I'm off to put them on my big PC, and have a listen.

I met Dave Murray last year, he's a nice bloke. Here's his blog.

Quality is awful, but this is the first video of Markos I have seen. Stelios is sat next to him. If anyone knows where there are other videos of the man....

I apologise to my fans (Sid and Doris Vamvakaris) for taking so long editing the mp3 recordings I made on Hydra this year, but I think the wait will prove to have been worth it.

For only £10 sent to my PayPal account, you can have the conference lectures and (this is the good bit) over seven hours of Rebetiko to listen to.

Click this bouzouki to go to the web page...

I have reached the end of the concert at the Douskos Restaurant, only to find it looks as if I did record some of the after-gig party. Let's hope it doesn't include the bit where I sang "Your baby has gone down the plughole".

Well actually, I am listening to internet radio, and the best Rebetiko station I have found.

It's Soura Kai Mastoura.

A tune at Lulu's on the Thursday night of the Hydra Rebetiko Conference 2008.

I was up in time for my hotel breakfast, and then wandered down to the sea front. Drinking coffees here and there, I found that at least six of the sea front bars and restaurants had visible WiFi connections, and two of them (Gogos' Bar and the Roloi Café) were unencrypted. This meant I could sit and have Greek coffee in the complete absence of (almost all) traffic noise, and use the Asus on the internet as well, which makes Hydra a very special place indeed.

I had a beer and some calamari at Tasos' Café, and then wandered along to the conference registration session at the Melina Mercouri hall, which was nominally set for one in the afternoon. Being greeted warmly by so many people I recognise is still a strange feeling to me, as I have spent a lot of my life being rather antisocial, but it was wonderful. Thanks folks!

The hall was filled with interesting paintings, as in previous years, and to my great delight, has obtained some comparatively comfortable chairs at last. Some of the old chairs they used to have would gradually bend in use until one could no longer sit on them.

Ed Emery's introduction to the conference was very interesting, but he did ask that it should not be recorded, so I didn't record it. I did take a few notes though. ...section temporarily edited out.... And then we went on to the actual conference sessions, and I started recording again.

The first session was by Halvard Sivertsen, from Bergen in Norway, and was entitled "Rena Stamou: Last of the Rebetissas". An earlier conference, in 2005, had a session with Rena present, talking about her life. Halvard has made a discography of all of her work, every recording she participated in that can be found, an impressive achievement indeed. He played us three tracks, her first ever with Tsitsanis, one from 1951 with Papaioannou, and one with Stelios Xrisinis. As a bonus, Halvard has also gathered together a collection of all the tracks mentioned in the book "Songs of the Greek Underworld" by Elias Petropulos (translated by a certain Ed Emery).

The second session was contributed by Klearchos A Kyriakidis, of London, and was called "Metaxas, the Greek underworld and the censorship of music during the late 1930s: a politico-legal analysis". Klearchos spoke so entertainingly that I forgot to make anything in the way of notes. Fortunately, he handed out copies of his paper, so I can tell you that it "sheds additional light on the background to the music censorship laws which were introduced by the government of Greece during the late 1930s. More specifically, the paper highlights the clash of personalities between General Ioannis Metaxas, the Prime Minister of Greece from 1936 until 1941 and the manges, the composers, lyricists and other musicians of the form of music known as rebetika." As soon as the paper appears online at Ed's site, I will link to it.

After a short break to rearrange the furniture, it was time for Paul Astin of California to talk about "The Groove in Markos Vamvakaris". Paul illustrated his talk with jazz piano versions of some Markos songs, and supplied a printed version of the paper, which makes very interesting reading. Again, I will link to it when possible. The session was somewhat heated at times, when there was discussion of whether the player in the recordings Paul played was actually Markos Vamvakaris or Spiros Peristeris, as well as whether the CDs Paul had listened to were actually "fading in", showing that the recording was started after a taximia had been played, or whether this had been done when the transfer to CD was done. Given the poor quality of the mastering on many Rebetiko CDs, it is hard to know how valid some of Paul's conclusions are. I certainly can't say one way or the other, and unless there are written descriptions of recording sessions available, perhaps this will remain obscure.

