'Monday Monday, so good to me...'

Commercial time - following on from the successful club nights hosted at Madame Jojos last year the first night of a 13 week run of Reggae Punk Mondays takes place on the 10th February at The 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street London. In addition to performances from The Duel and Freedom Faction, Ruts D.C. will be playing our first British gig of 2014. It's a new departure for the band - an acoustic show. Dave Ruffy, Segs and myself will (hopefully!) be playing a new song or two in our set alongside older Ruts and Ruts D.C. material, Segs will be DJing throughout the evening and the whole thing kicks off at around 8pm. A fine evening is in prospect, and with the whole thing being streamed live on the Internet (details on how you can connect with this are at FFRUK - it's no good asking me how to do it I'm afraid!) you can watch it in the comfort of your own home if you can't make it along. Oh yes!

'Radio waves... move like pollen in air...'

Commercial time - here are a few things that have caught my eyes and ears over the past couple of weeks :-

GLM - the band formed by original Lurkers members Pete Stride (guitar), Nigel Moore (bass) and Pete 'Manic Esso' Haynes (drums) - have put a new track 'A Perfect Storm' up for free download on their website. There is also an interview with Mr. Stride on the always-worth-visiting Louder Than War website in which among other things he talks of the band playing some live shows later this year. To fans of The Lurkers (and indeed GLM) like myself this is splendid news! In addition Esso has made an extraordinary appearance with Garry Bushell on the Radio Litopia podcast. Have a listen here - it's very funny, but it's not for the faint-hearted...

It's been a good time for drummers on the (Internet) radio, as Dave Ruffy from Ruts D.C. appeared on Shoreditch Radio last Friday, telling some great stories and playing some of his favourite music. You can hear it here, and it's well worth a listen. And while we're on the subject of Ruts D.C. our new album 'Rhythm Collision Volume 2' is now available on vinyl as well as CD - you can get it now from Amazon or from the band at forthcoming gigs. A record - a proper record! Great stuff!

And I've just heard the extraordinary news that Wilko Johnson is apparently planning some more shows despite being diagnosed with terminal cancer and indeed playing a series of farewell gigs earlier this year. What can I say? Well 'thank you God' springs to mind... in the meantime you can click here to hear the great man's recent appearance on the BBC Radio 4 show 'Mastertapes' - highlights are many and varied, not least when he's asked if he has ever used any effects on his guitar -

'Pedals? Listen man, I'm a guitarist, not a cyclist!'

Comments like that go a long way towards explaining why he's also a hero.

The shapes of things to come?

I was saddened to hear of the death of Clive Dunn this week - if you're my age you remember 'Dad's Army' very well, with catchphrases like 'don't panic!' and 'you stupid boy!' being part of your growing up. Well, they were in our house!

The light pours out of me

Although I didn't have any gigs last weekend I did attend the open mic night at The Swan in Iver on Sunday evening, and very enjoyable it was too. I ended up playing in the house band (John the organiser asked me if I'd do it, and I'm just a boy who can't say no...) where I found myself joining Tony on bass and Bob on drums to accompany, well, anyone who wanted a backing band. A chap asked if he could sing 'Feelings' by Morris Albert - not an easy song as it's got more than a few tricky chords (which I looked up on the Internet with my phone - what did we used to do in the old days eh?) but we managed to stumble through it. Big Al Reed was as excellent as ever (I'm not just saying that because he gives me gigs, he really was good) as was Les Payne, and after years of not going to jam nights I now seem to have found myself to be a regular at this one. Mind you, I did have another reason for going along this time...
For a while now we've been stocking some musical instruments and accessories at Balcony Shirts; these days we've not got many guitars (as they weren't really selling - sad but true)  but the accessories side of things is doing well. We get them from the John Hornby Skewes (JHS) distribution company - to this end Dave the rep visits us regularly, and on his last visit we got talking about my then-upcoming gigs with Ruts DC in Birmingham and York. By then end of our conversation the subject had come around to the possibility of an endorsement deal for me with Vintage and Fret King Guitars. I've been using a Vintage Lemon Drop for some time (that's what got us onto the subject) and have tried and liked some Fret King instruments, so it all got quite interesting quite quickly... to cut a long story short (for once!) Sunday was an opportunity for me to play a Fret King Yardbird on Sunday evening which Dave had provided for me to try; it's based on the guitar that Jeff Beck used when he was playing in The Yardbirds and while I don't own it (yet!) it's certainly a very impressive instrument. I've always had a bit of an aversion to maple necks (I generally prefer rosewood fingerboards, but it's a subject that doesn't have an simple answer as this clip shows...) but this felt and sounded great - we'll see what happens next but you just might see me looking out from an advert in the pages of the guitar magazines sometime in the not-too-distant future!

