Deal or no deal?

Well there we are then - Britain has it's first hung parliament since the dark days of the 1970's. Personally I will never - never! - understand how a working class person can vote for The Conservative Party, since it seems to me that everything about them is designed to ensure that there's a system in place to keep us proles in the gutter where they think we belong - but it seems that millions got fooled again. And now of course the wheeling and dealing begins, as the the 3 main political parties disappear into a cloud of compromise in an increasingly desperate attempt to get as much power as possible at whatever cost to the few principles that they've still got left, after a general election that saw more deception and doublespeak than ever before.

It's not good really is it?

Friday night's gig wasn't too good either; The Bell in Ruislip has I'm told worked hard to lose it's reputation as being, shall we say, 'less than friendly' but I fear it's failed - there was trouble there recently and the atmosphere wasn't too genial the other night either as Youngblood (yeah I know we were called The 4 Faces last time but Mick the drummer was back for this one as he got us the gig so I'll use our old name here - keep up at the back there!) stumbled through 2 sets in front of ex-CBB'er Mario, a few laddish lads and the landlord's dog. As I stepped off the stage '5.15' by The 'Orrible 'Oo' came on the juke box - 'why should I care?' indeed, it could have been worse (just!) so maybe I should stop moaning and, as somebody once put it, shut up and play the guitar? There we are, I've shut up.

Click here for footage of another guitarist who should cheer up!

Surreal as it may sound there was at least one point in the last couple of weeks when it looked as though your humble narrator could have found himself doing a one-off gig in South Korea on Saturday night; as with so many of these thing it didn't come to pass which is a bit of a shame on several levels, not least as it deprives me of the chance to call this blog entry 'Korea Opportunities' or 'Seoul Man'... that said it would had to have gone quite a long way to have beaten The Chicago Blues Brothers show at The Grosvenor House Hotel in the surrealness stakes, as we were on with Stavros Flatley and the band of The Royal Scots Guards. Actually thinking about it now about the only thing that could have made it more surreal was if they'd appeared on stage together - sadly this didn't happen but I guess there's always next time?
Now I don't know about you but I don't follow all those T.V. reality/talent shows (you know the ones...) and therefore hadn't encountered Stavros Flatley before, but the descriptions that I was given beforehand were extraordinary, mostly along the lines of 'a Greek bloke and his son jump about and do mad Irish dancing'. Sounds just what I'm looking for... as I arrived around 6 p.m. after a busy day in the shop everything seemed to be more-or-less ready for action, with my old Laney combo already set-up (I'd came in on the Tube with just my guitar and stage clothes, Pete keeps my spare amp for situations such as these) and everyone else soundchecked and ready to go. It's the Mears Group May Ball and we're playing in (you've guessed it!) The Ballroom; we've got The Court Suite to use as a dressing room and it's a 'nearly-the-A-team' gig with Chris in for Ian on keyboards as he's away gigging with Ray Davies, with Phil's on the P.A. with Big Tel and Dave D.J.-ing. Stavros and son arrive just as the guards are readying themselves for action, the atmosphere is genial as Stavros signs autographs for all and sundry; I've never asked anyone for an autograph in my life and wasn't going to here until it occurred to me that it might be fun to get one for the shop - Stavros obliged and it's on our Facebook page even as we speak! After the guards band had been on (they did more-or-less what you think they'd do i.e. march about playing military music, an oddly incongruous site on a night such as this) it was time for 3 minutes of, well, a Greek bloke and his son jumping about and doing mad Irish dancing - a near riot ensued where I was watching with people clamouring for a better view and much merriment all round. Stavros took the mic for a few minutes chat, he seemed to be a very nice chap when I spoke to him and came over as such here, appearing almost bemused by the level of success that he and his son has attained. 'We only went on the show for a laugh' said he - whatever the merits or otherwise of what they do they certainly put a smile on a few people's faces on this particular night, which is pretty hard to criticise if you think about it... and we didn't do too badly either, with plenty of dancefloor action during our epic 2 hour set, with an hour or so from Big Tel and Dave bringing a highly successful evening to a close. It's strange - corporate events such as this are not always much fun from a band point of view as you're quite often a secondary consideration but this one was something of an exception, and all the better for it. But it did get a bit odd here and there - maybe that's why I liked it?

