Brad Spurgeon's Blog

A Not-Book-Review: “Recycling Reality,” by Nicky Almasy – an expat’s coming of age story, from NYC, Mexico, and London, to Shanghai, Thailand, HK, and Kuala Lumpur

July 2, 2026
bradspurgeon

Nicky Almasy

Until early March of this year, when I shook his hand and exchanged words with him for about two minutes, I had only ever met or communicated with Nicky Almasy once. It is easier for me to know the exact date of our first meeting – which was 19 October 2008 – than it is for me to remember the second one, earlier this year. That is because the first was the Sunday night after the Chinese Grand Prix of 2008, and in Shanghai, a first step that fall of an experience that would change my life. Having now made contact with Nicky again after nearly two decades, I have learned thanks to reading his memoir, “Recycling Reality“, (Earnshaw Books, Hong Kong, 2022), that not only was he also at that time shifting to a new reality in his life, but that we share far more experiences than I could ever have imagined for such a casual acquaintance whose path I had crossed only once until he handed me his book under the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur last March.

That last meeting was reduced to just a handshake as I had just spent more than an hour or two beyond our rendezvous time caught up in the offices of the Emirates airline trying to deal with a cancelled flight back to Paris – a gift of the man who trumped the world by starting a war in the Middle East. By the time I got to Nicky, he had to leave for another appointment. But it was long enough for us to say hello, and for Nicky to surprise me by handing me this published memoir that I ignored the existence of. I have now finished reading the book, and I wanted to talk about it here since without my earlier meeting with Nicky, this blog would not have been created 16 years ago.

In late 2008 I had been carrying around my guitar picks, capo, and songbook to all the Formula One races that I was attending as a reporter for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, as I had recently turned my life full-throttle into playing music when not writing articles about the world’s premier auto racing series. In my late teens and early twenties I had played in open mics as I sought to test the waters to see if I could possibly become the next Bob Dylan. Learning very quickly that I didn’t have a chance in hell, I decided eventually to focus on writing alone. But in 2008, after a tragic personal loss – the death of my wife, Nathalie – I felt the need to return to playing music. At the instigation of some musician friends, I then began to look around for open mics to perform at and see if I fared any better as a potential Bob Dylan than three decades earlier.

Recycling Reality by Nicky Almasy

So it was that after several races, finally, in Shanghai of all places, one night returning to my hotel from a meal in a restaurant, I saw a nearby bar-restaurant called the Blues Room. On the glass of the door or other front window, an image in a poster jumped out at me: An old-fashioned, 1950s microphone and the words: Open Mic! I took a closer looked to find that it said, in English, that every Sunday night you could bring your instruments and go on stage and play some songs. Exactly what I had been looking for in the last races in Europe without success – although I had not really applied myself all that much, being somewhat skeptical of my abilities or needs to perform in public.

After the race – won by Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren, ahead of Felipe Massa in a Ferrari, setting up what would be an historic final race duel in Brazil shortly thereafter – I got on the media shuttle bus as quickly as possible to get from the circuit in Jiading, far outside the city – and arrived in town with time to spare before the beginning of the open mic. I had brought my pick, capo and songbook with me to the circuit, so went directly to the Blues Room. It turned out to be a very, very quiet night, with only one other musician. But there was this Hungarian guy, Nicky Almasy, who ran the event, and I was very pleased to meet him, as the F1 race in Budapest was among my favorites, and I always enjoyed the company of the Hungarians I knew. (My son had been training for years under a top Hungarian chess trainer, as well, and I always found the people gentle and interesting.)

The other musician was an American teenager who lived with his parents, expats working in Shanghai, and he was there with his sister, just slightly older than him. As an open mic experience, my first after 30 years absence, it was highly inconclusive, but probably also the best way for a middle-aged, aging rock star (in his own mind), to return to “the stage.” In fact, we played and jammed for hours, and at one point, Nicky immortalized the session by taking a photograph of me while standing at a table in some deep, purple-faced, Dylanesque chant.

Brad Spurgeon jamming at the Blues Room in Shanghai in 2008

I found no open mic in Sao Paulo, and anyway, with the championship being decided there and especially Hamilton taking his first title, I was far too busy writing and reporting to think about finding a place to play. It was only when I returned to Paris that I again began to think about finding an open mic. And it was only thanks to a small sense I had picked up at the Blues Room that I might find a deeply needed outlet that way, and then the persuasive words of my son, Paul, that I had to try again, that I ended up at Earle Holmes’s Monday night open mic at the Lizard Lounge, and my open mic, musical journey definitively began. (From that moment onwards I brought my guitar to every Formula One race and performed at open mics or jam sessions at each Grand Prix from 2009 to the end of the 2016 season, starting this blog to write about the adventure from 2010 onwards.)

What all of these preliminaries are leading to is, believe it or not, back again to “Recycling Reality,” Nicky’s book. As we were not in touch after that night in the fall of 2008, and as the event was a much, much more important moment for me than for Nicky, I don’t think he had any strong recollection of who I was at all when I learned he was now living in Malaysia and that we would be visiting there for TAC Teatro, and could we meet? So for me, the first thing I wanted to read about in the memoir that he handed me, was everything he had to say about the Blues Room in Shanghai, and how that happened, and what the stories were. I was not let down.

Nicky had begun to run the open mic evening and other live music events at the Blues Room – which was located at the corner of Nanjing Rood and Tongren Road – a year or so earlier, and it closed down not long after I played there, in early 2009. But during that time, surprise surprise, Nicky had not only been hiring bands to play there on the other music nights, but he had begun to exercise his other passion, which was photography. Yes, he had been photographing the bands that played there, and soon he had developed a business in Shanghai as a photographer of bands.

Before I continue about the contents of the memoir, another side note: As someone who likes to write, and even made a living out it, and who is currently writing a memoir myself, I am always interested in seeing what “works” and what doesn’t. The first thing I did when Nicky handed me this book, a 265-age paperback, was to check out who the publisher was. Had Nicky done what so many people do today, had he self-published his memoir? Because, otherwise, I wondered, who would want to publish, let alone read, Nicky-Almasy-of-the-Blues-Room’s memoir!?

I saw “Earnshaw Books” and immediately looked it up: “Earnshaw Books was founded in Hong Kong in 2006 and publishes a wide range of books across a growing number of fiction and non-fiction genres. A hub for stories, memoirs and history from China, Asia and beyond, and a nurturing platform for new authors, Earnshaw Books offers a unique and enticing glimpse into the world through words.”

