BBC Proms: The “Proms” refers to a shortened version of “promenade concerts”, an English tradition going back centuries, which originally referred to music being played in parks and pleasure gardens, allowing people to stroll while listening to the music. In the late 1800s, it was formalized into a classical music festival in which a series of concerts are held, most of them at Royal Albert Hall. At some point the BBC became the sponsor. On the final day of the Proms, the last concert at Royal Albert Hall features easier listening classical music and concludes with a series of patriotic tunes. To make this last day more egalitarian, a parallel concert is held next door in Hyde Park, which also ends with the same patriotic spectacle. This has now expanded to Glasgow, Belfast and somewhere in Wales.

Judie and I got tickets for the Hyde Park event and bought hampers, so we could have food and wine. (I bought two hampers and discovered that each hamper was for two, so we had too much food and two bottles of wine. Guess which we finished.) Of course, it rained–either steady drizzle or serious rain for the first three or more hours. Londoners are used to this. The concert itself consisted mostly of old pop acts and some show tunes that were sort of advertising for shows currently running or about to open. James Galway did play a flute piece based on “Carmen”. Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber was there to plug “School of Rock” (coming soon) and Tim Minchin sang songs from “Matilda” and “Groundhog Day”. The pop groups, The Feeling, Rick Astley, ABC and Martin Fry and All Saints, were essentially unknown to me, although one or two of Rick Astley’s tunes sounded familiar. But, when we looked around everyone seemed to be singing along. There is a whole layer of English culture about which we know absolutely nothing. There were some strange moments: weird on-stage interviews by Anneka Rice, along-time BBC radio and television host who looked botoxed and face-lifted to the point of being creepy, and the performance by Martin Fry, whose clothes and hair accentuated that he was an old guy singing pop songs from his youth. Everyone was very friendly and there was a nice spirit, despite the weather. The Hyde Park part of the show ended with Frankie Valli and a set of backup singers. He is 82, but looks pretty good and can still hit those high notes, although he is remarkably stiff. The crowd sang along lustily. We left when the feed from Royal Albert Hall came on the video screens. We decided to miss the patriotic chest-thumping and avoid the crowds on the Tube. Some pictures follow:

Our Party: If any of you have visited, there is a decent chance that we took you to Vagabond’s, a wine tasting place in Old Spitalfield Market, featuring around 80 wines in machines. With a pre-paid card that you insert in a slot in the various machines, you can take a taste or get a glass of wine, with the cost of the wine deducted from your card. The amount varies, depending on the cost of the bottle. It’s a great concept and we wonder if there are any of these in the NY area. We decided to have our party there, since it is like having a wine tasting with very little work. All we had to do was provide cards and buy a few cheese and charcuterie platters and have some bottles available when our guests ran through their cards. It worked out great and everyone had fun. It was a mix of Bryan Cave lawyers, New Unity people and various couples we have met during the year. An eclectic mix. Everyone got along. A great success!

Pinegrove: On Tuesday night, we went to see Pinegrove at club called The Lexington in the Angel section of Islington. It is fairly small (200+ capacity), so it sold out very quickly, since Pinegrove is very hot right now. For those of you who have never heard of them, Pinegrove is a Montclair band led by two friends of Alex. Evan Stevens Hall is the front man, lead singer and composer, who we have known since he was very little. I coached him in Little League at least one year and he was a year behind Alex in school. He has always been obviously talented, which, of course, means nothing in the music business. He has been playing in bands forever with his long-time buddy and drummer Zack Levine, who also went to Northwestern with Alex. Evan and Zack’s bands and Alex and his friends bands were the two most popular bands throughout high school. Evan and Zack have been trying to make it in the music business and have come close to giving up at times, but, at the beginning of the year, Pinegrove released the album “Cardinal” to rapturous reviews and they took off. They have been touring ever since to increasingly large and enthusiastic crowds and getting great publicity. On their current tour, they are joined by another Montclair kid, Aiden Feliciano, a friend of James from drumming classes with Miss Maya and Reggie Workman, who plays the bass now (like James). The concert was good, if a bit short. They played all of the album with the audience singling along. The band is very tight and Evan has developed an appealing stage persona. They are off to the rest of Britain over the next month and then on to Europe.

Random Notes: After my last blog, I went and read the reviews of “Labyrinth” that appeared in the papers. They were more positive than I was. Most of them raved about how deeply researched it was. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean that it is a compelling plot. Ultimately, the biggest difference is that the reviewers liked the equivalences between that crisis and the more recent crisis and felt the fact that it keeps happening is instructive. I suppose so, but how many times do I have to see this point made? The staging was great and the cast was good and it had a lot of energy, but was it a story that needed to be told?

It has gone back to being summer here. On Tuesday, it was hotter in London than in Miami. Sauna like conditions prevail in the flat, although it is merely hot in the kitchen, where I paint, so I’ve been retreating to there.

Judie is involved with person to person lending (I can’t recall if she has a new client or speaking at a conference). So she asked me to try it and report back. I took $2,500 and opened an account at a site called The Lending Club. The idea is that people who need a loan but, for one reason or another, would have trouble getting one from a bank, can borrow money from other people to pay fora home improvement or for debt consolidation or medical bills. It’s like crowd funding, but it is an interest paying loan. The risk is higher (and varies depending on borrower) and there is a real possibility that a borrower might default. So what you do is spread your risk by loaning just $25 on many individual notes. In theory, I should get a good return even if a certain number of the 100 borrowers I have funded end up defaulting. We’ll see how it works in practice.