It's friday night. Now, friday night gigs are different to thursday gigs (saturday gigs are another, whole different, kettle of fish - students of the genre are advised to seek out Mott The Hoople's seminal work on the subject, but I digress) - it's the weekend, there's no work in the morning, and on this occasion it is pay day. This all adds up to a heady cocktail, a veritable powder keg of emotion, and one which is ripe for exploitation by the savvy pub rocker. Obviously it's our weekend too, but someone's got to drive. I get myself in the mood by selecting Thin Lizzy's "Live and Dangerous" as the pre-gig driving warm up music. This has the dual effect of reminding me of both how exciting and adrenaline enhancing live bands can be and also that I'm never going to work to the solo to "Still In Love With You". Somehow, I'm still always surprised by that. As it turns out there are two pleasant surprises in store for me. Firstly, the drummer has proposed to his girlfriend, and she has accepted (however, given the weekend at a nice hotel, the provision of a personal stylist, a gift voucher at Jimmy Choo's and an evening at the ballet, one would have to be the worst kind of churl to decline such an offer - hell, I'd've married him for that little collection). The second is that, from the outset, it's clear that everyone is on fire this evening. No-one, especially not us, is this tight, are they?! It becomes apparent that this is no passing phase and we are having an absolute fucking ball - not just with the audience, but with each other. The jokes are flying in thick and fast, no-one's getting cross at the 'tween song intros, the audience, or each other and (lord knows how) the sound is hanging together beautifully. I wonder if (say) The Kaiser Chiefs ever wonder how their stuff goes down in a pub in Stowmarket when they're writing it. It's unlikely it crosses their collective minds, but we feed vicariously off their talent and lap up the resultant applause. At one point I'm windmilling mindlessly through some punk rock and notice that there is (a) a broken lampshade just above and to the left of me and (b) my hand is bleeding. It's not exactly Pete Townsend impaling himself on a whammy bar, but I'm secretly pleased....we mean it maaaan.... The drummer insists we play 'Band On The Run' and so we do. I sing some Bowie andThe Singer says (irony free) "Awesome". He tells the crowd to watch 'The Apprentice', a guy I work with tuts at "the gay stuff" (we play a Scissor Sisters number), there's condensation running down the walls. We're over time. We're done. Afterwards a guy, barely able to form coherent words, tells us how much he loved the gig. It's friday night, and the boys are back in town.

An Acoustic Diversion

An extraordinarily succesful gig by Me and The Missus last night. Having not tread the boards as part of an acoustic duo for a good eighteen months we were a bit concerned about how we'd manage, especially given that we'd been asked to bulk the set up to a sturdy two hours and as a result had spent a couple of anxious evenings running through some new (to us) songs and resurrecting a couple of half-remembered hits of yesteryear. Oh, and being too hungover on thursday to run through them all and see how long they lasted. 

The venue was a local village's local's pub, and one thing regulars in such an establishment expressly do not want to do on a saturday night is sit transfixed in silence while you pursue your heartfelt reading of an obscure Boo Hewerdine album track, and so the hubbub of conversation is at a constant throughout. 

Bolstered by the presence of a good few friends, neighbours, supporters and a close-to-the-stage table of youths who, although lippy aren't about to do anything to jeopardize their chances of getting served in the pub next weekend, we strike up a rapport with most of the audience, inviting responses on questions of the day such as why The Clash are responsible for global warming and whether Cliff Richard really does have a living doll at home with real hair (and which is quite possibly wired for sound). While the chat in the room is raging around us, that doesn't mean that they aren't listening, as their enthusiastic reactions to (of all things) a belligerent version of Richard Thompson's 'Shoot Out The Lights' and a whooping singalong to Squeeze's 'Up The Junction' betray. 

By the end of side two of the performance a combination of our getting the measure of the crowd and their galloping consumption of Adnam's Ale lead to a triumphant closing trinity of 'London Calling', 'Istanbul (not Constantinople') and KT Tunstall's 'Black Horse and The Cherry Tree', during which H's throwing herself into the spirit of the occasion leads her to inadvertantly rename 'Big Black Bush and The Cherry Tree' during some of the latter choruses. 

