The Days of Vinyl and Roses

Just back from a short red hot trip to the Southwest US where it really was very very very very hot ! We had a black hire car in the desert, thank you Mr Avis..... Palm Springs remains ultra-kitsch, but be informed the Blue Guitar club now seems to have gone, otherwise all seems 'very liberace' in the nicest possible way :-) Had a fab suite in Phoenix, huge and with 16 chairs of various descriptions no less - this is a personal record for Doug. Hotel rooms, of course, are graded according to number of TVs, fridges, loos, bathrooms, chairs ! Doug caught a baseball at the Diamondbacks game, so keeps it ! Susan would have kept the bruise if it had gone through his hands :-) Plus they let Doug win in Las Vegas - hoorah - and we saw this sign on the back of a cab there. San Diego panda watching rounded off another fine trip.

Just recently Doug has rediscovered vinyl, like as in LP records - but this time classical LPs from the late 50's and early 60's. These not only can be suberb recordings of fine performances, they need loadsa equipment to play and realise their true potential (!) We trolled around looking for cartridges, stylii etc etc and eventually bought a fine cartridge from Fred Longworth in Normal Heights, San Diego - he runs a vintage repair store there. Thanks Fred, it sounds fine !

Here's the cover of a fine old vinyl 10" Decca LP from 1958 of some Strauss lieder, 4 last songs, sung by Lisa Della Casa. If you haven't heard this, you're missing out, it's just beautiful - at risk of seeming liberace-soppy :-)

ttfn

Doug is captured in art

Here's Doug (2nd left), as seen by Josh, also featuring Rory (far right), Jill (far left), and special guest Tim Wilson (what a cracking Sax player)..... We like this piece of work - thanks Josh :-) Doug is depicted wearing shades, and seldom smiles when playing the tricky stuff, so this resonates and there's something to this characature about all depicted, you know :-)) We're in the UK for a bit, so taking the chance to play as much as poss - check out www.jazzmanhattan.com , but Doug doesn't play all the gigs so check first if you plan to pay the band a visit, collect debts, claim alimony, serve notice etc etc

Trail of The Lonesome Pine

In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Susan makes landfall aboard Discovery at Jamestown. We noted the chequered history of the brits, through to seeing the actual documents of the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution (as amended) in DC no less !

Williamsburg is a very cool preservation, startling in scale plus it's bona fide. The Queen stayed at the Williamsburg Inn recently and it was on the telly :-) made for most interesting chat with the excellent barman there, of course :-)

The Blue Ridge Mountains are blue with ridges - this seemed to surprise Doug though :-) We finally got a copy of Spencer's Mountain, the basis of the Walton's tv series, and visited the ancestral home of the Hamners upon which the book was based, sort of a personal pilgrimage for Susan and was good to do. Good night John-boy :-))

We rest our case at the US Supreme Court

This time we took our case to the steps of the US Supreme Court in Washington DC. Here's Susan on the steps, but we forgot to bring the case (again), so the moment passed (again).......;-)

We really enjoyed DC. Doug fell asleep near the spot MLK delivered his 'I have a dream' speech, and had a dream of his own :-) The Smithsonian museums are brilliant, its worth spending at least three years there. Tip: take good walking shoes. Great Zoo. Saw the Wizards win from 4 points down with 5 seconds remaining, that was a miracle.

Also good bars in rougher bits like Adams-Morgan, such as 'Madam's Organ' http://www.madamsorgan.com/ and 'The Big Hunt' http://www.thebighuntdc.com/ in Dunlap Circle were worthy of revisiting. It's a tough place though, DC and even seasoned taxi travellers such as ourselves were ripped off. Met some nice locals in bars who helped it all make sense. We'll be back :-)

Young and Foolish

Susan in NYC celebrating a significant birthday in some fair style :-) lunch at the Rainbow Room, Bellinis at Harry's, evening at the Met, what a fab day ! As part of the 'birthday festival' we also discovered the John Campbell apartment bar - now that's a well kept secret - plus the original Smith & Wollensky's, Charlie Palmers', and some old favourites like I Tre Merli. We could live comfortably in NYC. Most of the good things in life are a short taxi ride away, and there are just so many taxis. The Waldorf treated us very nicely, we should say. They have Noel Coward's piano, I hope he doesn't need it back :-)

Was great to live it up in style for a while. The Rainbow Room is a private club for lunch, so did well to get in there, it is quite a compact dance club on the top of the Rockafeller building, where Fred Astair et al did their stuff. The lunch was maginificent. Also tried out some dodgy jazz clubs like Swing 46.

Here's Susan at the Met, where we saw 'Peter Grimes' well done indeed. Have to say we can now rank our fave world opera houses, which is getting a tad pretentious don't you think? :-) Happy birthday, sweet 16 xxxxxx

Brew Movies

Susan at a vintage restored railway station in Salt Lake City, the Grand Union. Utah is surely a strange state, mighty religious but one gets the scary feeling it could all 'kick off' at any moment !! Perhaps there are deep psychological traumas caused by alcohol urge repression - for example we saw the Jazz (Utah's NBA team), and in the 5 man team two of them have the surnames 'Boozer' and 'Brewer' - it just can't be a coincidence :-)).

Nevertheless we enjoyed downtown SLC, and found a very very cool Cinema/Pub combo 'Brewvies' where you can watch films, chat, get food and drink, with people wandering in and out of the cinema all the time - we saw 'Cloverfield' which was a bit intense for that venue IMHO, would better suit old standards we think. http://www.brewvies.com/
Here's Susan in the brewvies cinema in SLC with a pint, the text in the background is on the cinema screen, happens to be an advert before the film.



Snow was fantastic in Park City :-) This sign was seen at the Pig Pen Saloon. For a utah ski resort this is an excellent bar, in fact by any standard it is worthy. However, our extensive independent tests show that at 3 feet from the bar you can still order, pay for and reach the beer. It needs to be 4.2 feet if it's ever going to work ;-) ttfn xx

We rest our case at the European Court

Here's Susan at the steps of the European Court in Brussels. If we had thought we would have brought the suitcase just to put it down and say we rested our case there, but we didn't and the moment passed........ Brussels was another most pleasant surprise, fine food, great art and museums, nice people and fine living including chocolate and beer.

We found a Django Reinhardt festival, by accident, which is a sort of gypsy swing jazz with guitar as the feature instrument - sort of Grappelli style - anyway it's another revalation in that there are still whole genres of music that are unexplored and quite brilliant too. Here's a band called Place de Broukere, well worth 10 Euros of anyone's money to see.

Mmmmmmmmm Belgian chocolate fountain..........

Right now we're in San Diego on a rainy Sunday morning waiting to see the Superbowl this afternoon probably in Jolt'n Joe's, then on to Las Vegas and up to Park City for for skiing if Doug's knees will take the strain, photos show he's not getting any lighter you know :-)

TTFN xx

Two Turtle Doves and a Concrete Mixer

Hoorah we're back in blighty for Xmas, break out the goose fat we are in fact freezing. Here's Susan at the South Bank yesterday with surely the best of the London festive lights, it's a real concrete mixer adorned with neon, no less. BTW, do most concert pianos sound out of tune to anyone else these days, or is it just Doug's notoriously warped pitch hearing? We saw Imogen Cooper playing Beethoven, and we're still not sure who won :-) Doug has a theory about piano tuning but it is a very very very boring theory. Mind you he tried to tune one himself once, should try everything once.eh?

Boomerang & the black eye !

From the archives, took this photo in Sydney nearly two years ago, still think it's hugely funny - look very closely, the boomerang sales dude has a black eye :-)) Thought this pic was lost, but now it's found !