So THAT'S how they got their name!

Big Jim Sullivan died on Tuesday. In a career that spanned over fifty years he played on countless recordings for any number of artists as diverse as David Bowie and Englebert Humperdinck (his Wikipedia page has a mind-boggling list of records that feature him - take a look here and be amazed!) He pioneered the use of effects like wah-wah and talk box, was involved in the development of Marshall Amplifiers, gave guitar lessons to Ritchie Blackmore, taught Jimmy Page to read music (Page became known as 'Little Jim' when playing sessions in the 1960s to differentiate him from Big Jim - they appeared on many records together) and may well have owned the first Gibson Les Paul in Britain. And if all that wasn't enough, we was from down the road from us in Uxbridge. You may not have known his name, you almost certainly won't have known his face, but you've definitely heard him play - a true guitar great if ever there was one, he leaves behind an extraordinary contribution to British guitar playing and popular music in general.  Cheers Big Jim.

Two gigs for your humble narrator this weekend, the first of which saw The Upper Cut make their latest visit to The Dolphin in Uxbridge on Friday. With heavy rain all evening I for one was fearful of a low turnout but the pub was filling up by the time we went on at 9.30, and the scene was set for a good night. It wasn't all plain sailing however - we went to start our first song Terry the bass signalled that he was in trouble, with no sound was coming from his instrument; a process of elimination revealed that his guitar lead had failed so I found him one and we were off into an even better gig than last week's Harefield bash. No new songs this time (we always try to play something different at regular venues but time constraints meant that we didn't get time to rehearse for this one) but we pulled out some older  songs that we hadn't played for quite a while, and by the end there was a full dancefloor and an offer from Noel and Bridie to play at their 25th anniversary party later this year. Excellent! Oh and my Blues Deluxe sounded great - apparently the fault was a dry solder joint on a PCB that was causing the channels to switch indiscriminately of their own accord; since I had the volume of the channel that I wasn't using set to zero this had the effect of turning the sound on and off. Very strange!

But if that was a good night - and it definitely was a good night - then Saturday took things to even greater heights, as Ruts D.C. ventured up to Birmingham for a gig at The Hare And Hounds. I must admit I spent much of the journey North drifting in and out of consciousness (it'd had been a late night and I'd been working in the shop all morning... I must be getting old!) although I did wake up in time to hear Seamus exclaim 'Did you see that road name? It's an anagram!' as we passed Sarehole Road...

Mick the promoter is a friend of Dave and Seamus having put The Duplicates on several times, and he's an absolutely splendid chap who distinguished himself by taking orders for curry when we arrived and then driving off to get them himself. Top man! 

With Nick behind the mixing desk our soundcheck went well, and with people already arriving spirits are high. Support band The Cracked Actors got things off to a good start - nothing to do with David Bowie (sadly!) but very good all the same. I spend a bit of time behind the merchandise desk during their set - from what people are saying they like me have been looking forward to this show for a long time...

By the time we go on at half past ten the place is so full that we can hardly get to the stage. It doesn't take too many songs before it's clear that this is going to be a night to remember for all concerned, and when we finish our show there are people literally queueing up to to shake hands and say thanks. One guy tells me that my guitar sounded great and then says that he had been 'waiting 30 years to hear those songs' - I just say thanks and then say something like 'I've been waiting that long to hear them too'. And I have. Well - haven't we all?

Dave called early Sunday afternoon. He'd been at the venue until 3 am talking to people, he couldn't believe the reaction that we'd got and labelled the show 'a triumph'. It's hard to disagree.

What better way to finish a fine weekend's gigging than to go to The Swan in Iver on Sunday evening for this month's open mic night. Myself and Big Al Reed teamed up with Bob Pearce on drums and Tony Eden on bass to deliver a five song set to the assembled multitude, and very good fun it was too. I also enjoyed seeing Les Payne playing some acoustic songs - he told a great story about meeting John Lennon in Germany in 1961; apparently Lennon was less than friendly, claiming that he would make it in the music business before Les would. 'And he did' said Les with a smile, adding 'and that's why they spelt their group name with an 'a' instead of an 'e' - ''Beat Les''...'

Well I don't know about you, but I really hope that's true!!

'What's the secret of good comedy?' a.k.a. 'The rain in Staines...'

Another weekend, another wedding, this one on Friday night at The Horsted Place Hotel in Uckfield. Tracy's put a band together to play at her friend Lisa's nuptials, and it features some familiar faces from Chicago Blues Brothers gigs - joining her and Matt on vocals are Squirrel and Marc on bass and drums, Chris on keyboards, Ian on saxophone and your humble narrator on the six-string razor. Dave and Big Tel are on P.A. duties, and everyone is present and correct by 6 o'clock to set up and talk through songs for the show. There are 2 requests - Adele's version of Bob Dylan's 'Make You Feel My Love' for the first dance and (gulp!) the Engelbert Humperdinck (ahem!) classic 'The Last Waltz' (something to do with David the bridegroom's football team apparently) to end the evening. Much of our soundcheck is taken up running through these songs as well as 'Son Of A Preacher Man' which we've been meaning to play for ages but have somehow never got around to. With everything sounding good it's time to get some food then get changed for the show - except there's nowhere to get changed and no food... actually that's a bit harsh as we were invited to change in the toilets (it's been a while!) and a small platter of sandwiches appeared for, ooh, several seconds, or at least as long as it takes for 9 people to take a couple each. Oh well. In the meantime Matt spots Tracy's high heels with the words 'are they M&S or S&M?', the bar (which appears to be free for everyone except band members who want to buy an alcoholic drink) is open, and the plan is for our first set to start at 8.45 for 45 minutes; there'll then be a break for a 'surprise' fireworks display with our second set running from 10.30 - 11.30. What actually happens is that we play for around 20 minutes from 9.10, then from 10.45-12.10, and the 2 sets couldn't have been different from each other...

