Holidays have intervened to delay a report of a great wedding gig that we played at the end of July in Birchington, near to Margate in Kent for Rebecca and Alex.
We played at the historic Quex House,which has lovely grounds. Best of all , there were fireworks during the break between our two sets.
We didn’t take any photos, but everyone seemed to have a good time.
This was one of the many recent gigs where we were lucky to have Rachel Musson guesting on saxophone, and also featured the mighty Joe Ospalla on drums.
We are playing at Northwick Park Hospital Social Club in North West London next Friday.
The funds raised by the modest £5 entry fee will help patients that are “locked in” or have little or no movement in their arms and legs. It will be spent on an ‘eyegaze’ communication tool. This allows them to communicate with eye movement as it tracks eye movement on to an alphabet sheet and ‘speaks’ the words for them. It also enables access to emails and the Internet.
Here’s a picture of one in use.
We will be playing two full sets with the first one at about 8:30 or so.
It’s near Northwick Park tube station.
Here is a map of the site (pdf), with the social club clearly marked towards the top of the map.
We have a free gig at the Cavendish Arms in Stockwell. It’s on Friday April 11th.
Our Facebook event is here – and you can see the other acts who are playing here.
The pub is easy to get there from either Vauxhall or Stockwell stations. The address is 128 Hartington Road, London SW8 2HJ.
We like the Cavendish Arms because it has a characterful music room with excellent sound and a proper stage. It is where we had our most recent official band photos done.
We’ve been invited to play at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton a few times, but were disappointed not to be able to do the dates that they offered.
But on Friday we had a good time at our eventual first gig there.
This is what we played:
Chinatown
Guns Of Navarone
Latin Goes Ska
Mood For Love
Harder They Come
Man In The Street
Tide Is High
Enola Gay
Price Tag
Tainted Love
Last Song
My Boy Lollipop
The Harder They Come and The Tide is High are two the new songs we worked up over the new year, and are definite keepers.
We were supporting the Kubricks, who we thought were terrific. It would be good to work with them again as they do their own material that goes well along side our journey from the 60s roots of ska.
Once again we pressed someone in the audience to take some pictures. Thanks Frank C.
We’ve been invited to play at Charlie Wright’s in Hoxton a few times, but were disappointed not to be able to do the dates that they offered.
But on Friday we had a good time at our eventual first gig there.
This is what we played:
Chinatown
Guns Of Navarone
Latin Goes Ska
Mood For Love
Harder They Come
Man In The Street
Tide Is High
Enola Gay
Price Tag
Tainted Love
Last Song
My Boy Lollipop
The Harder They Come and The Tide is High are two the new songs we worked up over the new year, and are definite keepers.
We were supporting the Kubricks, who we thought were terrific. It would be good to work with them again as they do their own material that goes well along side our journey from the 60s roots of ska.
Once again we pressed someone in the audience to take some pictures. Thanks Frank C.
Tuesday nights in early January are probably not the best nights for attracting a crowd. Add in heavy rain, and we were half expecting to be playing to an empty pub.
It was good therefore to see not just a pretty fair attendance but a full dance floor last night.
We like the Hootananny as it has a good stage and excellent sound, particularly in the hands of our last night’s engineer Geoff, who has mixed us before.
We also got the chance to play two full sets. And this is what we played:
Chinatown
Dr Who
Guns Of Navarone
Work Song
Latin Goes Ska
Johnny Too Bad
Mood For Love
Paranoid
You’re Wondering Now
Pata Pata
Harder They Come
10 Out Of 10
Alley Cat Ska
99 Red Balloons
Man In The Street
Tainted Love
Mambo Number 5
Rudy A Message To You
Tide Is High
My Boy Lollipop
Enola Gay
Gangsters
Price Tag
It went down well, and we hope to be asked back. Promoter Cecil Reuben knows his ska, and liked what we played.
We didn’t take any pictures but is anyone in the audience did we’d love to see them.
We played five new songs at our first gig of the year at the always great Dumplins Live Ska last night at the Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden.
That is almost half the set.
Brave, foolish or what?
This is what we played.
Chinatown
Latin Goes Ska
Harder They Come
Man In The Street
Tide Is High
Enola Gay
Johnny Too Bad
Paranoid
Pata Pata
Tainted Love
Our first new song was The Harder they Come, first sung by Jimmy Cliff for the film of the same name. And while it is absolutely of Jamaica of the 1960s, its rhythm cannot easily be described as ska or rocksteady.
The Tide is High is probably best known today through the Blondie cover (or even that by Atomic Kitten), but was first sung by the Paragons – a fine rocksteady group.
Johnny Too Bad has also been covered by very many people. The John Martyn version is good, but very far from the original by the Slickers – also on the soundtrack of The Harder they Come.
Paranoid comes from our bonkers covers book. We think we may be the first band to give this a ska treatment.
Pata Pata is of course from the great Miriam Makeba. The reformed Skatalites did an instrumental version of this, which gave us the idea. It is likely to be the only song we do in Xhosa.
We have two gigs in early January – the 4th in Camden and the 7th in Brixton.
On Saturday January 4th we return to Dumplins Live Ska – one of our favourite gigs – a nice venue, good sound and a friendly crowd who know their ska. This takes place at the Fiddler’s Elbow. The nearest tube is Chalk Farm. The address is 1 Malden Road Camden NW5 3HS. And it’s £7 admission.
