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How do you tell if the stage is level? The drummer drools from *both* sides of his mouth

Imagine being told you are going to be killed, but you have a “choice” of electrocution or drowning as your method of dispatch. You wouldn’t consider it to be that great a list of choices. Playing live music is, for most bands, on a similar kind of spectrum. You can play your own material – but no-one knows who you are, you’ve got to write it, arrange it and perform it, and you’ll end up playing in front of a few mates and disinterested punters for a tenner. If you’re lucky. Alternatively, you can play cover versions – in which case you’ll be greeted warmly and paid well, but you’ll have no artistic satisfaction and have to demonstrate professionalism by turning up on time, knowing the lyrics and making sure that everything sounds recognisable.

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A great angle to photograph me from - you can't see my chins

Anyway, we’ve been toiling away at Option A for years now. When you’re young and you have dozens of mates who have spare cash and no commitments, you can ramp up a regular audience measured by the score fairly easily. And their mates start to come along because it’s, you know, cool and stuff. Before long you’re well known locally and then people start to come to see you on word of mouth. On such a basis, we used to pretty much fill the old Duchess of York in Leeds every 5 or 6 weeks when we were in our mid 90s pomp. As bands get older though, they mainly split up. The camaraderie of hope drops by the wayside as you don’t taste anything more successful than regular gigs in your home town. And the novelty of seeing their friend on stage wears off for the audience and gradually they stop coming. And then the drummer gets married  and someone has to work nights and all of a sudden it’s a lot of work and – cue the title of this blog – nobody’s listening anymore.

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This is Dave Fryer: "the good looking one"

We’ve kept going through all that shit on the basis that making music is a lot of fun whether anyone’s listening or not. If you put aside your ego and any lingering hope of fame, you can spend time jamming with your mates and it doesn’t matter whether you’re in a bedroom or on the stage at Wembley.

But recently we’ve decided that playing live is actually just a blast, so we’re trying to steer a mid-course. We play half a set of covers, and drop in our own tunes in between. This was the first proper gig where we tried this theory out. As usual with us, we veered from the sublime (our version of All Your Love is getting sweeter and crisper every time) to the ridiculous (we’re never playing My Generation again!) The crowd stayed with us rather than drifting off to the tap room, so that was good. Brendan hated every second, which was less good – but that’s drummers for you though.

Setlist:

  1. Blues jam
  2. All Your Love – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
  3. 6372_109028763292_6811308292_2179824_7781799_nMississippi Fishcake Blues
  4. Be-Bop-A-Lula – Gene Vincent
  5. Substitute – The Who
  6. Unamerican
  7. In The End
  8. My Generation – The Who
  9. I Still Don’t Understand
  10. Come Together- The Beatles
  11. Sorrow for #1
  12. Another Blues Jam
  13. You Got It In You
  14. Honky Tonk Woman – The Rolling Stones
  15. Blind (Or a Tory)
  16. I Want You (to be my Sunshine)
  17. Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles
  18. No Flies On Me
  19. Here Come The Mandarins
  20. Can’t Explain – The Who
  21. Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
  22. Bottles of Pills
  23. Waterfall – The Stone Roses
  24. Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd