Looking through Charlie Gilmour's eyes

Another week, another riot (now there's something you never think you're ever going to type!) and what better image to be left with from the protest against the increase in tuition fees than Charlie 'son-of-David' Gilmour hanging from the Cenotaph? Well actually there are probably quite a few better images, not least the hilarious interview he gave on the London news programme when whilst carrying a false leg that one would imagine came from a shop window dummy (let's hope it didn't belong to a disabled person!) he slurred his way through a few sentences (given the amount of photographic evidence he could find himself slurring his way through a very different type of sentence fairly soon) before saying that he'd only 'borrowed' the leg and was intending to take it back, honest. Excellent! But of course there are any number of serious points to be made here, not least the irony that many of the M.P.'s voting for the increase went to university in the days before student loans and therefore received a full grant. How soon they forget - 'we don't need no education' as someone once sang... and of course the right wing media can have a field day at the 'troublemakers' as indeed can the Conservative and Liberal politicians, therefore obscuring the fact that many people will be put off from continuing their education simply because they can't afford it, and that many of the people who voted in favour of that happening signed a pledge to say that they opposed it. Does this mean that we can never believe anything that they say again - or does it mean that we never could in the first place? It looks as though we do need some education after all... and before we leave the glory of the Tories Jeremy Hunt has been in the news again after his name was mispronounced on the radio - apparently he was more amused than offended, 'though I'm sure he's heard the word on many occasions (and if you want to hear it click here!) not least because his nickname around the Ministry of Culture is apparently 'corrible'...

In the meantime Friday evening saw The Upper Cut return to The Bell in Ruislip for a show that got off to a less than ideal start - I walked in just as Watford scored their second of three goals against Queens Park Rangers amid scenes of great distress among the assembled multitude. The pub guv'nor appeared wearing a Q.P.R. shirt and a less-than-happy expression, and by the time we went on (after the match had finished at nearly 10 o'clock) there was very little interest in what we were doing. The pub is L-shaped, and we played down one end whilst a few people came around to watch us for the most part everyone stayed in the other part. Bah! Still we used the opportunity to play some of our newer material as well as bringing back a few songs that we'd not played for some time, and while it would be easy to moan or be cynical (oooh imagine that!) we had a good time even if nobody else did. As we were leaving the landlady told Terry that she'd be in touch as they'd like to have us play there again so I guess we must have done something right?

Saturday it was time to see a couple of bands in a couple of venues - Substance at The Crown and Treaty in Uxbridge and Sociology at The Bell in Ruislip. Yes that's right, The Bell in Ruislip again. Before our gig there the previous evening Terry the bass had noticed a poster advertising a gig on Saturday and observed that Sociology feature his mate Steve on guitar who has depped for me in The Upper Cut when I've been unable to make a gig. It seemed a good chance to catch them, although as I'd already intended to get along to see Substance for the first time in something like 15 years (I think one of the last Price gigs in our original incarnation was with them and we certainly played with both Need and Babapapa, the two bands that they'd all originally been part of) we hatched a plan to get along to both gatherings.

We made a quick visit to the C & T to check when they were on (11 o'clock) then headed for Ruislip. As we arrived at The Bell it was clear that there was no one on the stage yet we could hear live music - yes, you've guessed it, they'd set up in the end where all the people are. 'You lot should have played down this end' said a cheery chap who struck up a conversation with Terry. Well, yes we should, and no doubt we will next time... I'd not met Steve before but he seemed a very nice chap, and his band played a good mix of material, even gamely responding to a request for a Roy Orbison song. Good stuff.

Meanwhile back at The Crown and Treaty Substance were storming through their set - well I think it was them, it was difficult to tell as there were no lights on the stage at all while they were playing. Still it was good to hear (if not see) them again, and if anything they sounded even better than they did back in those dim and distant days. They finished at midnight and I'd intended not to be out too late, but as both Terry and myself bumped into several people that we'd not seen for a while we were still there nearly 2 hours later. What a way to carry on eh?

