I love to go a wandering...

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Track of the Day
"The Apple of Your Eye pt 2" from "Splinterheart" (2010)

Playlist
UK - 2012 Setlist
UK - Night After Night
Charles Mingus - Ah Um
The Mars Volta - Octahedron
Various - Rock & Pop on Shuffleplay

Took ages to get to sleep and I woke at 5 - snoozed till 6:45 then, up for a tasty breakfast...



Checked out and onto the street towards St Pancras...





..and Kings Cross...



Picadilly Line...



...to Covent Garden...





...not yet set up...





Blue, blue sky above the National Opera House...





Walked towards Trafalgar Square...



...past the National Portrait Gallery...



...to St Martins in the Field...





...to check on today's lunchtime recital...



...enjoying Trafalgar Square...



..and the sculptures around the church - Odyssey by Robert Koenig...



Back through Leicester Square - still only 8:30 am...



...and into Soho but too early for the record shops...



...so continued up to Oxford Street and spent an hour in HMV from 9 till 10 - buying nothing...



...then, back into Berwick Street...



..to Sister Ray...



..and Reckless Records...



...in both of which, a haul was collected...

Unlike at Fopp - which did not entice...



...back to St Martins...



...for the Liszt and the Chopin...



I managed not to snore but must admit to dropping off a couple of times, despite the superbness of the music...

Back out into the sun but did not venture into the National Gallery...



...instead, made my way back to Covent Garden...



...now fully set up...



...and a gift for the Exec Producer was procured from this French lady...



Deciding against the Tate Modern, as I was running out of time, I took a walk through the environs...







...ending up back at Fopp where a couple of discs and Charles Mingus' autobiography this time enticed...

A rest in the gardens of this Soho church...



Before heading back to Kings Cross from Picadilly...



Back on board at 5:30...

Leaving London...



Reading and listening to Mr Mingus...



First stop, Peterborough...



Then, a change at York and my connection was half an hour late...



Eventually back underway, having to move seats to avoid a very annoying drunken Geordie using his mobile in the "quiet carriage" and smoking in the toilets...



Such small things can ruin a journey...

Darlington...


Durham - on the wrong side to view the cathedral thanks to the drunken oaf...




Newcastle...



Happily, said oaf alighted here, giving everyone some long longed for peace at last...



On into the night...



...and Morpeth - a further delay due to a beer can being stuck in one of the doors...



Onward as the sun was setting...







To Berwick Upon Tweed...



Over the river into Scotland...





Second last stop, Dunbar...



..and, finally, into Edinburgh only around fifteen minutes late...



Picked up by the Exec Producer and very glad to be home after an enjoyable 40 hours or so away...

Seemed a lot longer...

Highlight of the Day : Wandering in London...

Thirty (four) years...

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Track of the Day
"Black Earth and the City Falls" from "Splinterheart" (2010)

Playlist
Various - Top 20 Albums
Cloudland Blue Quartet - Starlightnight
UK - Live in Philadelphia 1978
UK - 2012 Setlist

Not much sleep and up super early to leave the house at 6:46 am...



The beast was about to be about its business in London...



To Waverley Station, ludicrously early for the 8:30 to Kings Cross...



On to the train, into the "quiet carriage" and ready for the four and a half hour trip...



...which flew by...



Newcastle at 9:53...



Darlington at 10:22...



York at 10:50...



And,from there, non-stop to Kings Cross, early, at 12:45...



Crossing the road to my hotel, just a couple of minutes walk from the station, at the end of this road, the greenish building in the distance is the hospital to which Anne and I accompanied Sister Pam late last summer...



But today is a day of happier times...

The hotel was cheap and cheerful - a very, very small room on the third floor...



In and out and back to Kings Cross station...



...for the tube to Fulham Broadway...



...via a packed Kensington High Street Station...



Far too early, so I took a walk around Fulham...

Here the Universal building...



Here, another building whose identity remains unknown...



Around 3:50, I arrived at Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge stadium...



...and, round the back, joined the queue of beardy weirdy prog-lovers awaiting VIP entrance into UK's only British date of their world tour...



In the queue, I got talking to a Japanese lady, Takoko, who had been to every one of the fourteen USA and Canada gigs and had flown yesterday from Los Angeles to be here...

As we waited outside, we could hear the soundcheck numbers wafting from the hall - it sounded brilliant - but then, I am biased...

Finally, with our numbers swollen to around 100, we were allowed in to watch the end of the soundcheck...

Eddie Jobson spoke to us from the stage, advising that drummer Gary Husband had joined them this afternoon and that this soundcheck was his only rehearsal before tonight's gig...

