As I've said before, it was the NHBs who brought me here (plus mrs twm, of course).
We attended the 24 July 1999 NHB show at Ronnie Scott's, too. Down in London for just over a week, we got to four shows in all. Earlier on the evening of 24th July, we went to see "Plenty" at the Albery Theatre, with Cate Blanchett in the lead. We met Helen Mirren one night at Scott's. Rowan Atkinson was there another night (we'd seen him live in Stoke on a solo tour years before).
It was a great week. I got to a Bridget Riley exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery (she being one of my interests from way back in the mid-1960s). We did a bit of shopping in those higher-end second-hand clothes shops in Mayfair and Marylebone (I still have a dark blue Valentino silk shirt from then). We went to the horse-racing at Sandown Park. Another day, off to Greenwich and down to the Trafalgar Tavern for an (almost traditional) whitebait lunch, in the footsteps of Dickens and politicians of yore. I met friend with a contact at Christies and I got to handle an original Dylan lyric sheet from a BLONDE ON BLONDE song that was in their current auction then. Plus all the usual family things.
But, the memory that lingers is spilling out of Ronnie Scott's in the early hours of the morning to find our way back to where we were staying. It took me back to my youth, going to all-nighters in Soho clubs. The difference was that, in 1999, the streets were still full of people and much was still going on. In the 1960s, if you went out for fresh air at that time in the morning, the streets were largely deserted and much less well-lit. And this was on midweek nights, too. Back then, the all-nighters were at weekends - in my case, just Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.
And all that mixed in with seeing and hearing the NHBs in a small intimate venue, sometimes very close indeed to the stage. And I mean very close. Good times!
