Equally cursed and blessed

Back in the '80s and '90s I was in a band called The Price. We were a good band. Well, I thought we were, although I suppose it's always difficult to be objective about something that you're involved in. But we were also an unlucky band, particularly if you apply this criteria... someone once said to me that success in the music industry was like success in any field - you needed to be lucky. But they then qualified this statement by saying that for them it was the luck of meeting the right person or persons. Without that you could be the best in the World, but no one would ever know. That's quite a thought isn't it? If they're correct about this then put simply, we didn't meet them, which I guess by this definition makes us unlucky doesn't it? 
When things went wrong for us - and they went wrong for us all the time, or at least they felt as though they did - one of us would rather ruefully refer to 'The Curse of The Price'. The rest of us would normally laugh at this, or shrug our collective shoulders before wondering if it really existed. Well, I certainly used to wonder, and on a fairly regular basis.

On Friday night I wondered about The Curse of The Price for the first time in a while - odd, because The Price were nowhere to be seen at the time. The Upper Cut were making their latest visit to The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham, and a minute or so into our first number 'It's All Over Now' I was sure my guitar had stopped working for a second or two. No, it's ok, and sounds good... oh, it definitely went off there, but it's back on again now... oh now it's gone off all together. Bugger. 
We stopped the song as I fiddled with my leads. It came back on, but went off again. Hmmm... time for a 'we'll be back in five minutes' announcement and for me to look into the back of my amplifier to see if there's anything obvious wrong. The speaker leads were all connected, although the panel that fits them onto the speaker was loose so I used some insulation tape to fit it back on - not ideal but if it fixes the problem it should get me through the show. But as I turned the amp back on something told me that a bit of tape wasn't going to fix the problem. This could be serious.
And it was. 'Under My Thumb' shuddered to a halt as my guitar stuttered off, then on and then off again. Bah. At which point what happened next is what always happens next when this sort of thing befalls you at a gig - a very drunk bloke decides that he knows what's wrong and knows how to fix it. He doesn't and he doesn't, but that doesn't stop him telling you again and again that he does and he does. As I attempted to keep my temper he insisted that I needed to try my spare guitar. I'm sure he meant well, but he wasn't making things any easier. Against my better judgement we tried plugging my guitar straight into the P.A. but it sounded bad and I couldn't hear what I was playing. Terry suggested plugging my amp into another wall socket which I somehow knew wasn't going to make a difference; when I came back from a visit to the toilet they'd already done it, which annoyed me but as I couldn't turn time back there wasn't much that I could do about it. We tried a song but the amp malfunctioned again. That's it, the gig's over. Sorry. Big Al Reed and his chums tried in vain to convince me that it didn't sound that bad through the P.A. - but I'd had enough. Let's have a pint and then go home eh? So we did, but not before Sue the landlady had insisted on buying us a drink. What a nice lady she is.

I phoned Roger the amplifier repairman on Saturday morning - I explained what had happened to my ailing and up until this point usually very reliable Fender Blues Deluxe combo, he sounded suitably mystified as he usually does when a fault is explained to him over the phone but suggested that I get it over to him and he'll have a look at it for me. Good man. He asked if I have a spare? Well yes I do, but it blew a fuse last time I used it (here's the story) and although I'd left it running at home for several hours since then with no adverse effects I now had the curse of The Price to contend with... I decided to use my (spare) Blues Deville at the Price show that evening but to take along my Blues Junior as a (spare) spare - it wouldn't be loud enough on it's own but mic'd up it should be fine. It was still difficult not to be nervous though, and my morning at Balcony Shirts went slower than I would have liked as a result. 
The Price hadn't performed together in public since last March so some rehearsals have been in order. We got together at the start of August at Ruff Rockers in Uxbridge but things hadn't gone well - the songs sounded scrappy, and overall things weren't encouraging. After much discussion we reconvened at Ivy Arch Studios in Worthing a couple of weeks ago for something of a make-or-break session - we all agreed that if we sounded bad here we would considering cancelling the projected show at The Crown and Treaty, not least because it had been intended as a warm up show for our slot at The London Punk Weekender six days later, and that show had already been cancelled by the promoters. Thankfully the band sounded good - or maybe the studio suited us better? Either way we decided that the C & T show should go ahead, although we also decided to have a few hours warm up at Ruff Rockers on the afternoon of the gig. 
There's an old adage in bands along the lines of 'good rehearsal - bad gig, bad rehearsal - good gig'. As we wrapped up an undeniably good rehearsal twenty minutes early I decided that this was definitely not a time to mention The Curse...
We arrived at The Crown And Treaty around half past six; no sign of Big Tel and Dave with the P.A. yet so I wandered down to Galaxy for some chips and a bit of time to myself. I got back to the pub just as Tel and Dave were arriving - at which point I realised that I'd left my guitar effects pedalboard at home. I'm still not used to taking it with me... when I got back to the pub with it Tel was having trouble with the crossover on the P.A. - surely The Curse shouldn't effect him too? We soundchecked with 'The Man With The Smile' and about half of 'Turning Japanese', mainly because neither were due to be in our set, Tel's not happy but it doesn't sound bad to me. After us it's Scott's turn, he's performing solo as The Chilterns with a Guild semi-acoustic guitar and a harmonica, he plays fragments of a song or two before D.J. Chris starts D.J.-ing. People are arriving, the atmosphere is good - what could possibly go wrong?
Well, as it happens, nothing. Chris played some great music, Scott played well, we played a good set, my amplifier worked all the way through our show, everyone I spoke too really enjoyed themselves and as far as I know everybody went home happy. I certainly did anyway. That's a relief. In more ways than one.