I liked Sunday's gig too, although this one also gets stamped 'odd' but for different reasons. For a start it was in Battersea; nothing too odd with that as such but the venue is a Gypsy jazz themed bar called (wait for it!) Le QuecumBar. (Yeah!) It's run by Silvia who describes it as 'the most expensive hobby that I've ever had'; with it's walls adorned with photos of everybody from Django Reinhardt to, er, Hank Marvin (a serious fan of the genre who apparently even turns up at their jam nights and is hoping to put out a gypsy jazz album one day) it's an unlikely venue for The CBB's even if we are using a previously untried format of live guitar and saxophone over backing tracks. Matt 'n'Mike are Jake 'n' Elwood, local lad Ian is on sax (you can see his house from the venue!) and during our soundcheck Ian and myself deciding to play seated on the stage with the BB's on the floor in front of us - I told you it was an odd gig. Mind you it's not as odd as (a) being asked if I know how to fit a dimmer switch on the stage lights and (b) actually fitting it. I didn't know I knew how!
The gig goes well especially considering that Ian and myself are unfamiliar with most of the backing tracks even to the extent of not knowing what key some of the songs are in; there's the odd mad moment (I hadn't heard 'Love Man' for a while!) but we get through it all reasonably unscathed with the BB's in fine form. We might even appear in the same unlikely format again one day. Odder and odder.

Oo-er - Gordon Brown has just resigned. Anarchy anyone?

Re-members

The first gig of this run of work saw The Price make their Tropic At Ruislip debut on Friday night on a bill that also featured The Members and The Attendants. I'd been really looking forward to this one but must say it was a bit anti-climatic from my point of view - maybe I'd been looking forward to it a bit too much? It wasn't that we played badly, we just didn't play as well as we can although things weren't helped by my guitar going badly out of tune during 'Matter Of Time' and us having to cut our set down as things were over-running. Still we went down well and even got offered another gig with The Members so perhaps I'm just being a bit miserable (for once!)
The Attendants kicked things off in fine fashion with a great set that took me right back to 1980-ish when I last saw them; Bert's as mad as ever on vocals, Malcolm still nearly pulls the neck off his SG during every solo and Ken and Russ keep it all moving in the bass and drums department. And I enjoyed The Members too (and I'm not just saying that because we might be playing with them again, honest!) who I also last saw in the very early Eighties; they're a trio these days with drummer Nick Cash joining original, er, members J.M. Carroll and Chris Payne - Nicky Tesco and Nigel Bennett perform with them occasionally. 'The Sound Of The Suburbs' is still a classic as is 'Solitary Confinement' although I'll be very brave and say that me and my Flying Squad friends do a better version of 'Police Car'...

Last night Youngblood played at the unusually named Pear and Partridge in London Colney - or rather they didn't. When myself and Roger the drummer arrived we were greeted by the sight of a large board proclaiming TONIGHT LIVE! THE 4 FACES - looks like Terry's thought of a new name for us then... the barman let us in through the side door, telling us how many complaints they'd been getting about the noise, never a good thing to be greeted with when you arrive at a venue but he was friendly enough and agreed with us that DJ's are normally louder than bands anyway. With the 2 Terry's (one on vocals, one on bass) in place we played our first set to 20 or so lads and lasses and our second to the barman (who requested 'Need Your Love So Bad' which we played and all agreed should go into the set) and a couple of couples - it was one of those 'everyone-was-in-earlier-for-the-football' evenings. Still we played well and it's better than rehearsing... well, actually , it's more or less the same as rehearsing but that's another story.

Talking of which I'd better get my guitar out - Pete from The Blue Five is here soon to prepare for tonight's gig. We've not played together since, oh I don't know, last century I think - is this what they call 'leaving it all until the last minute'?!?

