Trials & tribulations - went to London

My band Creepy Cool went to London on Sunday with a friend who was traveling there to a festival in Hyde park. Bands such as The Killers & Starsailor were playing there with a final 3 hour set by Bruce Springsteen. He played a storming set at Glastonbury the night before which I saw on TV.
Anyway, we got there by around 2.30pm. We actually traveled there to do some busking somewhere near the festival but it proved more difficult than we first thought. We caught the underground at Epping in North London to get to Marble Arch and there was a busker playing in the tunnel. As soon as we got out the station, we were met by those wretched ticket touts trying to charge 80 quid for the festival tickets when the real price is only 40 this later turned out to be a scam. We found Marble Arch and set up & played there but the traffic from the road was too noisy, meaning that people walking past didn"t hear us properly and we only got 2 pounds in 1 & a half hours. We also had someone taking pictures, poking their long camera lense in our faces and didn"t even ask our permission. If that wasn"t enough they didn"t even put any money in our guitar case which I thought was very underhanded.
We then made our way over to Hyde Park and met the busker from the underground who looked Chinese with long hair yet spoke realy posh & he told us of the best places to play. We managed to find somewhere in Hyde Park which wasn"t too loud with the music coming from the festival & it was much better. We had a woman"s daughter singing a song on the mike which was great. The woman said it"s a pity more people didn"t play like us but busking is still seen as a down & out occupation & the authorities make it difficult. Security people there saw that we were collecting a bit of money & said that wasn"t allowed in the park because they said that people don't want to be hassled for money but they knew we weren"t doing that - we weren"t exactly holding people at knife point to give us money. We closed the case after that but opened it again a while after they"d gone. This is the good thing about busking, people choose to put money in because they like you & people liked us and we still managed to get about 20 quid.
Although Bruce was a bit loud, we ended up playing until 9.30pm. We were supposed to be meeting our friend at Tottenham Court Rd after the show. As it happened he turned up behind us at marble Arch station. Anyway, the train turned up and the others got on but people pushed in front even though I was carrying a heavy keyboard bag and a stool which is sure to slow you down. This stopped me from getting on the train & it went without me, I was livid. You would think that people would slow down and give way a bit on a Sunday but hey this was London and no-one bats an eyelid for anyone else. It"s not the kind of culture I would put up with for long.
Luckily I managed to get on the next one a few minutes later and met the others at Tottenham court Rd. and we traveled back to the car park at Epping and set off back to Boston.

The "king of pop" dies

Micheal Jackson: 1958 - 2009

I was just flicking through channels late last night on TV when a newsflash came up and reported that the king of pop Micheal Jackson had died in Los Angeles at the age of 50. I must admit I wasn"t a huge fan ( apart from the Thriller song & video) but a shock all the same. My aunt is actually here from America at the moment because her sister is having an operation & she"s a fan of his. It seems bad luck that he was supposed to be performing in London in July at the O2 arena & people had bought tickets. There was actually a busking band who had booked a smaller hall in the arena months ago which had been arranged on the same day as the Micheal Jackson concert. Micheal & his crew wanted to use the room for their after show party but this relatively unknown band refused (They had a single in the charts in 2004) they won"t have to move their show now.
I bet there"ll be loads of M.J. nostalgia now just like after Elvis"s death but at least it will take every body's mind off all the normal boring news as he was a remarkable character, surviving everything that the newspapers & the TV channels threw at him until now.

trials & tribulations - Hundreds of applications

On Tuesday I went for an interview for a part-time job at QD stores which has taken over the old Woolworths store. There were 600 applicants for 25 jobs - an indication of the dire job situation in the area. The interview went pretty well though as I was interviewed by a nice blond women so I should have a better chance than I would have done.
I"ve just started an ad words add campaign on Google after they sent me 2 Adwords vouchers worth 125 pounds. I"m trying to get more visitors to my Cult & tv reviews sister site which I"ve had up and running for a few months now. Up untill now, I"ve mostly posted articles on Ezine articles and Hubpages with my website url included. I also use banner exchange & a few other site promo directories but with limited success so far.