Well, I woke up this morning, Believe I create this page....
No seriously, I don't want to drip on about the Blues, we'd be here forever. But when you think about it, for those of us whose teenage years were the 60s, much of what we thought of as just another part of the pop scene was actually the Blues. I mean, The Yardbirds, The Animals, even The Rolling Stones, and so many more were all blues bands. So the Blues have always been with people like me, although, amusingly, some people still think of bands such as the above as pop and that the Blues is something they neither know about nor like! You have to laugh.
One of the best things about the Blues scene in the U.K. is the weekend events organised by Boogaloo (see link on right). These have developed in format over the years, although the basic idea is still the same. The accommodation is always half board and the prices are always cheap for the standard of accommodation.
Nowadays what happens is that you roll up on the Friday afternoon to the venue to book in etc., only to find that there is an acoustic session going on already! Dinner starts at around 6:30. The first band of the evening starts playing at 8:30 and play till around 10. The second band play 10:30 till around midnight. And then the jam session begins! This can go on till gone 4, or even breakfast time, although one venue has a 3 o'clock curfew. Around midnight, there is usually about an hour when hot snacks are available too.
On the Saturday, those who can, get up for breakfast. The music starts again after lunch (you have room for lunch?) with 2 to 3 hours of short acoustic sets, usually from the departing and arriving bands, although extra turns occasionally show up. If you want a change from live music, there is generally a room shanghied into use as a cinema which shows classic blues films from early lunchtime until almost dinner time. And, of course, starting with dinner, the whole sequence of events starts all over again and continues right the way through until breakfast and departure on the Monday morning!
It should be pointed out that whilst these events are officially referred to as Blues Weekends, the cognoscenti refer to them as Severe Sleep Deprivation Weekends!
Anyway, over on the right, here are just a few local links to give y'all a flavour of what it's like living around here.