Coming soon to a venue near you!

I'm not been out gigging this week, a situation that normally has me moaning my head off in these hallowed pages (and occasionally in real life too) and wondering if I'll be able to survive past teatime without swinging my right arm at a guitar; however since there's rather a lot of live shows on the horizon I'm telling myself that it's good to have a few days calm before the proverbial storm breaks. So in yet another blatant bit of shameless self-publicity here's what you'll hopefully be reading about in the next couple of weeks:-

This coming Friday (the 16th if you're taking notes) sees The Price following up our 25th anniversary shows last month with a gig supporting The Members (I haven't seen them play for about 30 years!) at Tropic At Ruislip. The Attendants are also on the bill (I haven't seen them play for about 30 years either!) and you can get in cheap by going on the venue website and booking a ticket (make sure you're coming to see us, it'll look as though we've got some fans!) or by printing off the leaflet that's currently on our website. It should be a great night! In a desperate attempt to ensure that we have a few people watching us Huggy and myself are appearing on Hayes FM this coming Tuesday evening - we're on Hughie Dixon's show at 9 p.m. so listen out for some off our favourite music, quotable quotes that mean absolutely nothing and no doubt lots more besides...

Saturday night it's time for a Youngblood (or whatever we're called these days) gig at The Pear and Partridge (great name!) in London Colney. I really enjoy our gigs - having spent years playing along with the recordings when I was learning to play it's great to be playing songs by the likes of The Stones and The Faces in a band at last! Sad to say I've missed a fair few gigs due to me being out gigging elsewhere - they always seem to clash which is a shame as I don't really want to end up depping in my own band. Let's hope I don't!

The next night sees your humble narrator returning to what was on paper at least one of the unlikeliest musical situations of his (ahem!) career. If you were looking to buy a musical instrument in the Uxbridge area in the late '70's/early '80's then the chances are that you bought it from a man who is these days known to members of the blogosphere as Voltarol. In those days he ran various shops ('Thames Valley Guitars' and 'Pete's Gig Shop' among them - I bet you've just guessed his first name!) and before that he was a member of The Jugular Vein, of whom John Peel once said 'The Jugular Vein also played'... quite how a miserable punky depressive like myself ended up playing in an acoustic guitar duo with him is a story perhaps best left lost in the mists of time, but somehow I did, and very good fun it was too. We played everything from jazz standards to Pete's own compositions, and left many-a folk club audience almost as confused as we often were; our antics were unfortunately curtailed when Pete moved away, but he's back in the area for a few days so we're opportunistically squeezing in a gig at - you've guessed it! - The Load of Hay. I'm not quite sure what we're going to play given the lack of rehearsal time available to us, but it should be good fun - well, it always was so why should this time be any different?

(Talking of The Load Of Hay there's a potentially extraordinary gig happening there on Sunday 25th - have a look at this website and tell me that you're not intrigued..!)

Around 2 years ago The Chicago Blues Brothers played a thoroughly enjoyable string of dates at The Theatre Royal in Windsor, and I'm pleased to say that from Monday 19th through to Saturday the 24th we're doing it all again. Excellent! Tickets are still available from the venue website (2 for the price of 1 on the first night!) and I for one am really looking forward to a great week's work. If only we had a few more week's like this! Ah well, mustn't be greedy I suppose.

Blogging opportunities may be few and far between given what's going on - my intention at the moment is to try to do some sort of short daily bulletin (Pretentious? Moi?) and then maybe some sort of overview when it's all over, but we'll see how it all goes. I'll see you sometime in the next couple of weeks...

The week after the weekend before

Well what I actually did on Monday evening was answer phone calls and e-mails from people saying how much they'd enjoyed the show(s) then watch an episode of 'C.S.I. New York' (which featured the band Train amid the usual blood and guts, and very good they sounded too) before having a relatively early night - only to wake up around 4 o'clock in the morning wondering about what songs The Price should play at next month's Ruislip gig. I really must learn to switch off sometimes.

