long after this I got a call from Nick the singer who explained the situation - Hud's on drums, Nigel's on bass, Freya and Ann are on vocals and it's a 50th birthday party somewhere near Harlow. 'Simon will go through the set with you as I'm not in the least bit musical' he said cheerily, before going on to be very disparaging about his own vocal abilities. He then revealed that he'd 'started the band for a bet' after going to a Bryan Adams concert with a friend - 'and here we are, 11 years later'. Like I say, I was looking forward to this one...

As we arrived in Hastingwood I realised that this was a rather different area to the one that The Price visited on numerous occasions when we used to play at The Square in Harlow. We're playing in a marquee in the garden - maybe that should be 'grounds' - of a rather large house, and the first thing we notice is that there's a generator humming rather noisily nearby. 'I bet that's a note that's just out of tune with us' says Nigel as we're setting up; we decide that if we play loudly enough then it won't matter. I'd only met Nigel briefly a couple of times before, he's just finished a tour with comedian Rich Hall (where he was known as Horst Furst II - excellent!) and plays regularly with Half A Meal Ticket among others. We run through a few beginnings, middles and ends before the guests start arriving, it's all sounding good and a fine evening is in prospect. There's an acoustic duo on before us, they've both seen us 'playing in local pubs' and really like our version of 'Don't Stop Believing'. No one in the band reacts although I expect they were all thinking roughly the same as me - 'perhaps there's another band with the same name around here then. And they must look like us as well...'

After a search for an appropriate lead Freya's iPod provides some background music as food and drink starts to appear; we're all sitting around a table near the marquee when a loud POP comes from with general direction of the marquee; the music stops, the lights go out and quite a few people make a noise along the lines of 'OOOOH!' Investigation reveals that someone behind the (makeshift) bar had plugged a fridge in, causing a current surge large enough to melt the extention cable. With people complaining that were no lights on in the portaloos things are unplugged, the generator turned back on and everything returns to normal.

We start 'Jumpin Jack Flash' at 9.15 to what might best be described as 'polite indifference' from all concerned - a shame as I thought we were sounding good. When someone comes up to me in the interval as says words to the effect of 'everyone's enjoying it, they're just not dancing' it makes me feel a bit better, and our second set gets a bit more of a reaction although there are no demands for an encore at the end. As we turn our amps off Nigel said 'well played that man' which means a lot to me coming from a player as good as he is; I think I did ok but a few of the songs were in unusual keys which threw me a bit - if I get chance to play with them again I'll make a better job of it. No really, I will. And it was a shame that the audience were a bit subdued as I really had been looking forward to the show. Oh well. You can't win 'em all. Unless you're Columbo of course. 'Oh sir, just one more thing...'

'Come on up for the rising...'

2011-06-23T19:51:00.004Z

It's a funny old life sometimes isn't it? One minute you're on stage with a songwriting genius, the next you're selling flip flops emblazoned with the image of a snooker legend. Or maybe that should be snooker giant? - after all Bill Werbeniuk was a big lad... that's Scott taking the photograph with Dave just visible behind the 'portable white background' that is actually the back of a sign that needs to go up on the front of the shop one day. And it will go up on the front of the shop, just as soon as one of us works out the best way to hang it. It's advertising the fact that we're now stocking more and more musical instruments and accessories, and to this end Chris and myself travelled up to Yorkshire last week to attend the John Hornby Skewes trade show - we met Mr. Skewes (it seems that's what everyone calls him!) and managing director Dennis Drumm, and I briefly met acoustic guitar maestro Gordon Giltrap as well as spending 20 minutes or so talking to Trevor Wilkinson, designer of Vintage and Fret King Guitars as well as various pieces of guitar hardware. We also ordered a fair amount of stuff from Dave the rep - it'll be very interesting to see how the next few months at the shop goes.

