First Time For Everything!

[Robusto]

My first Ramon Allones Specially Selected this evening. What a joyous smoke!

Decided (randomly) to have a crack at piano playing with a good cigar and my son took a short clip on the phone.

What a hoot! Another first - and would take some getting used to!





I post occasional videos on a YouTube channel called reallybrown

And the band I play in has a YouTube channel called ek1band


Drew. Larrysputnik. Willie1.
Do you combine playing and cigar bliss?

Never done smoking and playing before. It's hard work!
Will have to watch old Jools Holland and Fats Waller clips for stogie muso keys playing expertise!

[Drewmidorn]

I'm afraid apart from writing sessions where I'm actually writing on my own rather than with my writing partner or some dubious prima dona... i rarely smoke and play.

I often write in the lounge when I'm working on my own and I smoke there aplenty, hence my acoustic guitar and laptop probably have an unmistakable odour to them! lol

I don't smoke in my studio (or indeed anyone elses)...even when I'm working on my own... and never with singers around! The fans in the back of the Mac, hard drives, racks and powersupply for the desk would suck it all in and really shorten my pocket. I've spent enough money keeping the fans silent without clogging the little buggers up! lol

I never smoke on stage because a) its now illegal...thanks very much to the fascist regime and b) even when we're in a backwardly forward looking foreign country where the noble leaf is treated with the respect it deserves, or playing open air gigs, we're an energetic bunch of idiots and i'd injure myself or one of the singers and we don't stop enough between songs for me to put down a cigar...light it...or rarely take a sip of JD! lol Plus the fact the singers would be eyeing me evily and coughing before it was even lit.... as I say to them..."You've got it easy... I have to actually smoke this." Passive smokers make me sick...they're just too tight to buy their own cigars!

Keep it under your hat but a lot of the bigger venues have crafty smoking rooms backstage for artists... however out of the 16 gigs I have in december I'm only playing at one of them, koko (its the old camden palace)... the rest of the venues are buggers!

Bring back the old days of hookers and coke with Manny in the back of Manny's guitars (RIP) off broadway! lol... hang on that was never my life! lol

Oh well... back to the hard work!



PS thats not my studio! its the one I used to work in in NY... I WISH IT WAS MINE!

PPS And thats not my opera house either...it belongs to Budapest apparently... you couldn't smoke in the dressing rooms there either. lol

D

[Drewmidorn]

PPPS The RASS is a little cracker ain't it? I think thats probably what I've got on the go in that little photo with the scab on my nose! I reckon I probably chomp my way through 3 or 4 of those a week.

D

[Robusto]

Amazing, my friend! Wonderful shots. You're having a good life!

Just think. You could have chosen to bash out the National Curriculum forever and ever. (If we're really going to talk about the fascist state in action...).

My humble little band used to worry (quite rightly) about the damage being done by nicotine to the monitors and speakers in the pubs and clubs we play hereabouts. Our singer used to detest singing in the fug - and I understand that. I knock out my backing vocal lines with a couple of my buds in the band, and it is far, far easier to do that in clean air.

I have been very good during breaks between sets and only polished off a Villiger (by necessity, not choice) outside pubs and clubs. If we take a short break between sets, I never cadge a fag. I'm just not into them.

To be honest, I'm rarely gagging for a cigar. The lure is different to the cigarette mongers.

One or two of the shitholes we play don't have room for secret smoking areas.

When we play functions, I do not understand the propensity and vogue for the DREAM wedding with the DREAM bride's dress... with the same bride legless and on the doorstep knocking back Benson and Hedges with mates in the band. I don't get it at all. It can be vulgar.

We're a very clean band. There are areas of declared past debauchery in all sorts, and I think I'm the only drug-innocent. I'm almost 50 and I haven't even shared a joint. I've been around it, but have always backed away quietly.

I wish I had said yes sometimes. Sometimes I feel like a Sally Army dowager!

However, I do get a definite high from a good cigar, and I got one from that Ramon Allones. Wow! There's a connection to the D4 in the taste for me, but I'm like someone who's been driving the same car for a decade. I'm now changing gear and trying out heated seats.

I don't think I'll toke a cigar and play piano again in a hurry. I was close to choking during that clip - smokestorm up the nostrils - but I've had my first adventure with my missus away this week!

I'm so lame at being bad.

[larrysputnik]

I've never smoked a cigar while jamming, and even when I was young and stupid and smoking cigarettes I never smoked on stage. You do it well though!

Now smoking while playing golf; that's another story altogether.

[Robusto]

Bill Clinton - Eat Your Heart Out!

Coming-out cigar-wise was a bloody killer for me!

I remember shocking my wife when she woke up and found me with a cigar on! Instant trauma!

Lighting up for the first time in front of bandmates (two bands ago) was a trauma, too. So much bloody fuss and teasing! I was so bloody self-conscious at first...

Walking through town with a stogie on the go and possibly bumping into friends and - SHIT! - pupils!

My Dad seeing me smoke for the first and only time before he died. He was shocked!

Now it's like I'm in a reverse state.

Smoking a great one at the piano and posting it on YouTube - Fuck me! That's some progress!

I will be doing that again...


Cigars are so wonderful at times it frightens me!

