A Musical Triumph

You should have been there; then at least there would have been around thirty people present to witness our musical offering last Saturday. I can only assume that there must have been something really good on telly; what else could have prevented the masses from coming?

Still, despite all the potential disasters, given that we had only practiced the whole set three times, I thought we pulled off our gig with remarkable aplomb. We wizzed through Sit Down by James (but a quirky folky arrangement with accordian, acoustic guitars and double bass - I'm not sure it was meant to be quirky, but quirky it was); made short work of Lindisfarne's Meet Me On the Corner; and similarly demolished a number of other popular songs and traditional tunes.

"Tonight will be a night of popular songs, songs you might not recognise, and popular songs you might not recognise" we quipped. But I think the twenty odd assembled guests were pleasantly surprised - at least the ones who had their hearing aids in at any rate.

I still stand by my premise that this type of musical event ought to be commonplace: intimate gatherings with a group of local people and friends, with the musicians drawn from the people. Our performance was more than adequate and no one was left squirming in embarassment, in fact I think a number of the gathered mass actually enjoyed it.

Perhaps we can become the musical Oldham version of Blyth Spartans (I choose this team over Oldham Athletic for their reputation as doggedly determined against-the-odds football fighters - call me disloyal if you like). Meanwhile I had a wasted trip to Forsythe's music shop in Manchester to replace my snapped G string (insert snigger here) only to be sniffily told 'we don't do single strings and I doubt you'll find anyone else in Manchester who does'. I took his sniffy advise and ordered three of the beggars from Stringmail.co.uk - it hurt though, you know my attitude toward real shops, I would rather have had a chap find me some from a dusty drawer beneath the counter. A couple of the songs we did were by Bellowhead (that is my gratuitous way of justifying the image!) by the way, we are going seeing them tomorrow night at Bury Met to see how it should be done!