Simple Simon’s, Canterbury
Simple Simon’s, Canterbury, 21st April 2002:
As it was the fourth consecutive week I’d decided to attend, I resolved a radical, possibly suicidal, departure was required; so I took the eight-string bass. I asked to go on early, and so was second.
However, I still had to follow a 13 year-old singer-guitarist prodigy from Broadstairs (no, really) named Isobella. Half my age, twice as talented. The gods mock me still. She combined a startling Joan Baez-like voice with solid classical-guitar accompaniment (but no spasmodic indie-punk/bad-Hendrix racket on a Sunn Mustang like me at the same age). Anyhow, I tried to think of two songs that lent themselves to the, er, format. So one “usual”, the Magnetic Fields’ “Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long”, and a new song, “He Thought He Knew Himself”. This was written as a collaboration between Gerardo and me (he gave me the premise for the lyrics) which was intended for Kardium as we/they had too many slow dirges! The lyrics are basically poking fun at contrived angst and poetic/arty pretensions as pedalled by all too many bands. As the song is essentially a bass-line and some lyrics it was theoretically ideal but was a bit of a fiddly bugger to play and sing. Crowd reaction was subdued (possibly confused) but was fairly encouraging.
Yet another good evening including (oh god, I’ve got to try and remember some names!) Chris, his Washburn, and his multiple tunings; the living-legend that is Victor; Johnny “no relation” Ray (I like his booze song cunningly disguised as a love song); The Bloke With The Loud Shirts And Black Epiphone; and some bongo-fury from Barry plus singer/guitarist cohort which “always gets the ladies going”, as Phil (sound man and organiser) so rightly observed. There’s bound to be someone else I’ve forgotten; all these damn names. Phil tells me everybody’s called either Mark or James, but I’m not convinced. However, I digress…
The evening ended with an impromptu jam through a twelve-bar, possibly a Muddy Waters tune, with vaguely fruity lyrics (I think — I had been imbibing, so it’s possible my brain had been temporarily retarded). I provided a suitable bass line (I hope) whilst Barry banged his bongos, A Bloke played guitar, James (I think his name was) provided some marvellous alto-sax, and Katie sang superbly. Excellent. To finish, James chose to sing Kevin “Bloody” Wilson’s “Do You Fuck on First Dates?”, with support from me, Guitar Bloke and bongo-Barry. Hilarious consequences ensued: The Man (aka Mike the landlord), having failed to get James’s attention, pulled the plug (censorship!) and despite an attempted continuation à cappella (anarchy!), Mike successfully re-asserted his authorit-ah with a decisive “FUCK OFF!” (irony alert!). How we laughed…