I was invited out for lunch at a (genuinely nice) restaurant the other day in the company of The Present Mrs. Kirk which was called ‘Starlings.’ We knew instantly that we would be able to remember the name as we sang in unison a something from at least twenty-eight years ago called “Two Starlings, hatching a Plot” which is one of the worst, most ill-conceived and badly constructed numbers I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through. And yet, and yet…we could both sing the chorus on the fly, off the bat, and with three decades between the single performance we ever saw and heard of this song and the date we received the reservation. Sometimes it ain’t what you do, it is the way that you do it.
In the mobile listening station* today Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” cropped up, and I was reminded that in the earlier days of my folk/country/ (if you will) East Angliacana band Songs from The Blue House we would regularly accept commissions for beer festivals the agreed performance duration of which would far exceed our actual nominal set list. This - for me at least** - was a challenge which offered a gratifyingly enormous opportunity for artistic experimentation and the chance to, as we professed at the time, go off-roading. The version of Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox” – pitched somewhere between the Harrison/Clapton/Edmunds late night TV special captured through the wonders of a Videoplus code and the Gregson and Collister live version from ‘Home and Away’ proved a reliable crowd pleaser. The “Follow me for the changes and try and keep up…” version of “Tonight’s the Night” perhaps less so, although a six-piece band having your back and prepared to jam on an (at least) seven-minute version of a two-chord dirge in a pub in Margaretting is a feeling very few of us are able to look back on in the fondest terms. I think we are split about fifty-fifty on that one.
Beer Festivals and a dearth of material can make for fortuitous bedfellows. Think of the good folk of Sproughton being treated*** to a six-minute psych-folk exploration of gods kitchen’s “The Boy Who Loved Aeroplanes” say, or 5ive’s “Keep on Movin’” reimagined as a country hoedown. Lest we forget, Helen and The Neighbourhood Dogs’ debut performance at the Coggeshall Cricket and Beer Festival was scheduled to climax with a performative rendition of Tiffany’s**** “I Think We’re Alone Now” before we realised that Tony Winn was in the audience and also knew a couple of our songs so we could get back on and make amends.
Sometimes preparation itself can be the enemy of luminous rapture. Think, friends, of the entirely sober logical process which suggested that we should preface every song in The Star Club***** set at The Pickerel in Stowmarket with a Lawrence Ferlinghetti-esque reading from ‘Revolution in the Head’ up to – and including – a rendition of the 1967 fan club-only track “Christmas Time is Here Again”. I won’t lie to you, if the mood in The Pickerel darkens it does it quicker than a 2026 eclipse. We weren’t so emotionally scarred until we tried “Rubber Bullets” and they called out The National Guard.******
And so my message – if any there be - is this. Take the low road, the road less travelled, the road to the aisles. In thirty years,’ time, someone – someone – will be looking for a restaurant and laughing to their partner “Ah, yes – you remember, it’s called ‘The Wave’”.
*Skoda Karoq with the tracks on ‘random’
**I am including both the band and the audience in this exclusionary conceit
***OOAA.
****Tommy James and the Shondells for purists.
*****Beatles specialists. We’re on YouTube.
******”This is, Rob, a lie..!”
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