[Willie1]

Yes, I enjoy a cigar more when I'm doing something like Playing guitar, throwing darts or shooting pool, but the latter is no longer a possibility because of that piece of sh1te smoking ban.

You guys can look forward to a new guitar video that I'll be uploading in a few weeks time, once I get the new axe that's on it's way to me and get a 50W amp that I've got the sights on

Bry, that's a nice piece of playing man, you gotta nice mixture of New Orleans and Chicago style blue going

Do you know of any good Boogie Woogie tracks?

Willie

[Drewmidorn]

Bryan,

Its funny you mention the D4 as there are 3 cigars that I can never do without a box in the humidor...the RASS, D4 and Monte 2, the other cigars change around, but those three (hackneyed old choices I know) are like family! The Monte 2 is a "home" smoke for me, but I always have a couple of RASS and D4 s in my little humidor in my "gigging" satchel.

I sometimes think the "curriculum" route would have been the better choice but I have a massive propensity for swearing and no respect for those who don't earn it, at least when I swear in front of engineers and tell production managers they're being f%^ki&g C*?@s there isn't some disciplinary meeting with a board of impotent retards!

D

[Robusto]

Willie - Posting the axe clip will be cool!

Joe - That must be bliss to light up and tackle the course.

Drew (I bet the real name is Alan lol!) or... Dawn!

I like your stock three cigars there. I'm a lover of the D4. Fantastic stick which has never disappointed. I would put Cohiba Robusto in as a King of smokes for me. I think Bolivars are a sublime smoke, too. Any Ramon Allones does it for me, too. In fact, as Dean once said on here, I get a semi just thinking about them!

You boys with wardrobe humidors... Well, I just have my 50 stick humidor which is often down to just a couple of sticks... I'll have to be a bit more stogie-proactive, I think.

I was trying to think what the RASS (my first yesterday) and the D4 have in common. I think it's a form of sweetness, but not sugary-sweetness.

I think I'm a man who prefers stronger cigars. That's where Bolivar and Ramon Allones sit according to the texts. If anyone reads this and can suggest other really strong cigars to try, please shout.

I'm also a definite robusto man. Hence the name on here.

Teaching... Well, I love it, really, but it's wearing. The admin burden on a UK teacher is dreadful imho. And the statistical burden on us. It's Chris Morris's take on pie chart bollocks all the time. (Couldn't get through the bollocks without Chris Morris - We've discussed that before). Fortunately I have decent kids. I only have a one percent fuckwit quotient where I work currently. Not the sharpest kids, but certainly VERY ready to participate in whatever I do. I'm a classic nice bastard at work. Cross the line and there's trouble. Red and blue governments have B52d us with so much nonsense that a lot of joy has gone from the job.

My escape into sanity is gigging. I love my band. We get on and have a great laugh but leave each other alone between most gigs and rehearsals. We play some shite - Everybody Needs Somebody Blues Brothers stuff being the most hackneyed. (I hate it!). Most of the material I love, and we do it justice. I might play a pub for ?40 and it means very little. One of the band has had no work for two months. ?40 means his family eats. We can fight - but we're decent brothers and we graft, and I like that in a group.

I'm trying to find some local folk to write original stuff with for pleasure. My guitar bud who wrote with me went off to work in the USA and we had good ideas and wrote one night a week til about 0200. It's the only time we could find. I really miss him, and the writing regime. Some of it was quite good, and I think guitar and keys working together, writing together, is a great combination. The thing is you have to find the right people for bands and writing, don't you think? It's far from automatic.

We have pros in the band who disappear on tours to play with Howard Jones, Toyah and others. Good players. We've had deps who play with Clapton, Winwood, Hamish Stewart. They rate our band so join this little Kent band when they are not backing superstars lol! I'm like a pig in shit with these connections. I've never had this in a band before.

As far as 'fucking cunts' is concerned at work, I am expert at not using certain terms. You have to be. In the band, the most used word is 'cunt' because that's what we all are!

Just got phoned by a band bud, so sorry if this is disconnected. One of the things we talked about - because this window was open in front of me - was having a writing session together. There is a God!

If I didn't play - with a cigar on like a piano-bashing buddah - or not - I'd feel a bit worthless.

[Drewmidorn]

The big problem with teaching for me would be they wouldn't let me stand at the front of the class like this. This was last night. What an idiot! lol.

Also wouldn't work with the old cigar combo!

D

[RhiannonBW]

I was working at a gig at Brixton Academy on Saturday, and when I went to check the dressing rooms, someone the previous day had hastily stubbed two cigarettes out in the sink in the main dressing room. I had visions of some very hard heavy metal band panicking about being caught smoking and hastily stubbing them out before getting caught Very rock'no'roll!

Rhiannon

[Drewmidorn]

Such a frightfully naughty bunch!

[Robusto]

Blimey, Drew!

I like to sit and play and look like Madge Allsop rather than split my skin!
It brings in so many classy bookings, the scowling.

If Paul Weller or Keef light up on stage, I can't believe the silly fuss. They get fined about ?50, don't they?

And who's going to be upset in the audience?

The world - or the UK - has gone a bit stupid.

[Drewmidorn]

Osteopath appointment every six weeks without fail, and lots of stretching at the gym... its much more important than practicing! lol