Friday the 13th

Hail to thee,

welcome to the day of reckoning.

I was thinking about bring you thoughts of a diverse and conroversial nature today but it's been a bit of a disaster for me so I won't bother. All you need to know is that you should never fly on a cheap airline like FLYBE. Those buggers left me at the airport twice! Once was a delay for 5 hours and then this morning at sparowfart (thats 5am to you) I woke up to get on another flight. All went well and we even got onto the plane itself before the pilot announced that the flight was cancelled. So the rest of today has been spent in a daze of fatigue and annoyance.

Friday the 13th indeed.

Anyway onto the news.

If any of you are pianists or afficionado's of the terrible black monster you will have heard of Bosendorfer. They make the best Piano's in the world bar none. Big, beautiful, heavy and damn expensive beasts they are and every pianist worth his salt wants to have one. Our mate Greg Johnson calls his "Joanna" but I bet his bank manager calls it ludicrous.

In England there are a few successful festivals of classical music. (I used to work at one so I know a lot about the Bosendorfer Grand Concert piano's - having humped them on and off trucks for the best part of 10 years.) This tale involves a new festival called the Two Moors Festival and, as ever with these things, it is held in a remote and rather beautiful part of Somerset. It is one of those places where it is forever 1920 and the Empire has still got a grip on the colonies. Small men in black suits wander hither and thither with silver trays of cucumber sandwiches and old men with tweed coats mutter "Oh I say" whenever they see anyone with the faintest trace of a suntan. You get the picture.

The organisers of the festival recently bought a new Grand Bosendorfer and paid - get this! - £45 000 for it (That's nigh on $100 000 US). They had the thing delivered with great fanfare to the first location. Lights, Camera... ACTION!

The problem was that the movers had a bit of a comedy moment and dropped the thing as it came of the van. It then fell 14ft onto a gravel path and then to add insult to injury it committed suicie by hurling itself of an embankment.

OH BUGGER!

£45 000 - £45 000 = Headache for someone.

Well, all that reminded me of a couple of Bosendorfer tales from my past.

First, there was the time that we "borrowed" a nine foot grand and placed it on the end of the docks in Penzance / Land's End.

A good mate - Paul Coker - who is a reknowned classical pianist was going to play a recital with our other chum, Hungarian looney and serously good key basher, Andras Schiff, and we thought it would be a laugh to take the massive instrument out to sea before the gig. That didn't happen - too heavy and who was going to explain that tothe broding angry Magyar afterwards? Not me. So we did the next best thing and Paul serenaded the Cornish fishermen with the Teddy Bears Picnic, the Pink Panther and other notable show tunes as they set off into the brooding oceans.

Close your eyes and imagine the movie the Shipping News. Now add frivolity and humour. Kevin Spacey would be useless. Try John Travolta instead and you are closer to the picture. It was excellent and it made the local and Canadian TV news as there was a protest going on against European fishing policy or something at the time. Thanks' be the guys from Bosendorfer didn't see it. Still, it was pretty good effort for a fun day at the beach don't you think?

But that's not the best. That comes courtesy of dear ol' Tori Amos and her crew.

Bosendorfer had lent her a midi grand (which doubles the value of the piano) for a big tour in the states. I think it was the Choirgirl hotel tour but my memory fades.... So when the tour finished up all the gear was being shipped back to the UK and there was this big black thing waiting to be collected. Except no one called for it.

A week went by and no Austrian came to take their baby home
Another week and no news.
Then a breakthrough.

My dear friend who is a piano tech of world reknown called me up.

"Do you think it would fit in my house? It's 9ft long and 5 ft wide"

"Yeah but the floors won't take it"

"Can you fix them"

" No worries"

So the errant piano was boxed up and put on ship to go on holidays in sunny Tottenham whilst I rounded up a crew to remove three doorways and a living room floor and replace them with concrete and wider portals.

Job done the piano duly arrived and was installed.

It has become the worlds most expensive beer table - none of us can play the thing even if it is tuned to perfection at all times - so it serves very well as a piece of furniture.

So on this day of disaster and futility I would like to thank the dear Austrian chaps who crafted it with such love. One day they will have made my friend a very handsome donation to his pension fund. I hope they don't mind.

He sent it by sea after all and we all know that's eco friendly.

In fact he is a very Dolphin friendly tuner!

ta ta