Live Music: and sometimes now we find it as memories set in the crumbling faces of buildings that once contained it. Six nights, and a matinee. You could make it big, or lose it all upstairs or downstairs: or in a small, rented room down the street and around the corner. Places with radiators that never worked except maybe in summer. If you were as clever as you thought you were, you might have run from this: the music business: like the rings of Dante's Inferno: concentric: eccentric: our time in the pit infinite: all of us looking upward as the black birds of Fate circled and picked at our wounds. If hope wasn't a sin, it might have been a chain around our necks. But we'd skipped school, and convinced the scruffy manager to finally hire the band for a week. Maybe somebody had cancelled on short notice. Or perhaps he had simply got tired of us hanging around bothering him. But there it was: our big break. And in we went: forever changed: not duffers anymore, not outsiders: not wankers: but part of it: players: real deal musicians. Destiny called, and we answered with enthusiasm. We took out union cards.
Live Music: inscribed in neon, or stone, or glass, or sometimes by a part-time sign painter who could work his dyslexia against a window for a few bucks. George was the guy in Toronto, and his sloperb handiwork could be seen distributed across the windows of the economy rooms around that city. "Live Music." "Dancing." "Girls Girls Girls." "Haircut." He was a big, hard drinking man who also worked as a nude model at the art college. He didn't care if people made fun of his shrivelled up little prick. Or if he did, he never said so. He played tambourine in a few punk bands, for which we bought him beers. His signage pointed the way to many of our little temples. There was a guy like George in every town.
Neon, of course, was a better bet. "Live Music" in blue, or red was very classy. Better than paint on glass. Some of these joints were built in the 1940's and 1950's. Not just bars, but lounges. "Ladies and Escorts." Dirty velvet wallpaper. Signs that sometimes flashed. High voltage investments from another age. These would cause noise in your stage equipment, and later: add taxi cab radio to your wireless guitar. But they did make a certain kind of proclamation: hot, or cool: and when the right light rippled on the skin in the right way you could easily imagine the rest. Imagination had a lot to do with it, while the dance floor provided opportunities to the brave. "Hey, man, did you know John Lee Hooker played here one time?" Boom, boom. What was the name of that club? Neon stages were just better: they had hotter lights: lights that parted the cigarette smoke and swirled it around in mysterious patterns. Mixed with neon, this fog produced the romance of the stage. Sex, drugs, rock'n roll, blues, heartbreak, sweat, the best solo you ever heard: anything was possible. You can still smell it on the old amps: neon dreams.
Under these Live Music signs we cut loose our dreams: we played, danced, and sang as if it mattered. We opened for Muddy Waters. We played pinball between sets. We stole each other's girlfriends. And now sometimes: maybe not often enough: it returns to us as memories set into the crumbling faces of the buildings that once contained it all. Traces of booze, and pretty girls, and poetry and pool. The best song you ever wrote. The record deal you might have had. The Super Reverb amp you lent to Elvis Costello one time. Live Music. Six nights and a matinee. You could make it big, or lose it all.
Still at it, my Dark Horse blues tour is teasing the blues around Bangor and East Belfast for a few more days before another stop in Dublin, and then: Sept 9 Cafe Myo, Cork Sept 10 Sea Church, Ballycotton Sept 11, Blackstairs Blues Fest, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford Sept 12, Blackstairs Blues Fest, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford Sept 13, Blackstairs Blues Fest, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford Sept 16, Crowley's, Kenmare Sept 19, Clonakilty Intl. Guitar Festival Sept 20, Clonakilty Intl. Guitar Festival Oct 2-4, TBA Free State, South Africa. More dates to follow...
The next best thing to Live Music is to ride with me to some of the world's coolest little blues venues. To join me on the Blues Highway- you can Like, Follow, and Share me on Facebook.
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