supergrass in san francisco

April 10, 2026Leave a comment

I’d been back from Europe for less than a week and I was off again, this time down to San Francisco to see a performance by the band Supergrass. I had been planning this for ages, and would be staying overnight in the city. I got into Supergrass back in 1995 when I was still just about a teenager, but in all those years I never got to see them play live. They were doing a special tour playing their first album I Should Coco, the mark its 30 year anniversary. Now is the real resurgence of the old 90s Britpop bands, coming back out and playing again; we saw Pulp for the first time in 2024, then they brought out a new album in ’25, but the big news comeback was the massive reunion tour of Oasis (another band I was well into but missed seeing live). I knew there was no chance I’d get to go to that tour, since it sold it out so quickly, and tickets were astronomically overpriced. Supergrass though was such an exciting prospect for me, I loved that youthful optimistic first album, but I was massively into their second album In It For The Money. My friend James in England (fellow Supergrass fan when we were at uni) saw them at the Roundhouse (and was standing next to James McCartney at the show) and had told me how good it was, that they also played a bunch of other classics as well as running through the album. So I was well looking forward to it. Then the night before leaving, I was talking to my wife and she said that, well you know Oasis are playing in Los Angeles this weekend, there are apparently still some tickets. Yeah, but I’m going to San Francisco to see Supergrass, I can’t do both. Why not, she says. We looked, there were still some good seats at the Rose Bowl on Sunday evening. Sure, but where would I stay at this short notice? Flights would cost so much, too days out. As it turned out, I had a Southwest credit from a cancelled trip to Vegas earlier that year (I had planned to fly down meet my friend in Vegas, who was participating in a big poker tournament, but he had to cancel due to illness). My wife was able to find a room at a nice hotel in Pasadena on points, and so I booked the ticker… this was going to be the big 90s Britpop weekend, Supergrass and Oasis, 19 year old me would be freaking out with excitement, and it only took me thirty years and a lot of mileage to finally see them. Sure I was still exhausted after the long summer trip but as they say, here we go.

I took the Amtrak down, sketching the view from the window. I planned to hang about in the city during the day before checking into my (cheap) hotel, and going to the show. I’d be getting up next morning to fly from SFO down to LAX, but as always I try to fit in as much extra sketching as I can, because there’s NEVER ENOUGH SKETCHING is there. I jumped onto the Muni, and headed out to the Inner Sunset area around Irving Street. I like it up there. I drew some of the colourful shops (and then didn’t even colour two of them in). Sketching in the bigger portrait format like this I tend to do larger drawings, and they tend to take a bit longer, and I tend to get bored drawing them. But I enjoyed standing out on this street watching everyone go by and drawing these buildings, I know I have sketched this row before (see how it looked in 2010 when that ‘Easy Breezy’ cafe was a placed called ‘Tutti Frutti’). This place must have a contract that when it becomes something new, it should still have a rhyming name.

I had some lunch in Crepevine on Irving Street, and sketched a couple of people chatting in my little brown book. I just liked the pinks and greens.

Later in the afternoon I went over to the Little Shamrock pub, opposite Golden Gate Park. I have sketched here before; they still have one of my drawings on the wall, which I did back in 2013. It is one of the oldest pubs in the city, established in 1893. I sat on one of the little benches outside and sketched in pencil, but regretted the pencil I was using and wish I’d drawn in pen. It’s this two-page portrait format, it seems like a good idea, then I get bored and impatient with it, the bigger size. Still it’s good to sit and observe. I was being observed by the people at the bar, who would occasionally come out to have a look.

When I was done, I came in for a pint. It’s cash only, I rarely carry cash any more. I do like the interior, there is a lot to draw and usually a good atmosphere, on a Saturday afternoon. I’ve never been in the evening. I sat and sketched this interesting little corner, and then turned and drew the bar area. I used my fountain pen this time. I think I was a little conscious of time, and unwilling to really dive into too many details. I still had to get back to Union Square and check into my hotel, eat something, then head to the Supergrass show.

