Rod Stewart

This was stupposed to be a post about what is written on the t-shirt that the Breaking Wave’s drummer, Sir Desmond Ramkissoon KC, wears during rehearsals. But my Trinidad expert is away, so I’m unable to solve this really rather important question for a few days.

In searching for a soundtrack, which needs a bit of pan, I thought of Taj Mahal’s live version of ‘Take A Giant Step’ on his 1979 album ‘Live and Direct’, which he made with ‘The International Rhythm Band’, who featured a pan player called Robert Greenidge.

‘Live and Direct’ is quite hard to find on streaming services, and so I’ve had to suffer the indignity of buying, for £3.99, the CD version of an album I once had on vinyl and which now retails for a ton, my son. Never sell your vinyl. If you’ve got no room to store your vinyl, you’ve got too much furniture. Anyway, I did sell mine. And now look.

‘Live & Direct’ is unputdownable, so having found it on YouTube, (the digital equivalent of only having something on tape), there was nothing to do but play it through.

Track one, ‘Jorge Ben’, is a tribute to the Brazilian songwriter of the same name. Jorge Ben wrote a song called ‘Taj Mahal.’

But which famous elderly London Scottish bottle blond, who didn’t sign for Brentford or play harmonica on ‘My Boy Lollipop’, got into a spot of bother over his ‘borrowings’ from this choon? Answers please, usual address.