In the meantime The Rikardo Brothers played at The Bedford Arms in Chenies last night, at Paul and Cathy's wedding reception. We'd not played since way back in February (they - Alan on vocals and Pete on guitar - have played without me when I've been gigging elsewhere) when it was the day after a night that saw me indulge in what could politely be described as projectile vomiting (urgh!) and although I'll be honest and say that my fragile condition that day means that I hardly remember playing we must have done something right as we were booked to play this show as a result of our performance that afternoon. Judging by the condition of some of the guests by the time we arrived at 7 o'clock festivities had clearly been in full swing for a number of hours (I'll leave you to think about that for a moment..!) and by the time our first set started there were more than a few people who looked unlikely to last the rest of the evening. We'd had a rehearsal on Wednesday evening and I for one was glad that we did as I'd all but forgotten some of the material, but despite the old dubious moment the show went well and was rapturously received by all concerned. Cathy started our second set by singing 'Little White Bull' accompanied by Pete (I hadn't got a clue how it goes, but the fact that Pete managed to busk along is a measure of just how good a player he is...) while Alan completely forgot the words to 'Mustang Sally' and ended up singing 'In The Midnight Hour' instead! Overall however we enjoyed ourselves to such an extent that we've all resolved to make an effort to get more gigs for the group and even are looking to do some recording. Excellent! 

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Yardbird guitar to play - that sound must be on there somewhere...

'And we don't care...'

'Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols' was released 35 years ago this week. It's hard to explain to people that were too young to understand (or indeed not even born) at the time just what an astonishing event the release of this album was to disenfranchised teenagers such as myself. For me it remains the ultimate 'you're-either-with-us-or-you're-against-us' moment in popular music, an event that polarised the classroom, the playground, the kids that you played football in the park and in the street with - everyone. Listened to now (and I've been listening to it rather a lot this week) it still sounds extraordinary, a 12-track blast of punk rock adrenalin that never fails to astound and amaze. Well, that's what it does for me anyway! Inevitably it's been re-issued in various formats, not least a 'Super Deluxe Box Set' which will set you back the best part of £100 and which includes previously unheard outtakes, a DVD of footage from the turbulent year that was 1977 and a book that looks so big and heavy that it'll probably fall through the average coffee table. I keep telling myself not to buy it, but we both know that I will in the end don't we? I must have the album in various formats, oh I don't know, 6 times at least - which reminds me, I wonder how much my '11-track-album-with-the-one-sided-single-of-Submission-and-a-poster' is worth? Maybe enough to buy the box set? Then again surely the fact that I'm even thinking of spending that much money on something that I've basically already got is keeping the great rock 'n' roll swindle going into the 21st Century? Malcolm McLaren, take a bow!