In the meantime there's more sad news with the death of Clarence Clemons. I saw him play with Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band on several occasions - the first time was in 1981 at The Wembley Arena on their tour to promote 'The River' album which remains probably the greatest rock performance I've ever seen and indeed am ever likely to see. (I've considered writing a piece on it here several times but never feel as though I can put into words what the evening did for for me. Maybe it's time I got on with it!) As well as being a fine musician he always seemed to be a great character - the sight of him and Springsteen together on stage is one of the iconic images of rock music don't you think? - and it's sad to see him go. First Danny Federici, now The Big Man - these are bad times for The Boss and his band.

Last Friday Awaken played at The Dolphin. I arrived just as their first set was ending to find the place full of people - normally a good sign from a band point of view, but since most of those present had spent the day at Royal Ascot and were therefore both over-dressed and overflowing with alcohol it made for a rather strange evening. There was much dancing and general merriment although it all reminded me of those corporate events that I sometimes find myself playing at - you just know that they're not actually taking very much notice of the music and will forget that you even played virtually as soon as the show finishes, the lads being more concerned with looking down the front of the ladies' dresses and the ladies being more concerned with whether or not they liked the lad that was doing the looking. The band played well but nowhere near as good as they can - it all looked a bit too much like hard work. Maybe it was?

Sunday evening it was time for Pimp My Jazz at The Load of Hay. Now I must admit that since seeing 'Jazz Club' on 'The Fast Show' I often find it hard to keep a straight face when I hear jazz musicians (and indeed fans) talking - it all gets far too serious (not to mention pretentious) for me. Then again most of the musicians involved are much better players and a great deal more successful than I am so what do I know? Anyway Pimp My Jazz are based around the songwriting talents of Gavin Sparkes and Kay Shelly, both of whom I first met when I was working in The Music Shack in Uxbridge back in the late 1990s; the shop was run by Terry Peaker who in addition to playing fretless bass in Pimp My Jazz is also in The Uppercut with your humble narrator. Small World eh? Their two set show included most of the songs from their self-titled debut album alongside a few standards ('Fly Me To The Moon', 'Autumn Leaves' etc) and if nothing else they made me realise that no, I don't know enough about the style of music involved and no, I probably never will. Still they went down well with the jazz fans and that's what matters. Nice!

Incidentally Sunday 10th July sees Blyth Power main man Joseph Porter and acoustic troubadour Wob visit the Load of Hay - it should be an amazing evening!

And the last few days in Balcony Shirts have mostly been spent unpacking and displaying (and indeed selling) the musical merchandise that we bought last week - as I say, it'll be interesting to see how the next few months go...

Not a bad day revisited

2011-06-17T18:42:00.007Z

Back in May last year I wrote a typically over-emotional piece in these hallowed pages relating to 3 gigs in Yorkshire with T.V Smith. In it I recalled a moment during 'Borderline' at The New Roscoe in Leeds when I felt that it might have been the best piece of music that I'd ever been involved in. I wasn't relating to my or T.V.'s performance - it was the song my friends, the song. You remember songs don't you? They were things that people used to write, back in the days when people who had something to say for themselves chose to use 3 or 4 minutes of pop music to express their feelings. These days I'm not really sure what people do, but that's more my problem than yours, or indeed theirs. But I remembered that moment last night, on the stage at The 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street, next to the afore-mentioned T.V. Smith, playing the afore-mentioned 'Borderline'; as we swung into the first chorus and T.V. sang 'on the borderline, why don't you get on my side?' that feeling returned. You don't get moments like that very often, and I'm sitting here struggling to find a way to describe it. Again I looked out from the stage - there was a small oriental lady at the front, Gaye Advert behind her to the right, some punky lads in the shadows, all eyes on T.V. with the song building and building, bringing all the outsiders like me... you... us... together - '... it's not just you, sometimes I feel it too... look your enemy right in the eye, and say ''stay away 'cause I keep my monsters tied''... on the borderline, where the rules do not apply... you'd better steer wide...

I closed my eyes and played. And played. And played. And suddenly, everything - everything - was alright.

