A supportive & enthusiastic audience, although somewhere there was puncturing underway. A flash went off during the set, but most of its effects were contained. But not all.
01.08
An e-flurry at an end, now to de-vibrate.
20.32
Hotel Quite Acceptable, Fashionable District, Washington.
Crimson is in town on Election Day, in the centre of the maelstrom of US political energy. This was not the plan, merely an outcome of tour routing. It would not have been my choice but I am a happy boy. The miserable, wretched Detroit Pontchartrain is behind us, and hopefully forever. Onstage last night I felt myself becoming sick, and by the end sensed a fever developing. But the heating worked in my room & the cold inside, growing over 4 days in dismal & heatless surroundings, went away. Spirits are now in restorative mood.
Toyah is back in England - hooray! - and tonight is with her Parents. The water meadows opposite their riverside cottage is flooded and looks like the sea, says Father-in-Law Beric. In my Weekend FT, read on the United Express here from Detroit, was a picture of a man in nearby Upton-upon-Severn driving / boating around the flooded town in his 1967 amphicar.
Also in the FT weekend UK news: a report which provides another part of the closing chapter in the history of Endless Grief - "Investors face ruin as Lloyd's cleared of fraud". In 1996 some 30,000 individual Names accepted a settlement deal to close the book on the appalling losses suffered by the London insurance market between 1988-93. Some £8 billion was taken away from (primarily) the upper & middle classes of English life. In the area surrounding our former home, Reddish House near Salisbury, there were savage losses. The Donheads, near Shaftesbury, had a number of Names who were canvassed and brought into the world of unlimited liability through local dinner parties & social life. And then crippled. The social history of this event has yet to be written, but it represents a greater transfer of wealth from the monied classes in a short period than any attempt to redistribute wealth in the UK since Lloyd George's "People's Budget" of 1906.
Mr. Alder was one of those 30,000 who settled. He led the Action Group of the Names on Marine 475, one of the worst of the affected syndicates after the notorious spiral syndicates. (The agent responsible for representing the Names on Marine 475, Roy Bromley, committed suicide in the early 1990s.) Mr. Alder's Action Group won a preliminary court battle, which had the effect of improving the terms of their settlement in 1996.
The collapse of the English property market after August 1988 undermined The Old Chelsea Property Group, but around the end of 1990 the really bad news began arriving - unlimited liability on Marine 475 would be kicking in sometime soon. The record industry in slump, the property market in slump, large sums about-to-be-due to Lloyd's, artist income transferred from the EG Music Group during 1989-90 to support Mr. Alder's non-musical interests via Athol & Co., & the sale of EG Records & EG Music (to fill the gap) delayed: this was not a good time for Mr. Alder.
The (UK) first floor at 63a, Kings Road became the centre of Mr. Alder's fight against Lloyd's. It was possible to walk by & see him, looking older & greyer, at that time. Mr. Alder had the reputation in the music industry for being litigious, so legal action against Lloyd's would have been a suitable challenge for him. But in legal action no-one wins: apart from the system, everyone loses in one way or another. Mr. Alder sold many of his assets during the 1990s and, although still wealthy in most people's terms, he was crippled as the financial mover & shaker his world knew in 1987. No-one ever really recovers from blows this hard, continuing over a seven year period.
And last Friday the 230 Names who chose to fight on against Lloyd's lost, and are now liable among 1,600 hold-outers for debts of £50 million. The judge decided that allegations of systematic fraud by 33 members of Lloyd's committee were unfounded, but said that "the catalogue of failings and incompetence in the 1980s by underwriters, managing agents, members' agents and others was staggering". Mr. Justice Cresswell urged Lloyd's to set up a panel to reach a settlement with the 1,600. Lloyd's said no. Their legal fees had cost £20 milion & they want their money.
This (just about) ends a separate chapter on English life.
Now, I am waiting for the arrival of my guitar which didn't make the `plane & arrived at Dulles around 17.10.
22.33
The guitar has not yet arrived.
"A discipline that does not lead to a compassionate practice may be said to have failed."