Meanwhile the first album by GLM is released this week. 'Chemical Landslide' features Pete Stride (guitar and vocals) Nigel Moore (bass) and Pete 'Manic Esso' Haynes (drums) and while it's 14 tracks sound quite a bit heavier and indeed darker than anything that they produced together in The Lurkers there's still plenty there to keep us old fans happy. Esso and Nigel thunder along in time-honoured tradition, and if the Stride guitar is more metal than punk these days his haunting vocals balance it all out well. The best track for me at the moment is probably 'Beyond The Pale' with it's amazing 'can you turn the lights down' refrain although the opener 'Every Night's A Story' and the title track are running it close, with 'Crash Landing' probably the nearest to the old Lurkers sound. It's always hard to be objective when it comes to music made by friends but I think they've really got something good here so let's hope the album gets heard by enough people to make an impact - it seems to me that with all the social media at our disposal these days it's relatively easy to have an Internet presence but it's harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. It's available now from their website for the very reasonable price of £8.99 - go on, you know you want to...

In other news Ruts D.C were due to play at The Islington Assembly Hall on Tuesday, but sadly the show was cancelled as The Mayor Of Islington is using the room. I will heroically restrain myself from saying anything at this point other than to observe that judging by the comments on the band's Facebook page (and indeed on The Ruts's page) I'm not the only person that's disappointed... still there have been some good reviews of last month's shows in Birmingham and York, and we're playing at The 100 Club on Saturday 22nd December (hopefully!) as part of a Joe Strummer tribute weekend (it'll be the 10th anniversary of his untimely death) as well as lining up some gigs for next year so it's not all bad news by any means.

And on the subject of everybody's favourite social network I've been musing on whether or not to keep the Facebook page that I started back in September. Yeah, I know, things must be quiet if that's all I've got to think about... anyway after talking to a few people (not least the legend that is Voltarol - once again the winner of last month's caption competition was the only entrant! Mind you, it was a very good caption!) I've decided to put my reservations to one side and to keep it for the moment at least. You can find me here if you want to - with yet more shameless self-publicity in mind I'm basically going to use it to publicise upcoming gigs, post reviews and YouTube clips of old gigs, plug my mates when they're doing something interesting and maybe even include the odd lefty rant. So - pretty much the same as on this here blog then... incidentally I put up a note about the GLM album this week and someone 'unliked' me! It's a good album, honest! 
And things are quiet in more ways than one, as I'm still suffering from earwax in my right ear; indeed if anything it's got worse. Maybe it's just as well (for once) that I've had no gigs this week? 

Deptford fun city

Behold the above photo of Room 2 at The Music Complex in Deptford. This is a very good rehearsal studio, which is just as well as I'm likely to be spending rather a lot of time there over the next few weeks. I took the picture early on Wednesday afternoon during a break in a Ruts D.C. rehearsal, when Dave, Segs, Seamus and myself (Molara was sadly unavailable) ran through most of the material played at last year's Alabama 3 support shows as well as several potential additions to the set. Their 1981 album 'Animal Now' is about to be re-issued, and there have been any number of requests for older Ruts songs so the song choices reflected this - I won't ruin it for you millions of fans that are reading this (I wish!) but suffice to say that you hopefully won't be disappointed if you catch one of the upcoming gigs. 
Talking of photos the excellent Stupefaction blog has posted these wonderful images of Ruts D.C. way back in the early 1980s. I remember them looking like that! That was over 30 years ago - amazing. And talking of blogging Adrian at Aural Sculptors has reviewed the 'Rhythm Collision Volume 2' sampler CD - it's a very good review (I wouldn't have put a link to it if it wasn't!) as you can read here. Excellent!


I'd expected to be back in Deptford today for a Cool Britannia rehearsal in anticipation of our first show at The Lights Theatre in Andover tomorrow night, but late on Tuesday afternoon the news came that the show had been rescheduled to Wednesday 18th July. Much consternation (and a fair bit of swearing) among the band members followed, as well as speculation along the lines of 'if this has happened now how many other venues are going to do the same thing?' Not good frankly - let's see what happens next.


