So it was that Charlie, Doug and I met up at the Grand Ole Opry for King Creosote’s first post-Mercury Award gig. That’s the Grand Ole Opry, Glasgow. And what a godawful venue it is.

On the way in, the stewards directed everyone past a queue snaking all the way from the entrance into the auditorium. What’s this, I wondered? The cloakroom? But no, this was the queue for the bar, ringed as it was by bewhiskered old gents wearing badges emblazoned “Committee” who sent everyone to join the queue all the way back at the front door. Why it was the usual gentle scrum was not permitted to develop I have no idea.

The stage is flanked by two giant embossed cowboy heads like faces on a pair of silver dollars. That would be weird enough, but their ten-gallon hats are so disproportionately small that it appear that the upper portions of their skulls have been removed and their hats balanced delicately on the resultant flat surface. I spent the gig trying (and failing) not to look at them, sort of like a car crash on the opposite carriageway of a motorway.

Then, to round things off, the “Committee” saw fit to allow in (without tickets, I’m pretty sure) a load of knuckle-dragging regulars who stood at the back and talked loudly about how the music was pish, and why didn’t they fuckin play something that aw cunt kent. They spoke like James Kelman writes, only informed by aimless vitriol instead of wry social commentary.

The evening’s saving grace was that the music was, in general, pretty good. King Creosote was a chatty and witty host, deploying some in-song mockery to quieten a couple of overly vocal hecklers at the front, and keeping the real fans rapt throughout. Have a listen!

Chris, Leyla & Scarlet are visiting at the moment. Coba Fynn coalesces across time and space. Tremendous!

* * *

After a year of Monday nights spent chez Jeff & Devon, I finally had the chance to return the favour last week: with an appointment out on Bute on Tuesday morning, Jeff asked if he could kip at our place the night before, and I was happy to oblige. We pottered along to Shawlands after dinner to take in a bit of the local colour and wound up in Stube—my default Shawlands boozing destination—after I rejected the various other offerings along the way with a cursory shake of the head. “That one? Too crap/grim/dangerous.”

Stube was almost deserted, and when, after about half a pint, the lights dimmed briefly, I wondered aloud what had happened. “Was that a power cut? Did a fuse blow?”

“No,” Jeff replied quizzically, “it’s last orders.”

It’s been so long since I’ve been in a pub at closing time that I no longer recognise the signs. This is a troubling development.

Disappointed by the early kicking out, we drank up (the fizzy lager tickling my gag reflex the whole way down) and headed back towards the flat, stopping at the Ivory for a couple more along the way. I moaned about writer’s block and Jeff offered me beer and encouragement. It was a great night, and it was followed by a horrific morning after. The mere whiff of alcohol is enough to engage my body’s hangover response these days.

* * *

What else has happened? In the dying days of my commute I’ve decided to spread the love around a little, so last Tuesday I imposed upon Neil & Vanessa for a change. Neil and I took in Rivals/Les Liens du Sang at the Filmhouse that night, and I came away impressed: it’s a well-made homage to gritty ’70s cop dramas like The French Connection (see what I did there?), filled with smoking, shagging and fuzzy guitar riffs. It tends more towards “drama” than “cop”, and struggles to maintain momentum towards a slightly abrupt ending, but it’s still worth watching.

In a fit of gig-going, Ash & I saw Death Cab for Cutie at the Corn Exchange, and then Nick Cave at the same venue ten days later. We’d gone to the Death Cab gig almost by accident, pulled in by that indie gravity which emanates from bands once or twice removed from your normal listening fare; for me, The Postal Service was the hook, with vocals provided by Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard. The audience lapped it up but I listened from the point of view of a semi-interested observer and it didn’t quite gel for me.

Nick Cave, on the other hand, was mental. He is, I think, half consumed by the characters of his songs: he’s a gunslinger, a two-bit whore or a tragic lover as the moment requires. The sound was dreadful—all riot-control bass and buzzsaw treble—and the special effects distinctly not, but the force of his personality was more than enough to carry the night. Excellent stuff.

Squeezed in amongst all that, then, were a few more morsels: I met up with Josh while he was on a flying visit one weekend, ending up in the stylish pomposity of Monteith’s on the Royal Mile under Jez’s guidance; and lastly, Ash & I went along to a quiet, pleasant and very grown up work Christmas bash.

Callander isn’t exactly at a rarefied Highland latitude, but the towns thin out and the midge clouds thicken up remarkably quickly as Glasgow recedes in the mirrors, and the hotel had the feeling of a country retreat rather than one on the main street of an otherwise busy little town. Waxy & Phil were talking with a knot of beaming guests, so we waved hello and wandered inside for a drink. The hotel manager gathered us up to watch the first dance as we chatted with the Captain in the library and we filed through to the function room.