I realized that not only was it not self-published, but that Nicky had found the perfect publisher for his memoir. As he has now lived in Southeast Asia since 2005, moving from one country to another, one expat experience to another, he has a story to tell that will interest readers of that publisher’s niche. It could not be more perfect. I soon learned something more: My own interest was held at a much higher level for all those areas of his life to which I could also relate most closely by my own parallel experiences, and it waned a little – but not too much – on those I could not.

To summarize: I was absolutely hooked on his story of life in Shanghai, less so on his tales of traveling with malaria scientists in Thailand, and very much drawn in with his final chapters in Malaysia, especially his efforts to land a full-time job with Tony Fernandes’s AirAsia as a writer, photographer and videographer for its inflight magazine, Travel360. My interest there is not only due to Kuala Lumpur being one of my favorite places in the world as well, but because I too had crossed paths with AirAsia’s owner Tony Fernandes on several occasions when he was a Formula One team owner, and it was Fernandes who eventually gave the green light to hiring Almasy at the publication.

But to say that I could only identify with what I had myself experienced here would be doing a great disservice to this surprisingly well written life story that speaks for generations of people who seek something bigger, something greater, than the world they were brought up in. I say “surprisingly” because English is Almasy’s second language, and you wouldn’t know it by reading this. Almasy came from Debrecen, in Hungary, which is the country’s second largest city, but still only has around 330,000 total urban population. He grew up dreaming of the life he read about in imported music magazines like the New Musical Express – that “other” I mentioned above.

And if I say that it might require having shared the same experiences as a writer to get into their memoir, nothing could be further from that idea than the opening pages of Almasy’s story, when he writes about his wayward youth as an immigrant to New York City. There he set up a fabulously interesting life in a bar in Manhattan frequented by movie stars, before he returned to Hungary for a short visit and then found that he could not re-enter the US. So he decided, at barely 20 years old, to go for the classic route of flying to Mexico and attempting an illegal border crossing!

The story of how he paid a people-smuggler to get him across, but he ended up robbed, beaten, and dumped over the fence into the arms of the American cops aiming their weapons at him, reads like pages out of the darkest of low-life Jim Thompson kind of noir fiction. Along the way, in what I think must come from his basic life view of some kind of hope or faith, he seems to carry luck on his side through almost every step of his career – despite endless seemingly insurmountable such trials. He gives up on America, but resettles in London, where he ends up writing album reviews for “Record Collector” magazine, and hanging out in Camden Town at the height of Brit Pop, rubbing shoulders with all the up-and-coming talent, including musicians from the band Suede, that he will return to later in the story when they again cross paths, but on a different plane of life all together.

To cut the story short, and to summarize again: He finally settles in Shanghai in 2005, spends a decade there, and that gig photographing bands transforms into a completely different photography career launched by his own passion for documenting the then world’s second tallest building during its construction: The Shanghai Tower. That leads to a friendship with the embattled architect of the building, Marshall Strabala. Almasy becomes, one way or another, basically the official photographer of the construction of that building.

In turn he ends up working for the That’s Shanghai city magazine, doing countless cover photos, and bit by bit, he becomes a highly respected, full-time, and international award winning photographer. A theme that runs throughout the book is what I would call his “meetings with remarkable men” through whom he seems to, in some ways, live vicariously as a journalist and photographer. (That, of course, might be called the essence of journalism, as we are all writing about someone else – a “story.”).

Another of these people is the Hungarian musician, Miklos Both, who he connects with and ends up writing about, photographing, and filming in several collaborations, as well as becoming a close friend. Tony Fernandes, in some sense, becomes a somewhat more distant such connection, but one who ends up providing him with his longest period of “stable” employment, as he lands the job at Travel360 that will only end with the advent of Covid that shook up not just AirAsia, but the entire Asian and, indeed, world, tourism experience and lifestyle for expats.

But by then, Nicky was reaching his limits on what had turned from the lowest level of border hopping illegal immigrant working in a bar in the US into living at the very highest of journalistic luxury travel while reporting for the inflight magazine and traveling uninterrupted for weeks on end year in year out around Asia:

Once you reach your limit, you begin to lose yourself altogether: When you’re on the road, your temporary homes, the hotels, meaninglessly click and switch like projected images one after the other behind the shadow that is you. Marriott, Crown Metropol, Park Hyatt, QT, Novotel, Hilton, Wyndham, you name it, are all just repetitious, ever changing but never-changing artificial backdrops, mere empty stages to dress up your solitude as a traveller. I often find that the more luxurious the hotel, fine art hanging on the walls, their one-of-a-kind décor, the more it enhances a sense of loneliness. There is a lack of human connection. Besides, they isolate you from the essence of your chosen destination with their ostentatious comfort-bubble and cut you off from reality altogether…..

….But when these momentary shelters become your everyday reality, if this is in fact all you have to fall back on each evening, when you live in them for weeks on end, these very same magically self-cleaning units are nothing more than bitter, blank reminders of just what an ungrounded life you’re living.

Any hardcore business traveller would reassure you that beyond the dazzling luxury decor, the exaggerated reception smiles that only last strictly until checkout time, nothing awaits but a dark reflection of your inner emptiness. It hangs over you like a sinister pendulum, and it intensifies at night as you sigh into the empty room before falling asleep. A traveller’s loneliness knows no distance, sneaks under your door, finds you in your fancy bathtub, stares back at you from the bathroom mirror, and it’s already there under the nicely creased bedsheets with the carefully folded towel swan on top before you even climb under the clean, crisp blankets. Endless business travel is like jumping through different dimensions as city skylines revolve outside your window; Nagoya, Osaka, New Delhi, Seoul, Guangzhou, Beijing. As exciting as they are to be in, from the hotels, these cities are all shimmering mirages of a seemingly projected reality.

This is where Nicky Almasy’s memoir touches home the most for me: His ability to cut through the gloss, the surface view, the sludge, and to express what we all, inevitably, face in life no matter how much success or lack of it we may meet with in our lives and careers. I could also deeply relate to his sentiment and career decisions to seek change, as I myself did after covering Formula One for more than 20 years and finally choosing to step off the weekly travel conveyor belt. Ultimately, I found this memoir to be a wonderful vicarious rollercoaster ride through another contemporary’s challenges as he tries to find his way to a self-sustaining and meaningful life and career, and one with which I could compare my own life choices. I would never, ever have suspected such a story that night I entered the Blues Room in Shanghai and took that first step in my own subsequent life’s journey.

