Authentic or what?

I dropped into O'Flaherty's Irish pub tonight. On a Sunday, we have the particularly silly experience of an "Irish" band.


I've seen the band vary from around eight people, to the three they had tonight. One thing remains constant though, the music seems as fake as you can imagine. I'm sure these people have good intentions, but you'd need to have never been within a thousand miles of Ireland to think that the noise these people make was anything to do with Ireland.

Real pubs in Ireland have so much atmosphere you could stick it in a bucket and sell it. Obviously it doesn't travel well though, as the inside of my refrigerator has more atmosphere than this place. And the Stella is over priced and flat.

Friendly advice to Americans - if you want to go to an Irish bar, go to Ireland.


"Reasons to love the Mission Ale House" - the biggest reason is not on this poster. That's the reason that is that it's not trying to be Irish. It's just trying to be a good bar, and that makes it the best bar in San Jose.

Pain in the Neck

I suffer from chronic neck pain. When I was first told that it was really scary. I thought the phrase "chronic pain" meant that you would have it all the time. But like most things, the words really mean something different. "Chronic" in this context just means a pain that happens for no immediate reason, like being hit or anything. No physical reason. That's a good thing too, as I doubt if I could handle the maximum pain levels I suffer with this all the time.

I found these pictures on the internet tonight. It must be one of these bastards that's causing the problems. Saturday of this weekend was really wiped out due to an attack of neck pain. Happily today it seems all over again.


If you are employed in the USA and have good health insurance, the health care here is massively better than the UK. However I think the doctors here have some kind of deal with the drugs companies, as you can't get out of the doctors without a piece of paper to take the the pharmacy for some drug or other. I did a cull of the pills that didn't work a few weeks ago, but that left the above that I've been prescribed for neck pain over the past two years. Even with chucking the most useless ones out, I'm not convinced that any of the above do any good. I don't think Americans can leave the doctors without some magic pills that they believe may solve their problems.

Redwood City Blues Jam

I haven't been here for ages. This is the Wednesday blues jam at the Little Fox Theatre in Redwood City. The last time was the day before I was supposed to be flying back to the UK for Christmas. I said goodbye to my friends in America, then got stuck in the US due to the fog at Heathrow, so I had to say hello to everyone again. It was just as well, if I had to chose between being in a bar in San Francisco or stuck sleeping on the floor at Heathrow, I know what I'd chose.


We had sushi in a Japanese restaurant down the road. I saw these sushi rolls in the vegetarian section of the menu. They were called "Cats Eyes" rolls, as they had mushrooms and olives in them. I asked the waitress if they were vegetarian or did they really have cats eyes in them, and she didn't understand that was supposed to be a joke. Two of our party had lived in Japan for a while, although they didn't know each other before, they lived in Japan at the same time. I learnt some interesting cultural things from them about Japan.


I took a number of very dodgy photos. This is "Amy Lou's Blues", Amy Lou herself was very lively, if a little scary at times.


One of our party was also singing with one of the bands, she was very good. They did a version of "Take me to the River".


When I left they were playing "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" on a big outdoor screen in the town hall square opposite the Little Fox.

End of the Great American Stella Shortage

I'm pleased to report that the great American Stella shortage seems to be over, as evidenced by the beer taps of the Mission Ale House on Friday.

Not this even now

When you do a Google search of "Even Now Lyric" you just get pages of Barry Mannilow. Now this is truly scary:

Barry Manilow - Even Now Lyric

Even Now
When there's someone else who cares
When there's someone home who's waiting just for me
Even now I think about you as I'm climbing up the stairs
And I wonder what to do so she won't see
That even now
When I know it wasn't right
And I found a better life than what we had
Even now I wakeup crying in the middle of the night
And I can't believe it still could hurt so bad

Even now when I have come so far
I wonder where you are
I wonder why it's still so hard without you
Even now when I come shining through
I swear I think of you
And how I wish you knew
Even now

Even now
When I never hear your name
And the world has changed so much since you been gone
Even now I still remember and the feeling's still the same
And the pain inside of me goes on and on
Even now

Even now when I have come so far
I wonder where you are
I wonder why it's still so hard without you
Even now when I come shining through
I swear I think of you
And God I wish you knew
Some how
Even now

What is this? A lost classic from the band that never was - The Uppermost

Four years after the real heyday of the Kirkcaldy Bands, or my involvement with them, I formed a band with Steve Ellis and Jim Macdonald. Steve called it "The Uppermost" I thought that was a great name, very 1960's. I later found out it was was inspired by the name of a shoe shop that was up the road from no 1 Downfield Place where I lived at the time, and where Steve is pictured above. He also thought "Hair by Alphie" would be a good name too, that was a barbers shop in Fleshmarket Close.

