Blog: Back To The Lamb

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I was back ON THE ROAD last night, trundling through Bloomsburt with my gig bag behind me, to The Lamb, where we were doing another Totally Acoustic night. In the pub I met Mr P Knight and The Sole Of My Shoes and Helena, then went to SCOUR the pub to find Mr Pete Weiss, our guest for the evening. On the way to find him I bumped into one of Mr Carsmile Steve's LOT who'd I'd always thought was the former editor of a comics fanzine I used to read as a BOY, but it turns out he WASN'T. The Lamb appears to be The Pub Of Mistaken Identity for me, as the last time but one i was there i was CONVINCED that Waz from The Gresham Flyers was working behind the bar. He wasn't.

Luckily the identity of Mr Pete Weiss was not in question, for LO! there he was, looking like he does on the interweb, but more three dimensional. I've known Pete for YEARS via the twin majesty of ROCK and The Interweb - i first came into contact with him and the Stereorrific KREW through the album 50,000,000 Elves Fans Can't Be Wrong which we appeared on, released jointly by them and WIAIWYA. Since then we've exchanged CHAT and CDs, with me being particularly attached to the album Featuring Jaunty by Pete's band The Weisstronauts, HENCE me recently covering a track by them for a forthcoming compilation.

ANYWAY, that's all that and as he was coming over to the UK this week I organised a gig for him and me to play together, mostly as an excuse for PUB ACTION. Sometimes when you meet people you know online for the first time it's a bit weird - not everybody is as they seem in TEXT or, indeed, in SONG, but Pete was pretty much exactly as I'd hoped - a lovely chap who I felt like I'd known in person for AGES. Sometimes you meet people and think "AHA! I am going to be PALS with you", and it felt like it'd happened with him a LONG time ago. HOORAH!

We went upstairs and got ourselves sorted out, with Pete introducing me to a chap he'd been meeting with that day who had in a previous life been the Producer for Big Audio Dynamite! I was VERY impressed with this as my Dad used to be a MASSIVE fan of them and would play their albums at high volume in the car on Saturday mornings - tho I think the chap himself was a bit perplexed when I told him this. Hey, my Dad was a Cool Groovy Music Dad, it's a compliment!

People gently arrived and soon it was time to kick off, with me doing THIS on the ukelele:

Red & White Sockets

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine

Leaning On A Lamppost

It all seeemed to go OK, especially Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine which is rapidly becoming one of my favourites EVER, although I did notice NERVOUSNESS creeping in to my MIND. This has happened quite a bit lately, and led to quite a lot of forgetting of words - I do go through these phases from time to time, so I'm not worried about it becoming ENDEMIC, and it's probably not helped by playing the ukelele, where I'm not so familiar with the chords as on guitar, but I wish my BRANE would sort itself out!

Pete then came on and did a GRATE set. I was a bit worried about how he'd cope, as playing totally un-amped is hard enough if you've not done it much, but more so when you're usually in an instrumental band, but he SAILED through it with CHARM and a big bucket of CHARISMA. It was touching in parts, FUNNY in lots of others, and by the end of it everyone had a great big GRIN on their faces. ACE!

We had a brief toilet/cigarrette/BEER break and then I went on and did THIS:

I Did A Gig In New York

Billy Jones Is Dead

It Only Works Because You're Here

Never Going Back To Aldi's

Programming Is A Poetry For Our Time

The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)

The Gay Train

Hey Hey 16K

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Boom Shake The Room

It was a LOT of fun, with a LOT of fun, and even though I had to PULL OUT of an attempt on My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once due to, again, forgetting how it went, it all seemed to go well. When I did It Only Works Because You're Here I thought "Hang on, this could be the title of the album..." and the more I think of it the more I like it. Don't tell The Vlads though, I'm going to save it as an idea for late - SHHH!!

When all was done and dusted it was still only about nine o'clock so we settled into a lengthy and HIGHLY enjoyable session of CHAT with Doug, Duncan, Mr Jamieson Sutcliffe (stunning me by APPEARING, as if by Magic, when he should surely be in Leicester?) and The Dave Green, who I'd not seen for AGES. By the end of the evening all that was left was myself, Pete, Carsmile, and Mr John Kell, and we had a very lengthy and entertaining conversation about... Er... I'm not entirely sure, but i do know it was VERY entertaining at the time. I guess I must have been playing ukelele at the time, and THAT caused me to forget. There can be no other explanation.

The evening finished with MUCH hugging and a wobbly walk back to the tube. It was a LOVELY way to top off this most recent batch of gigging, and a BRILLIANT excuse to spend the night in the pub with a bunch of GRATE people!

posted 7/11/2007 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

yes, it was an entertaining conversation.

no, i can't really remember the finer details either...
posted 7/11/2007 by CarsmileSteve

yes, it was an entertaining conversation.

no, i can't really remember the finer details either...
posted 7/11/2007 by CarsmileSteve

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