We went to see Peter Hammill in a (not very) glorified Restaurant

My great musical hero Peter Hammill does not play in the USA very often. I used to have a bootleg tape of him playing LA in 1978 and it was obvious from the crowd reaction that this was a rare and precious event. He was the second of my musical heros playing in 'Frisco in September. So I was particularly excited to find out he was playing over the water from me in San Francisco at the end of September. So, of course, we booked the tickets and went.

The venue seemed promising from the website, but I had reckoned without how different things can be in America....

This venue is called the Great American Music Hall, sounds good. However I'd say the people who run this place have absolutely no idea how to run a music hall, great or otherwise. I should have known what was going on when I was asked by their booking office if I wanted to buy a "Dinner Ticket or a Regular Ticket". Seems in America, you just can't escape food (in the same way you can't escape drink in Edinburgh). So you go into the venue and then realise that the people who buy the "dinner tickets" get the best seats, closets to the stage.

Worse are the army of people who work there, who seem to stand around and watch the audience just waiting to bark an order at them, or mutter a complaint. Seems like the "have a nice day culture" never reached the Tenderloin, where the Great American Music hall is. Sit in not quite the right place, or move a chair without their permission and the Great America Music Hall police are onto you. Welcome, we didn't feel - it was more like being back at school.

Even worse still, having given away the best seats to the people who buy their food too, the waitresses run around and constantly encourage you to buy drink from them as you are sitting waiting for the band to come on, with that old American euphemism - "you doing OK there"? For those of you outside of America, this means, buy my drinks and give me a tip!

Even more worse still, when the support band was on (who admittedly were terrible), the aggressive waitressing and even more aggressive great America music hall policing continued unabated, with the one of the waitresses shouting out a huge long list of drinks choices to a group of people and then wandering around shouting about who had ordered a plate of chips, effectively drowning out the support act from where we were sitting.

Incredibly enough, even more worse still, although the waitressing finally stopped during Peter Hammill's set, the bar and the Great American Music Hall police conspired to spoil the show as much as they could for us. The bar clinked glasses together, slammed the fridge door shut, and slammed the till door shut all the time and the Great American Music Hall Police (obviously being more Bon Jovi fans than the more cerebral Peter Hammill fans) got bored with the show and began to goof around with the waitresses and talk in loud voices to each other - effectively completely spoiling the more quiet parts of Peter's set - unbelievable.

As for Peter Hammill, he was great as ever. I first saw Peter Hammill live in London on the 14th of February 1988, over 20 years ago. Peter was 41 then and I was 21! Now I'm 41 and Peter is 61! It's always a spellbinding experience to see Peter live. I also was the ONLY PERSON THERE wearing a Van Der Graaf Generator t shirt - imagine that. One guy was asked me when I was in the queue for the toilet where I got it, jealousy is a terrible thing amongst Peter Hammil fans. At the beginning of the only encore Peter said "alas the night is young, but the singer is not" and someone in the audience shouted back - "neither is the audience". Quite.

Sadly though, due to the numerous shortcomings of the venue, this was one Peter Hammill gig I didn't really enjoy. Come on America, you can have a bar, or a restaurant, or a music venue, but if you try to combine all three, you end up with a mess like the Great America Music Hall. A visiting icon like Peter Hammill deserved better and I sure won't be back to your venue.

Singapore

Here I am in Singapore and I'm staying in the hugely large Stanford Hotel. Someone said it is the tallest hotel in the world. I'm not sure that is true, but I'm on the 18th floor and that seems pretty tall to me. I'm on a recruitment trip for Sun, trying to hire the first of our new Asia Pacific operation.

Despite what Amnesty International and Wikipedia say about Singapore's rather harsh penal code, I really like it here. It is small, but I expected it to seem crowded, but it seems just fine. Its very clean and I always feel safe, in a way I don't always in America with all it's poverty and guns.

Of course beer is bloody expensive, at it's worst it's SIN $ 14 ($ USD 9.45 / GBP 5.56) a pint, bloody hell! It's also bloody hot and humid, 31 C tends to be the temperature it sticks at all the time.

It actually looks foggy here, but it isn't. I came out of the air conditioning in my room, stood on the balcony and the camera lens steamed up.

It also rains quite a bit here.