Tuesday evening saw the first Flying Squad rehearsal for a while - we're playing at (you've guessed it!) The Load Of Hay this coming Saturday (3rd April if you fancy coming along) and with Mike away Huggy is depping on bass. We last gigged back in February so there was lots for Andy, Dave and myself to remember as well as a fair but for Huggy to learn; we'll have another get together before the gig which should do the trick.

Wednesday I heard that Jim Marshall had died - no, not the boss of the well-known guitar amplifier manufacturers, but the photographer who's amazing images of the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who seem to me to sum up the 1960's rock music 'scene' in many ways - have a look at his website and see how many you recognise...

Thursday it was up to 'We Will Rock You' to service the guitars before Stuart the guitar repairman and myself walked across town for the latest in our occasional visits to 'The Jersey Boys'. When we arrived chaos reigned as an understudy rehearsal was taking place; we re-strung a couple of Telecasters before checking how much has to be done when we return next Thursday - rather a lot as it happens!

It was a busy Balcony day on Friday, including a visit from Attendants (and indeed Cane Toads) bass player Ken who came in to order some t-shirts (unsurprisingly!) for their upcoming round of re-union gigs (everybody's doing it!) including the one with us supporting The Members. I'll heroically resist re-promoting it here... oh, go on then - all the details and links are at the end of the previous posting. Hurrah!

Yesterday evening it was time to point an electric guitar at an audience again (at last!) as Youngblood played at The Mermaid in St.Albans. With Roger away drumming for The Lee Ryder Band myself and the two Terry's were joined by the excellent Geoff Nicholls on drums, who people like me remember from the 'Rockschool' T.V. programme back in the 1980's. When we arrived we found the pub to be reasonably busy with no obvious place for a band to play - when we told them we were the band the bar staff simply moved the people from the area where the bands play. I thought this would annoy the people concerned, but they just moved as asked and carried on chatting as if nothing had happened. I suppose the locals know that they're sitting where the bands play and don't mind moving when the time comes? After a quick rehearsal (a.k.a. 'talk-through the set with Geoff') we went on to play 2 sets to an ever-more appreciative audience, with Geoff doing a fine job behind the kit and Terry as excellent as ever on vocals-and-walking-up-to-members-of-the-audience-and-getting-them-to-sing-along - how does he do that without getting insulted? Or worse?! A good gig although rather less euphoric than the previous weekend's shows - back to work in more ways than one...

Silver jubilee

With The Price's 25th anniversary gigs looming large on your humble narrator's horizon (see the burst of shameless self publicity to the left!) I've been attempting to put the best part of 40 (40!) songs into 2 playable sets, bearing in mind that we're intending to not repeat a song over the course of the weekend. It shouldn't be too hard should it? Well perhaps it isn't and I'm just making it difficult for myself (as usual!) but I found myself lying awake at 4 o'clock the other morning wondering if we should perhaps play a shorter set on Sunday so that people can get home early, or maybe we should just start earlier, and if we do play a longer set on Saturday should we include all the reggae songs then, or the slow songs, and where do we put cover versions... like I say, it should be easy. Maybe we should play them chronologically? Or alphabetically? Or draw them out of a hat? Help!

Hope you can make it along to one, other, or both shows - it'll be good to see you. Then again to paraphrase Keith Richards, it'll be good to see anyone! Oh and it's East's birthday on Saturday. Now there's a thought...

Meanwhile back in the real world (such that it is) it's nearing the end of the financial year; with this in mind I spent the best part of 2 days this week attempting to put 12 month's worth of receipts in order; with the front room floor covered (and I mean covered) in pieces of paper of various sizes I heard myself say 'this would be a lot easier if you did this once a month rather than once a year' out loud. Let's hope I was listening... and I earned a lot less in the last 12 months than I did in the previous tax year. A LOT less. Losing the Pro Music work really did take it's toll (remind me to tell you the story one day!) We played significantly less gigs too, and pretty much all the money I earned in the run up to Christmas went towards paying a £2000+ tax bill. Bah! I feel as though I'm running to stand still (as U2 once sang) although I'm sure there are lots of people in much worse situations so I'm not going to complain. Well, not much anyway.

