April 28th - Day 10

This whole idea is feeling a bit bananas today. First test of nerve ten days in. The boy's ill again so daytime music is out. However I should have time to catch a band called Mescal Circus tonight, who intriguingly incorporate live painting into their shows, but tomorrow's going to be a squash. I could hang around town till after midnight tonight and hope to catch tomorrow's act then. Or is that cheating? Friday's looking tough too.

I ended up going to Hootananny in Brixton and listening to the mellow blues of Nelson King, and the sound check of Benjamin Thomas, and was back home by ten.

2015 update - Nelson King still gigging - down by the sea at St Leonards last night (August 2nd). Benjamin Folke Thomas's star has risen since 2009 - he's about to set off on tour, mainly Germany and England, London's venue being The Union Chapel. He also has three acclaimed albums under his belt.

http://www.nelsonking.net

http://www.benfolkethomas.com

May 7th - Day 19

I went to a bar stroke club on Shoreditch High Street called Last Days Of Decadence tonight to have another go at watching Mescal Circus (see Day 10). There were supposed to be first on, but they weren't, so I'll have to find them another time.

Instead I and twenty or thirty others politely stood and watched the fantastic Sunlight Service Group, who played music so up my street it was banging on my front door and screaming "I want to move in now!" through my letterbox.

I was only two years old when Pink Floyd first played at the trailblazing psychedelic club UFO, and I had more important things to do with my life, like not swallow marbles, than be bothered with the embryonic light and sound twiddlings of a future supergroup. But for a short few moments this evening, as SSG grooved through one particularly spaced out track that would have fitted cosily on Pink Floyd's first album, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" - and despite no oil slide light show - I felt I had my own belated little UFO experience.