Last night I went to the Eel Pie Club in Twickenham where Bob Hall was joined by Top Topham for another evening of nostalgia. I define nostalgia as anyone who has been around as long as me and is still playing blues. Other people who say that nostalgia’s not what it used to be, are thereby proved wrong. Of course, they may have another definition, but I like to get personal about some things and however you define it, I’ve been around long enough to have picked up some nostalgia. 

Bob often played piano with the first version of Savoy Brown. Incidentally one of Chris Youlden’s songs from a Savoy Brown album was used on the US TV show, CSI-NY, or whatever, the other week. Is that nostalgia or what.

 I also met with Roger Trobridge who is running the Cyril Davies website. Roger wanted a couple of copies of the British Blues Review, a blues magazine which I used to edit. The particular issues were about the early days of British Blues, in fact the earliest days, which Cyril and Alexis Korner were lynchpins . I had done an interview with Chris Barber who brought over Bill Broonzy, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Cotton, among others. Cyril and Alexis worked with Chris Barber of course.

I see that the natives are getting restless. I refer to that impertinent young brat, Mel Wright, responding to my previous comments with a lengthy missive. I knew I shouldn’t have bought him that last drink. True he did spark off this present notion of nostalgia by referring to an old venue in Soho where we used to try to impress French girls in the old days. Needless to say, they were not impressed.

Despite all this nonsense about the past, I did enjoy last Saturday evening in Soho. There were some great reminiscences about Bruce Langsman, who was a real character, something sadly lacking on the scene at the moment, according to my current guitarist, Bernie Pallo, as we drove to the monthly gig at the Inn on the Green last Sunday evening. Pianist vocalist Jamie Rowan was our dep for Chris Youlden this month and as usual did a great job. Despite that, I hope we may not need a dep for next month, but we’ll have to wait and see how Chris progresses by then. Let’s hope he decides he’s ready to resume soon.