And I spent much of today in a curse-free zone, rehearsing with T.V. Smith for this Friday's show at no lesser venue than Carshalton Water Tower. We sounded good so it should be a fine evening... oh hang on, what did I say earlier about good and bad rehearsals and gigs? Well it was wrong on Saturday and it'll be wrong on Friday too... 

Diddy wah diddy

Shameless self-publicity time again, and I'm trying desperately to think of a vaguely witty way to use the word advert in connection with T.V. Smith; I'm failing dramatically so I'll just say that I'm playing 2 gigs with the man himself this coming weekend - Saturday we're at The Ropetackle Centre in Shoreham (Attila The Stockbroker's 30th anniversary gig with John Otway - excellent!) and Sunday we're at The Load of Hay in Uxbridge. Details are on T.V.'s website, hope you can make it to either or indeed both of them.

Since the last posting Morrissey has gone mad again, this time about the Chinese - not quite this mad though! Meanwhile East, Big Tel and myself watched a DVD of the Broadway stage show (what could our seemingly sudden interest in musical theatre signify?) of 'Rent', and very good it was too. I also spent a highly enjoyable afternoon in a rehearsal studio running through a variety of rock classics with some familiar faces (more about that another time) and The Chicago Blues Brothers played at a very peculiar venue in Arundel...

Back in the 1980's there was a club called The Carioca in Worthing. No, I hadn't heard of it either although I wouldn't have minded being there on this night... Mike and Graham used to go there all the time, not least on the disco nights when the likes of Tony Blackburn, Peter Powell and David 'Kid' Jensen used to appear there. I know this because I read it on the posters on the walls of the barn that we played in on Saturday night, which the afore-mentioned Mike and Graham had decked it out to be a painstaking recreation on the original club for their joint 50th birthday party. Tracy returns on backing vocals, Chris is on keyboards and Eric is on drums but other than that it's the same line-up as last week's Abingdon show, and soundcheck is more of a rehearsal for Eric's benefit with medleys figuring prominently. Our first set is at 9.30, then it's a set from 'Radio 1's David Hamilton' (that's what it said on the poster!) before our second set at 11.30. There's time for a visit to the burger van that's been laid on for the occasion (oh yes!) before our first set which get a fair bit of dancing despite the odd hiccup here and there on stage . David Hamilton comes on while I'm queuing up at the bar, he wearing a gold lame jacket and plays 'Blame It On The Boogie' and it's suddenly 1978 at The Carioca Club on Saturday night with 40 and 50-something men and women turning into their teenage selves again (I'll leave you to think about that for a minute shall I?) amid much dancefloor merriment. By the time we're back on for our second set the free bar has had quite an effect on proceedings, and we encore with 'Gimme Some Loving' to more than a little hysteria. Sad to say it had also turned some of the revellers into inconsiderate imbeciles, at least judging by the number of beer bottles on or around various group members cars - or maybe they were inconsiderate imbeciles anyway? A depressing end to an otherwise enjoyable evening. I blame it on the boogie myself.

Must go - I've got some T.V. Smith songs to re-learn. That's more like it.

Power in the darkness

As it happens it turns out that the Kris-at-the-Load-of-Hay gig could have all been very different - when I arrived home after it Shirley told me that there'd been a power cut! It was lucky that it didn't effect our evening although at least it would have stopped that bloomin' quiz machine... it meant that my planned recording of 'Stones In Exile' on BBC 1 had a break in it which was a bit of a shame although I'm sure it'll come out on DVD sometime soon. It's a documentary on the recording of the 'Exile On Main St.' album by The Rolling Stones which has just been re-issued for the umpteenth time although this time there's a second CD of songs allegedly recorded at the same time although the actual recording dates have been disputed in some quarters. Many of them have been overdubbed recently, although I'm not sure that's a bad thing if it fits the songs which in this case in my opinion it does. Being a sucker for this sort of thing I've bought it yet again (I've got about 4 versions of it!) and it still sounds great to me - a rare example of a double album that sounds better when you play it all the way through rather than only playing part of it or isolated tracks. And the bonus tracks are pretty good too - some have been around unofficially for a while but there are a few that haven't surfaced before and they're are excellent. The Stones really were good once upon a time weren't they?

