I knew I should have kept a box of them under the bed...

Now here's a funny thing - the first Price single for sale on eBay. Most of these were sold at gigs out of cardboard boxes, and incredibly it was made 'single of the week' in the NME although that was a bit of an inside job as the writer in question already knew of the band; his name was Steve Lamacq - I wonder what happened to him? It feels a bit strange to see it there - how naive does 'pay no more than £1.30' look now? - but it's nice to think that we haven't been totally forgotten. You can see the full listing here - and no, I don't have any spare copies!

Following on from Muhammad Ali's 70th birthday last month it was sad to hear of the death of his trainer Angelo Dundee. Boxing was very popular in our house when I was young (my brother Terry was a boxer and dad a big fan of the sport) and so I know his name very well - he was a great character as these quotes show Would Ali have made it without him? Now there's a question... and Witney Houston has died - I don't know much about her music as it's not really my type of thing but with the media gearing up for another paparazzi-powered feeding frenzy I'm sure we'll all have chance to find out far too much about her over the next few days and weeks.

Anyway, amazing news - I actually played two gigs this weekend. At last! Every musician I talk to seems to be suffering at the moment, and while I'm lucky enough to have gigs on the horizon these are definitely tough times for all and sundry. Still The Uppercut returned to The Half Moon in Harrow on Friday evening for a show that didn't start well - even before we'd played a note we were being asked to turn the volume down. Bah! Our first song 'Dock Of The Bay' was so quiet I could hear the unamplified strings of my guitar louder than the sound from my amp. Not good, and although we managed to sneak the volume up a bit later in the evening it put a bit of a dampener on proceedings. Under these circumstances I thought we played well but it was harder work than it should have been.

Sunday night I accompanied Big Al Reed at The Anglers Retreat in Staines; once again Barry the slide guitar player got up for a few blues numbers (and very good he was too) and Al was his usual larger-than-life self; his spontaneous Frank Spencer impression during 'Polk Salad Annie' induced audience hysteria and had to be heard to be believed. It was something of an experimental evening for the venue as it was the first Sunday gig - let's hope they decide to continue.

And last week I saw T. Rextasy at The Beck Theatre in Hayes. I got there early to meet up with ex-Chicago Blues Brothers drummer John Skelton who's been playing with T. Rextasy for several years now; it was good to catch up with him and great to see him doing so well with the band, whose 'Children Of The Revolution' tour celebrates 40 years since the release of 'The Slider' (How long? I remember saving up my milk round money to buy that when it came out!) as well as marking the 35th anniversary of Marc Bolan's death in September. This was only the second date of the tour - John said that they were due to play several songs for the first time at the show, having spent most of their soundcheck running through them. It all sounded good to me, with Danielz as mind-bogglingly like Bolan as ever, and the band sounding solid and strong. The audience loved it too, with plenty of dancing and even a fair bit of screaming from some of the ladies present. Despite playing in several tribute bands myself I still can't make my mind up about them, but for people like myself who didn't see the original band T. Rextasy deliver as faithful a rendition of Bolan's music as we're ever likely to witness. Great stuff - mind you, where was 'Buick MacKane', 'The Slider', 'Shock Rock'... (continued on page 94)

96 Tears

In these days of evil presidente there isn't much good news to be had, so it's great to be able to report that the Hillsborough Online Petition has reached the required 100,000 signatures to call for the release of Government papers pertaining to the 1989 disaster. Let's hope this brings justice for the 96 a bit closer.

Two great songwriters have sadly left the building since the last posting - Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford both contributed immeasurably to popular music, Leiber with Mike Stoller (with whom he worked for the best part of 60 years) and Ashford with his wife Valerie Simpson. Leiber and Stoller wrote any number of classic songs for the likes of Elvis Presley and The Drifters in the '50s and 60s as well as 'Stuck In The Middle With You' (I didn't know they wrote that!) and 'Pearl's A Singer' (or that!) in the 70s. Ashford and Simpson wrote countless Motown hits for other artists as well as having several in their own name. If they'd only written 'Hound Dog' and 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' they'd be two of the best songwriting teams of all time. Two very sad losses to the music world.

The Chicago Blues Brothers journeyed to Maidstone on Saturday evening for our first show at The Pizza Express since last New Year's Eve. With Squirrel away Pete made a rare appearance on bass, Martin makes his debut with us on sax and returning for the first time in ages it's T. Rextasy drummer John Skelton, who was the drummer in the CBB's when I first started playing with them all those years ago. Chris is on keyboards, Dave on trumpet and Matt and Mike are Jake and Elwood for a show that featured '634-5789' for the first time in a very long while. It also saw Dave play the trumpet solo in 'Minnie The Moocher' from up on the balcony, and your humble narrator cutting his hand on his guitar at the end of the solo in 'Sweet Home Chicago'. Well. Matt was egging me on, and I thought I'd be fun to try a bit of a windmill... I never learn do I? Nevertheless it was a good show overall, and it sounded like it was a good show next door at Earls judging by the songs I heard Vince Vortex play - 'Seventeen', 'I Fought The Law', 'New Rose', '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais'... time I formed a punk covers band methinks!

In the meantime there are two potentially excellent shows on the horizon this weekend - The Uppercut return to The Dolphin in Uxbridge on Friday, and I'm depping in The Duplicates at The Pelton Arms in Greenwich on Monday. I started this blog on August Bank Holiday Weekend 2006 - hopefully these shows should be two very good ways to celebrate...

Welcome to the family

Shameless self publicity time again - The Upper Cut play The Load Of Hay in Uxbridge this coming Sunday (the 25th if you're counting) which happens to be the day after my 49th (49th!) birthday. If you're in the area why not come along and help me begin my 50th (50th!) year in the way that I'm hoping to begin every year - with a guitar in my hand...

And 'Oil City Confidential' comes out on DVD next Monday. At last! I've written elsewhere in these hallowed pages of it's excellence, and it'll be great to finally get a copy - hope the extras include this recently discovered footage (only seen briefly in the film) and the classic 'Geordie Scene' live performance. I bet it doesn't though... and Wilko Johnson and Julien Temple are signing copies at Rough Trade East (with Wilko is also playing live - oh yes!) on Thursday - I'm hoping to get to that to buy myself a birthday present!

Talking of birthdays, Friday saw a visit to The Marriott Hotel in York to play at Anna's 30th birthday party. She's a friend of Matt's who, when asked to perform at said event, put together a one-off band that he called THE SICILIANS - joining himself on vocals were myself on guitar, Squirrel on bass and ex-CBB and current T. Rextasy drummer John Skelton - with the intention of playing 2 sets of rock covers mixed in with a few standards and songs for our Blues Brothers-based repertoire. However as the gig came in at short notice we had no opportunity for formal rehearsals so Matt came up with a list of songs which we all practiced separately with the intention of getting to the venue as early as possible so that we could run through the songs that we weren't sure of. A situation like this can be a recipe for disaster - thankfully it wasn't (I wouldn't be writing about it here if it had have been! Ha!) although traffic chaos - maybe that should be insanity? - meant that we didn't get chance for much of a run through... John had enlisted the help of T. Rextasy van driver-cum-roadie Dave to get him, Squirrel and myself to the gig, and we agreed that the long-suffering Shirley would drop me at Birchanger Green Services on the M11 where I would meet up with the van and we could wend our way up to Yorkshire. So far so good, except that the M25 was at a virtual standstill, meaning that we had to cut across country in the direction of the service station. Of course we weren't the only people to have that idea, and progress was slow although probably still quicker than if we'd have attempted to continue on the M25. (After dropping me off Shirley headed to Watford for a spot of retail therapy - when I spoke to her later she said that the queue that we'd avoided was still very much in place for 'several miles') Meanwhile Birchanger Services wasn't much easier to negotiate - John called me as we were approaching it to say that they'd been there over 10 minutes and still hadn't found a parking space. Eventually an alternative plan formed, and we ended up meeting them in a lay-by on the A120 just outside Bishop's Stortford - where would we be without mobile phones eh? The rest of our journey North was uneventful in comparison (an excellent Bruce Springsteen interview in this month's 'Mojo' meant that I stayed awake for longer than I otherwise might have!) although with all the earlier delays we ended up arriving just before 6 o'clock - Shirl and myself had left home around 11.30 so a journey that might normally take 3 and a bit hours had taken the best part of double the time that it should have. Bah!
When we arrived Matt was on hand to direct us to The Classic Suite - we loaded in, set up and used what little time was available to us to run through some potential hot spots. Matt had bought us all while ties to wear (if you don't know the material then at least make it look good!) as well as bringing his acoustic guitar with him so that we could continuing rehearsing in The Close Room (our allotted dressing room for the evening) before readying ourselves for a 9 o'clock kick-off. Opening with the inevitable 'Happy Birthday' we played a first set that wasn't without a shaky moment or two but included it's fair share of highlights - when Matt suggested 'The Seeker' I must admit that I wasn't sure that it would work but it sounded good to my ears, and with John behind the drums 'Get It On' couldn't really fail could it? After availing ourselves of a small portion of the mountains of food available in the interval our second set started as the first one had finished - with a full dance floor. It stayed that way pretty much all the way through to our final song (Joey Ramone's arrangement of 'What A Wonderful World' - good choice Matt!) and we all agreed that it had been a great gig. There was even talk of a re-booking at the venue, but even if that doesn't happen we really must do this or something like it again.