Steve was an amazing guy at this time. We had been mates since school and he introduced me to tons of good music that I still love today. Artists and bands such as Robyn Hitchcock, The Television Personalities, The Velvet Underground and The Only Ones, to name only a few. Steve was in the year below me at college and his best mate from that class was Jim Macdonald.

Jim often spoke about being a guitarist, but I never heard him play until 1990 which is when we decided to form the band. I can't remember why it would have taken the three is so long to think about this, Steve and Jim had known each other since the Autumn of 1984. Could be that we had the collective lack of self confidence in ourselves as musicians and performers that can be in bred at school in Scotland.

However we did get together around March of 1990. Jim on guitar and backing vocals, Steve on vocals and me on rhythm guitar and bass. We worked out the beginnings of a set list and had a few practices in Niddrie Street in Edinburgh. The rehearsal spaces in Niddrie Street were quite an experience. They were in a kind of cellar complex. Water continually leaked in and I had my amp sitting in a puddle for the whole of one practice, I was convinced I would die for my art. If you needed to go to the toilet you had to go to the nearest pub, which was Bannermans in the Cowgate. I always found it difficult to go to the toilet there and not want to stay in the pub.

As ever, our set list was an uneasy compromise between the different band members musical tastes. As I recall, I didn't contribute many ideas to the song selection, so that may have also lead to some unhappiness from me over what we were playing. I can remember doing a version of Nick Cave's "City of Refuge" from his, then current album. I liked "Mercy Seat" from that album better. Though I did love our version of Altered Images "Insects". I liked the thought that I doubted that anyone else would have thought of doing an Altered Images cover. I also nicked, or "was inspired by", the chords in it's verse for "This is Radio Poohead", two years later. I don't think anyone noticed. Actually, there is a Robyn Hitchcock "inspired" lyric in that song too.

The real highlight of the set was the one almost original thing that we did. It was a version of "Wanted Man", which had been recorded by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. They lyric lists all the places where an outlaw is wanted:

"Wanted man in Kansas City, wanted man in Ohio,
Wanted man in Mississippi, wanted man in old Cheyenne" etc.

And it ends with the lovely lyric that goes something like: "The only place I'm not wanted is that place inside your heart":

But Steve re-wrote the lyric to give is a Scottish theme:

"Wanted man in costal Dysart, they want me in Kirkcaldy too" etc.

I thought this was great, Steve at his creative best. As this version of the song never saw the light of day, I felt I owed it to the world to write a song on a similar theme that became one of Ian's least favorite Pooheads songs, "Johnny Fife", my fife folk tale:

"Johnny went out traveling across the field of Burntisland
Traveling through Kirkcaldy to find his magic wand" etc.

We had the problem that we had with bands before though, no drummer. Our Niddrie Street practices were therefore drummerless, which made the whole thing less exciting. Tom's New Shoes had just got started at the time and in the fragments of audio tape I have of the Uppermost, you can hear the sound of them rehearsing in the space next door. They had a drummer so were a lot louder than us! I used to play guitar and bass on different songs, which lead to us sounding even more funny. By that time I had got rather bored with bass and the guitar seemed more exciting. Also I never thought I was any good at the bass, which most people seemed to agree with.