So I did that. My hotel was the King George, and it was a bit crummy to be honest, the room was pretty grim. I was going to stay in the nice new hotel next to the Warfield, but figured I was not going to be there long enough to need anything nice. In hindsight I wish I had; the couple of blocks or so between the King George and the Warfield were, well very sketchy to say the least, classic Tenderloin. It did not feel very safe walking down there during daylight, and I’d have to come back this way after dark as well. A lot of very dodgy people hanging about, it’s not a great place to be by yourself. I got to the Warfield early; it’s a fantastic venue. I last went there in 2015 when we saw Noel Gallagher, and the acoustics were very impressive, like being inside a gramophone. A lot of famous bands have played here over the years. My seats were good. There were some Italians seated next to me; I was wearing my AS Roma shirt. The opening band were pretty good, I did do a quick pencil sketch of them singing about the A1 road in England (or maybe it was a song about European paper sizes, I don’t know). Then Supergrass came on, and I was 19 again. Well no, if I was 19 I’d have been pogo-ing about down in the crowd and not wearing glasses. They were really good, for being older (they weren’t very old when they first started so we’re about the same age; singer Gaz Coombes is a month younger than me, the drummer Danny Goffey shares my birthday but is two years older, the bassist Mick Quinn – not the former Coventry and Liverpool striker – was born in 1969 so he is ancient). We all look good for our ages I think. Supergrass had a lot of fans in San Francisco, mostly of a similar age to me. They played the whole of the I Should Coco album, including my favourite track from that, Sofa of My Lethargy, which I used to listen to over and over in my old bedroom in Burnt Oak. They stopped and started on a couple of tracks, maybe a bit out of practice, or maybe some of the album tracks are just well difficult to play live, they were really creative with their switching of time signatures and interesting chord sequences. This was live music though, man, and it felt pretty real, hearing these songs I only knew from my old CDs being played in real time. Watching the drummer put in a proper shift. It was great stuff. They played a few other classics, including Richard III, which I rocked out to in 1997, Late In The Day, and Sun Hits The Sky, which definitely had a different element to it as a live track. There were no fancy theatrics, just really good live music. They finished with Pumping On Your Stereo, which was never my favourite of their singles but had a fun video, and was a feelgood way to round off the show. Well enjoyed it.

I didn’t enjoy the walk back to the hotel. Market Street after dark was not somewhere to hang about, and there were plenty of spaced-out unpredictable people outside the venue. I took a slight detour away from Mason Street, which was dark and foreboding but was the quickest route to my hotel, and grabbed a chicken burger in Carl’s Jr a block away, though that was a fairly scary experience itself, like I was stuck in a scene from Blade Runner. When I finally got my greasy tasteless food, I left the grotty fast food place and headed towards the hotel. There’s an Irish pub on the way that I remember going to once (with my Mum, when we stayed down here years ago; she actually loved the Tenderloin), Johnny Foley’s, so I popped in to have a post-show beer and sketch. There was a band playing old 60’s numbers, they were really good. I sat at the bar and sketched it, while tourists from China came in and drank pints of Guinness next to me. It was then time to to go to bed, because I had a long day ahead of me on Sunday – Oasis in Pasadena.