We met the long-suffering Shirley just before 4.15 a.m. (that's why I call her 'long-suffering'!) at South Mimms Services; just under 5 hours later I was behind the counter at Balcony Shirts, where a somewhat bleary day ensued. Actually I didn't feel too bad - I'd managed to get a bit of sleep in the van on the way back although I could hardly keep my eyes open by the time I got home. There was time for an hour or so's sleep and a quick plate of food (thanks Shirl!) before it was time to leave for St. Albans where The Upper Cut were making their second appearance at The Mermaid. Last time we had Geoff depping with us on drums, this time Roger was available - we arrived just before the two Terry's and after a quick set-up we were ready for our first set at half past nine. It's only a little pub and in many ways is not an obvious live music venue, but somehow it works well - although fairly sparsely populated when we started by the time we finished our first set with 'Sweet Litttle Rock And Roller' there were a fair few in. Terry the singer was somehow befriended by a chap called Darren (or was it Daryl? I didn't take much notice of him, especially when he continually referred to Terry as 'Tony'. Rule number one - when you meet someone GET THEIR NAME RIGHT. Mind you that means that I've just broken rule number one! Bugger! He kept trying to tell me how good 'Amused to Death' by Roger Waters is - I'm sure it's excellent, but why did he feel that he had to tell me that? Hippie!) who Terry, for reasons best known only to himself, invited to sing a number with us. He had a go at 'Can't Get Enough' - it started off ok but he'd picked a hard song and he was reduced to screaming by the end; I guess he made a better job of it than I would have, but then again I wouldn't have presumed myself able to sing it in the first place... after encoring with 'Sweet Soul Music' there was time for a drink during which I got chatting to some members of local band The 20th Century Boys (good name - I'd suggested that for The Sicilians!) who told me that they 'play the same sort of stuff that you do, but you lot are great!' Nice chaps... meanwhile Mr. Hippie is asking where Richard has gone (he meant Roger - see rule number one above) and increasing the bitterness factor as he bemoaned his fate at the hands of a 'woman' he'd been 'roofing' (I guess the poor little bunny had been supporting her by paying for her to live somewhere - or if she was really unlucky with him - but as you can imagine I wasn't in the slightest bit interested by then) before setting off to bore some other unfortunates leaning on the bar. Overall a good night despite Mr. Hippie, and it should be a good night next Sunday in Uxbridge - oh, did I mention that it's my birthday next weekend?