We are invited to encore and a combination of the crowd getting the measure of us and my galloping Adnam's consumption leads to a lengthy 'These Boots Are Made for Walking' (H is indeed wearing some shiny knee boots and a pencil skirt, which may have gone no little way to pacifying the upstarts at the front for a good deal of the set...) interspersed with running requests including 'Fit But You Know It', 'Parklife', 'Ring of Fire' and 'Not Fade Away' between (and occasionally instead of) verses. We thank them for a lovely evening, some of them make a point of thanking us and the experiment in introducing live music into the pub by the management is deemed a success.

A call comes to a rehearsal – a rare enough occurrence in the natural scheme of things, this get together been prompted by our forthcoming return to Spalding. Some years ago, when The Singer and The Other Guitarist were scouting around for ideas to fill their time with, they came up with the idea of forming a Beatles tribute band. The Other Guitarist was a bass player then, and blessed with not only left-handedness and a great voice for harmonies but with the Beatles Anthology for Easy Guitar, and so it all seemed to make sense if we got together and hung out at weekends, played some great music and earned a bit of beer money in the process. The vituperative letters to the local paper accusing us of stifling the local original music scene, the slightly obsessed stalkers, our local MP’s wedding reception, and the original member of The Quarrymen who shook us all by the hand after a gig and warmly congratulated us on our performance were all, benignly unsuspected, in our future.
One of our first champions was a local landlord called Paul, who with his partner CJ, had been hauled in to straighten out one of the, ahem, more characterful local pubs and was booking bands in on weekends to at least provide a soundtrack to the regular fights that inevitably broke out after the combination of several pints of two-star lager and the wrong look at the bar. At least one rolling and tumbling couple of ruffians pitched up in front of the stage just as we were about to break into ‘Love Me Do’ only to retreat in astonishment and to Paul’s delighted laughter, and so when he got offered a pub Oop North (anywhere further up the A14 than Peterborough is ‘Oop North’ to us lot) one of the first bands he contacted to follow him up the road was us. We duly took time off the day jobs and made our way across the flat and breezy fens, not really knowing what to expect once we reached our destination. As it turned out, what we should have been expecting was a run of four gigs in five days - one of which was an off-the-cuff acoustic show in the pub next door which I think climaxed in a stirring run through ‘Wish You Were Here’ if I recall correctly (which is unlikely), but certainly ended in the presentation of one of the art prints off the wall to The Drummer, a stern admonishment that if we were caught eating or drinking in any other establishment in town then we’d be barred immediately from his gaff (all food and drink at his was, naturally, gratis for the duration) and a barman dedicated at all times to ensuring that none of us, on pain of his dismissal, had an empty glass at any time during our stay. We took to it like naturals – this Lincolnshire flower town was our Hamburg, The Bass House our Reeperbahn, and dammit, if Spalding’d been good enough for Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix in 1967 (the poster was still above the bar) it was darned well good enough for us.
There have been many more returns over the years - for parties, barbecues, festivals, fundraisers and weddings (one of which was Paul and CJ’s) and throughout all of them our host and hostess have been unfailingly warm, generous, and usually at least very slightly drunk. But over time we grew out of The Beatles (or at least the drudgery that goes with being in a Beatles Specialist band), the visits became less frequent, we got in touch more by phone than in person and finally the new band swept the decks and cleared the air with a “No Beatles” rule which finally cut the cord with our previous incarnation. The polo-necks were tucked away at the back of the wardrobe, the Chelsea boots put out to grass. And now we’re going back. Not for a wedding, or an engagement, or even a fortieth birthday party, but for a wake. We weren’t expecting that one. Sleep well CJ; at least this time we’ll have rehearsed for you.

Tonight we have a gig in Felixstowe - I will leave home at approximately eight o’clock in the evening and get home at two in the morning. I will be paid thirty pounds. In between times, the following will occur….. Thursday, designated pub-rock day in any reasonable licensed establishment, gives way to a ritual. Gear in car, quick idiot check around the front room to ensure that there aren’t any stray stands, bags, leads or guitars kicking about (always embarrassing to turn up in, say, Wetherden without a serviceable amplifier, I find), and then off to a local takeaway for pre-show sustenance. There is a gentle rhythm about fast food fursday – the gravelly tones of Bob Harris, the reassuring plumminess of Paul Jones, and the intractable incompetence of Darren, who if he’d only concentrated a bit harder at school may well have mastered simple addition and subtraction as well as grade three button-pushing. As it is, the furrowed brow on being given the correct money is always a joy to behold. Having said that, he is at least bright enough to be in a job that pays at least the minimum wage, gives you free food and provides a uniform, and at this juncture it occurs to me that mine doesn’t. 