Regent Sounds Studio, Denmark Street

September 5, 2024September 9, 2024Leave a comment

Another in the series of London drawings to hang on the wall. This is Regent Sounds Studios on Denmark Street, off Charing Cross Road. I’ve already posted about the state of Denmark Street in a recent post. So I won’t here again. I have drawn this before, a couple of years ago it was, in a panorama that included Wunjo next door. This was the actual place the Rolling Stones recorded their first album in 1964. This is what I love about London, you can just drop things like that. They recorded more music there, and so did many other famous acts. I like the guitars they have in stock, I never bought one from there though. If I had a big house, and a lot more money, I am sure I would be picking up guitars all over the place. My Instagram algorithm certainly things I should be, every other post is advertising this Fender Acoustasonic, that Danelectro 12-string, this Luna classical, that Meteora bass. They really want me to have loads of guitars. I probably need to get better at playing them, but I am ok, I like playing what I play. I can’t sing for Jaffa Cakes, but I don’t care, I grew up in a family where having a singalong in the back yard is totally normal. When we were back in London we took my Mum on one of them double-decker bus Afternoon Tea tours, it was nice, a lot of fun. They mostly played Abba while driving us around, but I had the idea (which I didn’t start doing by the way) that there should be a Cockney Singalong bus tour of London. That would be brilliant. Go round London for an hour or so, cup of tea and a few slices of cake, and everyone sings the old Cockney songs, “Let’s all go down the Straaaand, ‘ave a banana”. Interspersed with a bit of ‘istory of course, black cabbie knowledge really. I know a lot of people who drive the black cabs and they know a lot of the history. Seriously though it would be a good laugh and very popular. I don’t live there no more though, so someone else can have the idea. Even rig up a little piano, an ol’ Joanna. I’d have to play my guitar though, or my ukulele, I never learnt tinkling the ivories beyond what I taught myself on my keyboard as a teenager. Anyway. I wanted to draw this as another slice of London that meant something to me, and in fact I’ve put this one up for sale in the Pence Gallery’s Art Auction which will held be later this month if you are interested in bidding. Visit the Pence Gallery website for more information.

Belle and Sebastian! At the Fox, Oakland

June 4, 2024Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see Belle and Sebastian! They were on their US tour and playing at the Fox Theater in Oakland, which itself is an amazing venue. I have sketched the Fox before, on my one trip to downtown Oakland back in 2021. Belle and Sebastian are for sure my favourite band (outside the Beatles), and they always give a brilliant show with an unpredictable setlist. Unlike most other bands they mix it up every night so you never know what songs you will get. I had a wishlist and almost all of them were played, even some I honestly didn’t expect. Here’s the setlist. I went with my wife and my son; it was my son’s first ever big concert so a big deal. Even though we were sat quite high up and far back, those were the best seats I could get, and it was a full house. The frontman Stuart Murdoch was entertaining as ever, a friendly story teller, and the band really played well, the sound carried around wonderfully. There’s nothing like a live gig to really feel the realness of a musician playing their instrument, playing songs that I’ve been listening to for so many years, and there they are right in front of me. My son’s a big Belle and Sebastian fan too, we both got t-shirts and got super excited when songs we love would suddenly come to life. My wife likes them too, the only other time we got to see them was when they played in Davis at the Mondavi Center in 2015 (how amazing that they played in Davis! Playing songs that reminded me of that first hot summer in Davis, cycling around with their new album in my head). I do listen to then a lot. They played Lazy Line Painter Jane during the encore, one of those early songs that made me love the band, and finished off with Another Sunny day, from their 2006 album The Life Pursuit, which brought me right back to that first year over here so many many years ago now. It was a fantastic concert, one that we couldn’t stop thinking about afterwards. I just want to see them again now! I wish I could see them in Scotland. I did my sketch of the venue in the little Moleskine before the gig started, so I could still see the detailed scenery, though not that well and I just wanted to draw quickly. I sketched them when they played onstage and added the paint in afterwards, mostly I just wanted to clap and sing along. Thanks for the great show!

festive times on campus

December 20, 2023December 19, 2023Leave a comment

The long Fall quarter is finally over, though it hardly seems possible, and we’ve entered the holiday break before the winter quarter, which is also shaping up to be quite busy. So it’s the time for festivities. We went to the Staff Assembly Winter Warmer event, which was fun, with delicious hot chocolate and cookie decorating, as well as a performance by the all-female a cappella singing group ‘The Spokes‘. They were really good, and so I sketched them performing (and had them all sign the sketch after). I also did a little sketching at our annual department Holiday Party (below) at the Student Community Center. We didn’t have any signing there (we’ve done karaoke in some previous parties, to varying success) but we did have some fun games like Bingo and Secret Santa. And a very nice hot chocolate bar. Tis the season for hot chocolate! We also had ornament decorating, which I love, except a red acrylic paint pen exploded all over my hand. It looked like I was covered in blood, and took some scrubbing to get off.