There are also loads of British influences here. The plugs are square pin, you drive on the left and even the car license plates are like the old UK ones with the letter denoting the age of the car.

They even have M&S here!

This bar was by far the strangest UK influence though. Believe it or not, it is staffed by a crowd of young Singaporean people wearing kilts. The guy at the bar, when asked what beers he had, told me "Scottish Ale". When I asked him to be more specific, expecting an answer like "McEwans" or "Tennants", he told me, "ale, you make it with hops", quite. Seems they are a micro brewary and make it themselves and I'm happy to report it tasted like any other lager, Scottish or otherwise, although it was sold at the decidedly un-Scottish price of 5 and a half quid a pint!

Other highlights included a visit to Raffles hotel where you are supposed to be able to see the very chair that Noel Coward used to sit in (we couldn't find it), although for some reason the custom here is to eat monkey nuts and throw the shells on the floor, which seems to conflict with Singapore's clear image as you crunch around on all the bits as it makes quite a mess. Also I think we had a beer in the bar that the original Rogue Trader (although everyone seems to be a rouge trader now), Nick Leeson used to drink in.

Here is my video diary of the trip - edited mainly whilst sitting on a Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to Hong Kong. Sadly though the Credit Crunch may be biting the best airline in the skys, as apart from one sector, I was able to get three seats all to myself all the way, which was great and even better than first class, but sad that it may be a sign of a bad economy. Singapore Airlines even have in seat power in economy in their newer airplanes, so I got most of the work done on my India movie on the plane.

Eric! Wreckless in San Francisco

We went to see the first of two of my musical heros today. I think secretly, Eric does not really want to be known as Wreckless any more, but I think he has tried changing his stage persona a few times, but when you had your biggest hit under the name of Wreckless Eric, I suppose it's better not to confuse the public and stick to your original persona. Even in his mid 50's, Eric is still Wreckless.

Eric was one of the original artists on the iconic Stiff label, was a close friend of Ian Dury and he is one of the best and most idiosyncratic songwriters I've ever had the pleasure to hear. He's also one of the genuinely funniest people I've ever met, although I think the audience in "Frisco struggled a but with the more biting aspects of Eric's humour. The dialogue on Eric's "25 years at the BBC" CD between Eric and Mark Radcliffe (who is also one of the funniest people ever in my opinion, although I don't think he has aged as well as Eric recently), when Eric did a session for Radcliffe is priceless and it always makes me smile. The dialogue between Eric and Jonathan Ross on the same CD is worth a listen too, although I don't find Jonathan Ross very funny, Eric rose to the occasion. Asked if he liked tribute bands, Eric responded that he was thinking of forming his own tribute band as a tribute to himself - brilliant.

I last saw Eric in a year like 2004 in a tiny pub in Haymarket in Edinburgh and he played to around a crowd of 20. My mate Ian and I had numerous beers whilst watching him and ended up meeting him after and found him a great guy in person, very generous of his time with his legion of fans that were there that night. We even sang the opening lines to "Whole Wide World" together, as I always had a hard time working out the second line of the chorus. I found out later that Eric did what I often do when writing songs and got the music and lyric out of synch and had to kind of squeeze his words into not quite enough music, so I think he must get fed up explaining what that second line is. He even signed a copy of his 1991 classic "Donovan of Trash" which was on sale at the venue on glorious vinyl. Although Ian wanted him to sign it "to the Pooheads" and Eric misheard him and put "to the Pinheads" and Ian made him change it. I wasn't so sure that you should correct a punk icon.

his time around Eric played another pub, this time in Protero Hill in San Francisco. I never thought I'd see Eric in the US, but he has now married an American songwriter called Amy Rigby, so hopefully he will be here more often now. As one of those amazing pieces of fate or coincidence he met his wife to be in the same pub in Hull (he went to art school in Hull) where he first played "Whole Wide World" to the general public. Amy played "Whole Wide World" as part of her set and Eric approached her afterwards and told her his one hit only had two chords and she had them both wrong. Very Eric!

Eric is now doing shows with Amy, so it's really the Eric and Amy show now, or maybe the Wreckless and Rigby show. Generous as ever with his time, Eric and Amy were happy to meet the fans after the show and I was touched that Eric even seemed to pretend to remember me from our encounter in a Haymarket pub in '04 (he can't really, can he?). Eric maintains a very caustic and funny blog in his diary section of www.wrecklesseric.com and we had time to have a chat about his latest entries where he was having a go at fat badly dressed Americans - imagine that. Amy also has a good blog, actually on blogger, that is worth a read.