Having spent much of Sunday stumbling around thinking 'I really should go back to sleep for a while' I eventually admitted defeat and went back to sleep for a while, and woke up feeling a whole lot better for it. I'm sure hangovers didn't used to last as long as they do these days? But it was good to be feeling better as the evening saw this year's last 'Acts Less Ordinary' gig at The Load of Hay, and what better way to end the year than with the legend that is John Otway. I'd spoken to him about a possible Uxbridge show back in September when T.V Smith and myself played at Attila The Stockbroker's anniversary gig in Shoreham, and was well pleased when he came up with a gig date for us as well as being more than a little intrigued when he announced his intention to do 'John Otway's Christmas Lecture' rather than a normal gig, although 'normal' is the last word that you can use when Otway is involved... myself and East arrived at 7 o'clock to find Grant the landlord lighting the fire in anticipation of a busy evening; Otway himself arrived shortly afterwards to set up his laptop and projector (!) and opted to use the pub's T.V. screen rather than his own. He then sat down to sew the buttons back on his white shirt (in case you're wondering why he'd do such an apparently odd thing before a gig, have a look at the 'Bunsen Burner' promotional film - around 50 seconds in you'll get your answer!) telling me that his mum used to do it for him right up until when she died last year aged 89, 'a button sewer until the end'. I took the opportunity to ask him about Pete Townshend's involvement in the early part of his career - he recalled 'standing as far away as I am from you' (i.e. about a yard) from Townshend as he recorded the guitar part for 'Louisa On A Horse' and thinking 'he's good'; he also told of recording the vocals for 'Misty Mountain' at Olympic Studios - he was on his way back into the control room from the recording area when 'a little man' stopped him and told him that it sounded good, and when he got to the control room the engineer asked him what Mick had thought of it...

9 o'clock and with a good crowd in it's time for the lecture to begin. Unsurprisingly given Otway's self-deprecating sense of humour the subject was his failure in the music industry, and very funny it was too with plenty of graphs and charts on the screen as well as live and interview clips and much more besides. I won't give any more away in case you go to see it (I wouldn't want to ruin the surprises!) but it left me with the thought that he isn't a failure at all - after all you don't accidentally get a 35 year career do you? An absolutely brilliant evening, and a fine end to a year of Sunday night gigs at the venue. I'm not sure how I'm going to top this one - maybe Charlie Gilmour would like to do something for us? Well, it's a thought.

Deal or no deal?

Well there we are then - Britain has it's first hung parliament since the dark days of the 1970's. Personally I will never - never! - understand how a working class person can vote for The Conservative Party, since it seems to me that everything about them is designed to ensure that there's a system in place to keep us proles in the gutter where they think we belong - but it seems that millions got fooled again. And now of course the wheeling and dealing begins, as the the 3 main political parties disappear into a cloud of compromise in an increasingly desperate attempt to get as much power as possible at whatever cost to the few principles that they've still got left, after a general election that saw more deception and doublespeak than ever before.

It's not good really is it?

Friday night's gig wasn't too good either; The Bell in Ruislip has I'm told worked hard to lose it's reputation as being, shall we say, 'less than friendly' but I fear it's failed - there was trouble there recently and the atmosphere wasn't too genial the other night either as Youngblood (yeah I know we were called The 4 Faces last time but Mick the drummer was back for this one as he got us the gig so I'll use our old name here - keep up at the back there!) stumbled through 2 sets in front of ex-CBB'er Mario, a few laddish lads and the landlord's dog. As I stepped off the stage '5.15' by The 'Orrible 'Oo' came on the juke box - 'why should I care?' indeed, it could have been worse (just!) so maybe I should stop moaning and, as somebody once put it, shut up and play the guitar? There we are, I've shut up.

Click here for footage of another guitarist who should cheer up!