“Tangled Up In Blue” In Black and White! – a Cover of a Dylan, and its Stock Footage Video

April 20, 2026
bradspurgeon

Blood on the Tracks

PARIS – The other day I was searching through my personal computer archive for something completely unrelated when I noticed an MP3 file that had the name “Tangled Up In Blue.” That being one of my favorite Bob Dylan Songs, from my favorite Bob Dylan album, Blood on the Tracks, and the MP3 being clearly something that I had myself recorded once upon a time when I was myself tangled up in blue (this was in my 2010 folder), I decided to open it. What I found surprised me!

That last sentence is a classic “click bait” exercise of the kind I hate. And I usually avoid clicking on any headline that is clearly click bait, even if it is in a reputable web site. Here, I put it there not as bait, but just because it was true. I opened this 2010 recording that I had done in my living room in 2010 of a song that I had forgotten I ever even sang. I love the song, but I think I always felt that it was too long to sing in an open mic or solo stage performance in a bar. So I just kind of forgot about ever performing it again.

“Tangled Up In Blue” cover by Brad Spurgeon

But I had taken the time to learn it, and I had decided I would have fun recording it one night in my living room, probably on one of my Dictaphones used to record interviews for my journalism. In any event, when I listened to the MP3, I thought that my execution of the song – with what seemed like no errors in the lyrics – and a certain emotional appropriateness, was something that I would really like to share with people.

“Crazy Lady” music video and song by Brad Spurgeon

But the idea of posting an mp3 just did not sit well in this age of easy-to-make videos. So I decided to throw together a quick video for the song, just to get it out there. At first trying to use some of my own film footage from 2010, and personal photographs, and a few other simple, direct, nonsensical ways of stringing together a background to the song, I decided to check out the freely available stock footage of rights-free video that I could find on the internet. I had used this method for my own song, “Crazy Lady” — which I also post above as a reminder — so I knew it could work. I then found all this fabulous footage that really seemed to match the mood of “Tangled Up In Blue” and within a couple of hours I had finished the video and posted it on Facebook.

It reminded me that we do not always have to fret about and pain ourselves over the idea of how terribly difficult and complicated our efforts to create a music video has to be. As that old advertisement used to say: “Just do it!”

The Warm, Intimate, Successful Long-Awaited True Heir to the Rush Bar Open Mic with Charlie Seymour

March 1, 2026
bradspurgeon

The Pub Open Mic Paris

Currently sitting in a theater space in Kuala Lumpur and waiting to see if we will be able to return to Paris on our flight that passes through Dubai (due to the war with Iran), I finally have a moment to write about my recent open mic experience in Paris: I had been waiting for so long to attend the open mic at The Pub, in Paris, that the anticipation seemed too great to be lived up to. The Pub open mic has now existed for two or three years – since Sept. 2023, in fact – and picks up where the original team of the open mic at the Rush Bar has moved on. After the Rush bar they then moved to a place in the Bastille area, but not finding the formula as cozy and genial as the Rush bar, they have moved on again. And cozy is the word!

“The Pub” is such a small, intimate, bar that as I walked in for the first time I worried it could never work as the setting for an open mic: The bar lines the back wall in an L-shape, and the “stage” is set before the front window. There are just a few tables and stools, and a winding staircase leading to the toilets in the basement. Nothing else much down there. So how the hell could this turn into as music setting for an open mic?

I forgot one of the key ingredients of open mics everywhere: I had forgotten that in my experience it is often the smallest, most intimate bars that produce the best open mics. Part of the reason for this is there is no possibility of anyone wandering off into groups separated from the stage to ignore the performers and chit chat. The other great thing is simply being so close to the performers the effect of the live music is always very strong in our mirror neurons!

Solene and PA at The Pub open mic

Finally, the tiny stage and spectator area absolutely ensures full attention to the performer, as any talk among spectators is so easily noticed that they feel ashamed.

So The Pub, owned by Darren Ashman who also continues his warm serving behind the bar, along with its open mic host, the equally warm and talented Charlie Seymour, turns out to be the perfect formula, and very close to that of the original Rush Bar open mic. Charlie plays a few songs to start with, then the stage is open, and it is all very casual, no list to sign, but just a signal to Charlie that you are there and want to sing.

Fingerpicking at the Pub open mic

The night I went, there were lots of regulars, and some of them very talented. I saw or knew some familiar faces and sounds, from some of Paris’s wandering open mic minstrels, as you will see in the videos. There is Charlie’s guitar available – but you can bring your own – and perhaps by chance there were keyboards there that night, too. The sound is fine, but the bar is small enough that if anyone sings harmonies – as did Solene et PA, as you will see in the videos – it is not necessary to have a mic ono both voices.

Charlie Seymour at the Pub Open mic

Oh, yes, and the beer was good, too!

More Fingerpicking at the Pub open mic

Another at The Pub open mic in Paris

From the European Corporate Chess Championship to an Unexpected Musical Jam Session: Two Days Where Many of the World’s Top Players challenge Executives of the World’s Top Companies in the Chess Mecca of My Hometown of Asnières-sur-Seine

November 9, 2025
bradspurgeon

European Corporate Chess Championship 2025 Underway

ASNIERES-SUR-SEINE, France – For the last week I had been worried sick about how well I might match up with one of France’s coolest jazz pianists and his upright bass player for a gig I had been invited to do at the Gala of the European Corporate Chess Championship in my hometown last night. Fortunately, for two very good reasons I ended up not having a problem playing with Ahmet Gülbay at all: the first was because Ahmet and his bass player are such great musicians with so much experience playing in jam sessions that they had no problem at all adapting to my own idiosyncratic musical style, so far away from their own. The second reason was that I had also been invited at the last minute to play in the tournament itself on the team of the Ile de France Region, as I am a member of the club that organized the event: Le Grand Echiquier, of Asnières-sur-Seine. And if my music is idiosyncratic, my chess game is even more so. But having spent the two days prior to mounting the stage losing all but the last game of my six rounds in the tournament, I had just the “blues” and pent up emotion to get up on stage and try to take my revenge by channelling all that amassed energy into song. It seemed to work. Above all, the tournament and gala were of such emotional proportions for me and everyone who attended, that we were all winners in the end. Oh, yes, and what made that gala so special and perfect for this blog which has always had as its main central theme the open mic or open jam session, the gala stage itself ended up turning into something of an open mic, or open stage, as it turned out we had several fantastic musicians in the room who ended up taking the stage.

