Where are we now?

Well it's been great to see the groundswell of support for Wilko Johnson in the wake of his diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer. Thousands of people have left messages of support on his Facebook page following the announcement of his condition, which goes some way to showing just what an impact he's had on the music world and indeed the lives of his fans and admirers. It was almost unworldly to read his manager's statement, as it tells of upcoming gigs, a live DVD (and that's something we fans have all hoped to hear about for ages) and a new album - there's so much to be optimistic about until it suddenly mentions 'farewell gigs' and brings us all back down to Earth. I for one read it with great sadness - I've written of my admiration for the great man's work many times in these hallowed pages, and it remains a great source of inspiration to me. So let's enjoy the remaining times that we have with Wilko - those farewell gigs should be unforgettable.

On a (considerably) brighter note, David Bowie released a new single this week. Now there's something no one expected - it's incredible that in these days of social media overload there was apparently no anticipation of 'Where Are We Now?'. It just goes to show that it's still possible to stay under the radar, although you may need Bowie's money and status to be able to do that as effectively as it's been achieved here. It's a haunting piece, very nostalgic and reflective, and very good in my not-so-humble opinion. There's an album 'The Next Day' due in March which is apparently 'rockier' that the single; this should be very interesting to hear not least because he's been working with Tony Visconti again, a collaboration has given us some of The Thin White Duke's best and most acclaimed work. Definitely something to look forward to.

First gig of the year for your humble narrator was on Friday night at The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham with The Upper Cut. I'd hardly got through the door before a fresh-faced young barman came over and told me that unless I gave him an invoice he wouldn't be able to pay us. I said something like 'erm, I'll just put my guitars down' but he carried on regardless. 'I think we normally email one in on Monday' said I - he looked confused. Fortunately Terry our singer arrived and spoke to him - 'we normally email one in on Monday' were pretty much his exact words, which for one reason or other the fresh-faced young barman suddenly seemed happy with. It must have made more sense coming from Terry than from me.
We'd spent Wednesday evening at Bush Studios in Shepherds Bush running through perspective songs to add to our repertoire - our first set included four-in-a-row (I bet you're wondering which songs we played aren't you? Well, since you asked nicely they were 'Ooh La La', 'Why Did You Do It?', 'Day Tripper' and 'The Last Time') and our second set included a go at 'In A Broken Dream' which we've tried before but never quite managed to get right. Happily all of them sounded good (I wouldn't be telling you about them if they hadn't!) which is more than could be said for 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' which was going well before I managed to lose the plot a bit during the guitar solo then played the riff in the wrong key... the normal course of action when this sort of thing happens is to glare at the keyboard player so that it (hopefully) looks as though it's their fault; however since we don't have a keyboard player I opted for Plan B - attempt to laugh it off then apologise to the band at half time. Aside from these incidents it turned out to be a really good gig, not least because we somehow found ourselves playing 'Whole Lotta Love' in the middle of 'Superstition'. That's never happened before - I wonder if it'll happen again?

Saturday saw the first live music at The Load Of Hay in Uxbridge for quite some time, when acoustic bluesman Michael Roach played a splendid set at pub regular Gary's 50th birthday party. I must admit that I'd not heard of Mr. Roach before, but aided and abetted by a slide guitarist and a double bass player he sounded good to me. Gary revealed that he'd attended one of the man's workshops on acoustic blues guitar, had kept in touch and then invited him to play at his birthday bash. A good choice, and it went down well with all concerned.

And yesterday myself and Terry the bass journeyed to The Nags Head in Sunningdale to see about a gig for The Upper Cut. Terry played there a while back depping in a band and had got on well with Jack the guv'nor; when we got there A Bit On The Side were roaring through 'Sunshine Of Your Love' and Jack distinguished himself by (a) offering us both a drink and (b) offering the band a gig on Sunday 24th March which we of course accepted. Result! If only it was always that easy...

'It's music based on fear...'

