Another birthday of those close to the top

A couple of nights ago I dropped by The Drum nestled in the courtyard behind 4 Prorizna Street just off of Khreschatyk in Kyiv's downtown core. I found the usual suspects there, but primarily journalists from the FT, BBC and Bloomberg(Warsaw) as well as Euan MacDonald... of Speeding Lisa and co-owner of The Drum.

Euan came over and sat down as I greeted Nate (Bloomberg) whom had seen last time on my sojourn to Warsaw in April, Euan (BBC), who I guess I saw about about a month or two ago, and Roman(FT) who had just returned from Georgia. Not the state but the country!

"Bill, I guess you know that Speeding Lisa is pretty well dead, but a few weeks ago Blair and Mick asked me to join them to play bass at Sean Carr's birthday party somewhere out near Rivne!"

Now for a short digression. As it turns out Mick Lake, the guitarist of the Death Valley Screamers would frequent The Drum quite often and at some time back in about 2005 I had met him there and a number of other times as well. Somewhere along the way his common love for music he ran into Blair Sheridan, one of those other Montrealers who sort of ended up in Kyiv. Blair at one point had started talking with Mick about starting a new band here in Kyiv, but something that they had sort of grown up with... and lived through... The Punk of the UK (Mick) and Montreal (Blair).

Euan, continued: "So we all had to meet some bus out at the Zhytomyrska Metro station, we got out there on a Saturday morning and eventually found the bus, and the other bands that had Mick had set up to play at Sean's birthday bash! We were on the road for about 5 and a half hours! And as you can imagine there was plenty to drink on the bus," he paused and took a sip of his beer. "There were quite a few bands there at the gig," as he started to show me some of the pictures on his phone and then handed me the earphone to listen to what he had recorded. "Don't mind the sound quality," added Euan, "it was pretty loud and a lot of it just comes out as noise on the phone," as he started one of the video's running.

"I can't remember all the names of the bands that played there that night but there was one band that was pretty good, and they got this guy in a kilt!" Euan then added.

I saw a video of these guys a few nights ago as I was dozing off, but can't remember their name either...

Well it turns out that the band that Mick and Blair are called the C-men... and they will be playing at O'Brien's Irish Pub in Kyiv tomorrow night. OOOPS... Blair has corrected me, they are playing on Saturday, September 27th - Thanks, Blair! I will try to check them out... Maybe just a little of Ukraine has rubbed off on them.