i hear you’re a bassist now

May 30, 2023May 30, 20232 Comments

The number of instruments in this household is slowly rising. Just before Christmas I got myself an early present, finally getting a bass guitar, having never had one before. I played one a few times at school, but since then I’ve never picked one up. I am a massive Macca fan, so I decided to get the Höfner violin bass, with smooth flatwound strings. It’s light to pick up, being hollow-bodied, and shorter scaled so not massive. I would like to get a massive bass (though I’d have to describe myself as a Massive Bassist), a big heavy Fender, because they’re so different, but I have been really loving learning bass on the Höfner. I’m a beginner, for sure, but I learned a few riffs years ago and have been getting my way through a bunch of Beatles and Motown stuff as I try to learn bass lines. Got a lot to work on, especially regards technique – I know there are a few ways to play, and I still primarily play in a similar way to how I play guitar, but I’m slowly getting the hang of that bass plucking (though I tend to pluck at my guitar like a bass sometimes anyway). I don’t play with a big booming bass map, rattling the teacups of my neighbours, but I use a small practice bass amp that has a nice clean sound to it. I’m sure I have some work to do with setting it up properly, I might take it into a shop to help get it sounding just right. I struggled a bit with fret buzz, particularly on that top E string, and adjusted the truss rod and the bridge a little bit, though the latter is not easy on the Hofner. It turns out that when the weather is very wet, when we had all that rain, the sound is different to now when it’s dry and there’s a lot less moisture in the air (fret buzz has gone). I’m no expert, and don’t really see myself ever being one. I still enjoy my little Lake Placid Blue Squier Tele, I don’t actually plug it in very often and it’s my go-to when I need a quiet strum. I’m still not a particularly skillful guitarist, I have been improving a bit as I’ve been playing more but being all that good was never a high priority for me, I just like to play what I play. I’ve played guitar since I was 13, and my brother got me an electric on my 14th birthday (still have it, but it’s back in London, it needs a lot of work, and new frets, but is otherwise still a lovely little guitar). I still have my big Ibanez ArtCore that I got in 2006, though I never get that out of its case, and never really loved that guitar. I got some good sounds out of it for sure, but I guess I let it sit locked away for so long when I spent years not playing at all. I had gotten very self conscious all of a sudden years ago that actually I was pretty shit at guitar and didn’t want to even try any more. I rarely even picked up my acoustic, my beloved Hohner that I got in 1996 in Charing Cross Road, except to occasionally strum through a bit of frustration. I can’t say exactly what prompted this sudden dismissal of my instruments way back when, I had been writing some music and made some decent little tunes (decent in my head, anyway), but decided it was all a waste of time. It’s only in the past year or so, I think basically since watching Get Back, that I’ve said no, I want to play music again, and I don’t care who thinks it’s shit, it belongs to me. Also, a few years ago my wife got me a ukulele, after our first Hawaii trip, and I slowly started playing that and absolutely loving it. I’m not out there going to jam with others, play in front of people who are expecting cool bluesy licks and the sort of expertise you’d expect from someone who has apparently been playing guitar since 1989 to be able to muster up, but I never got that good when I was a kid, and I’m only playing for me as an adult. But I’m learning, my own way, and now I’m picking them up regularly, every day, and trying to learn new songs and lines bit by bit. It’s fun, music is fun, not something I’m making a song and dance about, but I really enjoy it. What I love about the bass is that I am approaching like an absolute beginner too, so basically everything is new, even if it’s not really. Plus it looks cool. I think at school I veered towards the guitar because I thought the guitar was obviously cooler than the bass, which was easy and plodding, and nobody could really hear anyway. Now of course we all know, the bass is bloody cool, and as a Beatles nut this one looks so cool. This is the start of a beautiful friendship (and, if I’m not careful, a beautiful collection).