This extraordinary chess tournament is in only its second year, but anyone who visited over the last couple of days might have imagined it has been around for decades: There were more than 50 teams of four players each from around Europe, and the players ranged from the un-rated to among the top in the world, including the former world champion, Veselin Topalov, of Bulgaria. Another of the top rated players of the event is the extraordinary Ukrainian, Igor Kovalenko, who after three years fighting on the frontlines of his country’s war with Russia, has recently taken a break to return to chess. He with his Ukraine team won the European Team Championships last month. Yesterday, his team – Greco – won the tournament in Asnières.

Marie-Do Aeschlimann, center, senator and wife of Manuel Aeschlimann, hand on her shoulder, with Jean-Claude Moingt on the left, at the prize giving of the tournament.

The tournament is the fruit of a fantastic synergy between the founding director of the Grand Echiquier, Jean-Claude Moingt and the longtime mayor of Asnières-sur-Seine, Manuel Aeschlimann. The two of them met in the 1970s while playing tournaments as teenagers, and while the one pursued his political career – without ever losing his love for chess – the other concentrated his energies in building the sport in France to the highest levels. Moingt first founded the Clichy chess club, which went on to become the strongest in the country for many years, fostering some of the top talents, before he became the president of the French Chess Federation from 2005 to 2011. A decade ago, the mayor called him up and told him he wanted to develop his city as a chess center in France. Today, my hometown since 1996 – where my son had begun playing chess as a young child and reached a top level before quitting competitive chess at age 15 – is now the seat of the French federation, and the home of the Grand Echiquier, which has among its players some of the top in the world, including Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the former world blitz champion, the rising young talents Javokhir Sindarov and Andrey Esipenko, and the Jules Moussard, a former French champion. Not to mention the somewhat retired former champion, Joel Lautier. The team has won the European Cup several years in a row. And as a final statement of its chess ambitions, there is a sector of the city that now features streets and a park bearing the names of several chess champions.

Marc’Andria Maurizzi, center, accepting his team’s trophy.

At this weekend’s European Corporate Chess Championship, under the aegis of the European Chess Union, other better known players included the reigning French national champion, Marc’Andria Maurizzi, and the former champions, Moussard and Laurent Fressinet. Another Frenchman was Jean-Marc Degraeve, who just won the European seniors title. There were many other extraordinary players from several other countries. But one of the most interesting of those who took part in what is above all a meeting between top companies and chess players to try to use the game as a team building and intellectually stimulating exercise was the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Sir Demis Hassabis, who also happens to be the founder of Google DeepMind. Hassabis was something of a child prodigy in chess, among many other things, and he remains attached to the game. There were several teams from Google present at the boards. I played the seventh round against Google’s #2 team, and I lost in the final seconds of the game on board 4 against what I can only describe as a brilliant young woman. I mean, could my ego accept she be anything else?

My only excuse for losing so many games was that I have absolutely no experience playing in this particular time control: It was 15 minutes for each player, PLUS 5 seconds added after each move at the end…. I got so excited and nervous several times as the game arrived close to its end that I threw away great positions for total failure! Including in the Google game!

Brad Spurgeon with Ahmet Gulbay and Laurent Souques Photo©Nicolas Auneveux

Anyway, as I said, this whole thing just lifted my angst, anger, and motivation to try to get rid of all of that pent up whatever by playing the music during the gala last night. But there remained that other challenge that I mentioned: The top jazz musicians I was matched up to play with. It was Jean-Claude Moingt, the director of the club, who called me from the big Cap d’Agde tournament a week or so ago to invite me to play with his friend, Ahmet Gülbay, who is not just a great pianist, but a chess player himself and Gülbay’s regular bass player, Laurent Souques.

As anyone who follows this blog knows, any small amount of talent I may have in music – a little more than in chess nevertheless – is entirely unrelated to jazz. I am a huge fan of jazz, however, and have even seen some of the great pianists live – like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and McCoy Tyner. So I was trembling with respect and trepidation. Ahmet and I exchanged phone calls and I sent him four songs I thought we could try from my repertoire, so he had a bit of time to look at what he was up against! (“Mad World,” “Crazy Love,” “Wicked Game,” and “What’s Up!.”)

Brad Spurgeon on stage at the chess tournament Photo©Nicolas Auneveux

As it turned out, I need not have worried. Ahmet is such an experienced pro, with more experience than I can even dream of with his longtime leading of the Duc des Lombards open jam session, dates at the New Morning and other prestigious venues, while Laurent Souques is also so talented and wide-ranging a bass player, that not only did we play those scheduled songs, but we did many more from my repertoire as well. The night then finally progressed with us playing not only together, but also taking duties on the stage individually in order to give each other breaks, as the celebration went on for several hours. The people attending the gala therefore, had a night of hearing my rock, pop, folk, and Ahmet and Laurent’s classic jazz and show tunes. Ahmet has a massive repertoire, and a facility to glide across the keys like I have rarely heard.

Then, one of those musical things happened that I run into again and again: The night turned into a kind of open mic session! First, a young guy who had been sitting beside Ahmet for several tunes, asked me when I was up doing a solo if he could play the piano. I agreed. When he immediately launched into Bach, Beethoven and Chopin, and did it like a master, I quickly exited the stage! Seeing this, another participant in the tournament asked if he could take my guitar and the stage for a song. I agreed: Out camee the Oasis standard, “Wonderwall!” Then, by the end of the evening, we discovered we had another singer in the crowd, and all I can say is that when she took the mic, I counted my blessings that she ended up singing AFTER my gig had basically finished. I did not want to go up on stage after a fabulous, trained opera singer, who has also mastered the French pop and jazz standards doing a couple of Piafs and several other songs. She was fantastic, and unfortunately, I did not get her name. But the combination of Ahmet, Laurent and this singer was brilliant: Especially for the many French people still left at the end of the long gala evening. And the most surprising of all, I think, was when the President of the Asnières chess club, Yves Marek, a top politician, and also the president of the “Hall de la chanson, Centre national du patrimoine de la chanson, des variétés et des musiques actuelles,” got up on stage and sang a comical ditty from Belgium!