On a lighter note, The Upper Cut (and after probably far too much debate we've finally decided that it's two words - The Upper Cut rather than The Uppercut) now have their own website which you can see here - more egotism and shameless self publicity! It's been good fun to put together, and if nothing else doing this and my website have given me chance to get to grips with the iWeb facility on my MacBook. I suspect that like my iPhone and iPod I only use a small amount of the clever things that it can do, but have a look and see what you think. Hmm... I use a lot of those i-related thingies don't I? 


And I've just heard from my old Blue Five bandmate (should that be 'duo-mate' as there was only two of us? Answers on a postcard please, usual address) Pete a.k.a. Voltarol whose always-excellent blog has been very quiet of late. It seems that he's been putting his online energies into Facebook (weirdo! - although I guess I really should get myself on there sometime...) and has sent me the links to pages for two bands that he's currently involved with - Silvia Nicolatto and the Anglo Cornish Project and Que Belo Castelo. All good stuff, but I for one miss the Voltarol of old. Come on Pete - get back on the blog!


Right - with an unexpected day at home it's time to plug the guitar in and play. Yeah, I know I could do something sensible like tidy up, but Shirley's out at work and I've got songs to practice. Hope the neighbours aren't in...

500 not out

This is my 500th blog posting!

As I've said elsewhere in these hallowed pages that I actually started this blogging lark to learn to type and to get better at using a computer, rather than to just wallow in egotism and self-publicity and to scream on and on about myself in cyberspace; I'm still only using two fingers to type most of the time, and I still don't know my way around a computer as I well as I would like, but I'm miles ahead of where I was all this years ago as I typed the words 'please allow me to introduce myself' (that took me about a minute-and-a-half, or it certainly felt as thought it did) to begin my first posting. I suppose you could argue that it would be a bit of a shame if I'd make no progress in the interim period, but the other thing to say is that I thoroughly enjoy writing it, and as long as I feel that way I'll continue to do so even though I often wonder if anybody is actually reading it...

In the meantime the egotism and shameless self-publicity is about to take on new heights, as I've now got my own website. Oh yes! Of course I couldn't even begin to do something like this without the help of people younger than myself, and it's at this point I must thank Dave from Balcony Shirts, his good friend Greg and Ace! DJ chap Simon for their assistance in the creation of something that gives me even more chance to scream on and on about myself in cyberspace. Well, no one else is going to do it are they? If you'd like to have a look then click here - it's work in progress as all of these things inevitably are, but it's been good fun to put together and I'm looking forward to seeing where it all goes in the future.

In the meantime the second 500 blog postings start here...

I was in the middle of a Skype conversation with the Cool Britannia crew on Friday afternoon (lots to talk about with the first show only three weeks away, but more about that another time) when my phone rang - it was my Dad, telling me that Bert Weedon had died. Often considered to be 'the first British guitar hero' thanks to singles like 'Guitar Boogie Shuffle' and his work backing everyone from Tommy Steele to Frank Sinatra, his tuition books 'Play In A Day' and 'Play Every Day' were read and studied by a generation of guitarists. It was all a bit before my time ('Play In A Day' was first published in 1957, 'Guitar Boogie Shuffle' was a hit in 1959 - I'm old, but not that old!) but his influence cannot and indeed should not be denied, as tributes from the likes of Eric Clapton and Brian May show. And Levon Helm has died - like most people I'm more familiar with his work with Bob Dylan and The Band than any of his subsequent projects, but for that alone he is guaranteed a place in music history. And away from music Jack Ashley died at the weekend - I met him once, when The Price played at The Middlesex Show in aid of The Royal National Institute for Deaf people (do your own punchline!) and he seemed to be a very nice chap, very committed to the cause of disability rights (I talked to him about my mum who had MND) and of improving the lives of deaf people. We could do with a few more MPs like him don't you think?

