It's been a while since I last updated my blog here on the HOC, Been meaning to, but I have been waiting until some developments came along so I had something more to write about.

Our band of four more was seeming to grind to a halt this year, Pete's daughter's brain tumour surgery took him out of action for two months, then he ended up in France picking grapes for three weeks, came back insect bitten but sun tanned and having a good time. He has a house of some description down in France and was getting it ready to shut down for the winter and decided to stay around a bit. Our drummer, Tony, works shifts and and has had all sorts of reasons why he can't practice, the main one lately being that he has hurt his shoulder.

But, Shaun our bass player, Pete and I decided that something needed to happen to progress this along as we feel that we have a fair bit of potential for a half way decent band, so we sat down in my living room and had a three hour meeting and chat about what was holding us back. We knew already that it had been the lack of band practices and we knew why, but now were facing a more permanent situation because of our drummers lack of availability. The common consensus was that if we stayed with our present drummer we would be no further along in six months time than we are now. AS three very nice guys, we do not like the idea of kicking some one out, it seems to be against our nature, but what is in effect happening is that we can not achieve our goals because one of the four of us seems to take it or leave it. Coupled with a lack of communication because he doesn't like e mail, which makes getting messages to him somewhat awkward because he doesn't answer his phone much either.

So, the inevitable decision was that we find a replacement drummer. Shaun and I had played in the past with a really good rock drummer called Jonathan and we thought we would invite him along as we felt that he would slot right in, however he never returned any messages so we have had to look elsewhere and we are not prepared to hang around.

The next step was a trip to the local musical instrument stores where there were ads placed from people looking to connect with other musicians, I found three, one of which was a guy called Alan who seemed to be a good fit for us, and last night I called him up and had a chat for fifteen minutes with him and the upshot is that next wednesday night he is coming for a session with us and a chat to see if we all like each other. Hopefully things will work out, then if they do we shall have to find a nice way of letting our drummer go. I am not one for unpleasantness.

On a different note, Shaun and I went to see Wishbone Ash last week, Which is Andy Powell and three other musicians, but Andy Powell has been the one member of the band that has evolved to it's present stage, which is an extremely competent band with excellent musicians forming the line up. The gig was excellent, the sound, everything was top notch. For those of you who are not aware of Wishbone Ash and their brand of music, it is very much twin lead guitar and it would be fair to say that they are more or less the originators of that style. They were incredibly tight and not a note out of place. Playing over 150 gigs a year they should be. But the venue was a 550 capacity building, no seats. What made me really sad was that here was a band with a tremendous pedigree, unsurpassed ability and a back catalogue of great music, playing to 500 people, while the dross on the X factor (UK talent show) America's got talent etc all end up touring the stadiums, and even those who appear on these shows with the audacity to call them selves a band, don't have a guitar between them, and very little talent. Yet bands such a Wishbone Ash (and others like them) not one only play to a very high standard, they write their own material.

I can only say that mediocrity rises to the top and the mass markets are fed a musical diet of straw.