Open-air Beer Drinking

Canada: Brampton Fair.
Note wire fence, security guards, plastic cup, mandatory red plastic ID wristband. Click on the picture for enlargement.


Spain: Supermarket car park.
Note footed glass, gourmet sausage.

Nothing to grumble about.

London Bobby's Last Public Performance went very well, place was packed and nobody left during the show! Wow! So maybe not the last performance after all. Have to be careful though, don't want to quit because the last performance is lousy, want to go out with a bang!

Did three hours of songs and comedy without referring to lyrics. Wow! Apparently I only need a set list.

Now I have to be careful about this blog, many more like this and will have to change the name from 'Bob's Daily Grumble' to 'Bob's Daily Brag'. A lot of the credit for the success of the evening goes to Pauline, the lovely gaffer of the Winchester Arms. The place was warm, cosy, convivial, just what a pub should be. It made it easy to entertain. Thanks, Pauline. The rest of the credit goes to my fans who showed up to support me, thank you everybody.

London Bobby, time-traveller from the previous century, bringing the good music with me.

London Bobby -Final Public Appearance!

Well, maybe. Depends how it goes. Soon, though, the damn keyboard is getting heavy.

When London Bobby appears tomorrow, September 26 at the Winchester Arms, in Dundas, Ontario, it may well be the last kick at the cat. This pub is managed by the same folk who had the Winchester Arms in Streetsville where London Bobby appeared in the 1980's. It is a good place for a party, see http://www.winchesterarms.net/

London Bobby's Pub Night, inspired by the music hall of 1930's London, is an anarchy of songs, comedy and audience participation. The songs date from the last century but still go over well, even the young pub staff like it, to their and my surprise. Pleases me no end!

However, I will be retiring soon. My style is a bit mellow for modern ears and real pianos have all but disappeared.To all who have followed me for so many years I give my heartfelt thanks. I hope you have had as much fun out of listening as I have had performing for you. Thank you.

My name is london Bobby and I am a time-traveller from the last century.

In this cage - wicked drinkers.

My first experience of a Toronto pub was trying to get into a bar where the girls were. A very large gentleman demurred and pointed out the wall down the middle of the pub and the sign that said, "Ladies and escorts only". On the other side of the wall was where dirty old drinking bastards like me should go. The decor was 1940 toilet (this was 1953 when I first hit Toronto) and the chairs and tables were Salvation Army basic. Several male waiters walked around with trays loaded with small glasses of unspecified draft and, unasked, slammed down two glasses for the newcomer and demanded twenty-five cents, imagine! You had to be seated to drink, you couldn't take your glass and walk over to another table if you saw a friend and you sure as Hell were not allowed to sing. These were the laws of the LCBO. By God we will make a profit selling the stuff but we sure as Hell won't let 'em enjoy it.

In 1971 they relented a bit and I persuaded the owner of a Greek restaurant to rename it "The Barmaid's Arms" and hire me to sing English Music Hall songs and get the crowd singing. He had quite a tussle with the LCBO to get the name approved with the word 'bar' in it, people might think there was booze in there.

Last Sunday I went to the Brampton Fair. Several stalls sold hotdogs and hamburgers but if I wanted a beer I had to go through this gate with security guards, into this wire enclosure and, get this, wear a red identity band on my wrist. I think the beer concession was being operated by the same people that do those private-enterprise prisons.

What depresses me is that when my friends in England, America and anywhere else in the world except Moroccco read this they won't believe it but my friends here in Ontario will just sadly shake their heads and say , "Yup, that's the way it is". I want to run into the street shouting, "Rise up! Shake off the oppressors!" and make a bonfire of red wrist-bands but it is hard to be a revolution all by myself. Come on, you lot, rise up!

My name is London Bobby. I am a time-traveller from the last century and some things haven't changed much.

Search for excellence. Success! and failure:(

I love piano bar! Good music, pleasant atmosphere, a smiling pianist/vocalist and a grand piano with seats around it, direct interaction with the customers, an inclusive civilised way to drink. I found an ad for a small Italian fish restaurant, "Piano bar on Thursdays". I went for dinner and the food and wine was great. So was the music, cool and jazzy. So why am I not going to hurry back?

Failure: Well, it wasn't a piano, it was a keyboard with rhythm machine built in and/or backing tracks. It might just as well have been a DJ. The guy may have been a great musician, but who can tell? Os it real or is it Memorex? I think he sang, there was a microphone there but there seemed to be more than one voice. Personality? Zilch. Sorry, but he never caught anyone's eye, never asked if anyone had a request, never spoke, never smiled. He disappeared on his breaks and left us with Diana Krall, Jobim and Stan Getz which is not all bad. But this is not piano bar. This is a keyboardist morphing into DJ.

Success! Where are the entertainers of today? Last night they were at Lula's Lounge in Toronto. The McFlies, a six-piece band playing acoustic instruments and packing the place solid with an enthusiastic young crowd. I had never seen a Cajon before. Its basically a wooden box and the musician sits on it and slaps the front of it, different sounds from different places. With a mic stuck in a hole in the back it's a hell of a drum set, this guy was driving the band. Individually the musicians were all extremely competent, as an ensemble they were fantastic. Tight arrangements, surprising repertoire including a Boy Gorge number and a song from Quiet Riot, "Come on feel the noise". I'll be at the next performance if I can find it.

Which brings me to today's grumble. Many bands and singles work in self-imposed anonymity. Three basic items to increase audience size and get more money, guys, the bottom line, listen, you need:

The band name displayed on or near the stage.
A guest book (or a groupy with a laptop) collecting names and email addresses.
A take-away piece with a photo, the website and contact info.

I am a time-traveller from the last century and I know.

In search of a piano bar

This afternoon I spotted a bar with a piano keyboard on the awning. I zoomed in, the keyboard logo was everywhere, even on the server. (I hate these PC words, so soulless. This server was in fact a lovely barmaid and the logo was beautifully displayed.) "Where's the piano?" I asked. "It will be here 9PM, tonight is jam night", she replied.

So I fancied a jam and came back in the evening. The band was on a break, I was invited to play when the band came back on. An hour and a quarter later the band was still on a break so I left. Bummer.

At the Barmaids Arms I remember working four hours a night with three twenty-minute breaks. The times are a-changing. I am a time-traveller from the previous century.

Nobody likes to be shown incompetent, especially generals

The US are going to the highest political levels to extradite a British computer geek, Gary McKinnon, who hacked his way into a number of US top-secret military computers, looking for proof of aliens. So why is the U.S. so eager to lock up the Asperger's Syndrome hacker?

The reason the US is so keen to punish McKinnon is because he made them look stupid. The fact that the US military computers were so weakly defended that a lone hacker in England could penetrate them is indefensible. Heads should roll, theirs, not his. They should formally thank McKinnon for pointing out how flimsy their security is and hire him to fix it.

Meantime, how much of that data was simultaneously being stolen by really sinister hackers, enemy intelligence operations with much more money, time, equipment and, presumably, finesse than McKinnon had at his disposal? That is the real worry and that is what the US should be concentrating on.

That's what I think. London Bobby