Saturday night it was time to return to The Feathers in Staines for a show with Big Al Reed. We began to an audience of around 10 people including the bar staff (or as Al put it - 'I could have invited you all round and done the gig in my front room') but by a few songs into the first set people were pulling up chairs and enjoying a show that could perhaps politely be described as 'loose in places'. Al had obtained some new backing tracks which we sadly hadn't had chance to practise with, but although a couple of the songs went a bit wrong it just seemed to make people warm to him (he comes over very well on stage) and by the end of the show people were dancing and demanding encore after encore. A good gig, but maybe not one to over-analyse, not least since the evening ended with a young lady in perilously tight red trousers taking severe exception to the barman refusing to serve her after closing time - if there is a World record for swearing I think we all saw a new champion.

And much of today was spent at Jamm in Brixton with Segs running through potential new additions to the Ruts D.C. live arsenal - with new album 'Rhythm Collision Volume 2' nearing completion and 'Animal Now' about to be re-issued there were plenty of songs to consider, and we came away with around a dozen of ifs, buts and maybes to start working on at next week's band rehearsal. Now there's something to look forward to!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some work to do on my new website. Now there's something I'd never thought I'd be ever be typing, especially in my 500th blog posting. Strange days indeed.

Sideways promotion?

Time for another mention for something that's getting closer by the day - COOL BRITANNIA. We've got a set list (at last! - although I bet there are still a few changes to be made...) we've got a website, a poster (that's it on the left, sorry it's a bit small but despite Gawd knows how many years doing this blogging lark I still don't know how to make these things different sizes either before they get onto this page of after they've got here. Still, size isn't everything...) and we've even got one of those Facebook pages that everyone apart from me seems to have these days (yeah, I know I 'should' have one, but this takes up enough of my time - and besides, have you seen the unmitigated cobblers some people write? Don't they realise that it's out on the Internet? Don't they realise that people can actually read that stuff? Argh!) so things are getting serious. There's an impressive list of gigs from May through to July, and with that in mind the band convened at Mushroom Studios (which used to be mushroom barns! Really!) near Southend yesterday. We managed to run through around two-thirds of the show, and despite the odd mad moment here and there we sounded pretty good, and I for one can't wait for the shows.

Talking of rehearsals I've spent a fair bit of this week attempting to decipher the bass lines on the excellent new Department S (you remember 'Is Vic There?' don't you? Of course you do!) album 'Mr. Nutley's Strange Delusionarium'. Why? Because I've got two gigs depping on bass with them next month, and I'm due to rehearse with them somewhere in Loughton next weekend. Strange but true - more news as and when I have it.

And talking of rehearsals (again) The Uppercut found themselves re-visiting Bush Studios in Shepherds Bush on Wednesday evening for a 'we-haven't-played-together-for-a-while-so-let's-see-what-we-remember' session, which rapidly turned into a 'actually-why-don't-we-try-some-new-songs?' session. As a result 'How Come', 'Monkey Man' and 'Crossroads' found their way into our set at The Dolphin on Friday evening, a show which I felt was a bit on the scrappy side, but which everybody I spoke to afterwards thought was great. The customer is always right, so I made no attempt to dissuade any of them - after all we were asked to play at a birthday party, Noel the guv'nor loved it and I got told that I'm 'the best guitarist in West London' by Simon of 'Ace!' club fame (that's a weird thought isn't it? I mean, has he seen all the other ones?!?) so I guess we couldn't have been that bad.

Saturday in the shop was one of the busiest ever, good fun but with lots to do (obviously!) and after a fairly late night I was certainly feeling it by the end of the day. No time to worry about that though as I was depping in The F.B.I. Band at Lillebrook Manor near Maidenhead. It was Rebecca and Luke's wedding reception, and it took place in a converted barn which to our collective horror had one of those volume restriction devices fitted - you know, the pnes that cut the power if you're playing too loud. Bah! Still the DJ's soundcheck didn't set it off which gave us all a bit of encouragement; not so encouraging from my point of view was seeing 'Celebration' on the setlist. 'We haven't played that one for a while, we used to play it all the time' said Jon the bass player cheerily; 'I've never played it before in me life' said your humble narrator not-quite-so-cheerily. 'You'd better tell Tony then...' Yes, I better had. He just laughed - 'remind me not to do that one then'. I've worked with less co-operative singers!