Last night it was time for me to return to the Youngblood fold (I've missed the last couple of gigs as I've been gigging elsewhere) for a show at The Misty Moon in Bethnal Green, where myself, Terry the bass, Roger the drums and Terry the singer played two 45 minute sets to a shifting audience of East End characters and misfits, most if not all of whom seemed to enjoy our efforts almost as much as we did. Our new friend Gavin (I think that was his name, he was a little, shall we say, confused which made him rather difficult to understand) asked Terry if he could sing 'Wonderful Tonight' with us and delivered an unforgettable rendition which many if not all of those who witnessed are probably desperately trying to forget even as we speak. Still he seemed happy enough... oh and I met a chap called Terry (this is getting confusing!) who said he was a big Alice Cooper fan (good man!) and then asked if we could play 'School's Out' (we couldn't although maybe we should) and then asked for something by The Who - as I started 'Substitute' we began windmilling furiously, much to the consternation of pretty much everybody within 3 yards or so of him. Again he seemed happy enough, as was the pub guv'nor who wants us to play there once a month. Top man!

As we were leaving Terry came over to roar his approval and ask where we were going back to; when I said Uxbridge he looked a bit confused so I said something like 'it's near Heathrow' to which he replied 'I was over near there the other day, in Reading - it was alright, a bit like Dagenham on wheels'.

I hope he's there next time.

Still Ill / Getting Better

I woke up Saturday morning to the rather grim realisation that things weren't getting any better - leaving aside the coughing, spluttering, sneezing and headache (did I mention that I've got ManFlu?) I found that my eyelids were all but glued together with what might best and indeed most politely be described as 'gunge'. Not good frankly. 'You've got an infection' said the long-suffering Shirley, with the look of someone who knows that what they've just said is entirely accurate. At least she didn't say 'I told you so'...

Actually she did, but I'm not going to tell you that here!

With a day in Balcony Shirts followed by a gig in the evening in prospect it was off to the chemist to spend some money - rather a lot of money I thought but the way the pharmacist spoke made me think that buying things like eye drops was a pretty good idea, in the same way as the manner in which he said the words 'Go to see your doctor on Monday' made me think that I should indeed go to see my doctor on Monday... a blearily busy Balcony day followed (Scott was if anything even worse for wear than your humble narrator, although his condition was more down to over-indulgence than anything else, the lucky sod!) 'though I didn't feel particularly worse by the end of it - that said the fact that I fell asleep almost as soon as I got through the front door is pretty significant if you think about it.

The evening's gig was in uncharted territory in more ways that one; a new venue - The Ox in South Oxhey - for a new line-up of Youngblood. With Mick the drummer falling by the wayside myself and Terry the bass have installed Roger Brewer (our old partner-in-crime from our days in The Informers) on drums. Terry the singer took the opportunity to suggest we get a new name, and came up with The 4 Faces which we used for this show - not sure what we'll end up with but that one did for this one, and a raucous evening it was, with men taking their t-shirts off to dance and women demanding request after request from the ever genial Terry meaning that we attempted 'Get It On', 'Bad Moon Rising' and 'Whatcha Gonna Do About It?' with varying degrees of success. We ignored all the other ones! In the meantime Terry the bass bemoaned the changing colour of crisp packets, I remained disappointed that the venue hadn't turned out to be a John Entwistle theme bar and we all agreed that we should have some good times to look forward to, whatever we end up being called.

