'A working class hero is something to be...'

I've just heard that Bob Crow has died - shame. He seemed to me to be a decent man who stood up for the rights of working class people, which in these days of evil presidentes is something that should always be applauded don't you think? I've just heard that two-faced clown Boris Johnson describe him as 'a man of character', a term that could never be applied to The Mayor Of London. A sad loss.

The second Gypie Mayo tribute gig took place at Surrey Blues Club on Friday evening - house band Game On started proceedings with a half hour or so of blues standards (enlivened no end by their guitarist playing violin on one number) before The Band Of Sceptics took to the stage. With frontman / guitarist Pete Sargeant in fine form their varied set included an excellently jazzy version of 'Only Happy When It Rains' next to the likes of 'The Pusher' and 'For What It's Worth'. Once again they invited me to join them for 'Gimme Dat Harp Boy', and once again they then asked me to stay for the rest of the set - Rick Danko's 'Java Blues' (also recorded by Dr. Feelgood with Gypie on guitar) and 'Dream Within A Dream' by the latter-day Gypie-featuring line-up of The Yardbirds. All good stuff, and it set the scene for a Flying Squad performance that I felt was a bit better than last week's Ruislip show. Pete joined us to play harmonica on 'Ridin' On The L&N' and slide guitar on 'Back In the Night', and we once again finished the evening with 'Killing Floor'. A good night at an excellent club.

Saturday night saw a rare occurrence - a short notice Upper Cut gig. We were only asked to play at The Jameson in West Kensington a few days earlier - with the Hammersmith Roundabout teeming with Stranglers fans (they were playing at The Odeon) we found the venue with surprising ease, and were set up and ready to play in no time. It's always a bit depressing when the staff are telling you to play quietly before you've even picked your instruments up, not least because as we'd not played there before we had little if any idea of what constituted playing quietly in that particular place; needless to say it didn't take long before they were asking us to turn it down. Bah! However by the end of our first set there was a fair bit of dancing, and with more people arriving all the time our second set turned out to be good fun with the band playing well and the audience responding well. As we were leaving Gavin the guv'nor said that he'd be in touch about a return booking, which I for one would not have predicted at the start of our show It just goes to show how little I know doesn't it?

And last night it was back to The 12 Bar Club for another Reggae Punk Monday which featured among others the astonishingly-named Dogshite. I must say that they were nowhere near as bad as their name might have suggested, although I suppose you could argue that it would be quite hard for them to actually be that bad... in the meantime Cadiz Music supremo Richard England and his assistant Blaise joined myself and Segs in a worrying amount of drinking - well, a worrying amount for a Monday night. Actually it was a worrying amount for any night, judging by how my head feels this morning... 

Eric Clapton spelt my name wrong!

My brother has been working at Shepperton Studios, which as you may know was once owned by The Who and features several sound stages where successful (i.e. those that can afford it) bands rehearse for upcoming gigs and tours. Terry held the door open for a young up and coming Surrey guitarist from one such band the other day; he (maybe that should be He?) was kind enough to sign an old call sheet which Terry had handy. I'm going to the Royal Albert Hall next month to see said guitarist - I'm sure it'll be a good night, I believe he's played there quite a few times before...

Talking of good nights, this Friday sees an event that's well worth supporting, a club night at the somewhat unlikely venue of The Gardeners Arms in Uxbridge - as the poster says, ACE! promises '60's soul ska and beat which is more than enough to tempt your humble narrator through the door. I remember D.J.'s Simon and Darren when they were lads back in the '90's, they've just started the excellent What's On In Uxbridge website which means that at last there is somewhere for bands and venues to tell people that there's something happening locally. Let's hope both the club and the website are successful for them.

Meanwhile the latest Balcony Shirts song has been unleashed onto You Tube - Chris and Scott are both lifelong fans of Queens Park Rangers, and from early on this season decided that if Rangers were promoted to the Premier League they would write a song that included the name of every member of the current first team squad. They've done a fine job, as you can discover if you click here - I'm on lead guitar, which Scott invited me to contribute with the words 'play like Neil Young'. I'm not sure I managed it, although he has since compared my contribution to 'Motorcycle Emptiness' by The Manic Street Preachers. This is high praise in my world (I wouldn't have been telling you that he'd said it if it wasn't!) and I'm not sure that I managed that either, but see what you think. There are also some suitably euphoric t-shirts available that come with a free CD of the song, and the song itself is now available on iTunes. Pretty cool huh?
Chris went to the last game of the season where he met fellow season ticket holder Mick Jones; apparently they play 'London Calling' when he takes his seat at home games. Excellent! Hmm... I wonder if I can get them to play a Price single next time I'm at a Liverpool game?!?

