Win, Lose or Draw?

Grand Final Day 2010 will go down in the annals as a bit blah.  But enough about football.

Questions about Australian blues must be posed and pondered. 

Whilst sitting at Jim's Greek Tavern and realising that my use of expletives was better suited to a hotel, combined with the fact that I had to find some live music within walking distance, my mate Nick kindly googled gigs in Fitzroy and discovered that Australian blues legend Chris Wilson was about to let forth at none other than, The Rainbow.

Clad in an Adidas sweatshirt, the kind Dads just shouldn't wear, Chris sat playing chords on a modest electric guitar. The way my brother did when he was learning eight carefully selected and compiled songs downloaded from tabsrus.com back in '98. He was accompanied by a competent drummer and it was just sort of a bit...well...blah. It's difficult to write this. Chris Wilson is a musical idol of mine; he's spiderman, and Live at the Continental was a constant in my life at one stage.

I remember once seeing him at the Cornish Arms and dancing fervently with fellow enthusiasts. We had such a roaring good time he announced after four or five encores that he would shout everyone a drink. He's a top bloke.

But GF Saturday was a different story. A fellow Rainbow punter was similarly underwhelmed and asked many of the questions I couldn't articulate through my whiskey haze, "Is he a classic blues man cashing in on a reputation? Underneath that reputation is he a desperate man hard on his luck paying his way? Is a guy like Chris Wilson falling out of the scene or has the scene fallen in on itself?"

These are questions bound to be revisited very soon on 365oflive. We welcome your thoughts too.

Anyway, the best and the worst of times can be had with Chris Wilson I suppose...and that's what the blues is all about.

I've also checked his schedule and he's playing around quite a bit at present, so it's only fair to organise a rematch. After all, he is the best harmonica player in Australia. Case in point: Chris Wilson plays harmonica @ The Rainbow.