I'd not played at The 12 Bar Club before and I'd love to play there again as it's a great little venue, although the word 'little' is very important in this sentence. There are tables that are bigger that the stage, front rooms that are bigger than the audience area and I'd imagine that one person with flu could very easily infect everybody in the building with one sneeze. It's murky, dank, seedy - in other words, it's fantastic. I travelled up on the tube with Esso; as we arrived '1-2-3' by The Professionals was playing in the bar and club manager Barnet was anticipating a good evening. Esso went to The Angel to meet up with John King just before T.V. arrived; soundcheck was straightforward enough with John the sound man getting everything right in no time. I bumped into Brian from Wunjo Guitars as I walked around the corner to the Nunu takeaway (falafel and salad - excellent!) who I'd not seen for a while - when I said I'd been in a few times and he'd not been there he said he'd been 'working on his golf'. Business must be good then... after catching up on a few phone calls I met Esso and John for a drink then went back to the venue to catch a few songs from gig organiser Brandy Row - anyone who plays a Johnny Thunders song is alright by me - and to get ready for the gig. We were due on at 10.15 but went on a bit later than that, and 'No Time To Be 21' kicked off a set that for me surpassed the 100 Club show earlier this year in pretty much every way. I've dribbled on about 'Borderline' already, but there were more than a few 'can this get any better? Yes it can!' moments for me; that said I also played a couple of absolute howlers during my solo in '21', forgot the extra beat of silence in the last chorus of 'Worn Once', messed up a chord change or two in 'Bored Teenagers' - well, you don't get something for nothing do you? Our set ends with 'One Chord Wonders' and general audience mayhem, we encore with 'Good Times Are Back' and 'Runaway Train Driver' before T.V. sets up shop at the front of the stage and does a roaring trade. Excellent!

It's a late bar and people are everywhere, it would have been great to stay for a drink but Esso and myself have got a last train to catch. Oh well, maybe next time. As we're leaving a chap called Martin stops me to say that he still has his old Price singles and that it was great to see me playing, was the band still going, when was I playing with T.V. again, while we were talking a couple come over to ask the same questions- for a few seconds I think about taking up Esso's idea of getting a cab home later, but times are hard and it would cost too much. Oh well, maybe next time. And once again another one of those amazing songs says it all - it's expensive being poor, these days more expensive than ever. And you don't get something for nothing do you? But for evenings like this, it's all worth it, every time. See you on the borderline sometime...

Operation Ivy

2011-06-12T18:53:00.000Z

Towards the end of our (ahem) illustrious career myself and my buddies in The Price did a few gigs with a band called Blue Wail. They were very good - a bit rockier than us, very much aimed at the American market. They were often joined on backing vocals by their producer, a bearded gentleman who'd previously produced quite a few other bands including Dr. Feelgood, The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks. As you might imagine I found Martin Rushent to be a very interesting person, and he was also a very nice chap so it was sad to see that he'd died last week.

Meanwhile The Flying Squad supported Treason at Tropic At Ruislip on Friday night. We were a bit under-rehearsed (the gig came in at short notice and it was a chance for us to give new drummer Andy a run out) but our set that went down well with the audience although I felt we were a bit too loose to deserve such a good reaction. Still the customer is always right so I'll stop moaning (for once!) and just say that I'm really looking forward to our gig there next month (the 15th since you've asked) supporting The Small Fakers. I hadn't seen Stuart Monks (or 'Stuart the guitar repair man' as he's often known in these hallowed pages) for a while and he was on good form as ever, and I bumped into Chris from The Members at the bar who said some very complimentary things about our band so maybe it was a good gig after all? I don't know enough about the type of music Treason play to be able to say whether they're good at it or not and it was all a bit heavy for me, but there was a fair amount of headbanging going on down the front so I guess they must have been doing something right.

