The Rubinoos celebrate 4 decades in the ring tonight out there in San Fran. If you're there, DO NOT MISS IT!

This, quite literally, just in from Brother Don. Timely too with SOTS having an SF "three in a row" this AM.

"just got back from Thee Parkside all the way across town here in san fran where i saw an incredible set by Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers.(sans Danny and James). Roy was most excellent. he strummed a Fender cutaway acoustic. Larry Lea played lead and they had their old bass player too. they opened with "Don't Believe Those Lies". and moved along with old faves like "Emmy Emmy", "A Hundred Miles an Hour", and "Born to be Your Fool". place was jammed and the crowd was groovin like crazy.

it was almost like being back at the Mab (which Roy mentioned) or those great Whisky shows where they opened for the Groovies. then Cyril came up and there was a roar from the crowd when Roy introduced him as an "old friend...and very dear friend". they did"Second Cousin", "Teenage Head" and "Slow Death". unbelievably great!!! Cyril took some INCREDIBLE solos!!! it was absolutely stunning and just like the old days. everyone went totally insane and they were called back for an encore and they did Chuck Berry's "Bye Bye Johnny".

Roy and Cyril together is just EXPLOSIVE!!! now i have an inkling of how great the New Orleans shows must've been. i congratulated Cyril afterwards but didn't get a chance to thank Roy so if you're out there Roy: FANTASTIC JOB!!! wow!!!! i really hope these guys get together some more. just tremendous. Cyril's guitar solos were effortless and magic. Roy was in excellent voice. what a night!"

I’m not about to make any promises I can’t keep today. Still, it is Friday after all.

The Primevals and Charles Randolph Rivers are at McChuills in Glasgow tonight. An Oxjam show.

Tomorrow, The Handsome Dicks will be at The 13th Note’s Buckfest. On at 9pm (apparently).

It’s just come to my attention that Sir Andy Shernoff has a website from whence you can navigate all his cyber outlets. He has shows coming up so check that now.

Cool event at GFT on Sunday including the premiere of the Herschell Gordon Lewis documentary.

Those were the days when everything seemed possible...

I concur with the too many RIP’s. I mean Guccione was kind of old but the Ari Up thing was a bit of a shocker. She was 5 years younger than I am. Been thinking about mortality quite a lot of late. Not sure why. Possibly because there’s a lot of stuff left to squeeze in and it seems as though there can’t be enough time to address that. I’ve also been thinking about the lyrics to “Whole Wide World”, intensified by their being paraphrased into “Do You Remember That?”. All pretty deep stuff for me really and I can’t divulge the connection for fear of my being exposed as even more of a prat than I usually am. Watch out for a brand new Wreckless and Amy song coming up very soon on Radio Free Song Club. The kids have been beavering away and I’d imagine that it’ll air when they get to the US in November.

Bryan dropped me a line to say that The Beav’s mom left this theatre the other day also...

RIP – Barbara Billingsley

Bit of a shock too to learn that Louie Appel has also passed away via a post from Eric (Roscoe) Ambel on facebook. The onetime Asbury Juke was here a couple of years ago with Ronnie Spector and we all headed out to Sloans for some bar food. Louie also played on wir ain Ms Rigby’s “Little Fugitive” album and a gazillion other sessions. A lovely big guy and cool company that has checked out way too early. No details as to how. My heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family at this time.

RIP – Louie Appel

I’m heading for Edinburgh now but you might want to investigate what Kogar has lined up for you.

RIP - Bob Guccione

RIP - Ari Up

RIP - Tom Bosley

Just heard about General Johnson this minute when checking North Fork Sound...

RIP - General (Norman) Johnson

Not sure about the quality of this clip but I can't check it. Just wanted it up there and I envy you if you never heard this version before. First time I did, it reduced me to rubble. Still does.

Today is the last day of the final “Le Weekend” in Stirling. James Johnston will be playing with Faust (North) tonight but sadly I can’t make it. Would have liked to have seen Tut Vu Vu also but another conflict. I did spend the day there yesterday though and got there just as the Jean-Herve and Zappi were concluding their presentation. There had been an impromptu performance and some discussion as to how improvised it was seemed to be the subject. I recall the expression “non-linear” being used. Interesting characters...

Wandered around town with the rest of the living dead for a while, with the exception of Europa and The Tolbooth, it’s a pretty depressing place these days. And if you add to that the fact that the last train out is at 11pm then it’s hardly worthy of city status at this point. Of course, in terms of public transport – Glasgow and Edinburgh aren’t much better. Still, after the “cuts” on Wednesday, the UK will be officially to be tarmac-ed over to make way for a giant car park. Wee bit of politics there for a Sunday forenoon.

