It is going to be a different sort of afternoon for me today. After church, rather than taking my bass home, I’ll be taking it down to London for an event at Under the Bridge in Fulham, which is under the Stamford Bridge home ground of Chelsea FC. It’s a session celebrating the memory of Bradford Gross, who was about my age and passed away unexpectedly about 18 months ago.

I knew Brad from my years with Lovesjones, a soul funk band I played with a little over fifteen years ago. My particular contribution to the afternoon will be jamming on a few of the tracks we used to do with some other remnants of the band and sundry other musicians. That’s not going to be without challenges – we’ll definitely have to lean on the improvising side as there will be zero rehearsal time to work up the tight arrangement thing!

There will also be plenty of other people. Brad was very charismatic and won friends with musicians, colleagues and sundry others. In some ways a big social event is very much not my thing. However, to stand in solidarity with those I do know and to share with those I haven’t yet met, I’ll try to pour out some fluid bass lines as my memorial libation to a friend.