Hi Everyone

Your war-weary correspondent has recently finished a 10 day road trip
through the UK. Jan Fanucci (catch her at The Saloon, Lou's, etc.)
asked me via E-mail:

How was London?
> > Jan

In a word: Exciting. Here are my notes.

We played two places there: The 12-Bar Club (www.12barclub.com) in
Soho and The Fiddler's in Camden. The "we" I'm
referring to is the Eric Blakely Band (www.ericblakely.com), a three-
piece outfit with bass (me), drums (Martin Frank from Holland), and
guitar (Eric from Austin). We all sing and we're out promoting
Eric's new CD of original songs, "Still Life at Full
Speed" aproject we put together. This trip is a ten-day trip
through the UK, starting in London and ending on the Scottish Isle of
Arran (www.arran.uk.com.)

The tiny 12-Bar Club is hidden in an alley near Central London and
hard to find. In cloudy, cool and damp May weather, it took over two
and a half hours from where we were staying to go the 9 miles through
late Saturday afternoon London traffic; single "carriageways"
(single lane streets), roundabouts, wrong turns, and one-way streets
add to the confusion of driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

The drummer, Marty Frank, drove from Utrecht, Holland for the gigs,
and he does OK with wrong side of the street driving. He did most of
the driving for the trip piloting an early `90's Nissan
hatchback. I was in the back seat jammed in with the drums; in front
were Eric and Marty, each thinking they knew the way to the club. I
was jetlagged and instead watched the neighborhoods, people, and
traffic pass by.

Parking is also much harder to find than our familiar North Beach but
we found legal on-street parking in front of the club after a Lorrie
driver finished his deliveries and surrendered his spot. We also
checked with the "Old Bill" walking his rounds on the
legality of our selection, he said it was OK so we wouldn't get a
ticket.

The 12-Bar Club is in the site of a Forge dating from 1635, much
older than anything in North America (including The Saloon) save the
Native American stuff. The band sets up on the hearth; the guitar amp
is in the fireplace while the bass amp (amps are supplied by the
club) and drums are off on one side. A balcony is close to and just
above the stage. During the gig, I could watch people's feet and
by looking upwards I could see the rest of them through the railing.

Most pubs in London close at 11pm. The 12-Bar is open until 3am, and
fills to standing-room-only capacity after the other places close.

Throwing in a couple of Beatle's songs helps the audience relate
to Eric's originals. I Saw Her Standing There and The Ballad of John
and Yoko really warmed up the international audience (I met people
from as far away as South Africa and as close as Detroit).

People in clubs here listen to the band rather than show their
appreciation by dancing, like in the US. Quiet and attentive while we
played, the audience applauded vigorously at the end of each song. We
got three encores. Afterward many came up to me and expressed their
appreciation for the music while commenting on my accent.

We stayed at a friend of Eric's in Merton, a neighborhood in the
Southwest part of London, near the South Wimbledon tube station.
Merton is a working-class neighborhood near its upscale cousin,
Wimbledon. There is quite a mix of people with lots of Muslims and
Indians in the mix; I had wonderful Halal (Muslim blessed) food in
the 'hood from a Kosovar restaurateur.

Prices are double in London; $12 Whoppers, $5.40/gal gas; $10
cigarettes, etc. I ate mostly pizza slices and sandwiches, and drank
tea. I also discovered during the trip that the words English and
food, at least when used in a sentence, produce an oxymoron. Canned
beans are not a vegetable, and spices are not just salt. Blandness
predominates and oil is the main ingredient of some dishes. And have
you ever had black puddin'? It's mainly dried blood and served as a
side dish at breakfast. The English also do tea but do it well;
coffee can be variable.

The Fiddler's,
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alanvic/comedownandmeetthefolks.co.uk/fo
rthcom.html), a large, neighborhood Pub located in Camden, was a no-
pay gig due to a manager who screwed up. The Camden neighborhood of
London reminded me of a giant Telegraph Avenue or Haight Street,
thousands of people were on the streets on Sunday shopping and doing
who knows what? Lots of people heard us at The Fiddler's, though,
just no money.

We left early Monday morning, getting lost as usual—this time
with a map-- while leaving London, ultimately getting on the M5 (M is
short for motorway, a road like our freeway but better maintained due
to cheerful acceptance of the gas tax) and headed north to the
Midlands, aka The Black Country. Named by Queen Victoria, it is said
that while traveling through this birth place of the industrial
revolution, she viewed from her carriage window the black smoke of
burning coal, the fuel of choice, and thought it all so ugly that she
had her window shade painted with more a pleasant, yet artificial,
pastoral scene to replace the view. Ironically, the Black Country is
now a "no burn zone," the only smoke coming from artificial
smoke generators at concerts for hometown heroes Black Sabbath, Deep
Purple, The Move, Slade, Led Zeppelin, and others. We stayed near
Wolverhampton (in Willenhall) with a friend of Ozzy Osborne's,
Peter Boot,who's website: www.fillyourheadwithrock.com. tells his
story.

Burton Winn (bhwbass@...)