In the end, I mentioned synergy between the two lead architects of the emergence of Asnières-sur-Seine as a French chess mecca; but what astounds me personally is how I could find myself quite by chance not only being a great fan – and mediocre player – of chess and living in this town, but being able to merge that with my other great love of music. There was another thing that made me feel even more at home at the European Corporate Chess Championship, and that was after my decades of reporting on big companies in the context of both my technology writing and my Formula One writings at the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, I felt I had stepped into a zeitgeist in that area with people I felt close to as well – even all those horrible people who beat me at the chessboard!

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“Where the Wild Flowers Grow”: A Friend and Bandmate Creates a Warm Tribute to Jonathan Perkins, in Completing His Song

September 11, 2025
bradspurgeon

Jonathan-Perkins-Wild-Mondo-Dave-Stewart-The-SPiritual-Cowboys

Last March, in my tribute to Eddie Jordan, the former Formula One team owner, I told the story of my meeting with him and his band, The Robbers, at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix during their gig at the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur. I mentioned at the end of the piece the sad news of the death of one of the band members, Jonathan Perkins, who was a brilliant musician who had played with Roger Taylor of Queen, but who had his own legendary band called “Miss World,” for which the other Robbers had also played. Perkins had also worked variously with Little Richard, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Timothy Leary, Roger McGuinn, Glen Matlock, Bob Geldoff, Dave Stewart and Daryl Hall and John Oates. In recent months I have been in touch with Matt Exelby, the singer, guitarist and keyboard player, who was another musician in Eddie Jordan’s band, and a good friend and colleague of Perkins. Last night I discovered that Matt has put up on YouTube a song that Perkins wrote and had created an initial, and simple, demo recording of, that Matt has now completed after several months of work on it. It is brilliant.

“Where the Wild Flowers Grow,” By Jonathan Perkins

The original demo was recorded at Sunrise Sound studios in Hampshire by Marc Burford, another talented singer songwriter and producer, in 2022. Matt has now added all sorts of instruments, sounds, and backing vocals to the demo that features Perkins singing. Matt then made a video for the song, and has now put it up on YouTube. It is a work of great beauty, and brings us Perkins’s deep, melodious voice and extraordinary lyrics, along with the full-bodied sound that Matt has now given it, to show us a stunning example of Jonathan Perkins’s work. I only met Perkins that one time in Malaysia, but we almost instantly found a deep connection, having both suffered familial tragedies within a year or two of each other at the time – he the death of a daughter, I of a wife – and with his depth of character as well as talent it is no surprise to me that he both played with the best of them, and also influenced generations of musicians as a music teacher.

This labour of love that Matt has done to complete the song they would have finished together, is a great example also, of the love and respect that Perkins drew from his friends and acquaintances. I have been listening to “Where the Wild Flowers Grow” over and over again, and I hope you will be touched as much by it as I am, too.

Groovin’ the Jam at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon, France

September 8, 2025
bradspurgeon

LYON – On the last night of our three-day oversea and overland trip back from Sicily to Paris we stopped over in Lyon, as we usually do. But this time, Ornella insisted that we find an open mic for me to play some music in, just for a change, and since I have been going too long without jamming in public. (Having played only once or twice during our two months in Sicily.) But when I stepped into La Grooverie at 9 rue du Jardin des Plantes in central Lyon, I immediately turned to Ornella and said: “This place is not for me!”

It’s not that I found this one of several weekly jam sessions in this terrific bar venue to look bad. I found it to look far too GOOD for me. We entered a full, bustling, bar to see the stage at the far end full of young musicians preparing to play. It was between songs, so while I knew that the theme was supposed to be funk, groove, etc., I did not even have to hear the music to know what I was up against: A stage full of brass – trumpets, saxes, and others – flutes, bass guitar, lead guitar, full drum set, keyboards, two vocal mics… in short, a whole orchestra of what could only be something special.

First at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

“Come on, Brad, try!” said Ornella. “I’ll go and find out how it works.”

“I can see how it works,” I said. “There’s no room for me. There’s no way I can get up there just with my guitar and do a Bob Dylan!”

“Let’s just see,” she insisted.

“But I can only let them down. These are clearly seasoned musicians, and they will not be doing my kind of stuff. This is going to be great music!”

Second at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

Ornella Lays the Pressure On

She insisted again, and anyway, it was raining outside and we had been driving from Genova most of the day and were exhausted and hungry and needed a beer. So we ordered a couple of pints of IPA, and waited for the music to start. Or rather, I stayed at the bar and moped, while Ornella went out to the terrace for a smoke.

While I listened to the first song, a guy approached me as he saw I had my guitar case. He introduced himself as Matt, and said he was the organizer of the jam. Did I want to play? I thought of Ornella, and said, “Sure. But how does it work.” I told him my limitations, but he said to go sign the list and they would call me up.

The music was exactly what I thought, and the jam was what I expected. What I did not consider, was just how great the attitude was of seemingly all the musicians – and public – who attended. When Ornella returned she told me that she had struck up a conversation with some musicians on the terrace and they told her how it worked and that I should try. She told me that I had to go see the organizer. I said I had signed up.

And Then Brad Got Up on Stage – and it was a Mad, Mad World

Then she gave told me the other thing that she had discovered, which is a key to this whole open jam – and the others under different themes that take place on two other nights per week: Most of the musicians who play in the jam are from local music schools in Lyon. They are young, enthusiastic, excellent musicians with a clear love of just getting up on stage and playing. Doesn’t matter who with.

Brad at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

And so when it was my turn to get up on stage, I immediately felt comfortable with the other musicians who had been assigned to play with me. I assume that since Matt knew I was mostly guitar and vocals with a more rock than groove song, he assigned only a drummer, bass player and a keyboard player – to make it easier for me. He had told me that they only did cover songs, so I combed through all my possibilities, and dug deep and … came up with the one I do the most: “Mad World.”

In the end, a trumpet player and a saxophonist both timidly tried to fit into the piece, but I guess they couldn’t find the groove! I wish I had the time to have done another song, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. It was a great moment for me, anyway, and Ornella made a video of it – warts and all!

