blakejonesmusic
local music, local arts, The Underground Garden

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A drummer can serve many roles in a band.
Our pal John Shafer is sometimes the electricity and fireworks that sends a song over the top. Oftentimes, due to his keen ear, he makes himself an integral part of an arrangement that keeps a song alive and breathing.
We all know the man can play the drums, but he also has a sharp eye for noticing the unique and interesting along the way. Since many of his pictures capture a dimension of our trip that I’m probably not conveying with just the ‘travel log’ or ‘narrative’ approach of the blog, I’ve included a few of these images here. These shots are from the at-this-point-not-yet-written-about Day Seven of our trip. We were in London with a day off to be tourists.

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Another interesting thing about John’s picture taking: he takes pictures of groceries.
On our last band trip to Liverpool (2007), he spent a bit of time photographing rows of baked beans, dog food packages, and breakfast cereals. Enough so, that the store security sort of had to ask him about it. (You know, these American cereal terrorists and all…) Here are some pictures of one of the fruit stands on our street in London.

Thursday, May 26 Bolton-London

What started as a full day of travel (Olly’s house in Bolton) to London, ended
with a rocket-fire evening walking tour of the ‘great monuments of London’.
We took the train to London’s Euston Station , then took the tube to Golders Green–the neighborhood of London we’d be staying in for the next few days. The weather had been mostly kind to us throughout the trip, but it was really pouring down strong as we lugged the luggage up Golders Green Road towards the King Solomon Hotel. At this point…we were just a bit tired. We’d really filled our days and had been moving at a fast pace since the moment we’d started this trip. After getting drenched, we took…it was maybe a whopping 45 minutes or so downtime in our rooms before meeting up again. Then we decided to have dinner locally–just down the street. There were a number of restaurants, most of them marked ‘kosher’(except for the KFC!). Golders Green is a strongly Jewish area. Our hotel rooms all had the little wooden mezuzah attached to the doorframe—I’d never seen these before, and most of the guests were speaking foreign languages or had strong foreign accents. ( I didn’t recognize the speach…could have been Hebrew? or some Eastern European languages? Some of the folks we met who worked there were Serbian..some Polish.)
We ended up eating at an Asian Vegetarian Buffet down the road. Pretty good stuff, and Leland being a vegetarian was happy to discover this place. ( He seemed to have a pretty easy time finding appropriate meals all through our trip…until we hit the Phoenix airport on the way home (and the flight there wasn’t much better….’um, we had one of those vegetarian things…but now we don’t’.)

After relaxing and catching our breath, we hopped on the tube thinking we’d go see Leicester Square and nearby Picadilly Circus; get a taste of London while we still had some of the evening left.
We took the tube to Charing Cross, walked over to Leciester Square (which as all boarded up in the middle and under construction), then over to Picadilly Circus and basically began a night of whirlwind power-walking all over central London. We walked down the Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace (which looked nice lit up in it’s night lights), then over and around to the area near the river that has Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
The Houses of Parliament had a sort of protest/camp-in thing going on(close guantonimo/stop the war)–seemingly to coincide with Obama’s visit which was happening pretty close to the time of our visit.

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It was a great high to be walking around on a beautiful night in London. Rain had been predicted off and on throughout the days we were staying in this town, but only on that initial walk to the hotel did it actually come down. The lights were gorgeous, and with most of our shows behind us, I think we’d felt that we were already quite happy with how things were turning out. One more show to go, and tomorrow set aside to be ‘tourists’. Life was good.
We were looking at Westminster Abbey…and I was convinced that this couldn’t be the ‘front’…cuz it looked like a side view…no matter how gorgeous it was….so the rest of the gang agreed to try and ‘walk around the block’ to the front. Well, it wasn’t as easy as all that. The ‘block’ wasn’t exactly square…and it was a bit of a maze, and a few of the little roads seemed quite small and deserted and reminded me of one of those ‘Jack the Ripper’ or Hammer Studios horror movies set in foggy Victorian London. Well, we soon made it back to a more well-lit and noisy area..and saw what may or may not have been the ‘front’–it was definitely marked as the ‘entrance’ if you were attending services—the ‘tours’ went to the ‘side’ –the one you see in our posted picture here. Later, if I can figure out how, I’ll post a short video that John took….hope it works here on the blog–it’s just of us standing and enjoying the scene on the bridge over the Thames and waiting for Big Ben to toll 11 o’clock. You can also see the Millineum Eye (the gargantuan Ferris Wheel) on the other side of the bridge. For now, here’s a photo of the big clock itself.