So - I still can't hear very well, but things do seem to be improving. Good! It's definitely a case of 'it gets worse before it gets better', but at least it does seem to be getting easier to hear. It's been a busy week in the shop and at times I've had real difficulty hearing customers but most people have been very understanding - indeed many have their own 'oooh that's horrible isn't it?' story of the times that they've had a similar problem. And I managed to play a rather muffled gig on Saturday night, with Big Al Reed at The Feathers in Staines. It's not the biggest pub in the World and we were a bit cramped to say the least, but the people there were friendly and seemed to enjoy our efforts. It being St. Patrick's Day I'd expected there to be Guinness posters (and indeed drinkers) everywhere but there were none to be seen; there were a few likely lads who thought they could put Al off with a bit of heckling but he was having none of it (he's also a stand-up comedian and as a result is pretty fearless once he's in front of a microphone) and our second set saw Barry joining us once again to play some slide guitar blues and tables being moved to give people more room to dance. A good gig - well, the bits I could hear of it were anyway.

An interesting evening at The Load of Hay last night saw the first public performance in many-a-year from Graham Barnes, and the first public performance ever from a Brunel band led by Michelle De Jong.

I remember Graham from way back in the late '70s when his band I Jog and The Tracksuits (oh yes!) released the 'Red Box' single on the short-lived Tyger Records which was based at the Unit One youth club in Uxbridge. John Peel played it often, and the band got to the stage of playing venues like Dingwalls before it all ended; he went on to take a more folkier path musically, including a stint in The Ministry Of Humour, who I remember seeing at The Load of Hay when it was home to Uxbridge Folk Club in the 1980s. His pre-match nerves were not helped by his electro-acoustic guitar not working ('I haven't plugged it in this century!') which meant him having to sing and play with just a vocal microphone set up in front of him rather than D.I.-ing his guitar and using the microphone solely for vocals; however his times in the folk clubs stood him in good stead, and his 20-odd minute set managed to more-or-less hold the attention of the assembled student multitudes. No sign of 'Red Box' (shame!) and he did make the grave tactical error of including a song by the hopelessly - make that criminally - overrated 'songwriter' Robb Johnson (*who I believe is still pedalling his overwrought, arrogant, self-righteous twaddle to the sheep who are scared to criticise him for fear of being called 'politically incorrect' by the hopeless sycophants that surround him; still, you can't fool all the people all the time...) but he has every reason to feel very pleased with his comeback to showbusiness.

Michelle De Jong introduced her band - an engineering student on cello and two fellow music students on guitar and keyboards - and began her first song, very laid back, very quiet, with vocals that a local wit back at the bar later described as being high enough to shatter the glasses behind the bar. Before the second number an audience member (presumably studying sound engineering) took it upon himself to adjust the P.A. in some way which made no audible difference to my ailing ears (mind you I suppose it wouldn't - maybe they were deafening!) and my fears that their material was sounding 'samey' by the third song were confirmed a few seconds into the fourth. As the keyboard player smugly took the cello from it's owner and played it like a bass guitar in their last number the afore-mentioned local wit groaned the words 'multi-talentless' before gleefully returning to his hobby of confusing the barmaid. He had a point - he usually has - but I've no doubt that their SoundCloud (whatever that is) has infinitely more followers than this blog will ever have, and that they'll all go on to have musical careers that will dwarf mine, so what do I know? Perhaps I should cheer up and leave the overwrought, arrogant, self-righteous twaddle to the Robb Johnson's of this world?

Either way let's finish this missive with some words of wisdom from the legends that are Spinal Tap. Click here for their thoughts on music played quietly - many a true word is spoken in jest, as they (whoever 'they' are) say...

*Sorry about the ranting about Mr. Johnson - I'll tell you where it all stems from one day. He's not that bad really... actually thinking about it, he's probably worse!!

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)

One step backwards, two step forwards

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of it's noisiest authorities insisted on it's being received, for good or evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only'

