It's my party and I'll play if I want to

In my last blog entry I neglected to mention my own appearance at Sunday's acoustic afternoon at The Libertine simply because I wasn't in the mood to talk about myself at the time of writing. Now I am, so please allow to me fill you in. It won't take long.

It's been a while since I sat down and performed acoustically in public. It was the impromptu solo performance at the disastrous Guildford gig earlier this year that inspired me to get back in to it. It's taken until now to make it happen, for whatever reason.

On Sunday, I had moral support on stage from Pocket Rocket guitarist 'Lex' Luther Taylor, who played electric guitar to accompany me, and did a fine job after just two rehearsals, and only being familiar with three of the seven songs I asked him to learn. I thought the decent thing would be to open the event and take the 'warm-up' slot, which I did. By song three of seven I was beginning to relax, and by song five I was leaning back on my chair. The sound was good and clear, and though there was some chatter from the floor, those assembled were largely attentive. Colin Gillman, Istvanski and Kenski had public transport problems and missed my set, so requested that I make a special appearance at the end, which I was happy to do. Colin got his acoustic versions of Give The Boy A Chance and (The) Happiness (You Deserve) as well as a reprise of Magic Bicycle.

It was a pleasure to host, and listen to, performances by all those that played after me. It was lovely too because so many RTYD members came along. All those playing were members, and as well as Ista, Colin and Kenny, Mark McKendrick was also there supporting his buddy, Woody.

John Grant, whose band The Beast are playing for RTYD on Wednesday 9th December at the Blues-Rock-Til-You-Drop gig at the Fiddlers Elbow in Chalk Farm, wrote a lovely thing in an internal message to me that I'm sure he won't mind me imparting to you; he wrote: "I think you've created something wonderful with this RTYD affair - it reminds me of a time when you could just breeze into your local and encounter the likes of Juice on the Loose, Kilburn and the Highroads, The Realists, Ducks Deluxe et al".

That's the general idea. And how cool is that?