Six Degrees of Separation.....or Less?

Are you going to detail out he connections?

Otherwise people could post anything without showing how?

I might be connected to lady smith black Mombasa by 1 connection? Who knows

My mother's cousin lives in the deep south of New Zealand, and she told me once there was a distant possibility of being able to lay claim to kinship with William Blake. Wasn't he a poet? I hear you ask. Well he did write Songs of Innocence and Experience. Does this count?  

Bert Jansch borrowed my matches, and kept them, once.

Strictly speaking that should be 'or fewer'

One of my best friends was the bass player in The Family Cat, a London/West Country institution. No degrees of separation, but not really famous.

I know Justin Robertson (Lionrock) and he knows the Chemical Brothers. My only VIP Backstage passes...

I'm more proud of the fact that my dad was Billy Wright's cousin to be honest!

It's a bit of an aimless pass time, given that you don't know them and they have never heard of you. I have a full time one client who is a professional musician still recording and touring since her debut in the 60s. We've been doing work for her for 10 years and occasionally see her. By this association I can claim one - or is it two degrees of separation from, off the top of my head, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Steve Harley, Lenord Cohen, Bob Dylan, Donovan and others. But so what? I've never met them and I won't get any work off them. This pseudo networking business is a nonsense. If you go up to four of five degrees, then everybody knows everybody else. Except they don't.

Via the gift of school friends Andy Weatherall and Nick Parkinson, son of Michael, I could claim loads of connections.

Jono

My brother's best friend in high school was a guy named Lance Sultan, whose brother Kasim is often Todd Rundgren's bass player.

I also have a friend in Moscow who knows Russian FM Sergei Lavrov, which puts me 3 degrees from Valdimir Putin.

'Fewer'...sorry about that....and of course it is a completely pointless and frivolous post.....keep it cheerful though.  G

I use the gym at my sports club twice a week and if he is not flying off  to some  country or another i work out with Chris De Burghs minder.

Mista H

My wife's mother once sold a whippet to K.D. Lang's sister.

The Family Cat,, that gets my vote as a claim to fame, great band at the time and should perhaps have made a bigger impact  learnt recently they do the odd gig.

my claim to fame would be being a descendant of Vesta Tilly of music hall fame and  having had a great great grandfather that once played for woolwich arsenal , but we dont discuss the arsenal connection in the TWP household. you have to have standards .

TWP

I shall tell John (Graves) you said that! He is now a quite high-up director at Bibendum Wines in London, still plays, but spends most of his spare time cycling up absurdly steep mountains. Which is something considering he's 6'7" and 15stone.

Fred (Paul Frederick) has a new band (well pair) - called Jack Adaptor. Very lovely music, the new(ish) album "I saw a Ghost" is only available as MP3 download sadly.

They do occasionally still play together as The Family Cat, and are still huge friends and very much in touch

I was once propped up against a bar next to Chesney Hawkes at "The Blues Tavern" (no longer there - demolished to make way for houses) on the Farnham / Aldershot border after he'd been playing there with his brother Jodie and very wittily (so I thought) proclaimed "You know, when you were famous I thought you were a right tw*t but I have to admit you bl**dy well can sing!"

Does that count?

(Actually, there were a few stories from the Blues Tavern days but that's the only one that wouldn't get anyone into trouble...)

Phil

Oh - I also went out "on the lash" once with a mate and some of his pals ... one of whom I was told was the drummer from "The Vapours" who took great pride in explaining to me exactly what the song "Turning Japanese" was about... 

Phil

He *NEEDS* a minder!?!?!? :hehe:

Phil

My sister is close friends with Bruce Hornsby's wife Kathy, and I met him once at a New Year's Eve party a few years back which, technically speaking, is one step removed from the Grateful Dead...

...who, in 1982, had breakfast the morning after a gig at the Strawberry Inn in Norfolk, VA...at the table next to Mrs. Hook and me.  Other than "good morning" and "thanks for a great show", we left them to eat in peace.

Hook

Rod, thanks, i played further from the sun to death when it was released , just going to dig it out now.. guest vocals by pj harvey no less .

i will see if i can listen to the jack adaptors.. and if the family cat get near to shropshire gigging territory i will go along

TWP

Phil

So what was it about ? I mean "Turning Japanese" ?  

Remember the song well. The same summer that I rog--ed a girl who claimed that she had spoken to Keith Richards on the phone. 

Cheers, Paul 

Google the lyrics ... it was described to me as supposedly being about a stalker who is obsessed with some girl and the "turning Japanese" is supposed to reference the fellows "self abuse" as he obsesses about her - certainly there's reference to him wanting an x-ray of her "so that I can look at you from inside as well".

It's interesting to read on the Wiki page for the track that this meaning is mentioned but is apparently denied by the writer (David Fenton). The Wiki states "It's a love song about somebody who had lost their girlfriend and was going slowly crazy, turning Japanese" - not really sure whether that fits the lyrics as well as the other explanation but feel free to decide for yourself.

The person I was talking with (who I believe was Howard Smith but was definitely from the Guildford / Ash area which ties in with The Vapours' Guildford roots) assured me that they took much amusement over the intervening years having a song about such content quite happily being played on the radio - especially when only a few years later Frankie Goes To Hollywood had "Relax" banned.

Hopefully she wasn't on the phone to Keith at the same time...! :-O

Phil

I helped to teach Garry (Webb) Newman to fly back in the late seventees. His brother John, who used to be a drummer (IIRC) became an instructor with us for a wgile before taking up an airline job.

So I suppose that's two musicians each with one degree of separation ?

Cheers

Don

My sister-in-law worked for a property company owned by Cliff. She met him quite a few times when he visited the office.

So I guess that's one musician and two degrees of separation.

Cheers

Don

Some years back my wife and I visited composer and musician Colin Towns at his lovely home and he made us very welcome indeed and even took us for lunch at the local pub. Colin used to play keyboards for Ian Gillan's band "Gillan" and is now one of the UK's foremost TV and film composers (Cadfael, Doc Martin etc.). He is also very big on the international jazz scene, jazz being his first love. A lovely and unassuming guy, totally down to earth and unaffected by his success and with an incredibly deep knowledge of music of all kinds from classical - jazz etc.

Peter

What an astounding title that would make for an LP/play/movie/book* !

(*delete whichever inapplicable)