With the car smelling nicely of a unique blend of herbs and spices, arrival at the venue is heralded by the flashing hazard lights of one estate car, a five door company job and a rather worse-for-wear Astra. The band’s all here… According to who’s been the most progressive in setting up, leads are uncoiled, stands assembled, speakers positioned and four-way extension leads readied for use by unspoken volunteers. The drummer is, as usual, excused from all this – engaged as he is in the arcane ritual of tightening, tweaking, arranging and hitting which heralds the first triumphant roll around the kit - usually with an attendant shudder from the bar as our patrons realize how loud it’s going to be. Already, four of them are singing along with the rhythm, football shirts and baseball caps flapping in the breeze generated by the pounding of the mighty Tama bass drum. A round of drinks is ordered and paid for – one lager, one lager tops, two Guinness, a Budweiser – under a sort of informal rota system. This round will get progressively cheaper throughout the course of the evening as we switch to lime and soda, generally thought to be the cheapest way of accepting liquid sustenance without actually refilling a bottle from the tap in the toilets. 

We look around and nod at vague acquaintances – there are the couple that follow us around to most of the gigs, quiet and appreciative, there’s Mark, the heavily-tattooed and quietly threatening ‘internal eviction technician’, there are no wives or girlfriends on this trip. While never quite plumbing the depths of some of the capital’s more insalubrious dives, tonight’s venue is prone to drunken and clumsy late night chat-up lines, not all issuing from the stage, and after the last time when two of our girls pretended to be lesbians in order to deflect the attentions of the local Don Juans they have declined further trips out – the girls that is, lothario central is looking to be as well-staffed as ever this evening. The lezzing up just encouraged the lads anyway, apparently, and even before the relaxation of the licensing laws this was a late gig for a school night. Now it’s even later. Naturally, the money hasn’t gone up commensurably. Times are hard, apparently.

 

The gig itself is a pleasant surprise – we haven’t played since well before Christmas and any rehearsals beyond front-room get-togethers are anathema to us, as indeed are soundchecks and, frequently, set lists. We are, however, gelling well tonight – it always helps when the drummer is on a high (quite literally on occasion) and the sound is full and balanced. The singer is playing my Les Paul tonight as his Epiphone is “making odd noises” (I decline to comment) and he seems to appreciate it’s grade-higher playability. I’m thrashing away on the back up Tele copy and our amps are pushing out a wall of sound both full and delineable. It feels good – especially during the nearest we come to close-harmony lead work in a torrid “I Fought The Law” where the alternately wailing and keening guitars combine together, and just for a moment we ARE The Clash on Broadway. We have a flexible and easy-going approach to playing the songs on the list in order, depending on how the mood (of both us and our audience) takes us. The bass player has written down a song title that doesn’t actually exist outside his imagination, and by the time we work out what it’s supposed to be, he can’t find the words in the safety-net big folder of words we carry with us at all times either – we skip it. 

At half time we (as usual) have over run the allotted three quarters of an hour set. I get to the bar and order a round of drinks, there is a woman who wants to talk to me. “That was great”, she starts. “Thanks” I say, wondering when the ‘but’ moment will arrive. It isn’t long. A great number of conversations conducted between band members and their public are based around the preposition that they (the audience) know what they (the band) should be playing far, far better than the group do themselves, whether it’s introduced with the deliberately self-effacing “Well, I don’t know much about music because I don’t play….” or the rather more confident “I see bands all the time, and…” which generally infers that “You owe me a living young man, so you’d better listen to what I’ve got to say – without me you’d be behind the counter in KFC”. This disregards two vital pieces of information – three if you accept the fact that no-one calls me ‘young man’ except in an ironic sense these days – point one; no-one dreams of working behind the Colonel’s counter (not even Darren, I’ll wager) to the point where they pose in front of the bedroom mirror, with a tennis racket standing in for the basket you get the fries out of the fat with setting the kitchen timer to go off every ten minutes in order to complete another imaginary order and so, no, specifically if we weren’t popular enough to make it worth the management hiring us in order to sell more drinks (you, sir, got in free, didn’t you?) I wouldn’t actually be behind the counter asking if folk wanted to max their zinger burger meal, I’d be at home, probably with a nice glass of red, on the sofa idly wondering whether I could get away with avoiding the washing up in order to watch the end of Location, Location, Location and ponder if Kirstie Allsop ever uses that big scarf for anything during loveplay. 

