Posts by pwsadmin
Ch. 49. Olwen, Rock Jingles & the Free Press
Two years later, the CD release of ‘Let’s…’ was followed by ‘The Dream of Olwen’ for which we held a release party at the Café 322, Sierra Madre on August 7th, 2010. Earlier in the year we’d arranged to take some pictures at El Matador Beach, Malibu for the album cover which would reinforce the…
Read MoreCh. 48. Auditions and other things.
My deal with Mr. Goodrich wasn’t the only ‘miss’ in the 60s. I had other encounters with musicians and other music related projects that didn’t come off for various reasons. Some were auditions that were fails but going right back to the beginning, first there was a talent contest that I entered, and which was…
Read MoreCh. 47. ‘Jazz Gigs in LA’ and the Return to Brondesbury Park.
Work for our new small group started to trickle in with an occasional gig here or there and the inevitable personnel changes that occur in a developing enterprise. For the first two or three years we had a fairly stable line-up of Gary on keyboard, Matt Otto or Javier Vergara, tenor sax, Ryan McGillicuddy, bass,…
Read MoreCh. 46. Coronation to Platinum & the Jazz Wedding
I suppose the biggest event in my early years growing up in Moredun was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It took place on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey, the thirty-ninth British Sovereign to be crowned there. The Coronation service used on such occasions descends directly from that of King Edgar of Bath in…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch.44 – Endings and More
I referred earlier in these musings to notions of the ground shifting beneath my feet and not, I should add, in relation to my presence in Southern California but rather, unconnected real-life events occurring simultaneously. It was the early 90s and the now slimmed-down UK business was bumping along in the North Sea and elsewhere…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch.43 – Lost in Quezon City
One evening after a communications class I’d enrolled in at Pasadena City College, I was walking back to collect my car from the parking lot when I heard the sounds of a big band coming from what I later learned was a gym. It was a warm, summer evening in the late 80s/early 90s and…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch. 42 – Brick Walls and Shysters
We had probably been in California three or four years when Mary took it into her head to place a call to Vancouver and finally settle this thing, one way or another, for good. By “this thing” of course, I’m referring to the matter of my origins and how I came to be here, on…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch. 41 – Changes
When the group, ‘Listen’, broke up and all the extensive national press coverage, the Parlophone record release, the BBC2 ‘Whistle Test’ appearance and the Radio 1 Pete Drummond session, in additional to all the other radio airplay, when all of this ultimately came to naught and further, my continuing search for another group plus the…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch. 40 – Immigration
When I left Edinburgh in 1967, I would tend to go home for a visit maybe two or three times a year to visit family and friends. As the years flew by however, gaps between trips became progressively larger, even more so after 1980 when my parents moved from Hyvots to Grantham in Lincolnshire to…
Read MoreOut of the Camp Ch. 39 – Dima, New York & Andy Williams.
That was the way things were left for many years, aside from one or two attempts that Mary made by writing letters describing events that led me to their door in Vancouver; about our story, family and sending photographs. We didn’t ever receive any response and so just got on with our lives for the…
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