Coming home from Eastbourne last night I met with some youngsters who'd been to a gig at the Con Club at Lewes.
We got talking about vinyl as one of the lads had started collecting vinyl records including one he was carrying having bought it at the gig. Took me back to Richard Branson and his Virgin store at the Clock Tower where you could sample requested records whilst sitting on giant cushions. Also the Big Apple on the same site.
But I love passing on old "rocker tales" after all this is where legends are made.
My one involved the Summit in Houston in 1982. I'd gone to meet a mate from Hove who'd emigrated to Dallas a few years earlier. We did the usual in Dallas Fort Worth by visiting the old stock yards which was made into Billy Bobs Texas the Water Gardens etc but then I moved onto Houston to see Asia Cheap Trick and Axe at the Summit an 18000 seater arena. I'd been in the Spindletop having met Ann Margaret and her entourage in the revolving restaurant and running late called a cab. As I walked into the arename with a bucket of Pearl lager the strains of House of the Rising Sun rang out. Eric Burden had unexpectedly reformed the Animals and it was magical to see the sixties band reformed. Missed Axe but later having made my way to Remmingtons a nightclub in SW Houston I'd adopted whilst there I arrived as a stretch limo was leaving. The window wound down and the band inside was Axe the band I'd gone to see on the bill. They invited me back to hotel as the club was closed. I sadly had to decline as I'd promised a lass I'd met earlier that I'd meet that night. Oh what could have been though it may have been fortuitous that I went "home".
We got talking about vinyl as one of the lads had started collecting vinyl records including one he was carrying having bought it at the gig. Took me back to Richard Branson and his Virgin store at the Clock Tower where you could sample requested records whilst sitting on giant cushions. Also the Big Apple on the same site.
But I love passing on old "rocker tales" after all this is where legends are made.
My one involved the Summit in Houston in 1982. I'd gone to meet a mate from Hove who'd emigrated to Dallas a few years earlier. We did the usual in Dallas Fort Worth by visiting the old stock yards which was made into Billy Bobs Texas the Water Gardens etc but then I moved onto Houston to see Asia Cheap Trick and Axe at the Summit an 18000 seater arena. I'd been in the Spindletop having met Ann Margaret and her entourage in the revolving restaurant and running late called a cab. As I walked into the arename with a bucket of Pearl lager the strains of House of the Rising Sun rang out. Eric Burden had unexpectedly reformed the Animals and it was magical to see the sixties band reformed. Missed Axe but later having made my way to Remmingtons a nightclub in SW Houston I'd adopted whilst there I arrived as a stretch limo was leaving. The window wound down and the band inside was Axe the band I'd gone to see on the bill. They invited me back to hotel as the club was closed. I sadly had to decline as I'd promised a lass I'd met earlier that I'd meet that night. Oh what could have been though it may have been fortuitous that I went "home".
