The Chunnel

There's an animal on the track. Or a train derailed. Info is sketchy, all I know is the Eurostar is delayed, so I figured I'd weigh in with a report.

Greetings from London, England. Where I went with Felice's family for a screening of "Breakfast At Tiffany's" at the Royal Albert Hall. Amazing to see a movie where everybody's dead. Like a time capsule. So alive on screen, yet the actors are as dated as the automobiles. Watching one wonders if Dave Barry had it right, that our parents lived the life...of freedom, of drinking, of partying, of a world with no scrutiny other than that of your next door neighbors.

We also went to see the Kinks play "Sunny Afternoon."

Turned my head. Is it true all greatness emanates from those on a lark? Just like the Steves went to the Homebrew Computer Club because they were nerds infatuated with machines, Ray Davies and his clan didn't do it to get rich, but because they were infected by the sound, they wanted to be musicians, not stars.

And that's why they got screwed.

But it's also why they made such great music.

Who knew what a fair publishing deal was? Who knew how to deal with the American unions? All Ray Davies knew how to do was speak from the heart, to tell his story, which still resonates decades later. The highlight of the show? "Dead End Street," which is meaningless in the USA, as a tune, but resonates in subject matter. Do we have any future or are we stuck in our station forevermore? Ray and the rest of the British Invasion were doing their best to avoid the factory, their goal wasn't to sell out to the corporation and become world famous, but rather to sing their song, and see where it took them.

Kinda like the Allen Klein book. There was no use for the man after everybody else figured out the systems. Just like Bill Graham invented rock promotion and then the managers figured out how to make all the money. When a scene is unformed...sharks with character move in, but the result resonates.

And I went to see Five Seconds Of Summer at Wembley. What a hole that arena is. Like they set it up yesterday and could tear it down tomorrow. The ceilings to the dressing rooms were so low I was worried about banging my head, and I'm vertically challenged. As for claustrophobia...

But that didn't matter to the 11,000 in attendance. Girls who knew every word and sang along. Music is just fine, it's the sound of youth.

And there was an accident on stage, the guitarist walked into the pyro, and it's funny how a scene can go from pedestrian to intense in a moment. That's life, while you're thinking what you're gonna do next, reality swerves in and throws you for a loop.

And London is inundated with tourists. Supposedly Paris is worse.

And it's so far away from L.A. That's one advantage to New York, the proximity to Merry Olde and the Continent.

But the weird thing is it's just not as foreign, because of modern communication techniques, the internet keeps us close. But something is lost in the process...our privacy, the ability to feel you're living an exotic life far away from home.

So see "Sunny Afternoon" if you want to know what it's like to be in a band. Keeping the members together is a chore unto itself.

And opening for 5SOS was Hey Violet, Modest Management's new client. Richard Griffiths told me about his five finger approach. You had to have talent, a good work ethic, good management and with all that you would get lucky.

Oops, forgot one of the middle fingers!

But our train just got into the station, got to wrap it up! Bye!


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