Part of it, yes. What have you been up to?

Purple potatoes, yum.

HI, you incredible lady!!!!! I miss you real bad.

I'm home, sore, miserable, but the Black Keys are blasting out of my pitifully weakened speakers, I am about to eat for the first time since Monday, and pretty much all is well with the world. Have a great day/evening/night (delete where applicable!) Toodle Pip

I am having even more horrible done at the hospital tomorrow which means I don't get to eat today. Then, by the end of the week, I should know what other horrible things they are going to do to me. I had a great weekend though. My band played to a bunch of rednecks on Saturday, but it was fun, halfway up a mountain. Then we took off for a couple of nights to Bakersfield, and spent the time eating Indian food (my favorite) and watching silly movies at a $1.50 movie house. I am glad you had fun at your friends show. I always liked to mess with friends and colleagues whether I was in the show or in the audience! I have to go drink something called "Golightly" which I presume will either do something unpleasant or else turn me into Audrey Hepburn!

Story 4 the day:

1. In my brief time in music management, I shared an office with two old music biz sweats in Camden Town, which is a funky part of North London, home to most of the bottom feeding to mid range music biz. The two old guys were always regaling me with their war stories of what the biz was like in the 60s, and we used to mess with each other which was far more enjoyable than doing any real work. One day, I answered the phone, and it was Air Studios and George Martin's secretary saying that Mr Martin would like to speak to Stuart, my colleague. I told Stuart this and he took the phone, all the time believing that it was a practical joke on my part and that he would in fact be talking to one of the people in the music agency upstairs. The secretary told him Mr Martin would like to speak to him at which point Stuart said "This is a recording, please tell Mr Martin to kindly fuck off after the tone, beep beep beep!" He hung up, didn't believe me when I said it really was George Martin and kept on not believing me till a music biz friend of stuarts called him saying that Air Studios had called asking if he had the correct number for Stu as the number they had was answered by some drunk guy!

Hi. how you doing? I had an unpleasant surgical procedure today with another one on the way next week. More proof if I needed it that middle age sucks. I just want to fast forward through the rest of it and get to the second childhood stage!

Thought I might do another story this week if you are up for it.

beep. uh, yellow?

I have to say that the guy in question was very sleazy. It wouldn't suprise me to learn that he knew he was showing more than his harp playing onstage. I don't know about the chair, I am all for burning the theatre, but that might not be to do with him so much!

Both those clips you saw were shot at 'Blues At the Barn' a fund raiser I organized for THAT community theatre in March 2007. I was still finding my way as far as playing again was concerned, but I did have fun. Now, that guy who played mouth harp on the acoustic song, there is a story to tell there. We shall call him Mr X although his real name is Dennis. He isn't that great, but my theory was that in keeping with my take on the whole community theatre thing, this should be a night for people who don't know what they are doing as much as for people who did. Dennis was limited to a few appearances on the two nights we performed. Now, he did strike me as a little odd, but odd is not odd when it comes to the folk you meet at the Barn theatre in particular and Porterville in general. However, the 2nd night we played and Dennis got up to play, I could sense some considerable disquiet in the audience. I didn't understand why, but at the interval a few people came up to me and asked me to make sure he didn't 'do that again'. One guy said his children were in the audience but failed to explain the significance. Finally, someone who was an actual friend of mine told me what was going on. Dennis the harp player wasn't wearing undies and when he sat down to play, legs apart, the first three rows were treated to candid views of his testicular areas. As my friend suggested, you need big balls to get up on stage, but that is taking things too far! I don't think there is anything exposed on that youtube clip but even so, the memory lingers on!

It's crap when relationships are put in peril like that. I hope it works out for you sooner than you think it might.

The irony with my situation is that one of the main reason I got involved in this theatre here anyway was I was a new boy in a new town and country and I wanted to make new friends. I also thought that in some way I would be 'giving back!" Well, I have made some good friends, but at the moment they are outnumbered by the enemies. As for giving back, it seems that what I have to give is not what some of the locals want.

I didn't mention that other vid on youtube for a good reason, but now that you have seen it, that can become the next story...

Sweet, and thx. I did drink quite a bit, well I drink quite a bit everyday, but I'm a functional alcoholic.

http://www.yout ube.com/watch?v=WrD1rHsZqSc

Hi! I am sorry your play didn't win, and as for temperamental actors, I know all about them. One thing I have noticed concerning musicians and actors is that musicians can have the most disgusting petulant frenzy, but hours later it is all forgotten whereas actors can harbor grudges over relatively petty things for years! Now the play is done, what's next?

The book does look at Community Theatre in general, but it does deal specifically with the sixty years this particular one has been in existence. Speaking of voice overs, I was going through tons of old photos from the theatre when I found one of Mercedes McCambridge appearing at a benefit show in the fifties. She made quite a few movies in the late forties/early fifties, but she made most impact on my generation by doing the 'demon' voice on the original version of The Exorcist. I will still put the book out, and sales will be hit a little by all the crap, but I am really only expecting to sell a few hundred anyway. I just want it out and out of the way so I can concentrate on the new project.