yuletide ukelele

March 23, 20233 Comments

I know it’s nearly Spring Break, but since we are still catching up with the end of 2022, here’s something that took up a lot of my time last November. Every year, I make an advent calendar for my son, and every year I feel like I have to outdo the previous year, or if not outdo, then at least do something different. Last year I didn’t make a calendar so much as painted Studio Ghibli images onto 24 round plastic baubles, filled with coloured paper and candy, and placed them on a small tinsel tree. This year, my son has gotten into playing the ukulele in a big way, so I decided that would be the theme for this year. I would make a ukulele shaped calendar. Then as that idea got itself into complicated knots, I realized, why not make an advent calendar out of a real ukulele? I had a cheap one lying in the cupboard that I bought at an ABC store on Maui a few years ago, when I was desperate for a ukulele to play on the beach but had left my nice Luna one at home. I think it was about $25. It plays fine too. I thought about putting an LED light inside and covering the palm-tree shaped opening with a coloured gel, so that it would act like a lamp when hung on the wall. I tried that out, but in the end never added the LED due. It’s an idea I’ll still explore though, I like the idea of hanging playable ukuleles on the wall that can also act as colourful lamps. Now because I’d had so much fun last year painting with acrylics in tiny detail on curved plastic surfaces, I just knew that was the way to go with this project. It was still trial and error though, and the smooth lacquered wooden surface, once painted over, never got as smooth again, though I did add layers of acrylic varnish to make it shine a bit. This was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

But an Advent Calendar needs windows, and how was I going to do that by just painting the wood? I didn’t want to cut windows into the uke – it’s a soprano, small enough already, windows would basically destroy it. What would be behind the windows? When my son was little I would add in pictures of the things he was interested in that year, TV shows, our cats, places we had been. I’ve created a few with candies and stuff inside window boxes, impossible on this one. I decided I would do two things: add scenes from our favourite Christmas movies and shows, the ones we always watch, but painted on in acrylic rather than stuck on. I would also, around the edge, add in the names of Christmas songs that could be learned and played on the ukulele. That meant this would take aaaaages, but that was a lot of fun. In the end I decided to do a third thing – there would be a holiday song to play for every day, 24 in total, with chords and lyrics printed onto a small piece of paper that would also be behind the window, whatever the window itself would be. I spent a lot of time making those, figuring out the chords, getting them in the right key. But how will those go behind windows? I decided to use round stickers, with little tabs beneath them to easily pull them off. The stickers should stick easily to the acrylic and be removable without peeling off any paint (ever tried to remove acrylic paint from a plastic palette? That takes a bit more effort than a little sticker). That totally worked. However, try as I might, I could not add the songs, no matter how small I printed them, with those behind the stickers the sticker would not stay in place, especially on the curved edges. So, I decided to put the songs, along with a little candy snack, into the windows of the old 2020 advent calendar, the one designed to be a model of our house. For the ukulele, it would just be the reveal of the images, but I really had fun painting those. I’m not going to show you all those (I always keep them just for us!) but here are some of them. I loved doing the Home Alone window, with the iron mark on one of the Wet Bandit’s face, and I was dreading attempting to draw the flippin’ Polar Express onto a tiny little circle, but I was really pleased with the result. The Feliz Navidad image was nice and simple, and also based on the logo of Red Star Paris (and my wife got me a Red Star Paris football shirt for Christmas). You can see below also the in-progress painting of the front, which I did last, but started with all the Hawaiian hibiscus flowers, and there are the snow-people on the beach, who first made an appearance in the hastily-drawn 2019 Hawaiian advent calendar (drawn on my iPad on a flight back from England).

