Saturday 10th January 2009

Today;s blog is mostly about a recommendation.

If you like R&B (the proper sort - James Brown, Committments etc, not Leona bloody Lewis!) check out this band that I heard on the radio last night and have been looking into this morning:

Eli 'Paperboy' Reed & the True Loves

http://www.myspace.com/elipaperboyreed

Check out "Doin' The Boom Boom" - excellent!

They were on Later with Jools Holland, but I must have missed that one. However, I have ordered the album from Amazon.

The track I heard last night was an amazing R&B cover of Ace of Spades by Motorhead - awesome and unexpected! Unfortunately it's not on the album, so I'll have to track it down some other way.

As usual when I discover a new band, I've just missed them on tour - they were in Leeds on the 29th November - oh well, maybe next time!

Anyway, gig last night was good fun. A 50th wedding anniversary in a true Northern working men's club. We haven't done one of those for a while and they are always a laugh, checking out the 8x10s on the dressing room wall (yes we had one - see below) for all the cheesy cabaret acts that do the working men's club circuit (we, thankfully, don't!)

Southern musician's guide to spotting a Northern WMC:

1. The band or singer is always referred to as the "turn" or the "artiste", and is the third most important part of the evening's entertainment behind the meat raffle and the star of the show "The Bingo" (I was once told off for daring to temporarily unplug the bingo machine at a gig somewhere!). See last night's dressing room door for example (sorry about the quality of the picture, you can blame HP for that).















I use the term "dressing room" in it's polite sense by the way. A Northern WMC dressing room is actually defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "a cold, smelly, storeroom covered in 8x10 pictures of 'artistes' called 'Wayne Kerr' or 'Lou Smorrells' or similar and containing at absolute minimum, a tombola machine, various stacks of chairs, broken light fittings, a damp stain, and various other indeterminate stains" Ours last night also contained three urinal cakes in an ashtray as an impromptu air-freshener. Nice!

2. The WMC will have an "Entertainments Officer", who "used to be in the business". He (never a she, God Forbid!) will be a jobsworth, control freak who will know everything, whilst actually knowing nothing at all at the same time (a clever trick performed by many people in the entertainments business) - reminds me of a story told to me by a musician friend who was touring in Japan in the 80's and had to deal with a hopeless Japanese tour manager. Apparently the Japanese guy got sick of the abuse from the band and cracked with the classic outburst "You guys think I know F**k Nothing, but I know F**k All!" - sums up the WMC Entertainments Officer nicely!

3. The WMC will have a stage for the bingo machine, which may be shared by the "artiste" if you are lucky and promise not to go too close to the sacred machine. The stage will have a sparkly backdrop, either in silver or in multiple colours (such as last night):















(The bingo machine is temporarily obscured by the drumkit).

4. The beer will be cheap and horrible.

5. The place will have seen better days.

If anyone thinks they have been to a Northern WMC where any of the above does not apply, then they are mistaken and were probably in a Morrissons.

Cheers!