Surreal as it may sound there was at least one point in the last couple of weeks when it looked as though your humble narrator could have found himself doing a one-off gig in South Korea on Saturday night; as with so many of these thing it didn't come to pass which is a bit of a shame on several levels, not least as it deprives me of the chance to call this blog entry 'Korea Opportunities' or 'Seoul Man'... that said it would had to have gone quite a long way to have beaten The Chicago Blues Brothers show at The Grosvenor House Hotel in the surrealness stakes, as we were on with Stavros Flatley and the band of The Royal Scots Guards. Actually thinking about it now about the only thing that could have made it more surreal was if they'd appeared on stage together - sadly this didn't happen but I guess there's always next time?
Now I don't know about you but I don't follow all those T.V. reality/talent shows (you know the ones...) and therefore hadn't encountered Stavros Flatley before, but the descriptions that I was given beforehand were extraordinary, mostly along the lines of 'a Greek bloke and his son jump about and do mad Irish dancing'. Sounds just what I'm looking for... as I arrived around 6 p.m. after a busy day in the shop everything seemed to be more-or-less ready for action, with my old Laney combo already set-up (I'd came in on the Tube with just my guitar and stage clothes, Pete keeps my spare amp for situations such as these) and everyone else soundchecked and ready to go. It's the Mears Group May Ball and we're playing in (you've guessed it!) The Ballroom; we've got The Court Suite to use as a dressing room and it's a 'nearly-the-A-team' gig with Chris in for Ian on keyboards as he's away gigging with Ray Davies, with Phil's on the P.A. with Big Tel and Dave D.J.-ing. Stavros and son arrive just as the guards are readying themselves for action, the atmosphere is genial as Stavros signs autographs for all and sundry; I've never asked anyone for an autograph in my life and wasn't going to here until it occurred to me that it might be fun to get one for the shop - Stavros obliged and it's on our Facebook page even as we speak! After the guards band had been on (they did more-or-less what you think they'd do i.e. march about playing military music, an oddly incongruous site on a night such as this) it was time for 3 minutes of, well, a Greek bloke and his son jumping about and doing mad Irish dancing - a near riot ensued where I was watching with people clamouring for a better view and much merriment all round. Stavros took the mic for a few minutes chat, he seemed to be a very nice chap when I spoke to him and came over as such here, appearing almost bemused by the level of success that he and his son has attained. 'We only went on the show for a laugh' said he - whatever the merits or otherwise of what they do they certainly put a smile on a few people's faces on this particular night, which is pretty hard to criticise if you think about it... and we didn't do too badly either, with plenty of dancefloor action during our epic 2 hour set, with an hour or so from Big Tel and Dave bringing a highly successful evening to a close. It's strange - corporate events such as this are not always much fun from a band point of view as you're quite often a secondary consideration but this one was something of an exception, and all the better for it. But it did get a bit odd here and there - maybe that's why I liked it?

I liked Sunday's gig too, although this one also gets stamped 'odd' but for different reasons. For a start it was in Battersea; nothing too odd with that as such but the venue is a Gypsy jazz themed bar called (wait for it!) Le QuecumBar. (Yeah!) It's run by Silvia who describes it as 'the most expensive hobby that I've ever had'; with it's walls adorned with photos of everybody from Django Reinhardt to, er, Hank Marvin (a serious fan of the genre who apparently even turns up at their jam nights and is hoping to put out a gypsy jazz album one day) it's an unlikely venue for The CBB's even if we are using a previously untried format of live guitar and saxophone over backing tracks. Matt 'n'Mike are Jake 'n' Elwood, local lad Ian is on sax (you can see his house from the venue!) and during our soundcheck Ian and myself deciding to play seated on the stage with the BB's on the floor in front of us - I told you it was an odd gig. Mind you it's not as odd as (a) being asked if I know how to fit a dimmer switch on the stage lights and (b) actually fitting it. I didn't know I knew how!
The gig goes well especially considering that Ian and myself are unfamiliar with most of the backing tracks even to the extent of not knowing what key some of the songs are in; there's the odd mad moment (I hadn't heard 'Love Man' for a while!) but we get through it all reasonably unscathed with the BB's in fine form. We might even appear in the same unlikely format again one day. Odder and odder.

Oo-er - Gordon Brown has just resigned. Anarchy anyone?

Friends reunited

2 good gigs from the ever-improving Youngblood this weekend- Friday at The Bell in Ruislip Gardens and Saturday at The Misty Moon in Bethnal Green. The Bell is a local gig for me and always had a bad reputation for violence 'though these days this thankfully seems to be a thing of the past. Terry (vocals) and Mick (drums) played there several times when they were in The Chevrons and they certainly seemed to have something of a following there which contributed to a rather boisterous evening which included some very well developed ladies showing off their dancing skills (I'll leave you to think about that one for a minute shall I?) and an extremely drunken lady telling us her life story in an attempt to get us to play 'Valerie'. We didn't know it (although we now know her life story!) so we didn't play it... The Misty Moon show was the better band performance but to a smaller audience (it's always that way round!) 'though it did include the 'very-drunk-man-in-a-bright-red-jacket-who-thinks-he-can-sing' (haven't had one of them for a while!) whose rendition of 'Ain't No Sunshine' had to be heard to be believed; we also had audience requests of 'The First Cut Is The Deepest' and 'All Shook Up', both of which we gamely tackled 'though I'm not sure we did them justice. Oh and Terry the bassman provided on of the evening's best moments by answering Mick's observation that his car needed washing with the brilliantly mad comment 'I never wash my car- so it never needs washing.' Hard to argue with that one don't you think...

