A evening with George Benson

The date was Wednesday 2nd July 2008. The location - Royal Albert Hall, London; and the occasion - only the long awaited nostalgic concert of one of my early jazz heroes George Benson.

I had purchased two tickets for my girlfriend and I to see the show. Unfortunately Marie was caught in a car accident a few weeks before so I had the company of one of her work colleagues instead (Also a fan).

For about 2 hours he treated the audience to his familiar feet tapping disco, pop, jazz and ballad numbers, some more recent, and others anthems hailing as far back as the 70s (yes I'm old enough to remember that era). Old favourites included "Give Me The Night", "Turn Your Love Around", "In Your Eyes", "The Masquerade" and "Lady Love Me" to mention but a few.

The atmosphere in the theatre was electric. You had to stand up in order to see over the heads of people in front dancing on the spot, clapping hands, whooping or singing along to the music. Supported by a quintet backing group of successful soloist, which included Stanley Banks from GBs original 1976 Breezin Album.

It was truly an excellent show, a brilliant reminder of why many consider him to be the father of main stream popular jazz.

Dwain Chambers Out of the Olympics

There's quite a lot of media coverage on Dwain Chambers battle to get his BOA Olympic ban overturned. However I can not bring myself to feel empathy for his situation.

Here is a man, who has admitted to taking a cocktail of performance enhancing drugs. He did this knowing the potential risks but obviously felt at the time the benefits were greater and the risk of being caught low. He was wrong on both counts!
While we may debate the fairness or not of a 'life ban', it can not be denied that all UK sports professionals sign up to and work under the same bye law. To cry "injustice" now seems as though Mr Chambers is attempting to have the 'best of both worlds'. Another idiom that comes to mind is 'you reap what you sow'.

The New Commitment

So...It's Friday 18th July and months since I registered with Google Blogger, but what the hell have I done with it?!. That's a rhetorical questions since its plain to see the answer is "not much".

But today I'm making a new commitment, something I can manage and build upon over time. That commitment is to post at least one blog each week for the next 3 months. That's right, by the end of October there will be at least 12 of my hopefully mildly interest, sometimes radical and occasionally dry witted cogitations. God help you !!.