I've been rebuilding the Free French website this morning – having lowered my hourly rate by 100% in order to get the job done – and while researching various reviews to include, I stumbled upon some comments on our 100 Club performance last August. The following was nothing less than an arrow to the temple:

Don't let the slightly balding, podgy frontman who looks a bit like a smaller version of ex-NME editor Danny Kelly put you off.

Strewth. Where's that Lo-Carb Diet book and wig, when you need them?

Happy birthday to my sister, who is 26 today, so she says, but I remember 1974 all too well. How ungallant of me.

As I mentioned, I was in Brighton on Sunday, having a weighty roast dinner with various people including , and . The latter advised me that Herb Alpert gave up playing music – presumably to concentrate on being a successful record company mogul – when he considered that his “Tijuana Brass” sound had been copied by too many people, thus diluting his impact on the music scene. None of us could recall anyone who had used the blueprint of “Spanish Fly” to create their own brassy, Latin-tinged soundscape. In particular, none of us remembered a band called “Nick Drake's Tijuana Brass”.

This of course led to:

The Jimmy Savile Experience
The Crazy World Of Elkie Brooks
BeenieMan's Hermits

and so on. If anyone would like to insert an inappropriate front-person into an established combo of the 60s or 70s, as per the above, feel free. It's not as if there's much else to do, is there.