Couldn’t help but notice the sleeve of Peter Brotzman’s Machine Gun in the bar area. The Tolbooth, in my opinion is a severely underused asset. Probably down to what they’re able to do with what little they’ve got but they really need to make provision for food and draft beer. Like these wee sausages they used to do. Anyway, that’s by the by at this point. Just putting it out there. There are few better venues in Scotland and the main auditorium seating might not be comfortable for the taller person but the facility itself is absolutely fantastic in terms of sound, light and space. Hell, they even have a ghost – right Amy?

Oceans of Silver and Blood & The New String Theory performed their commission in the nearby Church of The Holy Rude. Ideal setting and sound, perhaps a tad hit and miss but I make no claim as to what any of it was about. I prefer to break it down into what i consider cinematic. Wore a hole in my chin by stroking it trying to get a beat on what was going down. Once again the expression improvisation seemed to be evident. Some attendees apparently found the filming of it intrusive, your resident philistine thought it might be part of the performance. Like Bez.

Met Mr Bruce in the Cafe and had a natter that briefly interrupted by a guy called Peter Nicholson who performed on cello and “songs”. It was all a bit Richard Youngs for me but I did like the brief interlude where it sounded like a drunk bagpipe.

Marilyn Crispell and Raymond Macdonald were next up and I kind of dug some aspects of this. Ms Crispell plays the piano in a manner not unlike that which I used to get a row from my granny for. The realisation that I was maybe a child prodigy was almost too much to bear. The less squonk type moments appealed most.

Chris Forsyth upped the ante ext with a brooding Link Wray versus Tom Verlaine via Glenn Philips blues thump. Things were looking up and then Tetuzi Akiyama tore it all down again. I escaped and met up with Stephen and Katrina. Stephen tells me that it seemed like the two had done some kind of role reversal. Usually when I leave or don’t attend something it takes a turn for the better. Mr Bruce told me that on this occasion it did not get better so I was buoyed by that.

Tarwater came on a wee bit late so I missed much of that having to split for the aforementioned train. They were like a bubblegum Joy Division juggling splinters of Empires and Dance era Simple Minds. Pretty good and worthy of investigation. Maybe this being the last “lw” could be reconsidered. It’s a cool gathering of hipsters and the socially inept and consider myself part of the latter category of course.

A whole new angle on "the living dead".

Thanks to KP for the link.

What’s with Roky not heading all the way north? Hopefully it’s because there are plans afoot for Celtic Connections and not just that nobody has had the gumption to make it happen. Guess we’ll know soon enough.

The Pretty Things are in Glasgow tonight (Saturday).

It’s the final Le Weekend in Stirling this weekend too, see you over there today.

Screening of The Runaways film in Bo’nyucks tomorrow afternoon, much as I think it’s tripe I’m going to attend just to see if there’s anyone there.

Need to make a concerted effort to get this damn thing up to speed but will stop short of rash promises based on recent experience. Still harbouring a deep mistrust of my recently acquired tracking device, sorry Blackberry and can’t really seem to concentrate on anything for any length of time. A cocktail of senility and ADD is what it feels like but still, one cannae unscramble eggs as I’ve stated before so whatever will be is seldom how it’s planned at any particular point in time.

Thanks to Christian for the heads up on this...

It’s not possible to be in a number of places at once and when Willie Nile was in Largs (!), I was at the other end of the country. He and his band will be in the UK for at least another week as far as I know so you should check these dates. The Kaptain has been testifying all bloody week to the affect that this restored his faith in this thing called rock’n’roll and this is a man not prone to exaggeration.

Willie’s new album “The Innocent Ones” pretty much picks up where “Night Of A Thousand Guitars” left us. More tales from the American Music songbook performed with not a smidgeon of bluster. Truth is that this guy could have gotten to be where Springsteen is. Or Tom Petty for that matter but for some reason it wasn’t to be. The fact that he’s still knocking out material of this quality at this point speaks for itself. The Boss hasn’t come close to anything this heartfelt in years that I’ve come across. And I wish the comparisons to The Clash would cease, latter day Strummer when he took on the mantle of being a kind of Joe Ely maybe - but never the former.

Nile and Ely along with Scott Kempner, share an ability for retaining the romanticism and timeless passion of how music can make things alright. “Singin’ Bell” comes in like “From The Underworld” and is soon hitting a Rockpile pace that recalls “Guitar Town” era Steve Earle. “One Guitar” sees the 1000 whittled down to just the single digit. Not sure what he chose in the end but it sure sounds good. “My Little Girl” is Bobby Fuller via Buddy Holly, it doesn’t get too much cooler than that.