The National Trust disco

Sorry about all that ranting last time - it was the heat I tell you, the heat... but you can click here for the last word (in these hallowed pages at least) on England's calamitous World Cup campaign courtesy of the excellent Monkey Picks blog. I couldn't have put it better myself, as they say...

Funnily enough my phone came back on a couple of hours after I finished the afore-mentioned cyber-rant; I'm not sure it's working properly (a NETWORK LOST message keeps appearing which is a bit of a worry) but at least I could see if Macca or E.C. had left me a message. They hadn't. Oh well - maybe next time?

Meanwhile back in the land of the gigging The CBB roadshow rolled in to Surrey on Friday for an outdoor show at Polesden Lacey. Bev's in for Richard on sax, and with Ian away with Ray Davies Chris is on keyboards; the voice on the entryphone on the outskirts of the property sounds suspiciously like Stephen Hawking, and when the long-suffering Shirley and myself arrived at the stage ('just drive up to it' said Pete - so we did!) everything was set up and ready for soundchecking. Quite how we managed to attempt versions of 'All Right Now' (I made a right mess of the solo!) and 'Brown Sugar' with Pete on bass (Squirrel was due along later) and Matt on drums is a bit beyond me (thinking about it how '2-4-6-8 Motorway' made an appearance is a bit of a mystery too) but we eventually got back to the script with 'Sweet Home Chicago'. It sounded good to me but since I've still got the hearing problems that I mentioned last time I'm probably not the best person to judge things - monitor problems for Tracy and Pete (both on backing vocals) persisted all the way through the gig so sadly it wasn't all good news. Backstage before the gig Matt got a bit confused as to whether he is a member of The National Trust or The National Front (definitely the former!) and some very helpful staff bought in copious amounts of sandwichs and organic lager - excellent! The show itself was a bit of an odd one - we played well but it all seemed a bit, for want of a better word, 'muted' although the fact that there was a large dip in the ground (which would have made a good mosh pit although the only people I saw in it all night were bored-looking security men) between us and the audience could well have contributed to this. Not a bad show by any means but there was a bit of an odd feeling at the end, if you know what I mean.

One of the people who'd been trying to contact me in the earlier part of the week (actually he was pretty much the only person trying to contact me, but obviously I'm not going to admit that here) was Pete Kerr, guitarist with local heroes The Cane Toads and all round good bloke. He'd had a call from Caithriona at The Half Moon in Harrow who needed a band for the coming Saturday evening, and, confirming his 'all round good bloke' status, Pete suggested The Upper Cut (and yes, we're definitely called that now!) After a quick (landline) ring-round everyone - Terry on vocals, Terry on bass and Roger on drums - confirmed their availability, and the gig was on. We all turned up at the venue in the midst of the Spain vs. Paraguay game (everyone seemed to be missing penalties in the bit that I saw!) and attempted to set up as unobtrusively as possible. Terry the bass was on fine if rather surreal form - his opening comment of 'I think I've had flu all week - well I haven't had all the symptoms but it did take me 4 hours to put my socks on' will stay with me for quite some time... since Pete depped for me at a recent show we invited him along to join us for a few songs, and he ended up doing 5 or 6 with us all of which sounded good to my admittedly still-ailing ears. There was the inevitable exodus at the end of the game but those who were there saw the clock above the stage fall off the wall and nearly land on Terry the singer's head just a few moments after Caithriona had asked us to turn down a bit as they'd recently had complaints about volume levels from the neighbours. We weren't that loud! Terry the bass uttered the immortal words 'I was playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order' at the end of 'Layla' (he was right, he was!) and there were a few, shall we say, unusual arrangements here and there but overall we were pretty good even though I say so myself, and we've been asked to play there again next month (on Friday 13th!) so we must have done something right. It's good when that happens - I'll be cheering up if I'm not careful...