As usual, I taped more or less everything we did on my faithful old Marantz mono cassette recorder (bought in 1982 to record the audio of Blake's Seven off the telly, we had a video by this time, but tapes were horrendously expensive!), but we had the normal problem of tapes going missing. Steve lent one to an ex girlfriend of mine, although she wasn't a girlfriend of mine until 1995. I think Steve was into her at the time, he may be trying to impress her. I don't think she was impressed and we never got that tape back. May be a good thing, as my memory of it was that it was not very good. There was only one rehearsal tape that survived and I made a compilation of the bits of that that were reasonably ('reasonably" being a relative term) presentable and that was the only record of this band I had for years until I found the original tape when I was preparing to move to the states and I realised that I had indeed preserved the only bits worth preserving. The complication is only about 20 minutes long as well.

The same girl that Steve was trying to impress with our Uppermost tape had a friend who was much more impressed at the time with Steve and they ended up getting married and having five children together. They got together at the same time as The Uppermost were trying to get off the ground, so I think Steve's mind began to be elsewhere. The girl became known by Jim as "the Yoko Ono of the Uppermost", I thought he seemed to be taking the whole thing to seriously. My interest waned at the same time too, for not as good a reason as Steve's. I think I missed working with Ian, I think we understood each other better. We must do, we have been making music on and off now for 22 years. So The Uppermost fell to bits leaving only a great Scottish version of "Wanted Man" and some chords and ideas I stole for Pooheads songs.

Actually, the Pooheads were born around 18 months after the end off the Uppermost, it seemed that there was a longer gap between the two at the time. I suppose time goes slower when you are in your early '20's.

So why was I thinking about The Uppermost this weekend? Well I found a fragment of a demo tape of ideas that Jim Macdonald made and gave to me to try to get some ideas going for songs we could do. I was not immediately taken with many of the ideas. This is always awkward as it's difficult to say to someone that you don't know too well that you don't like something they've done. I think there were loads of versions of a Scottish folks song called "Wild Mountain Time" and maybe a Johnny Cash song or two.

But one song really stuck in my head and has grown on me over the years. For reasons I can't recall, this was one of the first songs I digitised in 2000, when I first got the equipment. This is a good thing, as I struggled in vain to find the original tape in 2005, so I may never hear Jim's version of "Wild Mountain Time" again.

The song that survived is called "Even Now" and over the years I've been fascinated to know if it was a Jim Macdonald original or a cover. The last time I saw Jim was at Steve's stag do in 1991, so we have been out of touch for a long time. I find the song fascinating though. It has all these strange jazz chords in it. Actually, the same jazz chords that prevented the Pooheads from doing their own version of it, probably a good thing. But the lyric. What a lyric. Weirdly compelling, strange, disturbing and slightly sick. Like some tragic art movie in song. In truth, Jim had a better voice than Steve and his performance on this demo was just right. I can just imagine listening this on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Scotland watching the rain slide down the windows. It's chilling in a spooky kind of way.

One of my theories is that this could have been a poem that Jim set to music, it sounds like the words could stand up on their own right without the music.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the song is posted here:

http://www.andrewcrescent.com/page6/page8/page8.html

The level is quite low, so if you listen please turn up your computers. It's also pretty hissy as the MP3 was made from a second generation analogue copy and was probably originally recorded on basic equipment.

I'd love to find out if anyone knows what this song actually is. Or maybe it is indeed a lost potential Uppermost classic? From a quick check of the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, it states that "Even Now" was Barry Manilow's second album. I don't suppose it was the title track of that.

Talking of Edinburgh bands of the early '90's, my next web project is a Tom's New Shoes tribute site. Well somebody's gotta do it. Andy J, the guitarist of the band that was named after me, has dug up a ton of material so we got a lot to use to put a site together. I have obviously forgiven them for having a dummer and being louder than the Uppermost in Niddrie Street.

So maybe if "Even Now" is a lost classic, all that standing about in puddles in Niddrie Street in 1990 will have been worth it.

Friends of Europe Sunday

I was at the Friends of Europe meeting on Sunday. I've been going here around once a month since November 2005. The organisation started just at the right time for me, when I was looking for ways to meet new people.

Click here to check out
The Bay Area Friends of Europe!

This is run by a guy from England called Geoff and he has put together a website to publicise the group - www.bafoe.org

I took a load of photos, which Geoff has uploaded, you can see them here:

http://euro.meetup.com/80/photos/?photoAlbumId=175085&photoId=1567419

This was the biggest, in terms of the number of people we had there, ever. Loads of people from different countries.