Maggie Clarke

All riiiiight, Eric! Sounding great. Great vibe on the song. And I hope the title lyric is significant. Ready to start a new musical chapter. Would love a new tour. My band, the Meetles, just played Go All the Way under Herald Square last week. http://box805.bluehost.com/~maggiecl/Razzland.htm Maggie Clarke, Rock concert photographer (and other things)

OK. I put it on my calendar. I hope someone will let me know if it is not happening.

I saw John at Beatlefest a few weeks ago and he mentioned another NYC gathering of fans at BB King's on May 3. I can't find a thread on that here. Is it happening?

I just attempted to watch the Let's Pretend video. Great great video, except that with my system it stopped every few seconds throughout. I don't usually get that kind of thing with Youtube so this one must be more dense with info. I may need to buy the super turbo charged cable over the cable I have?

Wow! Great shots. You were THERE???!!!

If it makes everybody feel better, the pop critics in Cleveland are just as snarky as some of those in NYC who wrote up the amazing benefit concert at Radio City on April 4 for teaching transcendental meditation to at-risk kids. Imagine trashing Paul and Ringo (who sang together at the same mic as well as Ringo on drums and Paul downstairs on Hofner) with Sheryl Crowe, Eddie Vedder, Donovan, and comics Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern and on and on.. That was historic and now looks like Paul and Ringo will record some stuff together. I've put up 4 pages of photos on MaccaLand so far - access via www.maggieclarke.com

OK! You won't believe it, but I spent the last couple of days working hard, and I've now got four pages of Cleveland concert pix and 3 pre-show pix up on my photography website. I've improved the look of the website a bit too, fixed up most of the BB King's and Highline pages, and have added an organizational page for all my Raspberries pix, called "Razzland". Why Razzland? See, it started in 1997 with Moodyland, then a few years later continued with Maccaland. You get the idea. The concert pix are all much crisper in original format, having been reduced to 1/100th the file size for faster loading. I mention this in case anyone would want prints. All were taken from my seat (or the last song or two from the stage to where we all rushed... remember?) (Sorry I couldn't get more of Jim, but either Wally or the cymbals were in front of him much of the time from my vantage point.) So here's the portal: www.maggieclarke.com Have fun!

And I realize I'm quite remiss in not posting anything so far. It's absolutely stunning how I've been trying to move forward and keep getting knocked back on my kiester as regards this computer. I've lost 2 hard drives in the last couple of months. I've had different problems uploading to my server. I had planned to do some today, when last night I realized that my installation of MS Office was so corrupted I'll have to reinstall windows and everything again. I'm backing up now. I haven't forgotten. My apologies.

It was nothing against backups, really! I was thinking the stage was too small.

I didn't remember the stage at the Cutting Room to be that large, though maybe everybody would fit... The other places are though, as I remember.

When I go on these photography tours my mind is wiped clean by the time I get back. I was reminded about my promise to get Cleveland photos up on my website yesterday at the fan gathering in NYC. I'll get on it. Also discussed yesterday, I did write up highlights of my travels, illustrated, and I put this online. I realize that part of the delay, in addition to just too many things to do, is that I've been having trouble uploading files to my server for the last several months. This, in addition to my computers behaving slowly, and I give up in frustration forgetting until I get a reminder to try some more. Anyhoo, I've been working for 15 minutes to upload my travels, including the photo of me running with thousands at the Paul McCartney Quebec concert that was on the front page of Montreal's Le Devoir. And btw, I probably passed close to your town traveling by train from Amsterdam to Duisberg on the way to Copenhagen. Enjoy. I'll work on new Cleveland pages as I can. It does take time.

There's a small but popular venue in NYC, the Cutting Room, that has some amazing talent that you would expect to be in larger venues. I've seen Carly Simon there, Billy J Kramer, Denny Laine. It's a great venue for Eric alone with his piano or with the Raspberries (no backups). I've seen folks like Justin Hayward, lead singer for the Moody Blues, do a solo tour at places like Supper Club in NYC and Birchmere outside of DC. Other small places: Old Westbury Music fair (aka North Fork), the Melody Tent (Hyannis).. You should see some of the places.. the Moodies even played a high school auditorium once, no twice in one night (Nov 2000) in southern NJ. I admit, I don't entirely understand the way that all venues book acts. I know there are differences. I know that when I went to the Cavern in Liverpool and couple of years ago, it was after a tour on the Magical Mystery tour bus which that day was being narrated by the fellow who books acts for the Cavern. I somehow mentioned America was still touring and he wanted me to tell them since he'd be interested in booking them. I should think the same would be said of the Raspberries. Not every venue is tied to promoters, who may take some encouragement to book the Berries. But the other half of this is outreach. Is there a desire on the part of all four Raspberries to tour anymore? I can tell you that touring is one of those things that requires a bit of consistency if you really want to build attendance. The Moodies have this down to a science, hitting most areas in the US and western Europe at least once every two years usually 1 big and 2 small tours per year. Getting up to that level would require a lot of promotional work... playing smaller houses than you would eventually build up to. And most of their year is off-time. There are other acts that have gotten back together in the last several years who are making the rounds, often in small venues. Some are big some were big. The Eagles, Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy, Brian Wilson. The audience is there for them much more than it would have been 10 years ago. I, for one, would continue to travel to see the Raspberries perform and would talk it up in my networks.

It was a great time. There were 10 of us eventually. Food was good, conversation lively. Photos were taken. We watched a video of last summer's party (I missed it, , and I showed photos I took at the last concert in Cleveland.

I'm around then (NYC). Sounds great. I can be there. (Was last at BB King's a couple of weeks ago at the 2nd annual recreation of the Bangladesh concert. What a trip - 30 musicians or so onstage. Food is great, but rather pricey. You know, I must not have been paying attention, but I just found the part of this site where all the guitar tab is. Oh My God! Now I need to find the time to get all of Wally's expert work under my belt. Woo hoo!

This is so great. I was especially happy to hear that Eric had such a great time and that everybody knew his and the Berries' name. This is all good.