Hi, Hello, How you doing...?

Last week, I blogged about my awesome night out seeing Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings at The Roundhouse, but what I neglected to mention in my review was, on my way to meet my buddy at the venue, I noticed walking just in front of me was Bosco Man aka Gabriel Roth – bass player with The Dap-Kings and Daptone Records head honcho.  He’s walking just a few feet ahead and I completely blow the opportunity of a photo and a signed ticket stub by not being bold enough to tap him on the shoulder and say ‘hi’.  (It was funny though, seeing him approached by a scalper and offered the chance of buying tickets for the gig, clearly having no idea who he actually was.)

It’s always difficult isn’t it – having the opportunity to meet one of your heroes and being fearful of it being a complete disaster.  Thankfully, it isn’t something that’s happened yet and I do actually have a few really cool incidents where it’s worked out pretty well…

“Oooh, this is ‘Karma Flower’.  This is the first song from Nicola Conte’s album, ‘Rituals’, and this song has vocals by Kim Sanders.”

“You’re so sad.”

“That’s why we’re here.”

The above is an exchange between me and my wife, Saturday 11th June 2011, as we’re sat at the beautiful surroundings of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz club in Soho (my first time!) watching the sublime performance of a genuine hero of mine, Nicola Conte.  I tend to drag my wife to most gigs and everything she tends to know about said artist(s) comes from the ramblings I rain down on her, as demonstrated through the above exchange for example.  So anyway, after the gig, through the crowd that’s shuffling out of the door, comes Nicola Conte holding a rollup cigarette and a box of matches, heading for the front door.  My eyes widen as he’s standing directly in front of us but my wife, big beaming smile, extends her hand and says, “Hello”.  He smiles back and shakes her hand, and I figure I can’t go wrong and do the same thing.  Excellent, he smiles back and shakes my hand.  This is excellent!  As he heads out the door, my wife then pulls the Ronnie Scott’s brochure out of her bag and says:

“We should get him to sign the brochure!”

Good idea!  She rushes out after him and by the time I’m out of the door, I see them talking and he’s smiling and signing the brochure.  She thanks him and then says:  “I really loved your album ‘Rituals’!”

I burst in to laughter at first but, thinking about it, I feel like one of the cool kids just stole my homework and passed it into the teacher! 

And then there’s the time I met Soulive after their Jazz Café gig, 23rd October 2010.  I had to wait 6 years for the opportunity but I’m happy to say that I own a signed ticket stub and a signed copy of their album ‘Rubber Soulive’.  Soulive are my favourite band of all time so it was excellent to be able to tell them that but what I didn’t tell them is that their song ‘Joyful Girl’ was actually my wedding song.  It would have been such an incredible thing to share with them so I’m really disappointed that I missed the opportunity and, on that note, that’s what I’ll leave you guys with.  Thanks for reading.