Thoughts on the monarchy from a foreign jail

Thoughts on the monarchy from a foreign jail, (or gaol if you are British).

Apparently the U.S. penal system gives Conrad Black enough stability and peace to meditate and commit his thoughts to paper. Whatever your thoughts on the monarchy are, pro or con, I recommend you read this article on the choice for Canada between monarchy and republicanism;

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2165496

An article in the Calgary Herald says "Prince Charles and Camilla are visiting, and most Canadians don't really care". http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Prince+Charles+Camilla+visiting+most+Canadians+really+care/2169872/story.html

Conrad Black has written a well-reasoned article as to why we should care. This article is all the more poignant considering the circumstances of its writer. Regardless of the future of our constitution, and the present plight of the writer, here is a quote with which I completely agree:

"Prince Charles deserves a warm welcome in this country. He likes Canada, knows it well, and has a number of friends here. He has recovered well and completely from the buffetings and infelicities of earlier days, when his estranged wife was running a parallel monarchy, and from the sadness and ultimately the tragedy of that marriage. The Duchess of Cornwall is an unambiguously apt and gracious person, and the imperishable and strangely useful institution of the monarchy will be in good hands when their time comes."

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

Packrat relinquishes disks

I've just thrown out eight disks of vital information, Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft's Encarta. Who needs it with Google and Wikipedia at fingertips?

But, here's the rub, what took me so long? And why couldn't I have thrown them out before I moved them from Victoria to Toronto with a lot of other useless stuff?

Retired?

Semi-retired? Am I working or not?

I have a gig tomorrow so this should be short, I have to rehearse. Yes,I have been playing but working? Not really. This is how it is.

Entertainment is a commodity like shoes or shirts. It has to be crafted and it has to be sold. The creation and updating of the show is work but it is satisfying. Selling it is hard grunt work as every successful salesman knows. There has to be market research, brochures, photography, CDs and DVDs, bios and resumes, emails and web-site updates, advertising, correspondence, negotiations, contracts, collections, telephone calls, cold calls, just a lot of frequently frustrating work.

When the sale is made, if it's shirts or shoes, the work is done. If it is a show, the work begins. I myself am the product that has to be delivered, rehearsals, travelling, equipment set-up, sound checks and finally the show itself.

My next birthday is a big one and I am going to give myself a present, I am going to semi-retire. I am going to cut out all the above sales work and I am never going to carry keyboards or speakers again even though few venues seems to have a piano or a decent sound system any more. I am still good old available Bob but I probably won't get any gigs which is a pity because I still do well, still like to work, to play, that is. I still have this thing, this package, this cocktail of music and laughter which is quite rare to find and which I have been blessed with. It is a vanishing phenomenon, most of today's performers don't smile when they sing or play.

Every successful entertainer is an illusionist, he walks on to a stage and does his thing, everybody has a good time and he makes it look so easy, so effortless, so much so in fact that bookers say, "You want all that money, you are only on for forty minutes"! My answer is, "I'm working now, negotiating with you, the show itself is free. If I am not working, why aren't I sitting beside the pool with a book and a drink?".

An adoring audience is like a lover and applause gives me a high. That is why we entertainers do all that office work, carry those speakers, lif' dat bale. The show itself is free.

I probably won't get any more Legion gigs. Apart from letting their pianos go out of tune and fall to pieces, they seem to think I am a dance band and put the audience miles away from me on the other side of a bloody great dance floor and expect me to bring all the equipment and play and sing for four hours to an inattentive audience for a pittance. Or worse still, they expect me to do that AND all the publicity and promotion and work for "the door" and CD sales. Sod it. In coffee shops the sign says: no shoes, no shirt, no service. Now I say, no piano, no fee, no performance.

On the booker's side it is a fact that putting on the evening is a lot of work and heavy responsibility for the entertainment chairman. (As everybody knows, in every club 97% of the work is done by 3% of the members.) My part of the show, entertaining, is relatively easy and fun for me. Putting bums in seats and making sure they can see and hear me is the grunt work but it is the booker's work, not mine.

Today I am playing the grand piano in my daughter's living room. My gold record is on the wall smiling down at me. There is a dog here who likes it. I am rehearsing for my gig tomorrow, a private party in Brampton. i must go, work to do.

Summer of discontent

I am a good entertainer and the secret of a successful performance:- keep it positive. But once off the stage I am a curmudgeon, consumed by the vicissitudes of life

I guess what I'm bitching about is getting old. I don't feel old and my eyes are good and my mind sharp. At least, I think so. I have a do list on Remember The Milk, songs to write, videos to make, CDs to sell, gigs to prepare for, songs to learn, music library to organise and video editing program to master. But what is all this arthritis rubbish about? I'm not ready for this. Another twenty years of springy steps, please.

What is twisting my tail is not that the do list isn't diminishing but that the reason for non-performance has changed. I have always achieved below potential but that was because of screwing around, goofing off, playing when I should be working. Now it is because of napping. I used to laugh at senior jokes, like a senior chooses the vice which will get him home earliest, takes all night to do once what I once used to do all night, etc. Damn, I should time-travel back to Barmaids Arms days and punch myself in the nose. Not funny, Bobby!