Blues In Britain

Today is the day we have to start putting together issue 84 of Blues In Britain magazine, for December 2008. Some articles have arrived already and some have to be written.
Yesterday, having stayed up all night to watch coverage of the US elections, I wasn't functioning well. Jon Taylor, our reviews editor, was in, gathering together reviews that have come in by email and correcting text. He was also tearing open jiffy bags with CDs sent in for review and mailing out copies of the magazine to record companies and PR people whose artists have been reviewed.
I was fielding phone calls from PR people representing musicians, Don Cleary our advertising salesman, several musicians and people who think I have nothing to do but chat.
I did learn from Don that Jon Cleary will be on the Lengendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise in January, which I am going on too. It will be my first time; a week on a ship in the Caribbean with Taj Mahal, et alia, I am looking forwardto it!
I also contributed to and wrote a reviews of recent events: Festival New Orleans, at what I still call the Dome in Greenwich, Storm Warning at The Bull's Head in Barnes. I was looking for photographs and trying to identify some of the musicians in them.
Today will be more of the same. I have to write about Ian Siegal and T-99 at Dingwall's. I might have Jazz FM (www.jazzfm.com) on or listen to Monday's Paul Jones show again, on my computer.
Tonight, I am going to see the Reverend Al Green at Hammersmith Apollo. I have never seen him live and I may never get the chance again. I was not granted an interview and I gather that people who did try didn't publish. I would have got something and I would have given him a front cover. Seasick Steve wouldn't grant us an interview. He is reported to have said that blues magazines 'ghettoize the music' and that 'journalists lie'. I always report what people tell me, unless they ask me not to print it, even when I know they are lying to me. Blues In Britain is about the artists and the music, not my ego.