It was a success, and my son and wife both loved it. And yes, we even played some festive songs on it, though I’m not sure how many of the Christmas tunes my son actually learned, but he’s getting really good at the ukulele, and is now getting pretty skilled with the guitar too. It’s good to have a bit of music and a bit of Hawaii in your life.

the other side of Denmark Street

January 9, 20232 Comments

Back to London last July. After a day’s touristing with the family – we went to the Churchill War Rooms, then wandered about central London until my feet hurt – I stopped off at one of my favourite old streets, the centre of guitar shops and music people, Denmark Street. Just off Charing Cross Road, round the back of the recently redeveloped Tottenham Court Road station, this was the center of the British music industry for a long time. Tin Pan Alley. As London has been pricing anything good out of existence for a long while now, but of it have been falling away and I was worried to finally come back and find it all gone down the pan. There’s a few old places no longer there, but I was pleased to still find a lot of places to mooch about looking at instruments, the character still exists. So I drew the street looking southwards, across from Wunjo and Regent sounds, and stood drawing until my feet hurt. This was intended as a sister piece to a panorama I drew of Denmark Street back in 2014 (see below) looking northwards, before major redevelopment started in the area. The 12 Bar club was still there, and Macari’s; I was saddened to see Macari’s on Charing Cross Road had closed recently, that’s where I got my beloved acoustic guitar that I still have. After drawing that picture years ago I learned about “Save Tin Pan Alley” – http://savetpa.tk/– which is devoted to preserving this historic and culturally significant London lane. As a guitar-obsessed teen I was often too shy to go into these stores, fearing that I would suddenly be found out and laughed at. They soon became my favourite places, though I still won’t get down an electric guitar and plug it in unless I know nobody is there to listen. They have different guitars than you see in a lot of guitar shops in the States as well. This past year I have finally rekindled my love of the guitar, having abandoned it for well over a decade, and got myself a new guitar, the Lake Placid Blue Squier Telecaster, as well as a Fender electro-acoustic for my son who is learning. Just last month I finally got myself a bass, for the first time in my life, and I of course got the Hofner violin. I should have been playing bass all these years, I love it, and the Hofner is nice and light, especially with the Flatwound strings. I need to fix the fret buzz though. Apparently I should adjust the truss rod, but I’m a bit nervous about that. I also need to fix up my old electric guitar in London and bring it back out here, the one my brother got me when I was 14, the Westone Concord II. I re-strung it and cleaned it up, but the third fret is pretty worn down where the B string hits it, making it hard to play an open D. Teenage Pete played that chord so much it filed away the fret. Maybe on my next visit I’ll take it down to Denmark Street and see if someone there can fix it. I’m still pretty basic with my guitar playing, and I don’t mind that, but it is nice to be back messing about with guitars again.

back to where you once belonged

February 4, 2022February 4, 20222 Comments

I bloody loved Get Back. Peter Jackson has done an amazing job with all that old footage from the Let It Be sessions, it really was like getting the Beatles back for a little while. I have so many things to say about it that I can’t even say them, so I continue to re-watch it, to listen to other Beatles buffs talks about it, and then re-watch it again. It’s an absolute joy, compelling to watch. To say that it has re-sparked my life-long love of the Beatles is an understatement. At the same time, I was also recently given the massive new Paul McCartney book The Lyrics for Christmas, which I’ve been eagerly anticipating and listening to Macca interviews about it for the past few months. So I’ve not only been listening to all the old Beatles stuff but many of my old Wings and solo Macca stuff, which I loved so much when I was a kid. On top of that, I have pulled the old electric guitar out from under the bed, the one I bought in 2006 and haven’t played since about 2009, it has been locked away in its hard case under the bed like a spaceman in stasis. It’s an Ibanez Art-Core AFS-75, in black. It has been nice catching up.

