I am Sam

I am Sam

I'm new to the art of Blogging, so I'm writing with the hope it all comes together at the end and makes some sense. I'm also writing with the knowledge that no one will read this unless I tell people I have a blogspot. Do I want to do that?

I was introduced to Blogging on Tuesday. Giles (Vibrants' singer) and me had the pleasure of seeing a gig in a pub called The Bedford in Balham featuring Rachel Fuller, Pete & Simon Townshend, Foy Vance and Mikey Cuthbert. It was a free gig for 250 lucky people. If you were 251 in the queue then you were turned away. Most of the people in the audience were bloggers and knew about this intimate occasion because they read and contribute to Rachel, Pete, Mikey and Mikey's girlfriend Rene's Blogspots. I found out about the gig when Laurie, Vibrants' Hammond player, said he'd seen it advertised in The Times a couple of weeks ago. The whole gig was great. I'd heard Mikey's stuff before and been in the studio when he's been working but had never seen him perform live to an audience. I was told that he was very nervous prior to coming on stage but that didn't show at all. I was really chuffed he recognized me actually. Simon Townshend produced a demo for us at Oceanic (Pete Townshend's studio) a couple of years ago. I'd never seen him perform solo so It was great to see. I was blown away by his final song 'The Way It Is'. Foy Vance was the only artist on the night I wasn't familiar with. WOW! This bloke can f**king sing! He came over from Dublin at Rachel Fuller's request after she'd performed with him at Ronnie Scotts. It's hard to describe his voice. You need to see him live. This is starting to sound like I'm reviewing the night. I'm not trying to. It already sounds better than the one in the Evening Standard though. Rachel Fuller's set was great. It was her night, she thought it up and organised it and got all the artists to play for free. She was the headline act but the last performance of the night was from Pete Townshend. Apparently he hadn't done such a cosy, intimate gig for 30 years. He joked that his father once told him that if you start playing for free, your career is as good as over. Anyway, I felt very prevailed to be there right at the front by the stage watching his set. All the acts joined the stage to do a version of 'I'm One' at the end. Excellent! Review over. I was talking about blogging wasn't I? It seemed like the whole theme of the night was 'Blogging' and 'Bloggers'. Each act mentioned their very own Blogspot and invited people to check it out. I was chatting to people after the show and they encouraged me to create my own Blogspot. So I have. I find it difficult to write about myself and what I'm doing. I don't assume you'll find it interesting. It's great if you do though. I'm still asking myself why I'm doing this. I'm writing this whilst I'm at work. I wish I could say that I was a full time musician but I need to work part time selling phones so that I can pay bills and buy strings. It's a shit job but it's really flexible so when something comes up like a gig or a meeting, I can shift things around to suit me. Got rehearsals tonight. We're going to work on new material. Things are bubbling along nicely for The Vibrants and the next few months are going to be exciting. We've got a gig coming up on Saturday @ Dirty South, Lewisham. We're told it should be quite busy. It's always best doing gigs when you can play to new people. Too many promoters in London don't actually promote and they expect bands to bring 40-50 people to satisfy their overheads. Bands then scrape together the same 40-50 people that come to all their gigs and so therefore never reach a new audience. So, here lies the answer to why I now have a Blogspot: to reach a new audience. Cheers