Caravan club

Just one gig this weekend, on Friday at The Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. They don't normally let people like me into places like that...

It being Friday afternoon I set off in good time to get to the venue for a 4.30 soundcheck, although I also set off early to give myself time to visit (a) the H.M.V. shop on Oxford Street (I've still got some vouchers left from Christmas) and (b) Sister Ray in Berwick Street - unsurprisingly (b) turned out to be a far more interesting option, with your humble narrator heroically resisting various Sex Pistols live recordings (not all of them entirely legal methinks - excellent!) in favour of a 'Punk: Attitude' DVD (for only £3.99! I got one for myself last time I was there, this one's for Dave at the shop) and a CD of the legendary 'Nuggets' album which I've got as a double album on vinyl but have been meaning to get on CD for ages. Great stuff. From there it was down to Green Park on the Victoria line to meet up with everyone in the hotel ballroom, where we're playing at Caravan Diamond Ball charity event. Matt returns as Jake, Tracy's back for the first time this year on backing vocals, Chris is on keyboards and Ian's on saxophone - other than that it's the usual faces in the usual places. Also on the bill are Carwash - I spoke to their guitarist Simon the night before who very kindly let me use his Mesa Boogie Mark V combo, and very fine it sounded too. We've got The Hartford Suite to use as a dressing room, it looks out across Park Lane and it takes a bit of finding but we get there in the end.

We're not on until 10.30 and food is at 8 o'clock so Squirrel, Chris and myself decided that we were actually tourists and that we'd walk down to The Hard Rock Cafe for a visit to The Vault. The first time I visited I chanced upon it when we were playing at one of the other hotels in the area and I managed to have a go on some very rare guitars - these days they're all in cabinets but it's still great to see them. From there we walk to The Kings Arms for a drink or two before returning to the hotel at the allotted time for food in The Harvest Suite - coleslaw sandwiches for me (no vegetarian option! How much does it cost to stay at this hotel?!?) with chicken curry for everyone else. Mine doesn't take quite as long to eat as everybody else's (!) so I decide to take the lift to the 28th floor to visit the Galvin at Windows restaurant (I wonder if there was a veggie option on the menu?) where you can see out across town - it's a clear night and it has to be said that the view is pretty extraordinary. From then on it's 'hurry-up-and-wait' time - it often is at these sort of events - there's a dance troupe on before us, a similar type of thing to 'Stomp' which seems to warm some of the audience up and intimidate others, at least judging by the looks on their faces. We play a short (45 minutes) set which goes down very well, with a fair amount of dancing and a breathless encore of 'Jailhouse Rock'. Simon and myself spent a large amount of time discussing Eric Clapton's guitar sound (he's thinking about bidding for the 1980's Soldano set-up in this Wednesday's 'Crossroads' auction! Good man!) through the ages, Matt spotted Phil Tufnell in the bar and we finished in time for me to get the last train home - a good night all round.

Turn the volume up, turn the temperature down

And so the heatwave continues, and the same people that were moaning that it was too cold a few months ago are now moaning that it's too hot. Oh well, I suppose it gives them something to do. Maybe I should start?

Mind you it was hot last night. Really hot. I don't actually remember the last time I was so hot on stage - there was a moment during 'Green Onions' that I went to move up the neck during my solo and the palm of my left hand stuck to the back of the guitar neck, causing an extremely peculiar set of notes to emerge. I'd like to think it gave my solo an avant-garde flavour, but I think it was actually just out of tune. Mind you the same thing happened during my 'Sweet Home Chicago' solo so at least there's a chance that it was starting to sound deliberate - that said by then there was so much sweat on the lenses of my glasses that I could hardly see where I was intending to play. See how I suffer for my art? And see how the audience suffers in return? Actually the audience were a game bunch, bravely occupying the dancefloor for much of our 90 minute sweat-fest, at a benefit evening for The Johnson Community Hospital held at The Castle Sports Centre in Spalding. Well to be pedantic we were actually playing in a tent inside the sports centre, a set-up that no doubt contributed to the temperature on and indeed offstage. Steve was on drums, Neil played Jake for the first time in 18 months (he did it really well too) and Steve was on trumpet for a show that contained a version of that well known Blues Brothers classic 'Long Train Running' that was described by Squirrel after the show as 'the strangest that I've ever played'. It was probably the strangest that I've ever played too. Still they all kept dancing so it can't have been that bad. Hopefully.

Friday night was a hot one too, at The General Eliott in Uxbridge where a rare-ish 4 piece line up of The Good Old Boys (Alan on vocals, Nick on bass, Pete on guitar and Richard on drums - find out more about them here) played 2 rockin 'n' rollin' sets to an appreciative audience. Alan seemed fully recovered from a recent leg operation, Nick and Richard were as solid as ever and Pete put aside a technical problem in the first set ('I set up too quickly and didn't plug a lead in properly') to deliver some splendid solos. I felt they missed the extra guitar here and there (Simon was off gigging elsewhere and as Alan put it, 'there's not much room in these little pubs so we thought we'd keep it as a 4 piece') but it was great to see them play. Then again, it usually is.

Thursday night didn't seem to be quite so hot, but it was a very strange gig all the same - following on from our show at Le QuecumBar in Battersea earlier this year one of the oddest line up's of The Chicago Blues Brothers Band made another appearance, at Cambridge Cottage in Kew Gardens. Matt and Mike are Jake and Elwood, Richard's on sax and I'm on guitar with backing tracks providing the rest of the accompaniment, at an evening for the Hillingdon Hospital Consultants Association. So far so good, but now the fun starts - there's a volume restriction device in the room we're playing in, and it's set at a very low (make that VERY low!) 85 decibels. How low is 85 decibels? The short answer is 'very', but as this chart shows, it's actually not much louder than a telephone dialing tone. Yes you read that bit right. And what happens if we exceed 85db? The power gets cut for 20 seconds. Bugger! While we're setting up we realise that we can quite easily shout loudly enough to cause the power to be cut, and all ask questions like 'why do they bother with live music here at all?' to little or no avail. The staff are as helpful but there's an air of 'we don't normally have people like you in here' about proceedings - well, I thought there was anyway. After setting up Mike, Matt and myself (Richard arrived around 8.30 as he was busy elsewhere) went over to The Coach And Horses Hotel to meet up with Simon Small who's a mate of Matt's and who I've depped for several times in Mario's Blues Brothers show but have never actually met - we've talked on the phone but fairly obviously are never on the same gig together! Suitably refreshed it's back to the venue for some food and to await the call to arms. We play a 50-ish minute set which understandably never really gets going from our point of view - the power goes of during the first song and it's a struggle from then on in, with Richard and the BB's eventually using unplugged microphones and myself scratching away on barely audible guitar. Then again there was much merriment from the audience and, incredibly, enquiries for band bookings so I suppose it all went well - I always feel like we haven't done our jobs properly in circumstances like this, but I guess it's the audience reaction that's important and they all seemed very happy with things. Oh well - time for me to start moaning about the weather then...