The Beatles were the band that made me first pick up a guitar in the first place, back in the 80s. My friend and fellow Beatles-nut Ralph had a guitar, so I got one for a fiver at a car-boot, but it was a pretty crap acoustic, so on my 14th birthday my brother got me an electric guitar, a Westone Concord II. I need to finally bring that old thing back from England at some point and fix it up, give it new pick-ups, make it a project. That’s what I actually learned to play on, though I was never very good and couldn’t do anything fancy, just play chords and do the the odd bit of finger-picking. It was easy to play though, easier than my Ibanez, which might look and sound better but never felt completely right. I think I’m a bit intimidated by this one. I would write songs, so many songs, it was always about trying to create, come up with new tunes. Anyway in 1996 while working at Thorntons chocolate shop in Oxford Street I went out on my break and bought a Hohner acoustic guitar at Macari’s on Charing Cross Road, which from day one had a beautiful warm sound, and it still has. I have brought that with me, to Belgium, France and over here to California, and it’s my favourite guitar. I got the Ibanez after moving to the US – my second Ibanez, actually. The first one, a black electro-acoustic I bought in Cotati a week or so after my arrival, broke when it fell over softly onto the carpet. So I went out and got this one as a much flashier replacement. I enjoyed it a lot and even recorded a few new pieces with it. I love playing with music, even if it isn’t exactly sophisticated, I just love it. And then I stopped, for some reason I just stopped playing entirely, and wouldn’t even pick up my acoustic. This lasted for years, and I was off guitars. I wasn’t any good, so that was that. I got a ukulele a few years ago after our first trip to Hawaii and loved it, so for the past few years I’ve been playing that off and on, and I love it, the gentle sound. I’m still learning but it’s already one of my favourite things. So I started getting my acoustic out a bit more, but not wanting to disturb, played quietly or when people weren’t home. After watching Get Back, my old Beatles love made me want to just be strumming, all the time, so I was on the uke or the acoustic as much as I could. Certainly on our trip to Hawaii I played a lot of ‘Here Comes The Sun’, which was optimistic given all the rain we had. Then last week I remembered my electric guitar, hidden away under the bed like a secret. I dragged out its heavy hard case, unhooked the clasps, and released it from its plush blue bed. Now the next bit should be, “and then the years fell away as I played a melodic solo, my hairs standing on end, I was back.” But that would be completely false because I was never that good a player, and the truth is I never felt comfortable with this guitar. It was nice playing it again, but it still felt like it could never be fully in tune when playing open chords (I felt the same back in 2006), I’m mentally used to the fretboard on my old electric, and I’m still sounding beginner-level clunky when it comes to riffs and scales. I feel a bit unworthy of such a fancy looking guitar. I think I’d hidden it away for so long because I thought, well I might just sell it. But then, you know what, I found that I could do a few things, and why not learn, why not take this time to improve? So that’s what I’m going to do, play it more often, try things I wasn’t able to do before, see what comes out. I got some new strings, I’m going to put them on this weekend. It feels like a new guitar, to the point that I feel surprised when I listen to the old recordings from 06-07, I did actually play it more than I thought. And I even drew it back then – see below, along with the chords of a tune I wrote called ‘Angry Words’ (ironically I didn’t write any words to that one, the tune was all in the lead riff). So now ‘m watching a lot of YouTube videos on doing this and that, and it feels like starting over, like an absolute beginner. Just like a sketchbook and pen, I loved having a guitar in my hands when I was growing up, it made me feel that little bit safer.

angrywords

midsummer indigo girls

January 25, 20203 Comments

This will be another long post. I really did do a lot of sketching in 2019 and this is all from the same day. Apart from the sketch below, which was done at lunchtime (and coloured in afterwards) it’s all the same evening, midsummer night, June 21. I definitely haven’t already posted these, have I? I had been asked by the Mondavi Center at UC Davis to produce some sketches for their annual magazine, which is called “Gateway“. To do so, they invited me to come to the Indigo Girls show in an official sketcher capacity, to draw some of the outside, the lobby, and of the show itself (the last part being done in near total darkness). It was a fun night. The above was sketched outside the main entrance as people started to arrive.

I drew some people outside the Mondavi Center arriving for the show. I got there early, picking people who stopped in one place, but I did some quick sketches of people walking past. I don’t think these people were together, and they didn’t all have flowery clothing, I added that in for fun. I sketched the ticket warden (or whatever they call them) because I loved how they stood out in their smart black and white, and they were all friendly, they usually are at the Mondavi.

