"May the First be with us"...

I am glad I found a chair.We must have got to the street too early or the band had forgotten to set their alarm clocks. Folk kept stopping when they came to the place where the noise of the sound check was coming from. I guess it was a booze promotional. The small tent covering for the equipment had logos on it for a brand I had never heard of. After the event, only a couple of days later I can't for the life of me recall what the brand name was. I wasn't planning on playing, but after 40 minutes of
waiting I was getting a little impatient for action. The uniform black outfitted "Professionals " weren't doing the do. I played a couple of ooblee dooblee tunes , you know , my own modest rubbish, on my pipsqueak whistle. We hadn't come prepared with the amp, I regretted not having the foresight. Mine is battery powered. The sound check usually takes about 30 seconds.The "pipsqueak " carries well above all but the most deafening racket. I tried to converse with a few people, difficult , they appeared to have been drinking for most of the day. I felt like a temperence preacher at a "Legalise Canabuse" rally. Me tunes took my mind off being grumpy for a while. Saw a few feet tapping away, I was happy to receive some warm smiles from passers by.
As far as I could hear there wasn't a lot I could criticise about the technical musician ship. But a pile of cover versions didn't inspire me to want to stay for long. I couldn't see the band from my vantage point I was listening . Something about the vocalist was bugging me. Amidst the funky blues and dexterous jazz riffs A Frenchman was imitating a deep south American accent. A clichéd caricature in style and content. I felt that the priveleged wunderkind on the mike was really taking the piss. "Trying to sound black" doesn't do it for me. Happier by far I would have been to hear a black French singer chanting away in their own first language. Perhaps I am too critical, the audience didn't seem to mind. I felt pinned to the wall behind me by the volume of sound., took my mind off the dominant discomfort for a while by having a quiet acoustic jam on my own. I was having to blow too hard to hear myself at all, I soon became hypercritical of the noise I was making and decided in short order to stop playing altogether. Someone standing close by said my tootling sounded good. Small mercy. The total of one and a half hours of waiting for the band to play didn't quite pay off. I bimbled off to find some uncrowded quietude. A bit of peace from the nuclear powered cover up culture. The bits of the occasion I enjoyed , the chair and the few tuneful scraps of my music. I wasn't drinking , I rarely do and never whilst I am playing, as a rule. This isn't intended to be a music critique. If you think so you are reading it wrongly. I was on the opposite side of the dogshit covered street. It just wasn't my idea of a nice day out.
Our little group eventually amassed itself to get a lift home, Anne-Sophie was driving. There was further delay as some folk wanted to buy some groceries. There was a queue. More waiting , I found an entrance to a Metro, in Place St.Anne. The holiday left the entrance clean and uncrowded. Through the bars across the entrance I could see an opportunity of playing in a space compatible with my kind of music. "A better buzz than waiting ", thinks I. There was nothing of note to see but the sound was excellent. Worth playing without a crowd, I had been waiting most part of the afternoon for one thing or another. I was making the most of the acoustic moment..
I didn't know that up above me I was being hussled to stop playing, "We are going now, come on," as though I were a child on a parental shopping trip. It damped down a little of the pleasure I had gained from the few moments of grace. As though someone had pulled the plug before I had completed the tune. I put my flute back inmy pocket and joined the others for the journey home.
I don't play the bars or the terraces, I play my flute. The interminable convoy of Pizza bikes in the street party gig ruined the breathable atmosphere for me. I was grateful for the moment's respite in the Metro entrance. Toby took a couple of photos. The one above is in the Street. The photograph in the next posting is of me playing in the sound space of the closed station. It is a real pity so few heard it. I hope there is a next time.

Stones to support Iznibz Last World Tour...

Ragged Man Promotions is proud to present Oblivionz own Iznibz Wazir in collaboration with Not the Final Vinyl Recording Company, details of the tour have yet to be fully confirmed , I will keep you posted as news emerges.

Beware of the "new"sixties...

"An era of deluded self indulgent toxic liberalism". Sez I. I have little pleasure in remembering those times. Remember them I truly do. Folk talk a lot about the "sex, drugs rock and roll", side of the new freedom that pervaded post war Britain. Few took the promotion of a national austerity program seriously. When rationing ended I was deliberately conceived as a little bit of affordable extra. Britain had signed the European convention of the Declaration of Human Rights and Fundemental freedom. I was born in 1951. The signing was a signal that it was safe to bring kids into the world without the risk of war ruining all familial progress. Theresa May wants to abandon the Human Rights Act, a very recent confirmation that Britain actually believed in the Declaration at all. "I didn't think they meant human rights for them as well as us sarg," the point doesn't seem to have percolated down to the dominant home team .
the high table P.C. front men did a wonderful job of promoting Britain's post colonial image. the mistakes of Empire were foolishly ignored, whilst the survivors of the "Winning side" dipped their bread in as many of the licentious excesses that the new found "disposable incomes" could buy. Most of Britain is now in the grip of the hangover residual from those times. Being surrounded by the New Age of First World compulsive consumerism , did next to nothing to improve my last worlder reality. As a child of first generation immigrants I got a chance to taste and try but without the opportunity to buy into the new prosperity. For now I will keep my own counsel as to why that should be so.
The new Era of which Gandhi spoke is a global reality but the media promotion of the concept of the "New World Order" seems to have displaced the bourgeoning hope that that his vision embued. Gandhi is dead, so too Martin Luther King, John Lennon is an airport now,(I don't know how he did it). The wet knickered hysteria of the age of Beatle mania did nothing for me the first time round. The regurgitated carambis of nostalgia for what in retrospect may be regarded as a popular psychosis, a mental illness in fact.
My journey away from what I regard as "the big mistake" has been a difficult one. I am Sixty now. My sixties will be utilised in a way that have a greater chance for lasting success than any of the popular promotions to date. The children of the last Babylonian Empire are in desperate need of guidance away from the funnel traps that lead to cyclical repeat of the historic folly.