That was the end of the conference sessions for the day. I took the opportunity to rest for a whileand charge up lots of batteries in preparation for the evening's entertainment. Later on, there was a fine meal and music session at To Steki Taverna. I'm happy to say that the food was good, as usual, although I am somewhat vague as to what I actually had.

My recordings of this music session have much less of the cutlery noises and conversation than previous years' recordings. I achieved this by throwing a long microphone cable over a branch of a tree, and suspending the powered microphone over the heads of the players. The music finished reasonably early, to give Argyris the chance to get some sleep, and after making backups of my recordings, and having an ouzo nightcap, I turned in.

Thursday

Having driven away from Melksham at almost midnight on Wednesday, I arrived in the Gatwick Airport car park some three hours later. On the bus to the North Terminal, I found to my horror that I had left my tatty old Greek fisherman's hat in the car. The idea of being without it until I could get a new one on Hydra was too horrific to bear, as was the idea of wearing a new one, so I went back for it, and caught the next bus.

I checked in for my easyJet flight at the officially correct time, only to find all the other people who had been checking in in front of me were on the same flight. So I was more or less the last to board, not that it matters much when one is travelling alone, found a seat, and went into a state almost, but not quite, like sleep for three hours.

In Athens, baggage reclaim was quick. I went outside, and caught the waiting X96 bus to Pireas, and arrived at the port a little after 1pm. It turned out that I had missed a Flying Dolphin to Hydra by a few minutes, and the next one was not until 5pm. Why there is a huge gap in the middle of their timetable, unless the boats are taking a siesta somewhere, is a complete mystery. So I sat and chatted with a gentleman who was going to Poros to join a mate on a yacht. Every few minutes we had to say "No thank you" to people selling genuine Rolex watches for tiny sums.

Shortly before 5pm, lots of people I recognised started to appear, which was good. In the so-called "real world", I know very few people, and most of them are a little dull. On Hydra I know rather a lot, and most of them are very interesting. To add to the people I know, I was delighted to meet Dave Murray and his wife Debbie. Dave and I have been (sort of) cooperating on a song translation project for much longer than I should really let it take, so it was good to meet him at last.

There was something wrong with the engines of Dolphin 19, and it kept slowing down to a comparative crawl. The journey usually takes 90 minutes, but this time it took well over two and a quarter hours. Ed Emery was waiting to greet people when I arrived, probably because so many were on such a late boat. I trundled my case a couple of hundred yards to the Ippokampos Hotel, where I was made so welcome that I felt they had been missing me for a year. Not only does the Ippokampos welcome me like a long lost son, but it also has a rather nice fast wireless internet connection, so I was able to email and Skype home with my nice Asus Eee PC to tell folks I had arrived safely.

After a brief rest, I went to Lulu's Taverna, and joined Dave and Debbie outside. Dave's dinner looked good, so I ordered myself some fish like his, and some Mythos beer. Nikos Politis, Tony Klein, and many others arrived, and we confused the wonderful folk at Lulu's by playing outside instead of inside. I recorded as much music as I could, with my Edirol R-09 and powered microphone. After a couple of hours and three beers, I was ready for bed, so off I went. I backed up my recordings to the Asus, and fell into the sleep of the very happy Rebetologist.

Last night's concert was great! The main band didn't come to the island because the revolting Mayor of Hydra would not pay them on time, if at all. So instead, the Famous SOAS Rebetiko Band entertained us for the evening. The other band would have bought a PA system, so there was none, but that helped. It was a wonderful acoustic set, though sadly people sat too far back were not able to hear as well as me. I had a front row seat, and put a microphone on the stage.

I'm not posting any now as the files need editing. That will be a pleasant experience, and then I will be putting things on my web site, www.doctor-dark.co.uk