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June 6, 2008

The Americans Are Coming, The Americans Are Coming!

Actually 'the Americans' (my mother-in-law and our niece) arrived yesterday afternoon. As all good houseguests should, they came bearing gifts: a couple of rather festive Fender-branded T's and a pair of Ray Bans, styling circa 1970... retro-chic straight out of Carrie Bradshaw's closet.

Now, I'm more of a Gibson meets Prada kinda guy, and green isn't really my colour, but y'know, I think I can work with this stuff!



Sometimes, being one half of a bi-national couple has its benefits. Family don't drop in every day, and when they do they bring cool pressies!

The flip side is that today I'm suffering from 'passive jetlag'. I may not have crossed time zones but my delightful-but-hyper 8-year old niece did... my required (or at least desired) 8 hours sleep was significantly shortened by her 6 hour time difference! So, it was a Fender T, retro Ray Ban, two coffee kind of morning, and I'm downing my third java boost with lunch.

Still, last night was a lot of fun. My niece loves the fact that 'Uncle Kenny' plays guitar and she tried to put together an impromptu concert. She even wrote a new song for the show, which had pretty damn good lyrics, considering the vintage of the source. A tale of forlorn longing and the loss of intimacy. I'm not kidding!

As she already knew the lyrics to "Proud Mary", remembering them from a road trip we took at the tail end of last year, I set to learning the chords and trying to remember the rhythm. Sadly, the show per se never actually got off the ground due to a scheduling conflict with din-dins. Dinner itself was less than nutritionally balanced and included a lot more chocolate than I'm used to.

Tonight is the debut gig and album launch party for Twickenham-based rockers Magic Ship. I was hoping to head over to Barnes to catch the gig, but with the arrival of the in-laws that doesn't seem likely. For any of you who are local and at a loose end I heartily advocate getting down to The White Hart to check out the band.

Trust me, you're going to like what you hear, you'll get to meet the band and, last but definitely not least, you'll be able to buy their hotly-anticipated debut album at a special reduced rate.



Oh, and while I think about it, I'd like to send out a special 'hello' to all the Rufus Wainwright fans who've stopped by over the last couple of days! I didn't realise that the boy had such a following! I've not had such a huge spike in my page hits since I mentioned having seen Pete Doherty walking down our street! The cynics amongst the blogging community will doubtless accuse me of milking the keywords 'Rufus Wainwright' and 'Pete Doherty' to boost my traffic, but, frankly, if that was the case then I'd have pointed out that I posted a 'review' of his 'Hampton Court' gig yesterday. Oops... I just did. Sorry...

I wonder what a duet between Pete Doherty and Rufus Wainwright would sound like... (okay, not really...)

2 comments:

Furtheron said...

have to figure out what words will get more hits on my blog..... :-)

Those glasses - just the kind of stuff my son is wearing - he looks like something off Starskey and Hutch!

Ken Skinner said...

That style of Ray Bans are everywhere at the moment (which isn't necessarily a good thing). I actually just re-watched the DVD of "Almost Famous" (about young journalist following a fictional 70's band on the road)... every single character in the movie is wearing a pair of these things at one time or another (though they don't have the tacky brand label etched onto the lenses).

I'm still getting loads of hits from people looking for Rufus Wainwright stuff! Ironically, his music is mostly piano-based, so I don't think anyone's interested in hearing about guitar stuff!