Wednesday, May 25 Bolton-Manchester

[note: I know there were some nice photos taken of this night's gig in Manchester. I'll post them when I track them down.]
Woke up to the great hospitality of Olly’s house. Lots of good stuff there for us for breakfast..and then Olly gets up and makes us (the non-vegetarians in the group that is) Bacon Butties (bacon sandwhiches on white bread with butter—mmmmm so delicious and heart-friendly too!). [They were awesome.]
Then Olly got us packed up and off on the motorway to his school in Manchester.
It’s a small music industry oriented college that’s built around a former commercial recording studio. They have fascillities for folks to study performance, recording, artist management, DJ’ing—anything that’s in that field. Olly said it’s a bit of an experiment at this stage. Very cool though.

We set the instruments up in a large classroom, then went into another to be ‘interviewed’. We were trying to discuss the things that might be relevant to them: how we funded the tour, how we set up a tour so far from home, etc. Of course the ever-present theme of ‘community’ was discussed, as well as how the International Pop Overthrow festival really set the framework for this particular tour—and served as a real mechanism for ‘community’ once again—even meeting Olly was through this festival’s network.
So we spoke, and then went next door for a couple of songs: “Sun Up” and then to the theremin for “Miserlou” (the theremin’s always a big hit). Nice kids (I keep resisting using the term ‘kids’…but relative to us ahem…’veterans’ (laughs), yeah.)
One young lady, when hearing of my worries for my voice, produced a packet of cough drops (often called ‘sweets’ in this country) that she said Tom Jones swore by. (They were pretty potent!)
After this presentation, we loaded up a nice pile of gear borrowed from the college for tonight’s gig. When piled onto the parking lot it was hard to believe it was going to fit into Olly’s little Ford Fiesta….but applying great ingenuity….he made it work.
(As the picture above shows…)
Next, we all went downtown on the tram (around here we might call it a “light rail”. In Germany, I was familiar with these rides as the “Strassenbahn”. We went for a bit of a walk through Manchester’s “North Quarter” neighborhood—lots of record stores, independent clothes shops for hipsters, etc. Fun stuff. We got a little bit of gift shopping done for the folks back home.

Olly took the tram back to fetch his car and the gear. The rest of us roamed over to look at Manchester Town Hall–a wonderful and massive Victorian beauty of a building. It was just after 5 o’clock, so we suspected it was closed for viewing, but we went through the door anyway.

The older man at the desk said,” I’m sorry, it’s closed.” A moment later, he adds,” But if you’d like to look around in the lobby…go right ahead” The place was a wonderland of long, arched stone hallways. In another moment, the man says, ” If you’d like to go upstairs, I’ve called ahead.” So we walk upstairs, and there’s another older gentleman…at first he looks unsure, but then, here we go again, we get the full-on private tour! (Now some of this might be put down to the friendliness of the people [certainly a factor], but the serendipitous timing of all these ‘lucky tours’ we’re getting really did feel like we were having some cool gifties dropped into our laps by Someone Upstairs.)


After our tour of all the grand meeting rooms, council chambers, etc. [one of them had recently posed as the "House of Lords" in the most recent Sherlock Holmes movie], we wandered back over to the Tiger Lounge (our venue for tonight’s show) and saw that Olly had beaten us there. We loaded the gear, set some things up and generally got ready.

The Tiger Lounge was a cool and kitchy basement club. Various decades of ‘retro’ were spread around the rooms. Apparently , on DJ nights, they only spin vinyl. Very Swinging Bachelor Pad. I was drinking copious amounts of tea and hot water–and sucking on the Mighty Tom Jones Cough Drops.

When the entertainment began, the host for the night, a guy called Stuart, played a couple of sort of Nick Drake-type style songs. Very very good.
Then Olly did a set of his soulful numbers—excellent as usual.
Then came a sort of performance-poet guy called Martin (can’t remember his stage name). He set up various synth loops with some hand-held gizmos, and sang/spoke his poetry. Very engaging and quite good. This was definitely shaping into a night of extreme variety–but good stuff.
We were on next and we were all hyped up to play.
Apparently all the hydration and magic cough drops did their job, because singing was a joy. The band were white hot and rockin’. We were able to play a slightly longer set since we weren’t part of tightly scheduled festival, and we had a ball.
The theremin went over big again. “Dear Prudence” felt great—Neptune really played well–a most fortuitous choice for the position since Martin Hansen couldn’t travel with us this time. “Here Comes the Bus” was as “Who-ish” as could be, and John and Leland slammed it home. A very very fulfilling gig. We made some new friends and had a ball—AND the bar served us pizza afterwards. Nice.