Things hadn't improved on Sunday but at least they hadn't got any worse - that said I spent much of the day half-asleep and the rest actually asleep. Well, that's what it felt like anyway... after a possibly ill-advised amount of medicine(s) and carrying as many boxes of tissues as I could it was off to Tropic Of Ruislip for a Flying Squad gig with the excellent Chicken Legs Weaver. As we arrived Big Tel and Dave were just getting the P.A. set up, George the promoter was moving tables and chairs into position and all was set for good evening. We soundchecked with a thunderous 'Ridin' on the L&N' and it all sounded good to me - then again I probably wasn't the best judge of things! After CLW's soundcheck a problem developed - our drummer Dave had hoped to record the show on his laptop directly from Big Tel's P.A. system but it wouldn't work; Tel came up to me with the words 'I think I've upset Dave' just as Andy came over to say that Dave had gone home in a state of some distress. 'He's coming back 'though' said Andy not looking totally convinced... he did come back, arriving sometime during CLW's fine set. He went down well as did we - there could have been more people there but the ones that were there certainly seemed to have a good evening. From my point of view it was... ok. I was flagging by halfway through our show and, without wishing to sound too melodramatic (for once!) by the end of our set I'm not sure I physically could have played much more. And I don't think I played particularly well 'though I suppose there's an excuse if I want to use it? Then again my old mate Andy Stubbs (who booked The Price many times during his reign of terror booking bands at Brunel University and is now Uxbridge Town Centre Manager) came up to me afterwards and told me that I sounded like 'a cross between Joe Strummer and Mick Jones' so I guess I can't have been that bad as that might well be the best guitar-related compliment that I've ever received, from my point of view at least.

Monday morning and it's time to visit the doctor. I told him my symptoms then recounted the pharmacist's thoughts - he said something like 'oh well, they're supposed to say things like that' then rather reluctantly examined me, first with a stethoscope... 'there's nothing wrong with your chest' he said as he pushed his thumb against my left eyebrow. 'Maybe not, but when you did that it felt like you'd just tried to pull my face off'. He remained unmoved - 'you might have a touch of something like sinusitis I suppose' he said as he wrote out the inevitable prescription for the inevitable anti-biotics. I think I was in the surgery for around 2 minutes and didn't feel as though I'd been taken particularly seriously; on the other hand Shirley observed that, judging by the strength of the anti-biotics that he'd prescribed, he'd probably just not wanted to worry me. Who knows?

Still one way or another it was time to feel better, and to feel better as soon as possible, as it's that time again... mad as it may seem (particularly to the band members!) this year marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of The Price. With this in mind we're playing as often as we can this year (have a look on our website for details of the first shows) as well as hopefully doing some recording and (gulp!) writing some new material. With this in mind it was time for a return to Ruff Rockers Rehearsal Studios for an epic 6 hour session during which we ran through over 30 of our own songs (did we really write that many?!?) along with a few willfully obscure cover versions, and during which I drink 2 bottles of Lucozade, took probably too many painkillers and got through the whole session without keeling over; that said I ran out of steam when I got home and was asleep within 30 minutes of getting through the front door. Rock'n'Roll eh?

And I've had yesterday and today off sick, during which I've taken my tablets like a good boy and attempted to do as little as possible - but I did watch 'It Might Get Loud' again, and damn good it was too. Mind you I only recognised about half of it- I must have been more out-of-consciousness than in it first time around! Still at last I do believe I'm starting to feel a bit better. Good!

From vibrators to stockbrokers

Well- that was a busy 4 days in mad-guitar-land...

Thursday it was time for a Flying Squad gig in previously unchartered territories, supporting The Vibrators at The Beaverwood Club in Chislehurst. It's a gig promoted by Pete Feenstra who I first met sometime back in the 1990's when I was playing in The Flame; he promotes at a lot of venues- have a look at his website to see what I mean- and has done a lot of work in keeping live music happening at a time when it wasn't a particularly fashionable thing to be involved with. Bearing in mind that it was Guy Fawkes Night myself and Andy (vocals) set off early, but I don't know how early we would have to have left to avoid the traffic chaos that we encountered in the course of our 3 1/2 (yes, three and a half!) hour journey...

We'd just about got out of town when Dave (drums) called to warn us against using the M25 as it was at a standstill from junction 10; we got to junction 12 before turning off and trusted the 'avoid congestion' option on the sat nav. which did a pretty good job until we neared Wandsworth Common where there were literally thousands of people on the streets, presumably on their way to a fireworks display. Traffic was at an almost total standstill and it took quite a while for us to discover the reason why- the cars couldn't move as there were so many people were on a Zebra crossing. Surely a policeman or even a lollipop lady could have prevented this from happening? Or would that be too simple?

