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Current mood: acoustic
Category: Life
Maginnis was kind enough to drive me through to Cosmopol on Wednesday following the failure of the Silver Bullet to pass the MOT, at least not without the application of large sums of money, which I was not prepared to do. The Silver Bullet has had a good run: 109,000 miles, 11 years, two serious crashes, touring in Holland and Belgium and a wide variety of uses from pashion wagon to timber transporter. It presently resides outside our house listing gently towards the rear nearside as the tyre deflates.
I suggested to Maginnis that she could be my roadie but I think she got a bit confused and translated this as groupie, which had not been my intention. Hence a bit huffiness in her car until the semantic misunderstanding was resolved. Cosmopol on Wednesday was its usual excellent self though I'm prepared to draw a veil, preferably A Long Black Veil, over the American singer who wasted an incredible amount of time fannying around selecting which guitar to play and which amplification to use, tuning up and generally buggering about. The fact that her loosely fastened top finally exposed one small, almost pre-pubescent, breast to public view was absolutely no consolation for the time wasting that preceeded it.
One of the objects of the evening was to capture on video a version of The Birthday Song dedicated to Roo, presently on honeymoon with Stacey in Hong Kong, and whose birthday fell on the 15th. Maginnis positioned herself on the balcony and her new camera recorded the event excellently with, admittedly, rather scratchy guitar sound. Anyhow, the finished result has been emailed to Roo. He returns to work on Monday and will find that the team spent Friday entirely erasing any evidence of his occcupation of a workspace. A lot of effort for a double-take, I suppose, but hell, worth to see his face! We love him dearly, it's just our way of showing it.
A day off on Thursday was used to investigate the alternatives to the defunct Silver Bullet. All I can say at present is that negotiations are underway. I should note that Chris's scorn at the text in the several catalogues I returned with ('what's all this "aggressive" crap?' were her very words, if I recall aright) was somewhat muted following her internet researches and entirely absent during Saturday's test-drive. I, of course, am hopeless at large expenditure and tend to leave such arrangements to Chris, who I firmly believe has some kind of slush fund.
The Listening Room was not looking very propitious at 8.30 tonight with a dearth of performers and a total absence of audience. I suggested that the format of the evening be abandoned and we just jam out the session. However, by 9.00 and my featured spot it had got busy. I must have played for about and hour and a half, dredging up rarely-played songs such as Wanted, Bird on the Wing and A Time of Love, newer and untested songs such as Exits and some slide guitar on My Friend. All in all, I was more than content and there was terrific audience reaction. I still think the guitar and harmonica combination, particularly when playing two leads such as on Label, The Bluesfather or Gaffer Tape, is such a rarity these days that people seem automatically taken with it. This was my first acoustic and totally unplugged gig in months: I've got so used to the electric guitar cranked up and over-driven that it all felt a little strange.
Back home on the bus using my senior person's bus pass and a nice conversation with the driver about gigs and gigging.
10:58 PM
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