Tuesday, May 24th—-Liverpool–Bolton

The big excitement this morning was the trouble the band had rousing me from bed. They expected I’d OD.’ed on the cough syrup I’d been drinking or something–but nothing so rockn’roll-dramatic: just sleeping like a rock (with the earplugs in)–by the third try, and with some louder knocking, I was up—and it was time for
THE DAVID SUMMERS WALKING TOUR OF LIVERPOOL!
Yes, like last time, Mr. Summers generously gave of his local knowledge and led us through a walk of The Dingle (the not-so-well-off neighborhood we’d been staying in and where Ringo grew up) and beyond. When you’re in a different (and to you) exotic country, every little building is interesting, but especially to us Californians where a 75 year old building is ‘historic’. That same cool red brick church, still beaten up, but now looking like they may be on the road to refurbishing it, was just ’round the corner, as was that funny fortress looking thing. First official stop: The Princess–the pub around the corner (and maybe 30 yards from) Ringo’s boyhood house. This was the spot last time where we saw some pretty weathered locals listening to a bunch of American country music on the jukebox. Today, it was still early, so fairly deserted.
Then trucking up this and that street, back to the back-to-back Liverpool Institute and Art College where Paul/George and John (respectively) went to school (it’s now LIPA, the performaning arts institute that McCartney’s contributed greatly to..and apparently each year hands out the diplomas for [cool perk for grads!]).
Then down up that street past the Ye Crack, a little cafe/pub where the students would often gather and a tad farther to The Philharmonic….very swank pub—looks like someplace that [name your fave Victorian fictional character but I was thinking...] Sherlock Holmes would stop for a brandy and cigar. It’s famous for its beautiful urinals! (no kidding…like an upscale English Madonna Inn–laughs).

After a drink and further chatting..we trucked on along and got to the MASSIVE Anglican Cathedral. Massive doesn’t even begin to describe this place …it’s massive hulk dominates the area, and it’s absolutely awe inspiring inside. I’m enjoying what looks like ..to my amateur eye, the cool mix of wood and brick work you see inside these English churches.

So we got inside the Jacaranda (another one of those “Margaret moments–see “Day 3″). The Jacaranda was a coffee bar, another one of those early Beatle venues. Below, in the basement/performance venue are murals painted by their friend (and sometimes Beatle) Stu Sutcliff–still preserved; thank goodness for the bad taste of the 70′s that covered these walls with wood panelliing rather than painting over them.
We then walked down to the river where we were off to take a “ferry ‘cross the Mersey”. At this point we had to say goodbye to our good friend David who was going back to his life in Lancaster. We poked around and did some souvenier shopping in the official Beatle’s shop at the docking area there…then had a nice sort of round-trip sightseeing ride on the ferry—a bit windy…but no more rain.
Then it was back to The Pineapple to grab our bags and say goodbye to that home-away-from home and the nice people there.
Then it was Lime Street Station—Liverpool to Manchester to Bolton.
Olly and his parents picked us up in two cars, loaded the whole gang and our gear in, and took us to their nice (and large) home in Bolton. Then it was off to a grand meal at a Victorian coach house just outside of town—a big traditional meal in a big traditional setting….roast beef, yorkshire pudding ( I skipped the ‘black pudding’)…the works.
Then back to the Neasham house where we were immediately treated like family. Rod (Olly’s dad) pulled out his eclectic assortment of LP’s to play and Gail (Olly’s mom) pulled out her original pile o’ Beatles albums–first time I got to really look at one of those early issue boxes of the Let it Be album–with the book inside and all (only the 2nd time ever that this Beatle freak has even seen one of these books). So good day just being travellers and tourists.

Mon. May 23rd Liverpool

Busy day—-
Went to the Casbah Club. Completely fascinating. (For the non-Beatle geek, this is the club Pete Best [original drummer for the Beatles]‘s mom opened in their family home’s basement. It’s a large-ish house on the outskirts of Liverpool.

Pete Best’s younger 1/2 brother Roag [pronounced Rogue] gave us the tour. Highlights: the ‘stage’ where the Beatles really did begin. And a carving in the wall where Lennon had scratched “John–I’m back”, when the newly turbo-powered Beatles had returned to the Casbah after playing in Hamburg for the first time …which was the conclusion of a story in which Lennon had had his ears boxed by Mrs. Best when he’d started to carve “John” in the wall during a previous visit.
Roag was a great and charming story-teller. If anyone in the band had had a small digital recorder in their pocket, his spiel would make a great keepsake. Hmmm. I’ll have to check with the more technically savvy members of our little group.

