Adam raised a Cain

Another rock casualty - Michael Davis of The MC5 has died. Like The Stooges, The New York Dolls and The Velvet Underground the MC5 are a band that were derided when they first appeared in the 1960s but that were later held up as heroes by the punk rock fraternity in the 1970s. One listen to anything from 'Kick Out The Jams', 'Back In The U.S.A.' or 'High Time' will show why their radical politics and their association with the likes of John Sinclair meant that the American establishment marked them out as enemies at the time of their release. Their extraordinary combination of anger, frustration and intelligence make them some of the most remarkable rock records of all time, and Michael Davis made a hugely valuable contribution to them. Click here for an amazing clip of the band playing live in 1970 - that, my friends, is rock 'n' roll...

In the meantime it's been another gig-less weekend for your humble narrator, although I did spend Sunday with F.B.I. Band / Utter Madness keyboard maestro Richard Whennell recording guitars on two tracks for Glee Club UK. There wasn't a lot of rock 'n' roll rebellion in the tracks in question (since you've asked they were 'We Built This City' by Starship and 'You're The Inspiration' by Chicago) but it was still a hugely enjoyable experience, and a real challenge to attempt to recreate the guitar parts on the original recordings. I'm not sure that I was completely accurate but even though I say so myself it sounded pretty good by the end of the session. Let's hope it still does!

Thankfully I've got some gigs this coming weekend (thank Gawd!) so I can't sit here talking to you as I've got songs to learn - but in the meantime it's my Dad's 80th birthday today and I'm off to see him. I've considered writing a hopelessly over-emotional, intensely personal account of our relationship here in these hallowed pages, but have decided to just say that more than ever I realise that I wouldn't be the person that I am today (for better or worse!) if it wasn't for the way he and my Mum bought me (and indeed my brother Terry) up. They could be hard on us sometimes which at the time seemed difficult to understand but nowadays makes a lot more sense. He remains a tough man, albeit with a somewhat softer centre these days, which is no bad thing if you think about it.

I've bought him a framed Heggarty coat of arms - in doing so I've discovered that our family motto is 'they neither bend nor change'. That'll do for me, and I suspect it'll do for him too. Happy birthday Dad.

'This could be the last time' - until next time...

I found out on Friday morning if I'd managed to learn 'Livin On A Prayer' well enough when I joined Glee Club U.K. supremo Richard in his Bracknell recording studio to record the guitar parts. Richard spent a fair amount of time attempting to recreate the talkbox effect that's used on the guitar during the first half of the original recording (I didn't have one handy!) and did a very good job; I used my Relic Stratocaster as I needed a guitar with a tremelo arm for one section of the song (in case you're wondering, it's the 'divebomb' effect halfway through the second verse - I very rarely use one, to the extent that when I came to practice that part I couldn't find it!) and even though I say so myself, it all turned out rather well. Mind you I wouldn't be writing about it here if I'd played terribly...

Saturday evening I went to The Old Fox in Ickenham to see Awaken, and a very odd evening it was too - when I arrived they were halfway through their first set, with a young man slumped unconscious in his seat near the front door and beery builder blokes alternating between ignoring the music completely and slapping each other around the face roaring 'you're my best mate you are' before dancing with each other. The band played a good set but not a great one, seeming a bit out of sorts and committing a setlist faux pas of monumental proportions when they switched from playing material like 'Brown Sugar' and 'I Saw Her Standing There' to a version of 'I Predict A Riot' that cleared the dancefloor in seconds, an incident that somehow summed the evening up for me. So down was I when I got home that I had to watch the Henry Rollins interview from the 'Punk: Attitude' DVD to get my spirits back up - it worked, but that's punk rock for you...

...which brings me to The Price. Malcolm called me mid-afternoon to say that he was halfway to the venue and had forgotten his microphones - as he put it during the show, 'it wouldn't be a Price gig if something didn't go wrong' - and there were the almost inevitable 'sorry I can't make it' messages from various people throughout the day but from the opening of 'Memory' (we hadn't played that one this century!) to the last unrehearsed encores of 'Too Many People' and 'Turning Japanese' it was one of the best and most enjoyable reunion shows that we've done. We were bit scrappy here and there (we had just one 3 hour rehearsal for a 1 1/2 hour show! Mind you that doesn't explain my appallingly out of tune solo at the end of 'The Price You Pay'...) but overall we played well, even including a new song (so new that it doesn't have a title yet!) put together in about 20 minutes from an idea that Malcolm bought in to the rehearsal - you could argue that we'd have used our limited time better by learning the old songs properly, but The Price always did things like that! Plenty of old faces gave us a rousing reception, and it was great to see a few people that hadn't been along for ages; sadly with band members ever more committed to other things it seems that events like this will get more and more difficult to organize which is a shame - still there's always the Sunday nearest to East's birthday next year... talking of whom, I left the man himself outside a kebab shop bemoaning the fact that they weren't serving anymore. I think he'd been drinking...

And The Flying Squad return to show business this coming Saturday (26th) when we support the ever-wondrous Eddie And The Hot Rods at Tropic At Ruislip - we're rehearsing at 4 in the afternoon and on at 8 in the evening!!