- 'A Tale Of Two Cities' (1859) by Charles Dickens

Back in the Middle Ages it was illegal to use the musical interval of a tritone in a composition. Medieval ears liked to hear perfect intervals when listening to music (for an explanation of the musical terms used in the ranting that follows then please click here, and I apologise in advance if I'm even more pretentious than usual in the next few paragraphs) so the sound of a flattened fifth was considered to be the most dissonant of them all as it split the octave exactly in half and therefore was as far away from home as could be imagined. Some (so-called) learned folk found the sound so offensive that they named the interval in question diabolus in musica - the 'devil in music' and wanted anyone who used it in a composition to be put on trial for witchcraft. It sounds crazy, but, incredibly, it's true.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the 1960s and the sound of the flattened fifth has been picked up by those well-known purveyors of witchcraft The Jimi Hendrix Experience whose classic single 'Purple Haze' starts with a tritone between Bb on the guitar and E on the bass; soon after Black Sabbath are using it in songs like 'Symptom Of The Universe' and 'Black Sabbath' itself, and bands like Metallica and Slayer use it extensively to this day, with Slayer even going so far as to name one of their albums 'Diabolus In Musica'. I suppose heavy metal musicians and indeed fans like the idea of being allied to Satan and all his little wizards although as far as I know no one involved has ever been put on trial for witchcraft; I must admit I always thought was a rather extreme thing to suggest for simply putting two musical notes next to each other, but what do I know?

Well I thought it was a rather extreme thing to do until sometime around 9.30 pm last Wednesday, when I found myself gripped by an unreasonable desire to inflict pain, torture, painful torture, even death on Phil Collins and Lamont Dozier for writing 'Loco In Acapulco'. If you've got five minutes have a listen to it here and tell me if I'm being unreasonable. You might disagree but I cannot for the life of me work out how The Four Tops, one of the greatest Motown acts of all time, managed to get involved with such unspeakably unlistenable tosh. Or am I wrong? Is it actually better than classics like 'Reach Out I'll Be There', 'Standing In The Shadows Of Love' and 'Bernardette'? What do you think? There's not a flattened fifth in sight but as far as I'm concerned it's proof that The Devil exists. No punishment is too great for anybody who had anything to do with the production of this song. Kill 'em all! Now! Argh!

In case you were wondering what I was up to as I contemplated such murderous violence, I was on stage with Pete and Matt (Jake and Elwood) and Richard (saxophone) playing a Chicago Blues Brothers playback show in front of a room full of people who couldn't have cared less whether we were there or not. I've more or less driven from my mind where we were and what we were doing there, and I have absolutely no idea why we were playing the song in question as it's got about as much to do with the Blues Brothers as, say, 'I Can't Help Myself'. Mind you we played that as well. As I put my guitar down at the end of the show I thought to myself 'that was my least enjoyable show of 2011'. And it was. It was horrific. The only thing that got me through it was the thought of the next two nights with Ruts D.C....

...which thankfully didn't let me down. (I don't know what I would have done if they had!) The Bournemouth Academy show was great but the London show at The Forum in Kentish Town was something else again. We'd bought 'In A Rut' into the set at Bournemouth - when we ran through it at the soundcheck we got a round of applause from The Alabama 3 members and crew who saw it, which bode well for the performance of the song that evening. The show was the best one so far, but the next night pushed things to greater heights; with the venue pretty much full before we went on we started well with 'Whatever We Do' followed by two songs from the new album 'Mighty Soldier' and 'One Step'. Molara's fine vocal on 'Jah War' got a great reaction from the dancefloor before a medley of a new song 'Smiling Culture' and the old Ruts classic 'S.U.S.' led us into 'Fools'. Next it's the afore-mentioned 'In A Rut'; Segs had invited Ainsley (who sings on some of the new album) to join us for the middle section which you can see here - he's very good isn't he? We prefaced 'Babylon's Burning' with a short section from 'Weak Heart' - as I put my guitar down at the end of the show I thought to myself 'that was my most enjoyable show of 2011'. And it was. It was terrific. Does that mean that I've just proved that God exists?!?

Back to basics on Saturday night, with The Uppercut returning to The Dolphin for the first time in a while; the evening marked the 24th anniversary of Noel and Bridie first taking the pub over, and was a suitably wild 'n' wacky affair. We hadn't played together for a while (they'd played some shows while I was away in Dubai with Pete depping on guitar) and so were a bit loose here and there but the energy of the performance more than made up for the odd mistake. Well, I think it did... Noel took to the microphone towards the end of the evening to thank everyone for coming and then to lead everyone in what he referred to as 'the universal football song', 'You'll Never Walk Alone'. A cracking evening.