Eric and Amy also seemed cool with the audience videoing parts of their show. Although due to the fact that Eric and Amy didn't come on till around 11pm and me (punctual as ever) insisted on us being there at 9 which is what the ticket said, I had a right few beers before Eric came on (which actually never seem quite as enjoyable or acceptable in America as it does in Scotland, shame about that) and started singing along, especially when he played old favorites like Reconez Cherie or Kilburn Lane and therefore spoiled another tape by singing along. Some things never change.


Eric's diary is at www.wrecklesseric.com, Amy's diary is at http://amyrigby.blogspot.com/

Drowning in Treacle

I'm surprised by the largely positive reviews of this film. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I'm a European living in California. We went to see this movie on the back of some positive press reviews. It starts well, but I was misled by it's start. I thought this was going to be more of a skeptical movie about the way religious people fool themselves into believing what they want to believe (a little like the sentiments behind "Life of Brian"). But no, the start is deceptive, as the film progresses, it actually wants to start to make you believe that a stain on the wall of a (supposedly) terminally ill mans house is the face of god, sheds blood and has magical powers. Sorry, I couldn't suspend my disbelief and the whole film then fell apart for me.

The lead character is supposed to be terminally ill, but his disease is unnamed, which I suppose is a good thing as it's difficult to believe what it could be as his only symptoms seem to be stubble and a craving for vodka and pizza. There is of course a beautiful woman who just happens to live next door who just happens to have a cute troubled 6 year old daughter, who of course the lead character falls in love with.

The whole thing descends into nauseating, saccharine, formulaic cinema. Towards the end I was beginning to laugh out loud in the cinema at the predictable happy every after ending, it seemed almost like some kind of spoof or wind up it was so corny.

But I suppose, if other people liked this then maybe it's a cultural thing. The US is a much more religious country than mine. I suppose that explains how George Bush got in - right?

How Environmental are Body Shop?

Sitting here in temperatures of a max of 37 Celsius today, you can't help but think about all those huge tanks called "SUV's" in this country, and what they could be doing to make matters worse. As everyone moans about the surprising early heatwave, I'm thinking about all the environmental damage that may be causing some of these temperatures.

So co-incedentally today, the above Body Shop product arrived at our house. I have no idea what it is or what it does but I do know that the little product (the little silver thing) arrived in a huge package that was pretty much 8 to tens times it's size. Aren't Body Shop supposed to care about the environment?

Back in Banglore

I'm back in Bangalore this week, we came here on Singapore Air, who tend to be a class above the normal economy class airlines. We stopped off via Hong Kong, where the first thing I saw when I left the plane was an advert for the Royal Bank of Scotland.

We are staying at the wonderful e-Inn in Electronics City. The e-Inn is a totally vegetarian, non smoking and (of all things) non alcoholic hotel. It's also got a jolly good free wireless network, which has got heavily used this week to play the BBC and do cheap and free calls on Skype.

We went for a walk on our first day round the local area. It was the first time I'd walked round a genuine Indian urban street, we are usually driven around and just see the chaos that India can be from the car window. I love some of the funny signs you get here, I'm not sure you could be openly advertising for ladies in the west.

Happily, although we were the only western looking people in the area, no one seemed to pay any particular attention to us.

I'm not sure who this person on the building is meant to be.

Yes, this is really February

We had one of those wonderful weekends last week in Santa Barbara. As you can see, the weather was wonderful. A real Californian experience, on the beach, and only early February!

Having been distracted by my new Nikon SLR, I'm now back to using my Leica more again and I think this photo set is pretty superb.


So, having had a particularly Californian weekend last weekend, I'm having a particularly Scottish morning. After literally years of trying, I've managed to persuade the BBC streaming audio server that I'm in the UK and am enjoying Aberdeen v Hibs. Aberdeen just scored!


I've also had a ton of new material for www.kirkcaldybands.com including the deeply wonderful picture above of Nationwide and the equally wonderful pic below of the Gimix. Nationwide look like something out of the 60's here! Scotty even has hair.