I went to see the wonderful Jools Holland though this was a bad gig. I have rarely been at a gig where the sound has been as bad as this was. Maybe they had someone on work experience who they gave the job of being the sound engineer to - that would certainly explain how the balance could have been so bad that you couldn't hear the vocalists or the piano. I've seen Jools a number of times and it is always a tremendous experience - but he can only do what he does on stage - the rest should be in competent hands - but not this time. It was still good, but it should have been incredible.
I popped to Sydney to see my cousin Vicky along with her hubby (Dougal) and kids (Max and Millie).
We just went to the Aquarium at Darling Harbour and wandered around there and then went for lunch together - so it was a short time, but it was great to see her. I have 6 living cousins; Lawrence & Stuart (Leicester and London), David & Jonathan (Manchester and London) and Juliet & Vicky (Leeds and Tunbridge Wells). I know Juliet and Vicky the best as Juliet and I lived in Leeds at the same time and we used to hang out a lot. And Vicky used to live over in Australia, so I’d catch up with her. So I know these two as people whereas I know the others only as family members.
I also went to see Newton Faulkner (from the UK) at the Palais Theatre. I have seen Newton before but this was a true chance to sit back and enjoy his talent - he is a superb musician and he writes good songs - he was pretty entertaining too.
As part of the Comedy Festival I went to see Shaun Micallef and Stephen Curry perform their show of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketches. I remembered 3 of the sketches from TV when I was a small lad – that helped. I actually thought that the show was ok whereas the general consensus was that it was crap. Oh well.
Another show was the Man in Black which is a show about Johnny Cash where Tex Perkins plays the man as it tells the story of his life and is mainly his music. Tex plays Johnny superbly and the band was great as was the girl playing June Carter. A very enjoyable night indeed – I could see that again.
I also took Carolyn to experience the Blues Train. This is a steam train with 5 carriages. Four of them host different blues acts and the fifth one is the bar. The night starts with dinner at the station in Queenscliff. Then you get into your allocated carraige and enjoy a 30 minute trip listening to the act in that carriage. Then at the first stop, you get off and swap to your next allocated carriage and enjoy 30 minutes of that act before arriving at the next station. At that station, there is coffee and snacks before going to your next carriage as the train sets off back for two more carraiges and acts. It's a damn goodx night - as long as you can handle pissed annoying people.
I also discovered that my brief write-up on ‘my first gig’ made it onto the RockWiz website. The story goes as follows:
“It was the 1960s and I was a six or seven year old lad being taken with my older sister to a show in Leicester, England by my parents. There were comics, there was dancing, there was music and then there was a strange man who looked like he would be on more than one sex register list. He played songs on a big old electric organ - no singing, just music - and had a smile that made people uncomfortable. Then, the act I was there for, Basil Brush. How talented he was - he managed to amuse me despite having to endure a man's hand up his bottom. Then the big musical act to end with. A man who wouldn't sing properly. If I sang like that, my mother would have told me to stop being silly, but nobody was telling him - he was Frank Ifield and he yodelled. To this day, nobody has explained to me why anyone would do that, but he did it for whatever sick reason he had - and he made us suffer for his art.”
By the way, the next gig I remember after that one, was a pretty tragic one. Louise (my sister) was going to a show at the DeMontford Hall in Leicester with some school friends and there was a spare ticket so (I assume) my parents told her to take me – I would have been about 12 or 13. The act was The New Seekers. I’m sure that I liked it as it would have been exciting to be at something without being with adults – I assume that we were dropped off and picked up again, but there you go. It would have been incredibly excviting to do something as grown up as going to a gig.
Despite that dodgy start (musically), my sister redeemed herself when similar circumstances occurred a year or 2 later when the act was the Jackson 5 at the same venue. I remember that was a buzz – probably because of the general hysteria and noise there would have been. |