The second vital point to note is that if I hadn’t been having this conversation I’d have caught the barmaid’s eye by now and would have got a round in and been happily into my second Marlboro Light of the break. This interruption is of the former variety, and conducted with a very slightly slurred, yet insistent tone. Despite our crowd-pleasing set-closing triumvirate of numbers by Razorlight, Snow Patrol and Coldplay, my new best friend wants to know why we don’t play ‘House of The Rising Sun’. “We don’t know it”, I begin before realizing this is a well-worn and hopeless route to take. Sure enough, she’s already humming the intro at me. “Well”, I start again “I know how it goes, but we don’t play it”. We, apparently however, should. The feat of logic behind this is that it is her favourite song. Does she have a copy of it at home, I ask? It transpires that she does. A gentle rejoinder that perhaps if she listened to it on headphones in the comfort of her own lounge later on after the gig she may glean more enjoyment from it than if we were to attempt an unrehearsed wade through it cuts no ice with her. 

We should play it, we should ideally play it in the second set and we should let her sing it. The other forty songs we had lined up to play over the course of the evening are transparently inferior to this, the one, true hit, which “no one else plays”. There must be a reason for that, I suggest. After ten minutes of these sorts of exchanges, I make a radical suggestion – if the need to hear this song played live in public is so pressing, perhaps she should pursue the option I did, that is learn to play the guitar, then form a band and she’ll be able to play it whenever and to whoever she liked. “But I don’t play guitar”, she counters. “Well I do and I think it’s shit”. The encounter has not gone well. I return to the group to find The Other Guitarist in conversation with a hippy. “So, you do a set, and then we do an hour, and then you go back on to finish the night” he is saying. “We”, it transpires, are a hundred-piece samba band. T.O.G. seems about as happy as I do, but he’s a better actor. The second set brings more noise, more list-skipping, more badinage – we’ve all known each other for long enough that there’s a real sense of the gang on a night out in the banter. When it works, it works superbly - (conversely, when no-one’s in the mood it can be embarrassingly stilted) – tonight the subject under onstage discussion is singing drummers (we have one). 

Just about the point that the whole edifice is about to crash down around our ears we click into the intro and are away as one. It looks incredibly rehearsed (we were once accused of scripting the gigs) but it isn’t, and it’s glorious to be swept away in the midst of it. There are joke intros to songs we have no intention of playing (always a mistake – that way lies more “You should really have played…” but we, or specifically I, can never resist it). Before long it’s encore time. They know we’re doing one, we know we’re doing one, we just have to hang around long enough to be back on before the applause dies down and the conversations resume. There’s a pretty girl dancing at the front (she really has taken the mantra to take her Mama out all night quite literally) who has been cheering and clapping all night and so we listen to what she wants, and it turns out we do have a Who number in our back pockets. The drummer is looking tired – it’s been a fast-paced end to a long evening. We’ve got just enough gas in the tank for a drawn-out “Fat Bottomed Girls” – The Singer morphs it Bono-like into “Helter Skelter” half way through the outro – we haven’t rehearsed this, or even ever done it at a previous gig, but we’re going with him, there are harmonies appearing, riffs being bended to fit.

 It ends with a bang, and the first thing after that are that the sliders on the P.A. amp come down (there’s always someone who wants to carry the evening on, and microphones are like catnip for drunks). The Mama from earlier thanks us for her Who cover. It’s her birthday. I get home, it’s two in the morning, I’m still buzzed from the gig and there’s a whining in my ears that’s not Neil Young. I get a beer from the fridge and turn on the laptop.