Lockdown Thoughts From A Musician

 Well it looks like we might soon be getting back to an actual normality after 16 months of absolute shite. Fingers crossed we shall be gigging to full (standing) houses again and being able to walk around without someone shouting "MASK!!!" every couple of seconds.

As a musician it's been a very rough time. I realise that many people have suffered losses far greater than mine and the thoughts of a person who still has his health, family and friends isn't of any great importance but there we go. Everyone has been put through the wringer (with the exception of Jeff Bezos) and it's worth remembering that the great majority of us suffer in silence. For every person using social-media as therapy, there are many more people putting on a brave face and ploughing on like everything is fine.

Small and medium sized venues have been devastated. Musicians have been forced to do online busking just to pull in a few shekels and still a great many people view what we do as a hobby. Not a real job. I can't tell you how angry this makes me feel. Government has thrown the entire industry under the proverbial bus.

Because of this, some of our old venues, pubs etc. have made the tough decision to scale back their live music programme. This is completely understandable. On the other hand, there are certain venues who have decided to cut their budget and try to get the same performers for (in some cases) half price. This is a total kick in the cannisters for anyone who's been struggling recently. One can only assume that these places are also paying half price for their booze and only paying the staff a similar cut price rate....

...somehow I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely appreciative of every venue that books me and I would be nothing without you but to simply halve my worth because I'm only a musician is bullshit. Surely it would be better for everyone to have half as many gigs but pay the right money?

After all, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

I'm sure there are a great many people with differing opinions and I absolutely accept that but I feel I should let my point of view be heard. 

Thank you for listening x

PS. Go and find me on Instagram, FB, YouTube etc. Please like and subscribe and all that stuff. It all helps in lieu of gigs x

School Days (R.I.P. Chuck Berry)

When I was in my first year of secondary school we were all tasked with giving a presentation on something. It could be anything we wanted so being of that age i chose guitars. I couldn’t actually play the guitar back then but that wasn’t the point, I was still obsessed by them.

As i gave my talk, the picture I showed to illustrate my love of guitars and guitarists was Chuck Berry. It was a great photo of him wide-eyed with a terrible multi coloured shirt and his trusty 345 around his neck. That photo basically became the template for my whole career as a musician.

A lot of guitarists work backwards to Chuck via the Stones etc. but i didn’t. Even before I learned to play, I loved his songs. His riffs, his lyrics, his stagecraft and that tempo. That awesome rock and roll shuffle. He was the man.

Later on as I got into more music from the 60s it became obvious the huge influence he had. I remember watching the woodstock movie and spotting half a dozen Chuck Berry guitar solos.

When ‘Hail Hail Rock & Roll’ came out I rented it a dozen times from the video shop. Finally I had a chance to watch his fingers and learn some of it. It also made me realise that he wasn’t the nicest chap in the world but I shrugged this off as i was only about 12.

Anyway, my point is that whether you like him or not, if you think his music is old-hat, even if you’d be happy to never hear a bad pub version of Johnny B Goode again; we can all agree that popular music as we know it would not exist without him. 

Hail Hail Rock & Roll indeed x