(There's a Blog Post Title that writes itself!)
In
light of the sad news about Rod Felton which I received this morning, my minor physical and
emotional struggles in reaching the Banbury Cross last night pale
into insignificance. Banbury Folk Club was a venue we had been meaning
to return to for a long, long time. We'd left it too long-but there
were reasons for this. When we'd played it last time it had been at a different
venue. Afterwards we had been booked in to go back there. But this turned out to be the night my Mum died.
Frankly, I don't remember much after that . I expect someone cancelled
it on my behalf.
We'd been in the canalside
venue last time, along with fellow Cov & Warwicks band Isambarde. We
knew them all quite well-both from the music scene and because
several of us had worked with them before. It was all smiles together at
the sound check when we got there. We sat supportively through their
first set, and then when it was our turn they just all got up and decamped
pointedly to the bar downstairs. That's star quality for you.
The
very last time I had visited Banbury, I was incognito, supporting a football team
I'll bet none of you can guess the name of. We got soaked through to
the skin and lost, ignominiously, to the mighty Banbury United.
Fortunately we'd made a day of it. Banbury has some good pubs. We
visited The Reindeer, The Bell,The Four Candles and The Banbury Cross
before feeling anaesthetised enough to return home.
So
Banbury had some mixed memories to be erased. Due to
a foot infection, complicated by a vicious onset of Gout, my
plan to drive the band there foundered. No white horses to Banbury
Cross for me, but Mick drove us there in the V.W. instead. A seamlessly
chauffeured journey, as the Passat purred along the M40. I then had
to hobble on crutches through an almost deserted Town Centre. This
was the first time I'd been able to force a shoe on since Saturday. I made it (slowly!) to The
Banbury Cross Pub. Which wasn't a bit cross at all, as it happened.
A bit more hobbling then, through a series of pub corridors made it all a
bit like an extract from The Crystal Maze, But it brought us into a
large, bright high-ceilinged room. Festivities had already begun in
there, and although the protocol always in Folk Clubs
is to remain quiet whilst entering, especially if someone is singing,
this was not humanly possible whilst clattering in on metal ware.
The
standard of performance from other guests was alarmingly high. We began to look at each other significantly.
Warwick and Stratford are usually as far south as we travel nowadays,
so all of these acts were new to us. We were treated to an eclectic
mix of bands and solo performers, although the emphasis was on sad
songs laments and angst. Which played straight into our chubby hands,
really. I was also off beer and drinking water so as not to negate the various medications I was on. Would things go o.k. ?
The
hosts had very kindly (and very flatteringly) put us on last. So it fell
to us to close this very enjoyable evening. A few of the audience had
already begun to leave before we set up, which made us
suspect they had perhaps seen us before. We'd noticed though, that
this was an audience just craving to sing and so with me
hanging onto a table (and otherwise unsupported), we lobbed our
unique version of “ All Over Now,” into the gathered
masses to see how they'd respond.
Oh
yes! They liked that, and they lobbed the chorus right back at us. We
followed it up with “The Odeon” a song which rarely fails
to please. They readily picked up that chorus too, and chuckled in the
right spots. (It's near to Oxford you see, and they were obviously
a bright crowd!). We had primed them, and softened them up for “Down
Our Street” our newest song and barely a month old. It has won
over every audience we've performed it to and this was no exception.
By
the time we pitched “Albert Balls” into their midst, there
wasn't a dry eye in the house. So it was time to bring the euphoric
mood down a little and to demonstrate that we could do straight folk.
But instead, we did “Courting is a Pleasure” -our
arrangement of a song which Nic Jones recorded on Penguin Eggs. We
finished with our piece of resistance “ What a Folking Liberty.”
This song is very much Son of Pheasant Plucker, with some tricky
chorus warbling required if the pub was not to be closed down. I'm
delighted to reveal that the entire song was performed with us all
collectively getting our tongues safely round the myriad
opportunities to mispronounce the words “Folk and “Folking.”
We'd
been introduced by debut host Di as a band who like to specialise in
audience participation. (Impressive-someone had read our website!)
As I was incapacitated however, audience participation on this occasion was
limited to the odd delicate stagger and lurch amongst them. But if we
ever get invited back, I'd love to see how they got physically
involved with “The Whistler” and “At The Septic
Monkey.” Our experience last night suggested they would be
riotous.
We
even had an encore. A proper, demanded one. Not one we had engineered
by truncating the set list. Comedy or pathos? We chose the
latter-because Light and Shade is what we'd like to think we're truly
about. So we slowed things down finally and gave them a genuine
Love song to leave them sniffling their way home. Apt, because we
had loved every minute there. “Need Your Love So
Bad,” went well and as I sang “when the lights are low
and it's time to go”-one lady on cue put her coat on and tried
to surreptitiously sneak out. Probably hoping to catch the last bus
to Charwelton. I could have told her it left in 1969. But it would have
been insensitive not to involve her. If I'd been able-bodied I'm sure we would have had a waltz.
The
return journey home was not as easy. Banbury appeared closed, but once
we'd negotiated various sets of roadworks and escaped the Town Centre, we hoped things would go
smoothly. However, it took us longer to drive through and around Coventry
than it did to get from Banbury to Coventry itself. The A46 was closed, and
the A45 was a nightmare. As it will be for the next three years. Oh-and the
Ring Road had been taken apart and was roped off too. Between them, the D.o.E. The Highways
Agency and the Local Council have done their best to continue the
work the Luftwaffe put into destroying this fine old mediaeval city
in 1940. The press announced yesterday that the deranged council wish
to enforce a 20mph speed limit on roads in the city. I can confirm
that this is already well in hand. We queued past midnight, amidst jams of lorries
stacking on the Kenilworth Road, as a fox sneeringly overtook us. I
got dropped back home at 12.38am. I doubt Mick got into bed much
before 1am.
Yet it had still been a special night. We sold out of CD's despite only one song we'd done "live" from the set list being on it. We'd done every possible piece of wordplay around crutches crotches and supports. Di had triumphed as a compere and had the bonus of hearing a song with her name in it.Thanks also to Mary, for indulging us, and to Geoff Phipps for the photos. We had had some very kind comments afterwards from audience members, other musicians and the organisers. And I'd laid one unhappy memory finally to rest.
