To Dither Or Not To Dither

The gig at the King’s Head Theatre pub on Monday the 2nd of June was fortunately free of over-enthusiastic dancers. This did not induce me to dance myself. I’m sure everyone there would have been relieved had they even thought that I might have contemplated it. Actually someone did ask me if I danced at all. I think he has been conditioned to believe that live music has to have musicians who dance. He’s been watching too much television.

On the next day, Tuesday, I did get to do a number at the Metropolitan with Jon Taylor and Christin, the cello playing friend. An unusual line-up for “Shake Rattle and Roll” but let’s live dangerously. The rest of the week seems to have passed in a haze of some kind, or maybe it just wasn’t exciting enough to register on my overworked memory cells. However I do remember turning down various invitations to other “Open Mike” events.

Not so the following Monday where once again I joined Jon for the final number of the evening. On Tuesday we got to do two numbers and managed to get people dancing to “Help Me” and “One More Time”. This proves to me that musicians don’t have to dance. Again I managed to turn down invitations to other open mike nights.

One of these was on Wednesday and my excuse was the particular pub charges too much for beer. The other was on Thursday and I fortunately had another engagement. Whilst I am pleased to support live music in pubs, rather than listen to DJ bump-and-grind, I’m in two minds about Jams and open mike scenes, because I think musicians should be paid. Is this being open-minded or hypocritically undetermined. I don’t know, but if the Prime Minister can be accused of dithering, then I reserve the right to dither.

Incidentally, the reason for turning down the Thursday night invitation was that it happened to clash with bassman Jim Mercer’s birthday drinks party. This seemed to require at least two different watering holes in Putney but it’s good to get some exercise in between drinks, isn’t it? At pub closing time, I managed to turn down the offer to continue the party at someone’s house, though I did almost dither.

On this coming Sunday, we’re back at the Oval in Oval Road, East Croydon. The line-up should be Bernie Pallo and Al Vincent on guitars, with Jim Mercer on Bass and vocals and Dino Coccia on drums. I shall of course pretend to be in charge. On Thursday 19th, we are at a new gig, The Kings Head Pub in Upper Tooting Road, which is apparently a good Victorian style pub. They conveniently drop the apostrophe which helps to prevent confusion with the King’s Head Theatre Pub in Islington. I mean confusion for me, of course, not for anyone else.