White Hart & other things

“I felt like I was twenty five again!” the Dame beamed at me after we’d come off-stage at The White Hart in Whitechapel (best known as the pub where Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell although oddly enough I didn’t see a plaque) where we supporting eighties soft-rockers XFX. He’d had a great gig. Of course, he wasn’t the one pinned into a space the size of a postage stamp and hadn’t spent the last three numbers with his foot rammed against the Wing-Commander’s bass drum to stop the damn thing from sliding forward.

It wasn’t a bad show though. We certainly played a lot better than the previous Saturday at Zeph’s birthday party and someone did comment after that he could hear traces of The Who in us, which is probably due to the incredibly toppiness of Ron’s bass amp combined with my propensity to over-indulge on the note front. Next Sunday we are at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town which will be our first official London show so hopefully we will be fired-up to deliver a good one. There are still some things which need sorting out (some of the older material doesn’t sit well with the new stuff; the Dame’s between song patter errs on the ‘please love us’ side of things whilst my own view is much more 'this is it: like it or lump it’ – the difference between the old pub rocker and the old punk rocker I think). Anyway, at our age its just a bit of fun so I shouldn’t take it too seriously (‘but what about your professional pride?’ – ahhhh, well there is that)

So, what’s been happening on the OD front I hear you ask? Other than having to meet the Head of Year and phone calls from Brent council’s Education Welfare Officer, plus the never-ending battle known as ‘get your arse out of bed’ every single bloody morning, things have been OK. She has received her Academic Progress report which tells me that unless she sorts her course work out in the next few weeks, she is on target to achieve ‘C’s in Music and Drama and fail everything else. Well that’s good news. She is going to school though at least four days out of five at the moment, although I don’t actually thing she’s made it on time for quite a while. School starts at 8:45. Classes begin at 9:15. I think she believes there is no point getting in before 9:10. However things seem to be going very well with her and young Chris, who seems to dote on her, which is great because – let’s face it – we all need someone to make us feel special

Culturally I’ve been up to… well, not a great deal. Saw a revival of Jonson’s ‘The Alchemist’ at the National. This production has had astonishingly good reviews but whilst it had its merits (the open house set; Ian Richardson's marvellous delivery of Mammon's feast speech) I thought it lacked the right level energy and drive. Remembering that this text begins mid-argument, for the lights to rise on a resolutely Pinter-esque kitchen table with the cast lazily sat around it and the bustling dialogue to be slowed to a crawl, replete with long pauses, completely sucked all life out of the first act. Jokes were trampled over rather than relished (for example when a mis-cast Surly asks Mammon what he calls the brother of Dol's mad aristocrat, his response of 'My Lord' should provoke one of the biggest laughs of the night; here it was nervously spluttered and the gag became lost). Alex Jennings performance was workmanlike and that seemed to subdue Russell-Beale. And as for transposing the brawler's rhetoric into Ali G style street language: who on Earth thought that was a good idea? Also, I thought the program notes were appalling (and this guy has a book out?) So, in short, disappointing.

Other than that, FM and I went to see The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash at the Borderline. They were good but not as good as they thought they were (Dale Watson does the trad country stuff much better). Excellent lead guitarist though: Telecaster through a Fender twin for that wiry country sound. Place was about a third full and they’d come all the way from San Diego so a bit of a bummer for them.

And that’s that for now. Zeph’s birthday party was great fun and if you to her MySpace page can see us murdering ‘Alabama Song’ together. Sweet.