I will send you links of the new videos on Youtube once they are up. There is one ok clip from the band I was in last year up there now. I will find the link and send it along! Toodle Pip

How are you? How is the play going? I resolved the stupidity with the community theater by severing most ties with them. It got very silly and stressful last week. There were wild threats going around and I am afraid I blew. I don't know quite where that leaves my book, but I have spent too long and worked too hard not to publish it. My band played Friday and it was a nice outdoor gig, a lot of fun. We play at a festival Saturday afternoon for two hours and then four hours in a bar later. I can't wait. We will have some videos on youtube soon. It is old man blues but played with passion, which I think makes a change. Anyway, just wanted to say hi. Take care.

Thinking of 25 things to do with a follow spot that don't include lighting helped the whole shitstorm thing. It all got very ugly, but my band starts gigging on Friday, an open air Gazebo thing, so I am looking forward to that and trying to forget the silliness.

I am glad you are doing a bit better. Going back to old haunts that contain shared memories is tough, but good too. It is something I wish I could do. I am really in the mood for a mooch round the sleazier parts of London's West End. I am going to a sleazy dive here in Porterville tonight though, so that is good Take care

Auntie Doris is a real good sort by the way!

Quite alright by me. I hope your rehearsal goes well. I am facing a shit storm from the community theater I am involved in. I directed their silly musical as a favor, and now one of the 'stars' is addressing the board tonight saying I treated her unfairly. She was one of the few with pro experience in the cast and yes, we pushed her further than some of the others as she purported to know what she was doing, but this is very silly. Being summoned in front of the board does sound more dramatic than anything that usually happens on their stage so I will play the scene out!

Yeah, I was an actor musician back in the day, then after I got sick I went back and got a theater studies degree. I directed Oliver recently at the community theater I am writing the book about. Not my cup of tea, but I did it as a favor and I did enjoy working with a large cast of kids. What is the play you are directing?

How I made the transformation from bottom feeding musician to bottom feeding music biz person and back again is a story in itself...

I 1994 I got really sick and it took me three years to get anywhere near healthy. I went back to University planning to teach drama and music. The day I was leaving college (1998) I had arranged to go to a club in Camden Town to see my all time musical hero Peter Green play. Peter founded Fleetwood Mac in the Sixties, took too much acid, became a paranoid schizophrenic, left the music biz, made a brief comeback in the 80s and then returned again in the mid 90s. I was going to the gig with my best friend Bill and a friend from Wales, who I had met online as a result of a fansite I ran in Peter's honor. We turned up at the gig and were fairly drunk by the time we got inside the club. So much so that we felt the need to sit down. It was pretty much standing room only, but there were a few chairs vacant next to one table which had an old guy with a walking cane and a few very odd people in fishing hats sitting round. Someone who worked at the club (Dingwalls) told us we couldn't use the chairs, but the old guy with the cane said we were in his party. It turns out that he was Stuart Taylor, Peter's manager. He bought us more drinks, I wasn't supposed to be drinking at all at the time, and things got very relaxed. Peter played but I can't really remember much about the gig. My friend Bill had to get up in the morning so he went home, leaving the two of us there. It turned out that one of the guys in a fishing hat was Gary Moore, a rock guitarist of some repute, but I was not impressed. My Welsh friend was if anything more drunk than me, and she started telling anyone who would listen that I did a web site about Peter and that I should do the official site.

The gig finished and there were a bunch of people waiting for Peter to emerge from the dressing room. My friend just waltzed in there and came out with Peter on her arm. He came over to us and asked for coffee. This was overwhelming to me. I had met a fair few musicians over the years, but this was different, I had idolized this musician since I was 16. He took one look at me (I am somewhat rotund) and asked if I was one of the bouncers. I was crestfallen, and his manager Stuart explained that the only subjects that Peter would open up on were food, guitars and travel. I tried food and travel to no effect, but when I got on to guitars, and asked him about a specific concert the year before, he became animated and for a few minutes we had a real discussion. I was like a kid at Christmas. Then, he was gone, off up the motorway being driven to the next nights gig. We stayed talking to his manager some more, he took my number, but I had forgotten why he might have wanted it. I was keeping quiet that I had been a musician up till a few years before.

Finally my friend Jen and I got up to leave. We went out of the main exit, but there seemed to be a ramp that was not there on the way in. She was ahead of me, and she seemed to hit this wooden wall that stopped her from walking any further. She kept walking anyway. It was about this time
that I realised we had actually walked into the back of one of the equipment trucks that was about to be full of Peter's PA, etc! I just turned her around and she walked straight out of there.

I thought that would be the end of it, my one meeting with someone I had always admired. However, a few days later I heard from his manager, I was hired to do his official web site, and within a year I was sharing an office with his management, and in fact was managing another old Brit blues legend myself.

I actually once planned to write a book based on my dealings with Peter, I in fact wrote most of it, but I left it for other projects. Peter is a trip though. Some folk that meet him don't see beyond his illness, but he has a wicked sharp sense of humor. When asked once if he believed in life after death, he said he wasn't sure he believed in this one yet. Another time when he and Stuart were sitting outside a pub, a sad old fan liked me saw him and asked for an autograph. Peter looked up at him and asked "What's the alternative?" I could go on.

I thought you might be fed up with my stories. I get like that every now and then. It has not been too good a few weeks here either. I have plenty of ancient stories to go, plus a few not so ancient ones.