Another old face from the past

It’s been a great day, apart from the lousy weather this morning. We awoke to the sound of rain beating down on the RV’s roof which at times can be quite pleasant, but as we were expecting visitors today it was not a welcome sound.

Last night we ventured out again to the Night Owl to see the act which was a group by the name of Soundsations. At first impression we thought we were in for a musical treat, as the stage was full of instruments, a sax, keyboards, guitars, electric and acoustic drums and a nice PA system.

The band appeared dressed in nice pop military styled jackets with white trousers. When they struck up the sound was quite full, but hang on there were only four musicians, a saxophonist, a Drummer, a guitarist and a Vocalist. It soon became apparent that the rest of the sound was emanating from an elaborate sequence of backing tracks. When I hear a bass line, I’m looking for the bassist and when I hear Keyboards, I expect to see him playing the keyboards. But as the keyboard player was playing the Saxophone it was obvious he couldn’t be doing two instruments at the same time.

Karaoke Musicians, I suppose it could be a new term to describe how bands today struggle to keep their costs down by dropping working musicians only to replace them with pre-recorded tracks. It’s a sad state of affairs that the music scene today have to do this, as young wanabe’s (which are mostly young girl singers) are prepared to appear for the minimum wage to get their ego’s massaged as potential X factor talent and that club entertainment secretaries will exploit this situation to get working musicians to drop their prices.

Needless to say we left early again.

This morning we drove down to Bridgwater to pick up an old army mate (Dinger Bell) and on the way back we visited a local garden centre for lunch. Once more it was nice to reminisce of old times but we had to be back at the RV as another old army mate was driving up that morning from Cornwall. 

Terry Maguire was a chap who I used to play with in a rock group called Abacus (a band consisting of six musicians, there were no backing tracks in those days, it was all live).

He arrived with his wife Carol just as the sun came out from behind the clouds and the rain disappeared. We spent even more time sitting in the RV reminiscing about our old army days, the one thing that did stand out was how old we’ve all become (where have those years gone).  

We, well some of us (mainly me and Terry) have expanded our waist lines quite a bit from those heady days of playing the messes in Germany and Dingers dry humour is still as enjoyable as it used to be but sadly his hair has turned white poor chap.

Stu, Terry & Dinger
Old boys meet again after thirty three years

The time flew by and Terry had to depart to visit relatives and I drove Dinger back to his home, I hope to get the chance to meet them again before we head over to Spain as I don’t think any of us will be around if we have to wait another thirty three years to meet up.

More Anon