The sound was crystal clear, as they stop started and fine tuned a particularly complex piece, while I tried my best not to look at the setlist in front of the lighting engineer...





One more song then it was over...



...and the stage was set...



Mr Jobson and John Wetton came out and mingled with the "VIPs"...

I didn't speak with Eddie but did exchange a few words with Mr Wetton and, in true fanboy stylee, had him sign my notebook and my ticket, as I explained how I'd waited 34 years to hear this material live...



I also had a chat with Eddie Jobson's sister and their 90 year old dad, who advised he hadn't seen his son play live for over thirty years - later in the night, after thanking everyone for coming along, a tear was in Mr J's eye as he introduced his dad to the audience - "90 years old and at a rock concert!"...

Pre gig though, the room started to fill and anticipation was high...

Your correspondent was in the second row...





As the room filled up, he was trying his hardest not to look at Mr Wetton's setlist...





At 8:10, "Alaska" started and we were underway...

The first piece, comprising four sections, lasted 18 minutes - by the end of just the third, King Crimson's  "Starless" in all its glory, including the long, ever buidling instrumental section and hair up on the back of your neck finish, we were forty five minutes in...

I was directly in front of John Wetton's bass stack - what a sound!

The main set came to a close after another hour or so of absolutely top notch prog excellence...



An encore was a guaranteed certainty as the crowd went mental...

A further two songs from the second album...







It looked to be all over...







But we were afforded a second encore, with Jobson on piano and Wetton on voice and it as all over...



In all, every song bar three from the two LP back catalogue of the band was presented, along with two Crimson covers and a raucous violin/keyboard solo from Eddie Jobson...

People had flown in from Europe, the USA, Japan, Central and South America, Indonesia and China for this gig - and I thought I was doing well coming from Scotland...

And that was it, out, back to the tube station and to Picadilly Circus for a bite to eat...



...before heading back to the hotel around midnight, knackered but what an excellent night of music indeed...

Amazing to watch and hear this music I've loved for over thirty years being played live - Husband was brilliant considering the soundcheck was his only rehearsal and Alex Machachek efforlessly replicated the great Allan Holdsworth's solos from the band's debut album...

If they’re playing near you, do not miss this - Wetton was stonking - and Jobson must be one of the most under-rated keyboard geniuses of prog...

Absolutely worth every minute of the effort to be there and every penny spent on the trip...

Setlist
Alaska/In the Dead of Night/By the Light of Day/Presto Vivace & Reprise
Thirty Years
Starless
Carrying No Cross
Keyboard/Violin Solo (Eddie Jobson)
Book of Saturday (John Wetton)
Danger Money
Nevermore
Encore I
Caesar's Palace Blues
The Only Thing She Needs
Encore II
Rendevous 6:02

Highlight of the Day : Finally seeing UK live...

Poignant beauty...

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Track of the Day
"I Walk to the Beat of a Cold Broken Heart" from "Splinterheart" (2010)


Playlist
UK - Live in Edinburgh 5/5/78
Paul Buchanan - Mid Air
Paul Buchanan - Mid Air (2nd Disc)
dEUS - Keep You Close

The sun is going down...



On the fifth of May1978, I had the chance to see UK on their debut tour, just after the release of their first LP...

They played eight songs in 75 minutes - five of them were unreleased; two did not make it onto their second, final album the next year...

Bands took chances in those days...

I partied the night away instead and Sister Pam went in my place with her chum Janice...

Today, I listened the recording Pam made - if I listened really closely, I could hear her cheering and clapping...

Gone now...

It overcomes me sometimes, often...

Tomorrow, 34 years on, I will see the group play at last...

They will only play music written in the 70's...

The RPI in May 1978 was 49.61, last month it stood at 240.80 - so the £2.20 ticket from 1978 ought to have cost £10.68...

But it will be worth the £58 VIP entry fee and the cost of transport to the Big Smoke and an overnight stay to attend the soundcheck, meet the band and, finally, hear this music live...

Today, the Exec Producer very kindly collected the Paul Buchanan box from the Post Office...



Paul Buchanan's album is a masterpiece of melancholy - I am going that way - I have been for a long, long time...

It's no bad thing...

People often criticise my music for being too depressing...

But, somehow, Paul Buchanan's melancholy is strangely uplifting - in a way that can move a grown man to tears...

There are a few artists who make me feel like giving up making music, as the bar is just too damn high - this is one of them...

Poignant beauty...

And now, to the latest dEUS album...

Highlight of the Day : Paul Buchanan, Mid Air...