Keith Cross, Mugwump and a premiere event.

Addendum posted June 2013 - Anyone who is looking for info on Cross' current whereabouts/activity should peruse the 'comments' at the end of this blog.

Google is a wonderful thing. Ok, a lot of what you find there is garbage but as a resource it surely has no historical equal; which makes it incredibly frustrating when you CAN'T find what you're looking for!

I have been recently revisiting my old Wishbone Ash albums, time on my hands for once, vinyl and simply awesome. (So glad I invested in a decent deck in the early seventies. Means that 40 year old vinyl is still playable - without clicks and pops!) The twin leads of Andy Powell and Ted Turner, truly magical.

Anyways, looking at a old video on YouTube (about 1973, here if you're interested) made me remember Andy Powell's 'signature' guitar, a Gibson 'Flying V'. (He still plays it.) But more importantly, where I first encountered that guitar and what has led to a life long wish to play one. A blonde one! (I don't because they are arses to play when you as small as I am - the body's 'V' extensions are way to the right of you, feels weird!)

Sometime in the early seventies, maybe 1971 or 1972, (before I saw Wishbone Ash live) I saw my very first 'Flying V'. It was a gig at the Marquee club in Wardour Street, London. The band was T2 and the guitarist a seventeen year old named Keith Cross. With long, flowing blonde hair and a blonde Flying V, he made an inspiring sight, and could the kid play! Truly amazing!

Well, I googled Keith Cross. Find out what he's doing now. That much talent doesn't disappear. And yet he has! Outside of a 1972 project that led to an album, he appears to have disappeared from the musical landscape. Even Peter Banks (Yes guitarist before Steve Howe - or Trevor 'I'll have a burger {or ten} and a beer' Rabin) has more recent entries!

So where is the man lauded as the 'next Jimi Hendrix'. The last info I can glean from Google is that he went to uni to study for a batchelors in the early seventies but there must be something, anything after that. Does he teach music in some slummy comprehensive; does he hang out with the musos in Santa Monica; is he the guitar behind every nauseating jingle you've ever heard; Keith, you must be out there somewhere!

A bit of an event today.

Now, anybody who has ever owned a cat, especially a long haired ones like Mugwump, will tell you that they are incredibly fond of emptying the contents of their stomach, whether it be food or or a hairball, all over your carpet, it amuses them, I think. One of the reasons I don't have any, carpet that is. No, it's a lot easier picking the stuff up when you've only sealed and varnished floorboards.

Well, in the 21 months or so that I've had him, Mugwump has never thrown up. Not food, not a furball, not even a little bit of bile. Well today he did! That'll teach him to wolf down his food without chewing properly! And why do cats always look so puzzled as though there is no way that hot mess of kibble, fish, could have come from the muscular contraction of the cat's gullet? It's as if the cat thinks that the oesophagus is a one way street and that there's only one exit point. In through the mouth, out through your bum! Poor Mugwump looked so surprised!

And why are you always a split second too late in getting the kitchen towel down under the path of said mess? Another one of God's little jokes, I think.