Third at La Grooverie Jam in Lyon

The ambience was so great that we stayed on until practically the end of the jam at 11pm before we ran off to eat a late dinner of Ramen soup in the main square not far from our hotel. And I gave a huge thanks to Ornella for pushing me on, when all the nerves in my body told me there was no place for me this in La Grooverie jam. How wrong I was!

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My New Single, a Cover of “How’s the Family” – a Song by Elliott Murphy, and With Elliott Murphy

June 5, 2025
bradspurgeon

How’s the Family (cover) Photo Credit: ©David Douglas Duncan

PARIS – Readers of this blog might remember that just over a year ago I published a big feature article in The Village Voice about Elliott Murphy, a major singer-songwriter of the last half century, who gave up his life as a rocker in New York City for …life as a rocker in Paris. Murphy is a one of a kind who has had an atypical career that began with his first album, Aquashow, released in 1973, when he was hailed as the next Bob Dylan. Since 1989 he has lived in Paris and tours Europe year round serving his fans here, who have now supported him through not only the first four albums from major labels, but right up to his most recent, possibly his fiftieth or more, album, called Infinity. Now to get to the point of this impossibly long lede: (jump to the nut graf below):

Some months after my article about Elliott was published I decided – but not for the first time – to see if there were any of Elliott’s songs that I might myself be able to play on the guitar and sing. It was not an easy task – so deceptively simple can they be, as I discovered. Then, somehow, I managed to give a spin through one of the great songs of that first album, “How’s the Family.” I succeeded in finding adequate chords, and a key that suited my voice – that required a lot of trial and error. And the only thing that really stumped me was the vocals in the chorus.

That said, I was also conscious that my effort bore very little resemblance to the sublime original version Elliott did on Aquashow – and still does. But I had a feeling, a way to approach it, that made it feel to me a little more like some kind of crooner song and approach – with a bit of jazz and folk mixed in.

I recorded the song on my iPhone 13 Max in my living room – guitar and vocals. Then I had the crazy and somewhat presumptuous idea that I should send the recording to Elliott to see what he thought – and as a way to show my thanks for his creations. I excused myself over the vocals on the chorus, however.

To my enormous surprise, he wrote back and said that if I ever considered releasing the song, he would be happy to add some backing vocals on the chorus and a bit of harmonica! That was it. All the motivation I needed to do a proper recording in the studio and get this DONE! My first studio recording in a decade.

In short, I wasn’t going to let pass an offer like that. So I set about the recording: I went to Basement Studio in Paris, owned and operated by my old friend Nick Buxton, and he recorded me on my guitar and vocals. He did a rough mix of that, which I then decided to send to my childhood friend, Danny Colomby, in Canada. I have known Danny since I was at minimum eight years old. I have ALWAYS dreamed of doing a recording with Danny, but never felt up to it.

Danny is a musical wizard, and always was (in my eyes.) He is a magical bass player, who has played with legends. His first cousin was Rick Danko, bass player for The Band, while his father’s first cousin was Bobby Colomby, drummer for “Blood, Sweat, and Tears.” But beyond that, Bobby Colomby discovered Jaco Pastorius, the greatest ever electric bass player, and he produced Jaco’s first album. I especially love Jaco’s work with Joni Mitchell. So when Danny – who plays like Jaco – accepted to play along on this track, I was over the moon.

What I never expected was that Danny would put two different basses, including the fretless, in a beautiful backing melody, and some keyboards and percussion. And a great mix! Out of this world.

The ultimate moment was when I sent Danny’s mix finally to Elliott Murphy, and he not only returned it with his backing vocals and his harmonica, but also some Rhodes piano, percussion and guitar! What is so fabulous aside from Elliott’s musicianship here – that ethereal harmonica – is that he had the humility to contribute to a cover of his own song that is so different to the original, except for the obvious main melody and all the lyrics. (To start with, the tempo of my version is much faster than the original.). To accept that and to play his harmonica along with this different version is a testament to the depth of the man. Out of respect for him, in addition to my version, I am posting here below his own original from Aquashow.

How’s the Family by Elliott Murphy from Aquashow

I then sent it all back to Danny, who offered to do a final mix. Then, to seal the whole, I passed it all on to Ron Bousted at Revolution Mastering in the US, who had mastered my CD “Out of a Jam” a decade ago.

Finally and ultimately, after all this bla bla, give a listen to those extraordinary lyrics, written by a 24-year-old, more than 50 years ago, and that still ring true today.

My cover of “How’s the Family” is now posted and available for streaming or download at all the major music streaming services – Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, etc., and in Spotify, in the link above. My plan now is to create a music video for it. So keep posted!

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Out of a Jam Underground at the NAMA Jam in Milan

May 19, 2025
bradspurgeon

Underground Jam at NAMA in Milan

MILAN, Italy – I never expected going to the incredibly cool Nuovo Anfiteatro Martesana in Milan for a couple of shows with TAC Teatro that I would find myself in the same location of one of the city’s Thursday night music jam sessions open to all musicians and styles of music. But there I was, in this extraordinary location just a stone’s throw away from the now closed down Ligera bar where Ornella and I met nearly a decade ago, discovering that if one door closes another opens. Even when you forget half the lyrics to a song you have sung a million times and that you find yourself starting anyway….

Yes, what a great discovery was this jam session at the NAMA, as they call the place for short. And the environment helps the vibe: Outside, in this beautiful park by the canal, you find the amphitheater – where TAC put on two shows – but entering the heavy metal doors at the back of the amphitheater, you discover a whole underground world you never expected or suspected. And when I say “underground” I mean in two senses: The people that run this joint have a broad cross-section of associations and events, some of which clearly have an underground aspect to them. But the whole structure is also located underground, underneath the park above.

Brad Spurgeon playing the Jam at NAMA in Milan

As we arrived on the Thursday, but had not yet put on one of the TAC shows – “Les Oubliés du Demain,” and “Lysistrata” – I took the opportunity to play in the jam. The jam starts after 11PM every Thursday, and you bring your own instrument and play what you want, with other musicians present. I played my pop songs, with an electric guitar – because I did not have mine – and with a bass player and drummer. But there were at least three horn players, and a fabulous ethereal electric guitar player, and an Amy Winehouse kind of singer, all of which you can see in the videos.

