Blog: Back To Lewisham

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I've been bogged down with a horrible cold for the past few days - not that anyone would know, for i have, as ever, been VERY BRAVE about it and rarely mention it more than once an hour to any single person. THUS I was all ready to receive The Healing Power Of Rock last night as The Power In My Motors and I took the fantastic futuristic DLR (sitting in the front seat - WAHEY!) down to Lewisham to play a gig to help raise money for Kooba Radio's PRS license.

It's been a long long time since I last played at The Fox & Firkin, which is strange because I've always loved playing there. We arrived to find Tim outside on the phone home - as we were walking down I thought "This is strange, we are five minutes late arriving, and yet Tim has not called me - has THE LOVE DISAPPEARED?" Happily I later checked my phone to find Missed Call: 19.01, Tim Pattison. PHEW! We all went in and discovered The Tiger already on the prowl, for LO! tonight was a night for The Cleator Moor Validators to hit the stage.

One thing that HAS changed about The Fox in my year or so away is THE BEER, for now they actually HAVE some on tap of the NON-poisonous kind - previously it was VERY MUCH a Stick To The Guiness kind of place, but we managed to enjoy a couple of Surprisingly Delicious pints over the course of the evening. The LOVELIEST aspect of the evening though was all the GRATE people who turned up, including Mr Charlie Flowers, The Gibbs, the Kooba Krew and indeed the whole Lewisham LOT - i spent a lot of the evening getting all excited to see people I've not seen for AGES. Really, I must take steps to ensure it's NOT this long before I play there again.

Anyway, soon it was time for us to hit the stage, and after an introduction by young Myles detailing our Toilet-based first meeting we got going and did THIS:

The Gay Train

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

The Fight For History

Mental Judo

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

Do The Indie Kid

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Easily Impressed

It was GOOD - we LAUNCHED into The Gay Train with such ABANDON that I got over-excited and got some of the words wrong - actually, I did that with a few songs, mostly because I was thinking EITHER "Cor, The Healing Power Of ROCK really DOES work" OR "Why is my voice not working at all?" The LATTER was queued slightly by a mid-set application of BRANDY.

Notable incidents included a lady coming down the front and asking us to play "Black Velvet", saying helpfully "I can sing it with you!" You do often get this TYPE at gigs (and, for some reason, more so at The Fox), who will NOT take no for an answer, and seem to think that ALL bands can play ALL songs, and if you ask enough they will cave in and play what you like. ALSO we made an attempt on debuting the bossa nova version of It Only Works Because You're Here which lasted all of ten seconds, which is the time it took us to realise that NONE of us remembered how the bossa nova rhythm went, so we did Mental Judo instead. There was a pretty decent bit of FUTURE MUSIC in Do The Indie Kid
, clapping along in Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid and an outbreak of DANCING by the end, it was GOOD TIMES all round.

Afterwards there was a lot of HUGGING, in band and in general, plus talk of mighty FUTURE ACTIONS, including a) Tim taking on PRODUCTION DUTIES for the new album and b) a possible Cleator Moor Validators TOUR, before THE POORLINESS got the better of me and, via MUCH MORE HUGGING, we headed off home.

What an excellent night we had though - Lewisham, let's not make it so long next time!

posted 7/10/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

I'd quite like to hear you doing a version of Black Velvet, actually... Secret track on the next album?
posted 8/10/2007 by John Kell

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