My friend Stephen made a half joking remark to me after watching Boulevard Days at Ventnor Fringe on the Wednesday performance. "We enjoyed that and are now looking forward to Acts 5 and 6". Hmm, okay then!
’Boulevard Days’ is written as a classic three-act play, a structure generally attributed to Aristotle. It covers the time I spent living in Paris as a musician.
So logically, Acts 5 and 6 would be about what happens next, after missing a bit. But I have to say, not all of my life has been remarkable! There have been long boring patches, and some difficult ones too which probably wouldn’t make good entertainment nor enlightement. But going back to the 1970s after Paris, I messed about in Cornwall for a few months, then got a job in the computer section at County Hall. There aren't any songs about that!
There were some long hot summers though, especially the first one 1976. I got my first car, a mini van and picked up some PA equipment. A tall 100w Marshall combi cabinet that weighed a ton but was on castors, a microphone and a metal stand, and a soundhole electromagnetic pickup for my acoustic guitars. The plan was to start playing pub and hotel gigs, then see how far it took me. My local hangout was the King William the Fourth, a large and busy city centre pub which was the main place for younger crowds to hang out. They had bands on Saturdays most weeks, but not always. The landlords knew me anyway and agreed to have me play a couple of dates, not that I would draw a large crowd, but because they liked my acoustic style for themselves as a change from all the pub rock bands they had to put up with. I rocked out anyway, and the usual Saturday night crowd turned out but once the place was rammed, only the people standing at the front could really hear me properly. Further back the sound was no good. My big speaker cabinet was heavy to lug around, took up most of the space in the back of my Mini van, but wasn't up to the job in a busy venue.
It seemed I had two choices. Join a band with a big van and lots of powerful heavy audio equipment, or else look for smaller quieter venues where I could play solo and be heard. I chose the latter because my day job involved working shifts, so fitting in with band rehearsals and gigs would be impractical. Also, I had honed my craft mainly as a solo busker in Paris so the way I play and sing had already become very individualised. Only trouble was, the solo gigs weren't forthcoming.
I signed up with an agency. That was a novelty. Some bloke with a suit had materialised himself into a small office above Yardleys the music shop and called himself a music booking agent. He organised a big showcase day in a hotel near Newquay that was supposed to be like a cattle market for bands. Lots of bands were going along to play for nothing, under the promise that all the entertainment managers and music booking landlords would be there to listen to the talent and fill their calendars. I was never even on the bill, but I went along anyway because some friends were involved and it was a chance to hear new bands play. Well, well, who would have thought it. None of the promised bookers turned up. So it was just bands playing to each other. Bert was pretty angry so he got his band to play Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen, then departed in a sulk. I was never a punk, that had all happened and ended while I was away really, but I quite enjoyed the Brainiac 5 in the early days around Cornwall.
Not impressed with the Acorn agency, I lapsed back into just playing the occasional folk club spot in The Swan or The Green Parrot. I did get a couple of last minute gigs at my new local after having moved out near Feock, The Punchbowl and Ladle. This was through the agency, but the agent himself never showed up himself to any of my gigs from the start, so he had no idea what style of music I was playing in order to match me up with suitable venues. He sent me to a variety of country pubs, usually miles away in obscure villages with not much of an audience. Sometimes there would be a group of appreciative locals happy to be entertained with some lively numbers at the end of a nights drinking, and sometimes there would just be a long table full of old men playing dominoes. These gigs petered out, and I tried joining a trio band, but we never got past the rehearsal stage and ended up far too often taking an early break across the road to drink rounds of Guinness in the pub.
The shift working slowly wore me down. Weekly rotating shifts are now known to be the worst kind and it was with great relief that I finally got on a training scheme to learn how to program big mainframe computers instead of feeding them. I seemed to have an aptitude for the kind of problem solving thinking required and found it interesting, absorbing even. There is a period in the middle of writing a large data processing program when the treasured flow state may be achieved, and pages of brilliant code are written down fluently with no mistakes, using nothing but HB pencils and a coding pad.
They sent me on a three week residential COBOL training course up in London and I had a great time. I already knew some friends there who were still students, another who worked in advertising, and also hung out with other people from the course with their London mates. One night I was wandering around from the hotel in Belgravia. In Victoria Street there was a famous place called "The Venue" where Peter Tosh had been playing several nights of a sold out concert tour. At the very last minute, they had added an extra date but nobody knew, so I was able to just walk in off the street and be part of a small after party type gig. I didn't have to worry about getting the last tube home or anything. As the night wore on, the members of the band tried to keep going as long as possible. This was a long time before the smoking ban came in and the musicians had been passing around enormous bongs on stage. After a great full concert they carried on jamming until one by one they succumbed and dropped out, so eventually the audience survivors including yours truly were just jigging around the hall to the sound of a last man standing, playing all by himself, the bass player!