NAMA logo

I found myself feeling really free as I got up to the stage and began playing Mad World. So free, in fact, did I feel, that I entirely forgot the lyrics of the beginning of the song. But I had started going, had the musicians backing me, and hey, the audience was mostly Italians – except for the Russian who had curated the art show, and her other Russian friends – so I thought, what the hell. No one will notice. And I started with the second verse. Then I finished that, stopped, and told the audience I had in fact forgotten the whole first verse! And as I said it, the words returned, and I went right back to it and started the song all over again, from the first verse, but ending on that rather than repeating the second verse again! Somehow, it worked out wonderfully. You can see the moment in the short medley video I compiled of excerpts from the three songs I performed and post here.

Another at the NAMA Jam in Milan

La Cattedrale logo

A day or two later, I discovered ANOTHER Thursday night jam in Milan, but this time, I could not attend. I did, however, visit the location and stand on the stage, and boy, does this jam at La Cattedrale in Cusano Milanino look like an amazing thing to participate in. I will update my open mic guide to Milan, and add a bit more about that.

Nice horns at the NAMA jam in Milan

For now, never forget how to turn a screw up into an advantage – easier done at an open jam session than anywhere else, perhaps….

Ethereal guitar playing at the NAMA jam in Milan

Eddie Jordan to Me Was, Above All, a Robber

March 21, 2025
bradspurgeon

Eddie Jordan Photo Credit – PA MEDIA

Although I interviewed Eddie Jordan several times, it was only at a musical event outside the context of the racetrack that I really got to know better the Formula One team owner who has just died at the age of 76 of bladder and liver cancer. It was thanks to an evening at the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur at the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend of 2009 that I owe to Eddie one of my best memories in the musical journey that I carried out in parallel to my Formula One reporting during my last decade covering the series.

It was my first year taking my guitar around with me to every race in the hope of finding a place to play music at each event. My goal was to find an open mic or open jam session in each city a Grand Prix took place, or failing that, simply any kind of a place to play in public. That first year was the most difficult as I was transforming my usual life as an F1 journalist from a routine of “airport, circuit, restaurant, hotel, airport” into all of that plus trying to find a place to play music.

That year in Kuala Lumpur I eventually managed to get on stage at a big, cool, half-outdoor, half-indoor, venue called Urban Attic. But that was not enough for me, and when I learned that Eddie Jordan was putting on a show at the Hard Rock Cafe with his throw-together band that he called “Eddie Jordan & the Robbers,” I decided to be bold. His show was to take place on the Saturday night before the Sunday race. I searched around for Eddie in the paddock on the Friday and managed to catch him just as he was leaving the circuit at the end of the day, and I approached.

I told him about taking my guitar to every race and looking for a place to play, and would he let me up on stage to sing a song with him and his band?!?! We were only in the second race of the season, and had gone directly from Australia to Malaysia, as the races were a week apart. (Just as F1 has done between Melbourne and Shanghai last week and this weekend.) So my open mic adventure had just begun. I had succeeded in playing in two or three different places in Melbourne, and at that point, instead of my Seagull S6 acoustic guitar, I carried with me only a horrendous little baby Stratocaster that could not stay in tune for even a single song. Good-hearted Eddie immediately said I could sing a tune during his show, but maybe I should send him a sample of what I would play.

Eddie-and-The-Robbers

Having no good recordings online yet at that point, I decided to record the song on my dictaphone that I used to interview F1 drivers and team members. Partly since Eddie was Irish, and partly because I performed the song a lot at that time, I decided to record “Crazy Love,” by Van Morrison. But the quality of the recording as well as me accompanying myself with that horrendous Baby Strat meant that I asked Eddie to please understand that I would do the song much better during a performance with the band. I sent the song and the explanation to him by email, and he still assured me that I could go up on stage and sing the song. Personally, I knew that I had a great reception at the Urban Attic doing the song with someone else’s guitar, so I was nevertheless confident that I would do ok with Eddie & the Robbers.

When I went to the gig, I arrived as Eddie was adjusting his drums, about to play in a few minutes. We spoke briefly, and he acknowledged that I could play a song. He also introduced me to the Irish ambassador to Malaysia, Eugene Hutchinson, who was in the audience, because I think he probably thought that it probably made him look good to introduce a journalist from the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times to the worldly envoy. I spoke briefly with the ambassador, and then Eddie & the Robbers went up to perform.

They were astoundingly good. Way beyond my expectations. It was not until almost exactly a year later that I began this blog, and started filming my experiences at the open mics with various Zoom cameras and good sound recorders. I did, however, that evening, have that dictaphone that I used for the Van Morrison demo. So I recorded a lot of their songs, as I just couldn’t resist. Afterwards, I put together a tiny medley of four extracts of the songs to show what they could do, and I posted it on my F1 blog on the IHT/NYT web site along with a long account of the evening of Eddie & the Robbers at the Hard Rock Cafe itself.

Many of the links within that post have gone bad. Including the recording. So I put above in the media player the recording of that medley for you to listen to. And if you didn’t listen yet, do so. It is worth it. We hear Eddie introducing the songs, some of the musicians, and we hear also his drumming. And we hear his brilliant band and their fabulous vocals.

At one point in the show – I think it’s the one on the recording – Eddie announces a “special guest” and my adrenalin flashed through me. But it turned out not to be me. In fact, I would never get up on that stage to sing and play. I do not recall now whether Eddie apologized or said anything at all to me afterwards for saying I could do a song and then he never called me up. But I felt both let down and puzzled. Still, the night ended up going way beyond my wildest imaginings in other ways.

Felim Gormley

After they finished their sets, all the musicians and Eddie sat down together and had some drinks. The Hard Rock Cafe was still bursting at the seams with the spectators, but I knew no one else present. I cannot remember how I ended up joining the band, whether it was by invitation or sheer party-crashing gumption. But I did end up with them. And what a group of musicians Eddie had managed to gather for his Robbers this time around: The guest of honor was saxophone player Felim Gormley, one of the stars of the legendary film “The Commitments,” directed by Alan Parker, and based on a novel by Roddy Doyle. On lead guitar and vocals was Matt Exelby, who played with, among many other interesting bands, a Roger Taylor – of Queen – formation. On bass was Peter Noone — no relation to the guy in Herman’s Hermits — but who also played with the Roger Taylor band. And with the deep, yet melodious, astounding voice and playing keyboards, was Jonathan Perkins, who had also played with the others along with Roger Taylor, but who had his own legendary band called “Miss World,” for which they had also played. But Perkins’ CV went way beyond that, as he had worked variously with Little Richard, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Timothy Leary, Roger McGuinn, Glen Matlock, Bob Geldoff, Dave Stewart and Daryl Hall and John Oates.

