Two words: fuck yeah.
If last week’s faintly disappointing gig was a salutory reminder that sometimes gigs don’t work for Whatever Reason, the show at the Duck and Drake might well have been our best gig ever. And I say that from a rollcall of something like 300 gigs stretching back over 18 years.
If you were there, a million thanks for being the most awesome of audiences.
When we were being followed by all our daft mates in their early twenties, we could always start some dancing off because your mates will always put out for you. But this was the first time in, like, forever we’ve generated total randoms to get up and dance. Halfway through the second half of the set there was hardly a bum on a seat and by the time we pulled out our shambling but energetic cover of Baby Please Don’t Go as an encore the place stank of beerm sweat and biscuits. Which is, of course, the way it should be.
If you weren’t there, you missed out on fig rolls… a burlesque dancer… some creamy moments of musical goodness… the floorboards pounded by dozens of hard-dancing feet… a guy on crutches being thrown out for being abusive… a man with no teeth and – weirdly – loads of people filming the gig on their phones. Home taping’s killing music guys! 
We also achieved a lifetime’s ambition by covering Step On by The Happy Mondays – Lord knows I’ve had the nose for it for long enough. And one day I might even learn to say “you’re twisting my melon, man” and play the piano part simultaneously in the way that God intended instead of hamfistedly doing neither one nor the other. Luckily, everyone was too pissed and dancing too weirdly to notice.
Rock and roll (or at least Rock and Fig Rolls)!
Covers
- Step On – The Happy Mondays
- Baby Please Don’t Go – Them
- Hey Bulldog – The Beatles
- Steady as she Goes – The Raconteurs
- Queen Bitch – David Bowie
- Be-Bop-A-Lula – Gene Vincent
- All or Nothing – Small Faces
- Waterfall – The Stone Roses
- Green Onions – Booker T. and the MGs
- Substitute – The Who
- Can’t Explain – The Who
- Tin Soldier – Small Faces
- Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes
- All Your Love – John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
- Come Together – The Beatles
Originals
- In The End
- Mississippi Fishcake Blues
- I Was Confused
- Until Tomorrow
- No Flies On Me
- (I Want You To) Be My Sunshine
- Everything I Want
- Sorrow for #1
- Still Don’t Understand