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Saturday 11 May 2013

Last chance to dance

So I'm sitting here, trying to revise cranial nerves and whatnot, and my mind flits back to 2004, and possibly the most impressive line I've ever heard, though I didn't think so at the time. It was the end of Blues Week 2004, an annual event of lectures, guitar, harmonica, piano/keyboards and vocals tuition, and I'd been working bar all week, so every evening had been an awesome collective jam of international blues musicians. This was the week I'd learnt to make martinis, because what the cool blues dudes want, ladies and gentlemen, is martinis. Vodka martinis. Lots of them.
On the final night I wasn't working, and went to hang out on the right side of the bar, drinking vodka martinis with Keith Dunn, Homesick Mac, Michael Roach John Cephas and Phil Wiggins and others, and then got dragged along to the after party, a weird experience of dancing to blues and rock and roll, in a student self catering flat with a lot of middle aged to old guys, with the most incredible jam set up on the go, and a good stash of beers. It got to about 5am, and Mr Dunn offered to walk me home, ostensibly to save me from the old guy I'd wafted away from my neck four times previously, we could all tell it was getting a little tiresome. We walked to my little basement studio, talking music and pottery, and what it's like to live in the Netherlands, continuing this chat over coffee and ginger nut biscuits. Now Keith Dunn is rather a large chap, and he sort of sprawled himself on my tiny single bed, with me sat opposite on the sofa, and kind of, well, inferred that I should join him. I declined graciously. But I have to give the dude credit. He was quite old, and I was 23. So respect is due. He finished his coffee, took the rest of my biscuits with him, and disappeared into the night. But as he bid me goodnight at my front door he said "Last chance to dance." BEST LINE EVER. Or maybe the worst. But still, impressive.

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