My third Sunday afternoon gig in four weeks (I don't think that's ever happened before!) saw myself and Big Al Reed return to The Feathers in Chalfont St. Giles. No sign of the chap with Tourettes Syndrome this time (apparently he'd been out the night before) but everyone there seemed to enjoy our efforts despite Al suffering from a bad throat. He's invited a mate of his called Barry along to play a few songs on slide guitar - when I asked him what he was going to play he didn't really know as he was not used to playing solo, and would I like to join him on lead guitar? Of course I would... as he started the first song I realised that I had no idea what he was going to play, or indeed if he was able to play at all - fortunately he was excellent, and it was really good to play some blues with him.

With Christmas looming it's all systems go at Balcony Shirts, meaning that I've been in the shop every day this week. But The Uppercut were out again last night, at The Six Bells in Brentford celebrating bass maestro Terry Peaker's 60th birthday. He'd invited a lot of his musician friends along, many of whom got up to play a song or two - it all got a bit chaotic in places with far too much hippie-ish jamming for my not-at-all hippie-ish liking, but everything went well and Terry was well pleased with the evening.

So there you have it - in the course of this posting I've played my best gig of the year, my worst gig of the year, and proved that God and The Devil both (probably) exist. Not a bad week's work then...

Dubai? Us?

As I sit here typing this, my latest missive to the masses (I wish!) I'm very aware that I shouldn't be sitting here at all. This is not an admission that I've finally realised that I could be doing something more worthwhile with my time than ranting in Cyberspace (as if!?!) but that I shouldn't actually be here - I should be in Dubai... Pete, Mike and myself (along with a band made up of local musicians) were booked to play at a festival in said far-off land this coming Friday, but sometime on Monday afternoon Pete finally pulled the plug on the whole increasingly dubious affair. It had been shaky for a while, with arrangements changing all the time and all too ominously - first we were flying out on Wednesday, rehearsing Thursday, gigging on Friday then home on Saturday, then we were leaving on Tuesday to rehearse Wednesday with a possible extra show on Thursday although no flight details were available for either of the options. Suspicions were further raised when Pete Googled our hotel and found that it wasn't due to open for several weeks; I spoke to him Friday and we had a 'cut-off point is Monday' discussion, although with hindsight I think cut-off point had already come and gone - when we spoke Monday afternoon he sounded at best jaded and at worst furious with the whole thing. I've never been there so speaking personally I'd like to have gone, not least to see what the place is like - you hear so many conflicting reports don't you? - but strange as it may sound I don't feel too bad about it not happening. Maybe it's a case of 'what you never had, you never miss'?

Still there was a bit of time away from home last week - having not had anything approaching a holiday in what feels like ages myself and the long-suffering Shirley managed a few days away in Dorset, and very enjoyable it was too - we managed a return visit to The Town Mill Cheesemonger and bought far too much of their wares (always a good thing methinks!) as well as visiting Monkey World which we'd not managed to get to on previous holidays. Excellent. It stayed dry for most of our time there although the last day saw rain like something out of The Bible; that doesn't necessarily explain how I ended up at the excellent Nevada Music in Portsmouth (it was 'kind-of-on-the-way-home', honest!) trying out Blackstar amplifiers so I'll attempt an explanation another time, although it might have something to do with last month's 'rock classics rehearsal'...

Saturday night it was time for something a bit different - appearing with Awaken at The Old Fox in Ickenham. Pete (guitar) and Martin (vocals) played a few songs with The Upper Cut at our Uxbridge gig back in August, and they invited your humble narrator to reciprocate by joining them alongside Ken (bass) and Russell (drums) for 'a couple of numbers' at this show. Never being one to turn down a chance to show off with a guitar in public I of course said yes, and I'm glad that I did since it turned out to be a highly enjoyable evening - I ended up playing rather more than a 'couple' of songs, including a few with a friend of theirs who they described as 'tiny Tina Turner' (guess who she sounded like?!?) and any number of songs with Martin at the helm. Great stuff. And I spent a fair bit of time talking to ex-Lurkers guitarist Pete Stride who I'd not seen for a while, not least about GLM - check out their latest song 'Chemical Landslide' in the Downloads section of their website - it's brilliant!

