Blog: An Actual Night Out At An Actual Gig

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My life has been a giddy social whirl of late, with up to THREE trips out A WEEK, often involving pubs! A few years ago this would have counted as par for the course, even QUIET, but now that I have got used to sitting on the sofa with The Tea In My Mug watching TELLY it has all been a bit of a SHOCK!

For instance, I went out for PIES and PINTS with Mr Matt Tiller on Wednesday night and then, NOT TWENTY FOUR HOURS LATER went out AGANE on Thursday to a GIG. A GIG! What was I thinking?

Actually, what I was thinking was "This is dead good", as I was off to see Alex and the Christopher Hale Band with Simon Love & The Old Romantics at Paper Dress. It took me a while to get there, however, as I had blithely thought to myself "Paper Dress is near Hackney Station" and got off at Hackney WICK, only to realise that I should have got off the train five minutes earlier at Hackney CENTRAL. I went back, caught the next train, and was in good time to find Alex and everybody in the PUB down the road. PHEW!

When we got back to the actual venue I was pleasantly surprised by how REALLY NICE it was. I've seen in gig listings that Paper Dress have been doing gigs for a while, and had imagined it as a smelly corner in an old clothes shop, but actually it was LOVELY, with a downstairs BAR area and an upstairs with a stage and proper PA system, and also a very jovial LANDLORD stood behind another BAR! It was GRATE!

I've not seen Alex play for AGES, nor at any point with the current band, who were ACE - notably the drummer, who I was astonished to find was very much in the Tim Pattison STYLE. You don't get to see these majestic creatures very often, and I MARVELLED at the way he WALLOPED his kit with a mixture of FURY and DETACHED SADNESS, dropping his head to concentrate during the (rare!) moments when he WASN'T hitting things, and even doing Classic Pattison Fills and also STOPS. I took photographs to inform The Band, but I wish I'd got a video of him in action!

The whole set was FAB, in fact, especially as it meant Alex was FREED to roam about and do proper frontman stuff. This was then followed by ANOTHER excellent set, by Simon Love and co - Simon has been ROCKING AROUND in groups in the same scene as me for AGES but I have very rarely seen him and/or them play live, which is a terrible shame because they were GRATE. My favourite member of the band in THIS set was his trumpet player who a) made it sound a bit like The Boo Radleys and b) DANCED DETERMINEDLY. It was ACE!

It all reminded me of the good bits of when I used to do this all the time, although when I looked around me it felt odd to realise I didn't actually KNOW anybody else there... until, to my DELIGHT, The Cresswells turned up! HOORAH!

It was, all together, rather brilliant, though I must admit that the way I felt the following morning was not quite as filled with nostalgic joy!

posted 30/8/2019 by MJ Hibbett

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