On the other hand Thursday saw the next installment of the ongoing saga that is 'The Chicago Blues Brothers go to Switzerland', this time to play at The Durachpark in Schaffhausen at a corporate event for Unilever who have an office in town (although I remember Lever Brothers at Port Sunlight when I was a lad.) With Marc off in panto ('oh no he isn't' etc) and Ian still away with Ray Davies we had Chris depping once again on keyboards and my old mate Paul on drums. I first met Paul back in the mid-'90's, and got back in touch with him after I saw his unscheduled appearance with Spinal Tap earlier this year; when it became clear that we were going to need a drummer for this show it seemed a good idea to put him up for the job, and to this end we met up a couple of weeks ago to give him a DVD of our Hayes gig from a year or so ago (a bit risky since the show's changed a bit since then but it was the only one I had!) so that he could learn our material. (Rehearsals? Pah!) The long-suffering Shirley dropped us off at Heathrow at 7.15 a.m. (why does it always have to be so early?!?) where we checked in (I don't remember getting my return ticket at outbound check-in before?) then went through security to meet the rest of the troops in the departure lounge. A relatively uneventful flight was enlivened no end by us being able to watch take off and landing on the in flight televisions via a camera at the front of the aircraft. I'd not seen this before although I'm told it's quite commonplace these days- what will they think of next eh? The take off was... well, mad is a good word for it I think- you really get a feeling of the speed the aircraft reaches just before the horizon abruptly disappears from view, And the landing was extraordinary- as we descended through the clouds towards Zurich Airport a small reddish light appeared in the centre of the otherwise grey screen (so grey that I wasn't sure if it was switched on or not!) which gradually metamorphosed into the runway lights (Squirrel- 'well you wouldn't miss those would you?') They got larger and larger before they eventually filled the screen, an oddly comforting sight as we touched the ground. Sadly the return take off and landing went, for want of a better term, unbroadcast which was a shame since I'd liked to have seen the approach to Heathrow although since it was foggy we probably wouldn't have seen anything anyway. Oh well- there's always next time.

Once on the ground Squirrel and myself had a problem locating our guitars- having walked around for ages trying to find the outsize baggage section we eventually spotted them sitting next to belt 22 where the rest of the baggage from the flight had emerged. With everything (and indeed everybody) in one piece we met Marcel the driver and loaded everything into the minibus for the journey to the venue. Marcel had made up a CD to play on the journey as he thought we might like it- I'd just recognised 'Lawdy Mama' by Cream when half the band (possibly rather ungratefully) called for it to be turned off. The 40-odd minute journey passed in a bit of a daze from your humble narrator's point of view (the early start was beginning to catch up with me!) and we arrived at the venue to be met by Ronnie the promoter and CBB supremo Pete who had flown out the previous day to get everything sorted out for the show. The stage had a large image of Al Capone suspended behind the drums (why?!?) and petrol pumps and speed limit signs everywhere- soundcheck showed that Paul had certainly got the hang of the 'Midnight Medley' (4 songs for price of 1!) and 'River Deep, Mountain High', and with everything sounding good (including the excellent Fender Hot Rod Deville provided for me to play through) we went to the dressing room for some takeaway pizza (excellent!) and to draw up a plan for the rest of the day. Since we weren't needed at the gig until 8.30 we went to our hotel to check in (I'm sharing room 121 with Paul) and to catch up on some much needed sleep before all meeting at 6 p.m. for some food.

When we returned to the venue things were clearly in full swing, with an act that I think were called Beatz on stage- they're similar in concept to the 'Stomp' theatre show in that they hit lots of things very loudly, in this case to the bemusement of much of the audience, many of whom were dressed in 1930's style clothing (I'm not sure where the Blues Brothers fit into that but at least the Al Capone picture makes a bit more sense!) By the time we went on at 10.15 the free cocktails were clearly doing their job judging by the audience reaction which was a bit muted at first but seemed to get going as our set went on. Paul did a fine job- he's very self-critical but it's a hard show to walk into with no rehearsal and all agreed that he did a fine job. A quick encore of 'Jailhouse Rock' and 15 minutes after leaving the stage we were already on our way back to our hotel, one of the quickest post-gig getaways that I've ever been part of. Al Capone would have been proud of us!

Back at the hotel Paul and myself decide that even though it's late and it's been a long day there's still time for a drink (there's always time for a drink, or if there isn't there should be!) and so make our way to the downstairs bar which thankfully is still open. We reflected on our first show together for over 10 years, and Paul observed that his last live show was at Wembley Arena (the Spinal Tap gig) with the one before it at The Nag's Head in High Wycombe; we laughed at the fact that my next one was to be at a small pub in Ruislip less that 24 hours after the one that we'd just played and what a strange set of contrasts this job often throws out. Paul said how he doesn't get to play live anywhere near as much as he'd like (he teaches drums privately and in schools) and I reminded myself how lucky I am to be able to play as often as I do- although I didn't feel quite so lucky as I got up at 5 a.m. for the flight home...