Yesterday evening we travelled to Brighton to play for a party celebrating a wedding that had taken place a few days before.
While loading into a venue on a pedestrian precinct in the middle of a fearsome one way system was not exactly easy, once we were all set up and enjoyed a fine burger it was a blast.
As a special request for the happy couple we played “Can’t take my eyes off you” with a ska flavour, which seemed to go down very well on what had become a packed dance floor in the monster second set.
We don’t have any photos or video but this is what we played:
We were delighted to be the main band on the Saturday night of a weekend mini-festival at the Royal Oak pub in Hollywater, near Liphook in Hampshire.
We were sharing the stage with the General Wayne sound system who have impeccable taste, and selected some great tunes for before and after our set. And while bands can never tell what the audience get to hear, the onstage sound was spot on.
Our special guest was the mighty Joe Ospalla on drums.
We didn’t get a chance to take many photos, other than a few as we were setting up.
Annie and Adam had perfect weather for their wedding last weekend, and we had great fun playing outside in the sun for their guests for two hours in the afternoon. There was a good covered stage, and we got to play next to the pool. If we really lived the rock and roll lifestyle we would have finished by throwing our amps in the pool, but we might need them again.
We were asked to feature songs by the Beat so we added Mirror in the Bathroom and Tears of a Clown to our set. Stand Down Margaret is perhaps not quite right for a wedding, though, thinking about it, quite a few of our numbers are wildly irrelevant.
It was great to see a such a good and enthusiastic turn out for our gig Upstairs at the Ritzy last night. There was lots of singing along, and some enthusiastic and authentic skanking.
We managed to take a few snaps at the soundcheck – and it’s always good to see our name in big letters.
We have never played a Christmas Eve gig before, so we were delighted to be asked by Croydon’s Oval Tavern to play there this year as it is one of our favourite venues.
We decided it should be called Ska Humbug! and it gave us the chance to play a lot of cheesy Christmas covers.
Many old Christmas songs are basically jazz swing tunes, and they always work well as ska – so it was not hard to adapt Rockaing Around the Christmas Tree, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which we have done before) for our line up.
We have done Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody before, so we dusted that one down. And in what we thought was a stroke of great originality we adapted the Snowman song “Walking in the Air” as a reggae instrumental. However we soon found that we were by no means the first band to do this, but no matter it still went down well.
We had lots of fun playing one of our favourite venues, the Earl Haig Hall, in Crouch End last night.
It’s an old British Legion Hall, brought back to life as a great pub/venue – though we like to think of Earl Haig as a lesser known counterpart to Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
It was a lovely appreciative audience, and it is always a real pleasure to play when the sound is good. Thanks Matt!
We only managed a few photos as it was pretty dark with the lights in the wrong place to get decent shots. But if anyone in the audience wants to share pictures or videos, please add them to out Facebook page.
This is what we played – a slightly shorter set than we had planned as we hadn’t factored in the 10pm curfew to keep the neighbours happy.
This was our second gig at the Oval tavern in Croydon – and it was as good as our first.
It’s hard to pin down why this is such a good venue, but it has a lot to do with good sound (thanks Gavin), what is clearly a great community pub and an enthusiastic crowd.
One family group, who all got up to dance, told us they had members in their 80s, 70s, 50s and 20s. That’s one of the great things about ska – it appeals across the generations.
We played two new songs. Our ska’ed up version of Mad World, which went down particularly well, we put in the first set.
And in the second set we played It Must be True Love, a Toots and the Maytals tune which is not that well known. We have been asked to play it at a wedding gig soon, and it’s a lovely song.
This is what we played:
Chinatown
Guns Of Navarone
Latin Goes Ska
Tide Is High
Mood For Love
My Baby Just Cares for Me
Alley Cat Ska
Mambo Number 5
Mad World
London Calling
Enola Gay
Price Tag
Red Red Wine
One Step Beyond
Mountain King
It Must Be True Love
Come Dancing
Simmer Down
99 Red Balloons
Tainted Love
Rudy A Message To You
My Boy Lollipop
Night Boat To Cairo
Gangsters
We don’t have any pictures or video of the band performing, but we took some pictures in the pub garden and at the sound check before we played, and there’s one of everyone in the band, inclduing special guest Jackie on tenor sax. If anyone did take any pix, please share them to our Facebook page.
We had a blast last Saturday kicking off a ska night at the New Cross Inn with the excellent Popes of Chillitown and ska legends the Toasters.
It was a short tight set and we think it went well.
So did Ashley who messaged our Facebook page to say:
You were the best band by a mile last night – great stuff!
This is what we played:
Chinatown
Guns Of Navarone
Latin Goes Ska
Tide Is High
Mood For Love
Work Song
London Calling
Enola Gay
Simmer Down
Tainted Love
My Boy Lollipop
We didn’t have time to take any photos, so we’ve cheated with a video of last time we played at the New Cross Inn
Kicking things off for us will be The Skamonics, who won our ears over for the first time back before Christmas and now we’re hooked and can’t stop dancing, to their unique mix of authentic 60s ska, two-tone and bonkers covers – three horns, female vocals and a driving rhythm section.
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