1995

Carl Brian, Bobby and Steve

• Carl was in the N8 band I described.
• The band doesn’t meet anymore, I don’t know what’s going on with any of them.
• I do still see Chris now and then.
• I’m working in Westbourne Park/Ladbrooke Grove with Hammer & Tongs, Gavin Piggott, all that lot.
• Chris meets them all because I invite him to accompany me to one of the parties in West London that was on that my workmates invited me to.
• I haven’t heard from Carl Brian, at all, since 1991.
• Out of the blue, Carl phones me one evening, says some producers want to meet me, want to hear me play keyboards.
• He’s making it sound like an audition; I think he may have even used that word.
• So he picks me up from Canalot in his car and we drive down to Soho to Bobby and Steve’s studios.
• All the way down, Carl is leaning out of the car window hollering at women.

• (He was driving, prolly was his best friend’s ride tho).
• I’m embarrassed.
• We arrive at the studios and I’m left alone in a room somewhere for about half an hour; wait here Carl says.
• Carl comes back with Bobby and Steve and they ask me to play something.
• I think I play my bossa nova, the only thing I can remember (I need sheet music usually).
• It’s quite good.
• But they’re snickering, all of them, the whole way through.
• One of them is full out laughing.
• They tell me to stop and leave the room.
• I can’t figure out what’s happening but it feels horrible.
• For me, writing this now, this is a gauge on how famous I was already in 1995.
• I felt like a freak on display.
• Could something else have happened that evening I’m unaware of?
• I never heard from Carl again.
• I’m angry and offended by this event and tell Chris Ludwick about it.