Halfway through the first number I looked at the band - everyone was looking up at the volume restriction device up to the left of the stage. We weren't playing loud and everything was working fine - then suddenly the power went off. But we weren't playing loud, honest... thankfully it was the only time that it went off, and despite the band being a little short of match practice our efforts were well received.

After the Cool Britannia rehearsal I made it down to The Load of Hay in time to catch the ever-excellent Kris Dollimore. Sadly one of the best guitarists that any of us will ever see began his performance to a mere five (count 'em, FIVE) people, an audience that would fit comfortably into most people's front room. There were a few more watching him by the end, and the man himself was philosophical about things, even offering to return in the Autumn - but as he left I realised that my time putting gigs on at The Load of Hay was very likely over. It's a shame as I've (mostly) enjoyed my attempts at being a promotor and I'm really proud of the shows that I've been involved with there, but audience apathy means that it's time for a rethink. I might put the odd evening together, but it a lot of work for something that I don't earn anything out of, and hopefully I'm going to be busy gigging from May onwards. Oh well - I guess nothing good lasts forever... mind you nothing bad lasts for ever either, so I'll hopefully be involved in putting gigs on again somewhere at some point in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime you must excuse me - I've got to practise some bass guitar...

'In other news...'

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.

Things can only get better

This posting is several days late - read on to discover why...

It feels like ages since The Chicago Blues Brothers last theatre show - probably because it is ages since the last Chicago Blues Brothers show! - and sadly circumstances mean that there's not likely to be any more in the foreseeable future. However before I get too maudlin let's say that it was a fine night on Friday at The Courtyard Theatre in Hereford, although the day itself was not without incident. I received a text message from Tracy the night before checking what time she was due round the next day (her and dep saxman Bob were coming round to us where Pete and co. were going to pick us up in the minibus) and to say that she wasn't too well and would see how she felt the next day - sad to say she was too unwell to play the show which meant that Pete made an unscheduled appearance on backing vocals. Overall the show was a thoroughly enjoyable affair with the near sellout crowd up for it more-or-less from the first notes of 'Peter Gunn' and the band rising to the occasion accordingly. Well, all the band except me because I played terribly. I'm not sure why - maybe it was an off night or something, but I made a bad error early on (the rising riff in 'I Can't Turn You Loose' is played 3 times there Leigh not once!) and followed it up by a shaky solo in 'She Caught The Katy'. Things got a bit better as the show went on but overall I was disappointed with myself. Bah! In the meantime the rest of the band played brilliantly; Bob hadn't played sax with us for something like 4 years but sounded superb, Dave was as great as ever on trumpet, Chris was depping on keyboards for the absent Ian and sounded excellent and the rhythm section of Squirrel and Marc were as solid as they normally are - all good stuff apart from my hamfisted attempts at the guitar. Oh well... it had been a good journey up there - Friday afternoon journeys can be difficult but ours went very smoothly, with one stop for what I believe is these days referred to as a 'comfort break' - I didn't get one because there was a bloke in there for ages and I got bored waiting 'though from what everyone said facilities were a little 'basic' so maybe it was for the best! Somewhere on the A436 a yellow car had gone through a wall - it looked like it had been there for a while (no airbag - looks like they got away with it' said Bob sternly) to the extent that it almost looked like a work of art. When we got to Hereford I sent a text message to Shirley to tell her that we'd arrived safely - she sent me one back to say that a workman in our road had cut through a cable so we now had no Internet, television or landline phone. Bugger! (Now you know why this posting is late - it was fixed yesterday!) Phil had the P.A. up and running ready for us, and soundcheck went well although it's one of the very few times that I've ever asked for the guitar in my monitor to be turned down. Well, it was deafening! No one else could stand in front of it! It was an 8 o'clock show so there was plenty of time for some food, and for me to meet up with my old musical ally Simon who moved down to the area a year or so ago. I've played in several bands with him over the years, and he was in The Barflies who made their one and only appearance at Big Tel's 50th birthday bash a couple of years ago. It was great to see him again.