Tracy offers her congratulations to the happy couple who take to the dancefloor as 'Make You Feel My Love' begins. But something's wrong - Chris is playing too quickly, or changing chords at a different time to the rest of us, or something - either way Tracy can't fit the words in, and it sounds terrible. Terrible. It's so bad in fact that she stops the song and apologises and attempts to make light of the situation, talks to Chris, they try to work out what's going wrong.... bizarrely Chris, who is in my not-so-humble opinion a brilliant musician, is playing in 3/4 time rather than 4/4 - somehow we get through the song although I for one never want to hear a recording of our efforts. (Once again lots of people filmed it! Bugger!) From there it's a shaky version of 'Play That Funky Music' before 'Midnight Hour' nearly stalls as half the band start in the wrong key; thankfully 'Superstition' goes some way towards redeeming us before Tracy makes the 'please could you all go outside for a surprise' announcement and we're spared further confusion. Chris looks nearly suicidal but we all tell him it's ok and all forgotten about, he says he's been having trouble with the timing of the song all week and even listened to it on his iPod just before he started playing. I must say that you can sometimes get a 'blind spot' with a song or a part of a song and if that happens it can be really difficult to get through it; you also have to very careful that you don't practice doing it wrong which then makes it very hard to ever get right!

The second set, when it eventually arrives, couldn't have been more different. Squirrel described 'Take Me To The River' as 'Steaming!' as it roared to a conclusion and he wasn't wrong - we sounded like a totally different band than the one that had tightrope-walked it's way through 20 minutes of near-chaos only a couple of hours earlier. Tracy invited a young lad called James who was wearing a pair of training shoes that lit up when he walked to join us on 'Mustang Sally'- he roared 'RIDE SALLY RIDE!' at a speaker-threatening volume then looked very pleased with himself. Meanwhile the dancefloor was full for much of the proceedings and we got compliment after compliment when we finished which given our antics in the first set was a huge relief all round. Well, it certainly was for me. Even 'The Last Waltz' sounded good!

And last night The Uppercut returned to Staines 8 days after our first ever show there - weird! - for a gig at The Town Hall. It looks as though the building has recently been converted into a bar - it's certainly a very impressive structure with a balcony and some of the most ornately-framed mirrors I've ever seen. They're even in the toilets! It's somewhere that could turn out to be a fine venue too, although as we began with 'Dock Of The Bay' we looked out to see about 15 people in a venue that could have easily held over 500. Still we played well (you always do when there's no one there!) taking the opportunity to play a few songs that we'd not performed for a while as well as trying out some newer material. By the interval there were a few more in, but by the time we finished there were 2 - 2! - people watching us. Mind you the bar staff were dancing, which is always a good sign for a re-booking! 'You deserve a crowd' said a burly security man as we finished on the stroke of midnight - so does the venue, although as we loaded our gear out in torrential rain of almost Biblical proportions we realised why no one had wanted to brave the walk across the Town Square. Shame.

Anyway I can't sit here typing all day as there's work to do. I've been asked by Esso to play at his brother Dave's funeral on Thursday; I've got to put together an instrumental medley of riffs from '60's Who singles as well as playing 'Waterloo Sunset' as people are leaving. I've never done anything like this before - no pressure then...

Gibson Martin Fender - Mick Green

I've just heard that Mick Green died on Monday. He was 65 years old.

Mick is probably best known (and now to be remembered- how sad is that?) as the guitarist with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates back in the 1960's when he and the band influenced countless soon-to-be rock gods (The Who adopted a 4 piece line-up after seeing them perform) with their no nonsense approach to rock'n'roll. Green himself was particularly influential due to his ability to play rhythm and lead guitar simultaneously- a young Wilko Johnson was famously 'stopped in his tracks' when he first heard the solo on 'I'll Never Get Over You'. After leaving the band he played with artists as diverse as Engelbert Humperdink and Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas before forming Shanghai in the 1970's. Just prior to the advent of punk rock in the mid-70's The Pirates reformed as a trio (the classic line-up of Mick with Johnny Spence on bass and Frank Farley on drums) when their blitzkrieg rhythm and blues fitted in perfectly with the times, not least because of their well documented association with Dr. Feelgood. When they finished in 1983 he went on to play with Bryan Ferry, Paul McCartney (notably on his excellent 'Run Devil Run' album) and Van Morrison among others as well as teaching guitar and occasionally reuniting with various Pirates line-ups.

For what my opinion is worth Mick Green is the greatest British rock'n'roll guitarist of them all. I first saw The Pirates on their 'Skull Wars' tour in 1978 and they were astonishing, as powerful and energetic as any band I'd seen before or indeed have seen since. And Green's guitar work was AMAZING, blisteringly loud yet incredibly precise and considered. I'd put him in my top 10 guitarists of all time for that gig alone but I was lucky enough to see him on many occasions after that, the last time a few years ago at The 100 Club when he'd clearly lost little if any of his fire and passion.

There's a live recording of The Pirates playing 'Don't Munchen It' at London's Hope and Anchor that includes one of the most outrageous solos I've ever heard- it sounds like about 3 people playing, I'm going to listen to it in a minute, it'll sound a bit different now but it's still one of the solos that I have in my mind ever time I start a solo and think 'now what do I play?' It never lets me down- it's one of my very favourite bits of electric guitar playing ever and as such means more to me than I'll ever be able to write down here.

Thanks for doing it all Mick- we will not see your like again.