We were invited to provide the musical entertainment at Perforce Softwares annual event which this year was at the British Library. We were very well treated by Perforce, Leiths (the event company) and the Library security.
For any musician or other performer corporate events have a slightly surreal quality, as the logistics make an interesting pathway to the actual performance... Compliance with risk, health and safety and electrical applance safety testing go hand in hand with whether weve managed to consider the right balance for the sets we have to provide for our audience.
This is all before youve actually struggled round the odd oneway system that now exists round the back of the new Kings Cross St Pancras conurbation, I remember reading a blog of a classical double bassist saying that musicians should be exempt from the congestion charge: I think the congestion charge is a good thing, but it doesnt seem to actively discourage the many vehicles we were in competition with to get into London for 4.30pm.
The thing that seems dramatically to have changed over the twenty years of playing in the west end apart from the increase in the sheer volumes of traffic is the total inability to find reasonable cost for parking as there seems to be nowhere to park, what I like about Italy or France is that it doesnt seem to be one large parking meter like London seems to be these days. Rant over..... I found somewhere to park (with the help of thr Library security man) that didnt have a yellow line - wow a rarity.. and an enormous thank you...
Now theres an idea for a membership website, a route finder for avoiding the congestion charge and then free parking - back to 1980s bliss...
And back to the gig; everyone we were involved with were charming, thoughtful and helpful.. A big thank you to Anna Spiering and her colleagues at Leiths, and Dave Robertson (Director of European Operations at Perforce) his colleagues and Fay for her fantastic Front of House duties.
We seemed to go down well and we were paid a few compliments, a nice evening all in all..
About The Los Dawsons
- Mike Dearing, Ben Hillyard, Dana Myzer, Phil Dearing, Mark Walker and Dave Burrluck
- We are an intrepid acoustic quartet (and sometime acoustic trio) from in and around Greenwich, we are vocals and 2 guitars (flattop and Spanish) Double Bass and occasional harmonica, and as a quartet we add a drums/percussionist with a further vocal. We perform either totally acoustically in small venues or amplified in larger ones, we can play in your dining room and have done so on more than one occasion. We play music that encompasses 75 years of popular music; jazz, blues, swing, country, rockabilly, rocknroll, latin, soul, Rhythm and Blues, pops, standards, folk, punk, brit pop and even some originals too... so Rent Parties Bar Mitzvahs or any other suitable occasion is our pleasure or hopefully yours! A snapshot of our latest tracks are featured in the Flash player here, they were recorded live with no overdubs – so this is what we sound like live... Our recently completed second CD Cattleya Nights embraces these sentiments…
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1 comments:
The congestion charge + the parking problem has completely put me off ever driving into London again.
So it's worked!
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