Sunday, August 05, 2018

"Flew in from Alghero Beach BOAC..."

 
As the estimable Ian Hunter once sagely quoth, “It’s a mighty long way down rock n’ roll”. I don ‘t know where he wrote that line. It may have been on a tour bus, an aeroplane, a service station somewhere. These days the amount of popping over to do a quick gig in Europe many musicians do means that the departure lounge at Stansted Airport is, essentially, the new Blue Boar. For the moment, at least. Who knows what will happen under the great new freedoms of Brexit, although the queues at passport control are always a lot longer in the ‘EU’ section, so there’s that to look forward to, at least.

I am for once caught up in this impossibly glamorous lifestyle of expensive food, nervous scrutiny of the baggage carousel and seemingly interminable waiting as I have booked a holiday with my devoted family which ends on the same day as the third date of the Picturehouse Big Band 2018 Tour (of Stowmarket) is scheduled. This means that whilst on Friday I will be in a lovely restaurant with impossibly well-groomed Italian waiters insisting that I try the Seadas, I shall dine on Saturday in a branch a popular fast food franchise so irredeemably filthy that even patrons in replica football shirts are taking souvenir pictures of it to send to their friends. All the way from Gatwick...

Timings work out, and so I present myself to the group armed with my latest custom hot-rod job of a guitar*, a potentially blistering Fender amp, a brand-new vintage Paisley stage shirt, and a complete lack of hearing in one ear due to repeated immersion in a pool and/or the sea over the past week or so. Fortunately it’s the ear facing (earing?) The Drummer, who already has his own plugs in due to the proximity of said amplifier to his drum stool. I wonder briefly whether this condition will have the effect as when the folk singers – you’ve seen the folk singers, by the shop, by where the multi-storey is, and where the Corn Exchange is, by the Corn Exchange, the folk singers – stick a finger in their ear so that they can hear the harmonies better, however I am quickly disabused of this notion when I get up to do Keep on Movin’ by boy band 5ive (some wag responds to Kilbey’s introduction to the song that we might form a tribute band called 5ifty 5ive). With a blockage in one ear and raging tinnitus in the other however, I do get what must be a close approximation of the experience Pete Townsend has during The Kids Are Alright. My sympathies, Pete.

Kilbey ‘Two Beers’ Mears** is in fine form this evening due to a rare driving-free excursion - courtesy of The Singer - and as his introductions get more voluble, the jokes funnier and a tear comes unprompted to his rheumy old eye during one particularly moving rendition of 'Run' I reflect on the proportion of the set that we started playing contemporaneously and which are now the subjects of anniversary and milestone editions of their original release. Even REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity has had the deluxe reissue treatment although, poignantly, they didn’t get around to it until the year after it’s thirtieth birthday. A mighty long way down rock n’ roll indeed.

Post-encore we are collared by an enthusiastic fan who insists that we play her 5iftieth birthday party, in two years’ time. “Even if you have to reform to do it!”. "2020” I say to The Drummer. “Try not to die in the meantime”. 



**Or, on this occasion, Kilbey 'Two beers, a couple of JD and cokes and might as well make it a double' Mears. 

Photo: Louise Paine/Facebook
 

2 comments:

John Medd said...

Ian Hunter wearing a paisley shirt in the Blue Boar; it's like playing Cluedo.

I don't wanna hex it (Brexit?), but drummers are always dying (irrespective of what it says in their passport) - I wouldn't hold your breath.

Unknown said...

I dislike the word 'collared', it was more 'enthusiastically accosted'.

I like the word 'wag'. That can stay.

You were, as always, a mighty fine bunch of musicians.

And finally, thank you for the photo credit, that's a bit over the top for a drunken snap, but the curtains look good in it, I'll admit.

Rock'n'Roll on 2020.