Sunday saw the first Sunday night gig at Tropic At Ruislip since, well the last one that I played there (!) back in June; that one was with The Flying Squad (it's about time they reappeared don't you think?!?) and this one featured The Ali Mac Band in the extended line-up that Ali refers to as The AMT Band. ('Ali-Mac-with-a-twist') They'd rehearsed in my absence while we were away and I'd done some work on my own with the songs while we were away - sometime in the course of our holiday I made what for me is the radical decision of playing slide guitar in open E tuning for some of the songs. I'm not sure this was the best decision that I've ever made as I don't think I did it particularly well (maybe a bit more practice is in order?!?) but it was a good gig with Ali in fine voice and the band playing well throughout. And it was good to be back at The Tropic - there are some great gigs coming up there, not least Pat McManus on the 17th of this month which I must do my best to get along to. And talking of gigs The CBB's are in Norwich next Thursday, I'm in Croydon with T.V. Smith next Friday, and The Upper Cut have their first gig for a while next Saturday in Bethnal Green so that's something to look forward to - but in the meantime we're here instead of there and as a result I've got no gigs this weekend. Bah!

All fingers and thumbs

In addition to beginning the long road to Balcony Guitars (the lads there want to open a shop called 'Leigh's Mad World Of Guitars'! Really!) the first 'no-gigs-this-week' week for a while included myself and Scott losing the keys to the shop on Saturday (if I told you where we found them you'd never believe me) and a Sunday evening viewing by East, Big Tel and myself of a DVD of the Madness musical 'Our House' (if I told you why we watched it you'd definitely never believe me!) I also had chance to catch the ever-amazing Kris Dollimore at The Crown in Leyhill last Thursday where he was as fabulous as ever, with a remarkable version of 'Castles Made Of Sand' standing out among an evening of standout performances.

The gap in gigging has given me a bit of time to do something that I actually don't get chance to do very often - practice (as opposed to play) the guitar. I've been promising myself that I'd spend some time with my acoustic guitar working on my fingerpicking and slide playing for quite a while now - Mr. Dollimore is something of a master of these styles, and when I mumbled to him something like 'I must get around to practicing some of that stuff' he replied enthusiastically 'yes, you must!' After discovering that we're both big fans of Rory Gallagher (especially this number) he went on to advise that I listen to John Fahey (a master of solo, or as he himself called it, 'primitive' guitar) among others. So sometime in the last few days I dug out my copy of 'Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes' (now THERE'S an album title!) along with '6 and 12 String Guitar' by Leo Kottke and 'Folk, Blues and Beyond' by Davy Graham (I'm ambitious if nothing else!) and got to work.

An hour or so later and your humble narrator was getting frustrated and not a little annoyed. I'm normally quite good at working out how to play things from recordings, but this stuff - well I couldn't get anywhere with it. It's not that I couldn't hear what was happening, it's more that I couldn't work out how to play what is often 2 or even 3 independent rhythms and melodies at the same time. And if that's not bad enough all of these players sing at the same bloody time. Bah! Still, no-one ever got anywhere by giving up so I kept playing... and playing... and playing... and eventually hit upon the idea that transcriptions of this music must be out there on the Internet somewhere (yeah, I know it's second nature to most people these days to 'google it', but I'm really old ok?!) and so launched myself into cyberspace in search of some help. It turned out that there's acres of transcriptions including some on the afore-mentioned player's websites. Excellent!

Well I've all but worn out a set of strings but I'm still not much nearer to being able to play anything other than a faltering version of 'Anji' and I could already play that! (If you don't know the tune or you've never heard it before then here it is; if you want some more from Davey Graham then try this and indeed this - Jimmy Page was listening carefully at the time wasn't he?!?) Still I'm making some headway with John Fahey's 'Some Summer Day' and have, since I stumbled upon something that sounded a bit like the opening riff, attempted to put together a solo version of 'Every Little Thing' by The Beatles. Like I say, nothing if not ambitious... but in addition to it becoming increasingly clear to me that the term 'primitive' is highly subjective I fear a career as an acoustic troubadour specialising in fingerbusting fingerpicking will always elude me although it's something that I'd like to develop in the future if only for the practice at playing something different. Then again, perhaps I should just stick to this sort of thing... and I haven't got around to trying any slide stuff yet. But I will. Probably. After all, did I really think I'd master an entire style in a few days?

I've got a gig this weekend. Good.