Eddie at this time was already doing television commentary, and I think he used the excuse of having to get up early for that job in the paddock, and was the first of us to leave for the evening, while we were all still in the middle of the second or third round. I got to know the musicians, and we share stories of playing here and there, and stories of Eddie, etc., and I ended up staying up half the night with Felim Gormley and Matt Exelby. (It was Felim’s 40th birthday!) By the time Perkins left us, it was noticed however, that when Eddie Jordan had said goodbye and quit the group, he had done so while leaving his entire evening’s drinks bill unpaid for, and therefore in the hands of the struggling musicians of his band! Millionaire Eddie.

Damon Hill, Jordan Mugen-Honda team principal Eddie Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen at the 1999 launch in London. Photo: Grand Prix Photo

One of the muscians made some comment about how it was just like Eddie. And it drew to my mind my failed deal with Eddie to play a song with them that night. It was pure Eddie from all I knew: He had paid these musicians’ travel and put on a great show for the clients of the Hard Rock Cafe. He had done what I would end up doing for the next decade, playing on stage at any musical venue I could after the business at the racetrack. But whereas my adventure was a no-budget, one-man show in often very seedy bars and other strange venues, Eddie did things with style, and big: His own band, the Hard Rock Cafe, the ambassador of Ireland in attendance, etc. But at the same time, there was the reverse side of the coin: were those little things betrayals? Or were they just part of his seemingly sometimes scatter-brained approach to life. He was a brilliant negotiator, a man of endless ideas and schemes. And he ultimately succeeded beautifully in life in living his dream as a team owner, and becoming very wealthy.

But not everything always held together. Did any of us that night truly feel betrayed by him? No. We all laughed everything off, because Eddie was this fun, light-hearted original bringing stuff to the world in his wake wherever he went. His team itself was run like a rock band.

And, by the way, I had another insight into his Robbers and Eddie himself when two years after this event, in 2011 while continuing my open mic adventure, I met a very cool group of buskers in the streets of Nice during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend. I stopped to listen to them, then played with them, then we met up later in the weekend at Shapko’s Bar open mic, and I got to know one of them better. He was a young street musician, maybe 23 years old, from Britain but bumming around Europe, and during our conversation I told him about my Eddie Jordan experience. He told me that Eddie had met him in the streets playing somewhere – I think Rome – and Eddie had invited him to join the Robbers and he did a few gigs as part of the band. So there was Eddie picking up talented young musicians from the street as he did top backing musicians for major artists.

Jonathan-Perkins-Wild-Mondo-Dave-Stewart-The-SPiritual-Cowboys

Oh, yes, back on that subject of bar bills, I have a suspicion that the first person Eddie met at the doors to the otherworld was Jonathan Perkins, who sadly also left us less than a year ago after his own battle with cancer, and unfortunately a decade younger than Eddie. No doubt Perkins is forgiving Eddie for that unpaid bill, and proposing they do another gig amongst the heavenly choirs.

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Astounding Allman Brothers Dickey Betts Tribute Concert Film, and Another Thanks to the Inspirational Mark Greenberg

March 17, 2025
bradspurgeon

Dickey Betts 1978

PARIS – I had to stop everything I was doing tonight when I saw that my friend Mark Greenberg posted a link to the full concert video of the Dickey Betts Tribute live in Macon gig that he played in on 28 February, last month. I had seen Mark mentioning this upcoming gig on Facebook for a while, but I never expected this concert to be as astounding as it is. I am posting the link so you can immediately drop everything you are doing, tune in and listen to the whole three hours of it – or, if you don’t immediately have that amount of time to spare, skim through and find the Allman Brothers Band songs you love the most and listen to those, then go back again. Spoiler Alert: The concert ends with “Ramblin’ Man!”

Dickey Betts, if you don’t know, was one of the founding members and guitarists of the Allman Brothers Band. And you will recognize which one when you hear his son’s guitar playing and vocals, especially on that aforementioned song, which was written and sung by Betts. He died at the age of 80 last April, and this memorial concert brings together not just his own son, Duane Betts, but other big stars and Allman musicians and family such as Warren Haynes, Chuck Leavell, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Charlie Starr, Oteil Burbridge, Devon Allman.

Dickey Betts Tribute live in Macon

Just when I was feeling about as low as I ever could in my entire life about the United States, this film and concert has reminded me of one of the many things I love about the country. I won’t go into any detail anywhere about any of that, just take a look for yourself. This is a fabulous concert, especially if, like me, you love or grew up with the Allman Brothers Band’s music.

Mark Greenberg Drummer

Mark Greenberg, whom I mentioned posted the link and is playing drums, is another inspiring part of my life. In 2011 when I was doing a week’s worth of open mics in New York City and he was running the Bitter End Jam, which he has done for almost as along as the Allman Brothers exist (exaggeration), I was about to walk out the door feeling way too intimidated to get on stage. He was standing on the sidewalk outside during the break, and seeing me walking out with my guitar he asked what was going on? (I must have signed a list to go up before this.) I came up with some lame excuse that had nothing do to with telling him I was actually scared shitless to go up with musicians of that quality, when he talked me into going up anyway. We worked out what the songs would be, he said they could do them, and up I went. Best moment of my time in NYC.

The next day, Mark gave me more of his time being interviewed on my cameras in his practice studio in the legendary Music Building, for my worldwide open mic film, Out of a Jam. Mark was one of the most inspiring of those I interviewed, and he appears throughout the film as one of the regular “talking heads.” All of this made seeing this film an emotionally moving thing. But there was more moving to it than you can yet imagine.

Seeing Mark in this Dickey Betts tribute, you will find him as one of three drummers always on the stage, and you will recognize him easily because he is the one with the shortest hair. When I interviewed him his hair was down to his shoulders. My bet is it will grow back there soon, but at the moment, Mark Greenberg has been going through treatment for pancreatic cancer, a disease that took his father’s life some decades ago. To see his optimistic and defiant, and joyful posts regularly on Facebook, and above all, to see him back on stage behind the drums at a gig like this, is yet another in the long line of inspirational things I now connect his name to.

Thanks Mark, and hope we get to play together again some day soon too! Maybe not in Macon, Georgia, where you played this concert – but why not Macon, France?

Allman Brothers Band in 1969

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