DC Diary

David Buckland used to be the manager/roadie of 'The Ring' formed in Exeter in 1970. He drove us around in a grey re-cycled ambulance wherein the great treat was to have a turn sitting in the front seat rather than buried amongst the equipment in the back in the freezing cold unable to see anything out of the darkened windows. Certain of instant success, we all gave up our day jobs and migrated to London in the ambulance when Dave secured us an audition with Hawkwind's management company. David also somehow persuaded a friend of his brother to buy us a PA system and two state of the art guitar stacks. We turned up for our audition in a basement studio in the Portobello Road with our new gear and set up ready to play..... except that all I could get out of my shiny new amp and 2 four by twelve cabinets was Radio 1 at 100 watts. Nothing we could do seemed to stop my violin acting as a radio aerial rather than an instrument so we packed up our gear and left.
I've just heard that David Buckland died suddenly and unexpectedly last week. He lived with his family not far away from me in North London and I have been on the verge of trying to fix up a get together for quite a while now. I have happy memories of our times together and wish we could have had one last evening to share them.

22 Feb 2009
Returned home from Italy at about 1 am this morning. This is a photo taken from the van.	Although I dozed a bit during the red-eye flight from Heathrow to Rome on Wednesday I was really tired all day.We were were expecting mild weather as we had experienced in Italy before at this tine of the year but instead it was really quite cold. To top it all we headed off into the mountains; beautiful and snow capped but the temperature was dropping all the time.	The Theatre in L'Aquila was a beautiful cinema dating from 1942 - lovely place to play. Very up to date sound and lights and music in a very traditional setting. The event was sold out but not all the seats were taken - I think the weather stopped a few people getting there. By the time we got to Awful love (see set list below) exhaustion started to set in and I was functioning on nervous energy till the end of the set. Later on the temperature went down to -10 and I was really glad when I was finally able to get to bed.

		The photos from the concert were taken by Paolo Di Pietro - thanks Paolo!

18 Feb 2009		17 Feb 2009
Here's the set list for tonight. Rain start Crowdsurfing Floodlights Sign of the crow Rain rain Black ice The pool Exiles Awful love Tonk Starless Schizoid man See you in Aquila!		Had a fantastic rehearsal yesterday - changing the new song Sign of the crow at the last minute - Paul smiling throughout - despite my best efforts to induce panic. Everyone is now singing including the amazing Craig Blundell who manages to be creative in 15/16 while singing a backing vocal and laughing all the while. In fact we were all laughing a lot yesterday - perhaps its all the singing? Looking forward to our Italian excursion. See some of you tomorrow in Aquila and the rest of you in Rome on Friday. Where else would you be? Better get some sleep. I've got to get up in three hours to get to Heathrow for a 7 am flight.

23 Feb 2009
Always lots of cake and sweet things for breakfast in Italy but not much savoury food. Seems a bit unbalanced to my palette! Jinian had a chance to rest his voice on Thursday as we drove back across the mountains to Rome. Couldn't get anybody interested in sightseeing with me so I ended up practising longer than I wanted and changed batteries, tweeked patches on my GT10 etc. We ate at Stazione Birra - dinner in Italy is definitely something special! Decided to add a 2 bar bridge to Sign of the crow as the verse/chorus transition was a bit rushed (but will we remember it on the day?) The circle photo was taken on Wednesday at Teatro L'Aquila as we were looking down from the upper floor to the lobby. The band shot was taken as we were leaving for Rome on Thursday morning. Mick, Paul and Craig were writing during the day - I haven't heard it yet!