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...