It's been a busy time at Balcony Shirts which I suppose means that t-shirt weather has arrived; mind you Saturday was the quietest day for ages although given the fact that it rained for most of the day that's probably not surprising? It gave Scott and myself chance to put together our new window display featuring some shamelessly opportunistic World Cup t-shirts alongside some signed copies of 'The Football Factory' - we're now stocking some books including 'God's Lonely Men' (Esso's Lurkers memoir) and various London Books titles as provided by John King on Friday. It'll be interesting to see how well books sell in a clothes shop - we sold the first one on Saturday (this one since you've asked) so maybe we'll end up opening Balcony Books next door?

Sunday it was time for The Price to continue their '25th Anniversary Tour' (that's what it said on the posters!) at The Brunswick in Worthing. With Malcolm and Paul both based on the South Coast these days it was a chance for them to invite family and friends along to see us play, and that coupled with a healthy contingent of Uxbridge lads made for a raucously appreciative audience who saw a show that was in my opinion was much better than last month's Ruislip gig. We managed a quick warm up at Ivy Arch Studios in the afternoon before getting to the venue around 5 o'clock - there was an acoustic session taking place in the other bar which obviously meant that we couldn't make too much noise so I went for a walk along the sea front where I bought an ice cream (£2!) and caught up on some phone calls before returning to the venue to put a setlist together for the gig, eventually settling on an epic 24 song set (including 'So Sure' and 'Changing Places', neither of which were played at the recent reunion gigs) which with encores (including 'Happy Hour', again not played since, ooh, last century!) meant we ended up playing for just under 2 hours. It was great to see Dave Nash a.k.a. Romford Dave who used to watch us back in the early days among the audience - he remembers the earlier gigs better than I do! But why was this gig so much better than our last one? Now there's a question...

Last night it was Tom Robinson's 60th birthday gig at The Shepherds Bush Empire, and a very enjoyable evening it was too, with T.V. Smith joining the band to perform 'The Thin Green Line' then participating in the most sedate version of 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' that I'm ever likely to hear. A great ending though - they sang 'Stand By Me' with two double basses, an acoustic guitar and a lot of voices without the aid of the P.A. system. Excellent! I've always thought that Robinson was one of the best songwriters to emerge during the punky times of the late '70's 'though I for one never really thought of him or the band as 'punk' or anything like it - maybe they were just astute enough to get on board as the punk bandwagon gained momentum? Anyway their first album is a total classic in my book not least as it features the amazing Danny Kustow on guitar - sadly he was nowhere to be seen last night although Adam Phillips made an excellent job of guitar duties all evening. Thanks to T.V. I ended up being invited to the aftershow party to meet Tom, although I had met him a couple of times before...

Back in 1988 (-ish!) I went to see Tom Robinson at The Beck Theatre in Hayes with Mick the original Price drummer. We hatched a plan to get there early and to give him a recording of our band to see if he might be able to help us or offer us some advice to further our plans of (ahem) World domination. Sure enough there he was, in the car park if I remember rightly, and we engaged him in cheery conversation, delivered our cassette tape and asked if he'd listen to it and let us know what he thought of it. Of course he would, and he'd let us know his thoughts as soon as he could.

Well no one was more surprised than me when a jiffy bag dropped through my letter box a few days later containing our tape - Tom had recorded his thoughts on the b-side, and very interesting they were too. I don't remember what happened to the tape - maybe Mick's got it? It would be fascinating to hear it now!

Years later I found myself at a Tom Robinson/T.V. Smith gig - I was introduced to Tom and reminded him that we'd actually met before; I told my story which he found highly amusing, then he asked if his advice had helped and commented that he remembered saying that he thought 'The Price' was a bit of a boring name for a band. I said something like 'that's good coming from someone who called their group 'The Tom Robinson Band'...'

You know that feeling when you've just said something and then thought 'why on Earth did I just say that?' I got that feeling then.

I was offered a piece of birthday cake last night. It didn't seem right to accept it. Happy birthday Tom!

And here are some photos from last month's Otley gig with T.V. in Otley - no sign of Mr. Saville... and a very special line-up of The Flying Squad are playing this coming Sunday at Tropic At Ruislip; full details on the venue website, it promises to be quite an evening!