The standard is high here and my own favourite is “Can’t Stay Home” but what I really acn’t wait for is a chance to see the canon performed during his next time around. There’s nothing new here – hell there’s nothing new on this earth – but there’s precious little around that’s guaranteed to hit the spot like this. There’s no substitute for honesty and “TIO” sweats that rare commodity profusely.

There go the cobwebs - thankyou Mr Munster...

Brother Don caught Teenage Fanclub in SF last night...

"Show was unbelievably GREAT!! TFC rained down a torrent of majestic pop -- one gem after another in a relentless onslaught of melodic gorgeousness!!! they were even better than last time if that's possible. not one but two encores. place was packed and crowd was euphoric throughout as was the band (especially mr blake).

To backtrack a bit... radar bros opened. quite good. kinda remind me a little of that band Spain. a little Spain, a little Luna, a little Floyd - post Syd/pre-dark side and a touch of The Band if that's possible.

TFC opened like gangbusters with "Start Again". Norman had a Gibson 335 which he kept trading for a cherry red Epi 335 with capo. small fender amp -- vibra-something. Bass was a fender precision thru big ampeg tube head and 8 X 10 rig. lead guitar was a fender jag thru slightly bigger fender amp than Norman's but similar (w/reverb). Frank had Gretsch drums. keyboard guy had I a Roland (i think) with a little casio mt-40 (!) on top. they quickly moved to stuff from the new album which went down very well: "The Past", "Shock and Awe" and then the masterpiece: "Baby Lee" -- as good a song as the band has ever done (and that's saying something and a half when you think of how many killers they've delivered over the yrs).

they also did another new fave of mine: "When I Still Have Thee". Plenty of classics to keep all happy: “Sparky's Dream”, “Ain't That Enough”, “I Don't Want To Lose Control”, “The Concept” (talk about killer songs!), “Don't Look Back”. the encores... “Can't Feel My Soul”, “I Need Direction”, “Everything Flows” (keyboard guy played a Tele on that so there were 3 guitars and it was just massive). 2nd encore included an explosive version of "What You Do To Me". just unbelievable.

my only criticism is that it was almost too much of a good thing. .."

Guess I didn't post yesterday at all. I did start but sidetracked.



Whistle stop weekend and posting Phast’s favourite Solomon Burke song ties in nicely with an episode during said Saturday into Sunday, phew...

Met up with Sister Qina down “the London” and packed as much into the allotted time as was humanly possible. This included eating at The Pillars of Hercules, meeting Tony and Vanessa and going to The Phoenix Artists Club, heading for Camden and another reacquaintance – Sister Donna Reeves of Dallas , TX. Grand to catch up and even put in a call to Brother Randall who is minding the store at home. I hadn’t seen Donna since they dropped me in Springfield, Mo. in the summer of ’92. Cue Percy Faith via The Skeletons.

This was the first of two visits to The Spreadeagle, the second after we met young Nick West at The Blues Kitchen. This was just a couple of weeks after visiting the Rock Kitchen in Madrid. Anyway, we went there to see Swedish combo, Stupidity and someone who was with them told me they’d be on at 10.30pm.

This turned out to be tosh because when we got back, I think we only caught the last 5 songs. They were great though and the Rev. Sid Griffin said it was the best he’d seen them. They brought a little bit of the ol’ Hope and Anchor to that corner of London on Saturday night. Prior to that, it was very cool to run into Nick Garrard and Rob Hughes. I had never met Rob and it must be at least a quarter century since I last saw Nick and he hasn’t really changed. In general, recent re-connections are going a long way to keeping me afloat – I hope there are a few others in the pipeline and I feel that the most important one was the catalyst for all this. Never figured myself as the spiritual type but I have my moments. Nice to see Mia there too, it was her birthday!

Nick travelled back to the area we were staying with us and we had a nightcap at Broderna Ollson in Frith Street. I always dug those joints but there was a wee hiccup in that I was told they didn’t accept Scottish money. Being that I make a point of carrying nothing but that, this was the first time I’d encountered such behaviour in a considerably long time. Just as well that Nick had some “real” money then. Cheers man. From there, Qina and I set off in search of some food to end what had been a very entertaining evening. Typical of the UK in general and London in particular that all we could find was Subway. It was fine though because we were famished. So then breakfast and the 9am train back north.

Qina is in Hong Kong now, starting a big adventure that I just know will be a gas.