We eventually arrived at the club not long after 8 o'clock. Fortunately Dave and Mike (bass) had been there for a while and were all set up and ready to rock- by the time I'd said hello to Eric on the door (I hadn't seen him for 10 years or more!) and introducing myself to Al the soundman I had something like 15 minutes to set up for an 8.30 start. Easy! Soundcheck consisted of checking that my amp worked (it did) and Al telling us that he didn't think the monitors were working properly (he was right, they weren't.) It took a song or two to get used to the sound and to get going for want of a better term, but we played well and went down a storm with the audience.

How well did we play? Click here to find out!

And The Vibrators were excellent too- they're another of those bands that an old punk like me watches and thinks 'oh I'd forgotten about this one' rather more times than he thought he would. With frontman/guitarist Knox still recovering from an accident ex-Members guitarist Nigel Bennett was the sole 6-stringer and very good he was too; he also did a good job of remembering the time I saw him play 'Babylon's Burning' with Ruts D.C. at The Fulham Greyhound all those years ago when I spoke to him afterwards. A top evening- and it didn't take us quite so long to get home (thank God!)

Friday and myself and East (who's asked me to mention that he was called a 'horny little devil' by not one but two ladies at last weekend's Bucks Golf Club show- well, he was wearing a pair of red horns for much of the evening...) spent the evening at The Dolphin in Uxbridge checking out The Side Project. They're a band made up from students at Brunel University who are interested in playing at The Load of Hay so we went along to see what they were like. Maybe the best word to describe them is 'quiet' as they didn't use a P.A. system (they sang through their amplifiers!) 'though anyone who plays 'Dreaming Of You' by The Coral is alright by me- I guess that means they get a gig then...

Saturday saw something completely different- a gig at The Old Bell in Enfield for a new band consisting of your humble narrator on guitar, my old mate Terry on bass (we played together in The Informers sometime in the 1990's) and ex-Chevrons Terry on vocals and Mick on drums. Currently rejoicing under the admittedly rather ironic name of YOUNGBLOOD we've managed a couple of quick rehearsals before this short notice gig came in. With a set that makes the most of Terry's excellent voice (somewhere between Rod Stewart and Steve Marriott in my not-so-humble opinion- yes, that good!) we managed to get held up on the way to the venue by, you've guessed it, a large number of people on a zebra crossing (presumably going to a bonfire party?!?) and we definitely need a bit more rehearsals if this gig was anything to go by (a couple of songs ground rather unceremoniously to a halt amid some confusion) although there was still a lot to enjoy (let's face it, if it had been really bad I wouldn't have mentioned it here!) and it'll be interesting to see how it all shapes up over the next few months.

Sunday and it's time for another Acts Less Ordinary night at The Load of Hay in Uxbridge, and they don't come much less ordinary than Attila The Stockbroker. John (his real name- yes I was a bit disappointed too!) was in fine form especially considering that he and his wife Robina have spent a great deal of time recently caring for his mum (who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease) and step dad (who's been diagnosed with bowel cancer and has recently broken his hip.) Indeed myself and himself spent a fair amount of time in an in depth discussion on the subject of caring for our mums (I spent years with my mum when she had Motor Neurone Disease) at various points throughout the evening.

East (yes, the horny little devil himself) was at the bar for much of the gig and reported 'jaws dropping' at strategic points during the show; this happens a fair bit at Attila's gigs- as the man himself says on his MySpace page, 'I don't mess about. I've got lots to say and I'm out there saying it' 'though the person who said to me that they thought he was 'politically incorrect' had surely got their wires crossed although I guess it depends on what you consider to be 'correct'! We could have done with a few more people in (don't come moaning to me that there's nothing to do when gigs like this are happening!) but it was still enough of a success for Grant the landlord to invite Attila back for a return gig next year. Excellent!