Afterwards, it began to rain and bluster pretty hard. The whole gang of us (band +Jaime and her mom Mary Ann + David Summer) met in the town center [after getting soaked trying to find a cab (and me still trying to baby my throat in what was like TV commercial weather for cold and flu season)]. We found an ATM that worked for us (not always easy) and an easy bathroom to access (McDonald’s)—and hey, don’t spread it around, but we actually just went ahead and ordered some grub there too…yeah I know “what? eating at McDonald’s while you’re in England?”…..but there ya go.
We were planning on taking the Magical Mystery Tour Bus (looks like the one in themovie) for their over-view of Beatle sites. (Many of us had done this on the previous trip..but some of us were new to this). After a bit of mix up….thanks to our Guro of Local Customs and Language David Summers for stepping in and sorting this out….we got a tour—Jaime and Jamie’s Mom on the bus, the rest of us in a Beate tour taxi. It was a great tour…seeing all the Beatle’s childhood homes, Strawberry Fields, and stopping for a goodly while on the Penny Lane intersection—then back to The Pineapple to get ready for this evening’s show.



The gig was at The Cavern Pub (just across tiny Matthew Street from The Cavern proper). The show went well—lots of good energy fueled by the fact that my voice was nearly there (as opposed to ‘very much not there’ on that last set at the Cavern). We were cut a bit short it seemed…but the band had a blast—esp. laughing at me as I’d call out songs and then proceed to play them in the wrong order…it turned into a tour-long laugh as I seemed to pretty much consistently do this.
Neptune and I hung out for maybe an hour watching bits of sets here and at the Cavern before going home early. The whole gang hung out in the pub–me and Neptune eating Tesco-bought sandwhiches (mmmm prawns) and drinking tea (yeah, we’re hardcore!) until bedtime.

Sunday, May 22nd—Liverpool

Went to church at St. Peter’s in Woolton (on the outskirts of Liverpool).In Beatle-lore,
this is the place, at a church fete’ (seems sort of like an annual village festival) that
John met Paul –John’s band The Quarrymen were performing at the dance in the church hall.
We found Eleanor Rigby’s grave in the churchyard (Paul claims that he didn’t conciously use it).
We were a bit early, and somehow it was found out we were musicians from California,and suddenly an older man was getting out his keys and telling us he had someplace we had to see. He took us across the street to the church multi-purpose room, took us inside and proceeded to give us a private tour. [This was the first of what we in the band were calling "Margaret moments" after a lady (Margaret) who saw us taking pictures in front of Ringo's house on our 2007 trip to Liverpool, and asked us if we might like to come inside----no planned or payed for tour---but a bootlegged-in affair just done for niceness. These things happened in such a serindipitous way ["If we'd been 5 minutes later or earlier...."] that it did feel like there was Someone up there dropping these opportunities into our laps.]
Turns out, this guy was there at that pivotal moment in Rock n’ Roll history. “I was 15 at the time”. He pointed out a painting done to represent that moment. “It’s not very accurate…but it’s pretty.”

Then it was back to the Cavern for our first show. This one was to be on the traditional ‘front’ stage. The one you see in the photos…looks sort of like a wine cellar with the arches, etc. The show went fine. I’d been drinking tea and water and cough syrup. There was a nice full crowd. Folks were receptive. There was an older, drunken eccentric wearing a jagerhut that kept trying to tell us stuff and ended up giving me two balloons for doing a good job or something on a particular song. I sang a bit tentatively, the other guys backed me up on the singing, and it went pretty well.

Our second set was another story! This one was in the larger, more modern ‘back’ stage. The first song was ok….by the second and third song…my voice was terrible. It turns out our song “Virginia Woolf” is a bit hard to sing when you can only croak out a range of a couple notes. It was very disheartening. We pulled it out of a tailspin when we went into the theremin songs. We ended with two rockers and it wasn’t so bad…but a bit of the enthusiasm had definitely been sucked out of the room. Once again, we pulled it out just a tad when I told the audience that I’d love for them to hear this band when the singer didn’t suck…and that I’d be down in the corner with a box of free CD’s for anyone who had had the patience to see us through this ordeal. We did make a number of new friends (and got some ‘pity’ drinks) out of this move. Lots of people were quite nice about it.
Both Jamie and Olly (our friend from Bolton who’d been touring the West Coast last summer and whom we befriended) and his dad all showed up about now. Olly was doing a set at The Cavern Pub that night. Neptune, Leland and I came back to watch it—good set. Many similair songs to what I’d heard last summer, but with a band that gave it a rockin’ Stones/Faces feel. The strange sideshow was a group of guys apparently in stag show—one of them (the groom to be?) was dressed in a duck costume one-sie complete with a little duckbill and tail. Ollie: “Cheers for dressing like a duck.”
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Fresno-Manchester-Liverpool (Fri., May 20th & Sat., May 21st)