I was asked to sketch people in the lobby area, so I grabbed a wine and a place to stand. As it turned out I knew quite a few people who were attending the show, it was a popular one.

And then it was time for the show. I was actually given a special seat, though it was in near-complete darkness. The opening act, Chastity Brown, was really good, I loved her voice, and she talked to the audience, as you can see above. Then below, the main event started. I was able to sketch some of the audience in between the shows, and also when lights were down. There was a lot of purple and blue light, and I struggled to see my pasge, but the music was great, and sketching to music makes the pen move so easily.

I used the zoom function in my eyes* in to get a better look at the performers (*I squinted real hard), the two main guitar-playing singers (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) and the very performative violin player in between them (I don’t recall their name). For some reason I needed to write down the chords.

Anyway, a fun evening was had, it was a good show. So eventually the magazine came out in the Fall, using the outside sketch on the cover. Here it is!

i wanna see some history

January 14, 2019January 14, 2019Leave a comment

Here’s a little bit of my past, a drawing of an old concert ticket I still have, the Sex Pistols comeback show at Finsbury Park in June 1996. It’s pretty worn out – most of that wear and tear was from being in my pocket while pogoing around with 30,000 other sweaty punk rockers on a very hot Sunday evening. I went with my uncle Billy, and my Hungarian friend Andrea (we lost her during Skunk Anansie, one of the many supporting acts). I had been a Sex Pistols fan since I was about 13, when Billy first played me some Pistols records at his flat, but never thought I’d ever get to see them – I was not even two in 1978 when they split up. When the ‘Filthy Lucre’ comeback reunion tour in ’96 (with Glen Matlock back on bass) was announced, we had to go, and the Finsbury Park gig, being in Johnny Rotten’s home area (he used to go to the same school as my dad actually, but much later), was going to be great: support from loads of old (and new) punk and similar acts, most exciting of all for me being Buzzcocks, another group I’d always wanted to see (and never saw again; RIP Pete Shelley, by the way!) I had been at the Hellfire Club on Oxford Street the night before, practicing my pogo, Iggy Pop was on stage right before the Pistols, shirt ripped off, all abs and muscles and dancing (I couldn’t relate) and then it was time for the Sex Pistols and it was loud and crazy and too much fun, going right into the night. We were at the front, crushed against the barrier, barely able to move. I remember there was a woman next to me cheering and dancing, and behind her this lecherous bloke made many gross moves on her, and didn’t stop even when people called him out; I’m happy to say I elbowed him in the face as I was pogoing to ‘Seventeen’ and he sodded off. It was a crazy night. I went over the top of the crowd eventually, the crush at the front being a bit much, and then jumped up and down for the rest of the night in the middle of the Finsbury Park crowd. Rotten gave a massive fun performance, I remember him announcing “Fat, Forty and Back!” (I was Skinny and Twenty). They rattled off all the classics (they don’t actually have that many songs so it was basically their whole catalogue), in front of an audience that was probably larger than the total number of people they had ever played in front of, combined. Well, their largest gig ever. Not exactly how I grew up imagining Pistols gigs – in some sticky-floored ballroom jumping up and down on broken glass, or down at the 100 Club with cracked ribs and sweat and smoke (though there were those things), and not exactly Manchester Free Trade Hall, but I daresay a few bands were formed that night too. Andrea must have gotten home on her own, and Billy and I found his car on the other side of Finsbury Park and sped back to Burnt Oak. Wicked, we just saw the Pistols, no big deal. Not going to be going on about this for the next twenty years or so. It’s especially more fun telling people about that day now that I live in America, where people are more impressed, “oh yeah I saw Buzzcocks supporting the Pistols,” like it was in 1976 or something. It does go down as one of those things I’m glad I went to, and glad I went with Billy, and I’ll remember it all my life.