As previously observed the show was a very good one aside from my poor playing although quite how a mobility scooter ended up being ridden across the stage by Pete at the start of the second set and by the B.B.'s in 'Funky Nassau' is something of a mystery to me... after the show there was time for a quick drink with Simon who said that he thought I sounded like Buddy Guy! I must play 'terribly' again!

Saturday was the busiest day at Balcony Shirts for a while - it always is when you've been up late...the journey home had been enlivened by a stop at the afore-mentioned 'basic' service station - the guy behind the counter wouldn't let us in as it was late so Pete angrily led us all back to the bus! We stopped at the services down the road instead... oh and the yellow car was still there in the wall. Maybe it was supposed to be there?

After finishing at the shop it was home for a quick snooze (I'm old ok?!?) before getting my guitars together for the evening's Upper Cut gig at After Office Hours in Barnet. As Roger the drummer and myself neared the venue Terry the singer called to say that we were to load in at the front of the pub rather than through the back door like we have done every other time - it was a bit dodgy on the double yellow lines but we got the job done, and all agreed that it was a bit less precarious than using the steps around the back. After setting up Terry the bass observed how there were a lot less people there than we've had for our previous shows there - I guess it's the end of the month and the Christmas credit card bills are in?

9.30 and our first song 'Sweet Soul Music' was greeted by the site of people moving away from the stage and the manageress frantically gesturing to us to turn the volume down; a couple of songs later a glass fell off the P.A. speaker column and broke - it shouldn't have been on there, but maybe we were a bit loud! We limped to the end of set without too many other adverse incidents; the second set was much better with a bit of dancing from the (few) people present, and I played a bit better than I had the night before which was something of a relief.

No gigs this week - time to practice then, or watch telly, make a phone call, go on the internet...

'Death is pretty final, I'm collecting vinyl, I'm gonna D.J. at the end of the world!'

Tomorrow is Record Store Day.

(Yeah, I know it's very American to use the word 'store' - but that's what the day is called, ok?!?)

So - why am I telling you this and, by implication, why do I think that it's so important? Well, if you're my age it's very difficult in these days of uploads and downloads to tell younger people how exciting, how brilliant and maybe above all how much FUN it was to go out to the shops and come home with a record. Leaving aside all the wondering whether or not you could afford the single and the bus fair home (no credit cards for us kids in them days!) or which of you would buy which single (because you and your mates who you went record shopping with all had a cassette recorder which allowed you to all swap and therefore enjoy and become inspired - whoever said 'home taping is killing music' clearly wasn't a music fan) because it was a real event, even a ritual, to go out with the express intention of coming home with more music to listen to. Well, it was for me anyway... and if it wasn't for you then, well, I had more fun than you did!

The Internet is a truly amazing thing - I would think that we can all agree on that, not least because I wouldn't have something called a 'blog' for you to read without it! - but for me it's nowhere near as amazing place as a record shop (not 'store'!) used to be; that's why I'm happy that there is a 'Record Store Day' as it implies (proves?) that they're still out there, but sad that there has to be a 'day' for something that in my naive little world still existed anyway... and let's face it, if it's good enough for Joe Strummer then it's good enough for me and you!

11.50 a.m. - the publication time is genuine as I wrote the above missive after I got in from having a few beers (a 'pre-gig drink' we used to call it!) with East. I thought I'd better check it this morning as I must admit that I wasn't exactly sure what I'd written... it'll do!!