Giles Brown
LAST year I wrote about my friend Fish’s visit from Washington and the jam session that we had.
During the 80s we had a band that consisted of various Marbella Rock n Roll types that went through several incarnations.
The first line up – ‘Medicine Show’ – consisted of myself, Fish and the fabulously named and sadly now departed to the Great Gig in the Sky, Brenton Macbeth Blackwood.
I left to London to continue what is laughingly referred to as my career, and the band then became ‘The Good, the Bad and the Nice’, when the supremely talented Nader and Adam joined.
Adam left to NYC, becoming a regular on the live music circuit there, Nader to Brussels for a while – continuing to record superb music and returning to build his dream musician’s villa in the hills overlooking Marbella.
Fish moved to Colombia, where he gigged at the Hard Rock Cafe, Bogota in all probability to an audience of Shakira and Scarface lookalikes.
In the meantime, I struggled to fret a B chord.
While he was over last time, we all got together for an afternoon jam session, where things went so well that we decided that we should it again.
Be careful what you wish for. This month Fish celebrated a ‘landmark birthday’, and, as Paola, his ridiculously gorgeous Colombian wife, had rented a nine-bedroom villa, it seemed the perfect opportunity to get the band back together, man.
Two run-throughs in the week leading up to the party and we were ready to perform. As celebrations go, Fish’s birthday was one of the best.
Great friends, fabulous food and enough free flowing booze to stop a heavy cavalry charge.
We had all clubbed together to buy the man himself a handmade Spanish guitar, a gift that actually had him shocked.
And as a, ahem, ‘specialist’ who has been to some of the world’s most (double ahem) ‘interesting’ places – a mobile phone call in Kabul springs to mind, where I thought there was crackling on the line but was blithely informed it was small arms fire – the present had him lost for words.
The gig itself was huge fun – I managed not to hit too many bum notes and we even renamed the band.
After 30 years, three of us no longer have our hair, so we renamed ourselves…
The Good, The BALD and The Nice!