Our first day was really two days long. (time zones and all that jazz).
We woke at my house at 3:32am (gagh!) Long flights, but good company.
Lauri had packed me a sandwhich (ah, love!). Leland had loned me his mp3
player (whats this 21st Century?). I remember listening to Nilsson’s “Harry” album
on the trip, and some early Who just as we were coming into Manchester (seemed
appropriate!) courtesy of the in-flight movie/music selections
one could make on the little screen on the back of the airplane seat.
Terrible long line for passport control, but easy passage, even after admitting that
we were musicians.
Relief and happiness abounded when we met Neptune (the only band member not flying the same schedule as the rest of us) at the train station adjoining Manchester airport.
The only worry remaining was my cold-ruined voice for tomorrow’s Cavern shows.
We stopped at our home-away-from-home The Pineapple (pub and hotel) as soon as we got into Liverpool. It was great to be back. These people treated us so well on our first trip here 4 years ago and we were glad to get reservations here (along w/ Fresno friend Jaime Holt [and her mom] and Lancaster,Lancashire friend David Summers—all due tomorrow—yes, we practically took over the joint.)
We took a taxi over to Lark Lane—a sort-of Tower District-like area where there were lots of places to eat, cool little shops, and most importantly–not the tourist-ey/price-eyness of the city center.
Since it was so early….about 1 in the afternoon, most dinner places weren’t open, but we had a great lunch at a cafe’ called Pistachios. I had haddock chowder and Chicken & Mushroom Pie. We also found a pet shop for John to look into as well as a small music shop that looked a little more like a hang-out than a business for the lone worker (“How much are you selling that Les Paul Jr.?” “Oh, I’m not sure I’m selling it; I might just play it for a while.”).
The rest of the gang went into the town center to say ‘hello’ to IPO festival head David Bash, show Neptune Matthew Street and the Cavern, etc.
I stayed in the pub, drank tea , wrote in the journal, and generally rested my voice before going early to bed.

If you’re curious about the tour itinerary, of if you’re in the UK area….here are
the gigs we have set up for our English tour!

Sunday, May 22—Liverpool
The Cavern—2:30 in the afternoon. (front stage..the one that looks all wine
cellar-ey)
***just added, another show at The Cavern this same day, but this one on the back stage—4:15pm

Monday, May 23rd—Liverpool
The Cavern Pub—6:30 in the evening.
(this is just across Matthew Street from the Cavern. Matthew Street is a small pedestrian-only lane lined with several pubs and clubs.)

Wednesday, May 25th—Manchester
The Tiger Lounge—gig begins 9ish, we’re on at 10:15.
(Thanks to our friend Olly Neasham for setting this up!)

Saturday, May 28th–London
The Bull and Gate—4:15 in the afternoon
(apparently Nirvana played here on one of their early tours)

So, there you have it. Besides enjoying the sites when we can, this is what we’ll be up to for the next couple of weeks. Thanks again to the many who have helped, in one way or another, to get us launched!

thanks to world atlas dot com for the map!

Thanks Todd and Pam Severson for the cool pic.

We had a great time last week at our BonVoyage/Blake’sBirthday show at Fulton 55 in downtown Fresno. Thanks to all who performed and all who attended. Lots of guests hit the stage. Besides the bands: The Dale Stewart Band, Poplord, Josh&Jaime (see the pic above), Trike Shop and The Escorts, we had special guests Lisa Kao and Ron “Doc” Morse join the fun.

Also, special thanks to FresnoFamous.com who posted this review of the show.

and thanks to Todd and Pam Severson for the pictures [the good ones up top]!
(and then there’s this one after we’d scavenged through the KFC and cupcakes (thanks Lauri!) and my mom’s famous potato salad!

and here’s Poplord…

and there’s several more good ones taken by Todd and Pam, but I’ll have to re-size them to make them fit here on the blog.