Saturday saw The Upper Cut made their first appearance at The Uxbridge Ivy Leaf Club. It was one of those strange gigs where you're seemingly ignored all night then 4 numbers from the end people start dancing, demand encores even when you're packing your gear away then tell you that you're the best band that's ever played there and offer you another gig. Weird. We hadn't played together since the Dolphin gig last month so were a bit shaky to begin with but got it all together in the end. As we arrived there were three police cars outside, with a young man clearly the worse for wear having trouble standing up and several people hanging around and talking to the policemen; as I carried my amp through them they were wrapping the young man in that silver foil that you see marathon runners being wrapped in at the end of the race. Like I say, it was all a bit weird. Oh and Stu turned up again - none for ages and then two come along at once, as the old saying goes.

There's a T.V. Smith gig to look forward to this week, on Thursday at The 12 Bar Club (T.V. gigs are always events to look forward to in my little world, but I've not played the venue before so that's another reason to look forward to it) and Awaken are playing at The Dolphin on Friday. Oh and we've got Pimp My Jazz at The Load Of Hay on Sunday. Come on down, as another old saying goes...

Local lad makes good?

2011-06-08T10:27:00.003Z

And the madness continues to continue - here's the Uxbridge Gazette article on Balcony Shirts. We actually look like a band don't we? That's John in the middle of the back row, The Price played a few shows with his band Hector's House in our early days and very good they were too; he wrote the song with Chris and Scott with Dave and myself playing on the recording with them. We've now had over 16 thousand hits on YouTube - how on Earth do we follow this?!?

Staying local for the moment, Midnight played a fine show at The Dolphin on Friday evening, with the 5 man horn section sounding good and a fair sized crowd showing no little appreciation. I saw Ace Club D.J.'s Darren and Simon at the bar - Darren made the observation that The Dolphin was turning out to be a really good venue that he's 'never seen a bad band at'. It does seem to be going well there, which is good news for the area as it's another place for bands to play - which reminds me, it's time for another plug for the excellent What's On In Uxbridge website... there we are, that should do it...

Saturday it was time for my first gig in ages with The Briefcase Blues Brothers. Now this could get confusing so pay attention. Mario who used to be Jake in the Chicago Blues Brothers show runs The Briefcase Blues Brothers - he did before he was in our show, and he still does now. Matt who is currently Jake in our show used to be Elwood in Mario's band, and with regular man Chris unavailable is depping at this gig. So the B.B.B.'ers are one ex-C.B.B.'er and one current B.B.B.'er, except when Chris the real B.B.B.'er is available. Got that? Good. Perhaps you can explain it to me... on my way to the gig I got a call from Pete from The Rikardo Brothers telling me that our projected gig the next day at The Unicorn in Abbots Langley had been double booked and so we weren't playing. Bah! I was looking forward to that - oh well, they've apparently promised us a replacement date so we should play there sooner or later. In the meantime Adam's on drums, Kylan's on bass and (another) Matt is on keyboards for a gig in a tent in the garden of a very nice house near Swanley. It's Dylan's 40th birthday, he's a friend of Wayne who sometimes plays keyboards in the B.B.B.'s (I did say earlier that you had to pay attention!) and who is joining us for a few songs. When I got talking to him he said that his surname was Lee, which would make it easy for him to remember my name - I later found out that this is his dad - how cool is that? The show turned out to be a good one although it took me a few songs to get back into B.B.B. mode - they play some of the songs faster and some slower than we do, and in different keys and with different arrangements, all of which takes a bit of getting used to. For this reason I felt that the first set went ok but by the second set really took off with Wayne joining us for 'Shake A Tail Feather' and 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours' and a full dance floor throughout. A good evening's work.

And this posting finishes on a local note, with The Flying Squad returning to Tropic At Ruislip this coming Friday; we're supporting Treason who sound like a very - make that very - heavy rock band. It's our first gig with our perspective new drummer Andy who I last played with back in September 2009, at a wedding with me on bass guitar. That was a good gig, and as we sounded good at Ruff Rockers last night hopefully this one will be too - although Treason do look a bit scary... and The Upper Cut make their first visit to The Ivy Leaf Club in Uxbridge on Saturday (we're gigging there, not just going for a drink, honest!) making it two local gigs in a row for your humble narrator. There's something that doesn't happen too often...