The next couple of hours shot by until with alarming rapidity we found ourselves in front of the assembled guests. “Waxy, I hope we don’t ruin your wedding,” Charlie said, or words to that effect. “We’re Coba Fynn. Waxy asked us to play—” (Charlie had explained some time previously to Waxy & Phil that Coba Fynn would of course be playing at their wedding) “—so we hope you enjoy yourselves.” He turned to us. “Let’s go.”

And so we did.

It was tremendii. CF original Glasgow Girl got the guests onto the dance floor and some choice covers kept them there, Waxy’s dad joining us on harmonica and wailing vocals for Hoochie-Coochie Man. We played two wedding requests: The Lighthouse Song for Waxy, the song practically playing itself through our intruments; and Phil’s favourite Smoke on the Water. The demanded encore of Crossroads was played at a blistering pace with blistering hands, and when we finished the set after forty-five short minutes I felt a twinge of guilty triumph at having stolen the ceilidh band’s thunder.

We took paper plates of buffet pies and spring rolls outside to cool down for a bit. Doug and I analysed the night’s performance in a chin-stroking fashion.

“Nice work there on the drums, Doug. Although I couldn’t hear myself very well—I thought maybe the bass was a bit low.”

“Really? I could hear you fine. I could feel you in my bones.”

“So long as it was your bones, and not your boner.”

“Obviously not, man. But I will say that if there was to be a sexual connection between any two members of the band…”

“…then it’s going to be the rhythm section, right? That’s what I like to hear.”

Ash laughed at us.

“Oh, it’s cool; we’re just being homoironic.”†

A fantastic night, and a fantastic wedding. Congratulations, Waxy & Phil!

* A month or so back we were pressed into service for Charlie’s boss’ retiral do at Oran Mor in the west end of Glasgow. We set up in the Auditorium under Alasdair Grey’s spectacular mural, soundchecked in the abbreviated time available and then got out of the way as the first guests filed in. Quite firmly uninvited to the meal itself, Doug, Davis and I ate mixed pakora at Charlie’s kitchen table while the dinner guests gorged themselves on wild salmon, truffled asparagus and caviar washed down by 18-year-old single malts and the finest cognac. (Probably, anyway. My speculation may be informed by a touch of jealousy.) We arrived bang on time for our set, waited through an hour of overrunning, back-slapping speeches and were hustled off the stage after only twenty minutes as the function staff started cleaning up at the stroke of 11.30pm.

** At Bannerman’s; intimate is the term, I think, meaning “comprised only of the band’s friends and immediate family.”

† Gauche, non-PC or just lame? I can’t decide.

FUCKIN TRAMS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then another:

Edinburgh does. Not. Need. Fuckin. TRAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!

We arrived after a stormy journey-into-terror drive to Glasgow (wherein we forded the M8) to find Davis alone on stage, idly picking out chords, and the sound guy looking at his watch, unimpressed.

We went on at 8.30 or so to an audience consisting mostly of the other bands, and the Captain. I had memories of the last time we played such a quiet gig, and they were not happy ones. Something this time just clicked, though: the audience, or lack of it, was incidental, and though I was happy that they seemed to enjoy the set it was more about hitting the right note within the band. We played consistently and convincingly, I think, and afterwards a Blim was sufficiently impressed to compare Fox in the Phoenix to the Clash.

The ‘Fynn and the Clash mentioned in the same breath. This is a welcome development.

I stayed to watch El Condor Pasa. Their songs and playing were good, but my God! they were bored. They’d been touring for two whole days and already they looked like they’d rather be looking for tall buildings off which they might reliably end it all. We clapped, they looked stricken. It was an odd show.

* * *

We had another gig on Saturday—a going away party for Emily, one of Charlie’s colleagues and the temporarily resuscitated Average Folk Band‘s squeezebox maestro—but before then we’d booked practice at the benighted Verden Studios. Verden is on the outskirts of Portobello, and squats within a ’70s office block on an otherwise derelict industrial estate. It has a few redeeming features—expansive windows in some of the upper rooms; mismatched but solid gear; mini-bars filled with cans of Irn Bru and bottles of beer—but mostly, it’s a hole. We were assigned a windowless box on the ground floor with litter stuffed behind the soundproofing panels and no ventilation.

And yet we had the best practice ever. We sweated freely and played our hearts out. My perception is too subjective to tell if we were actually good or not, but it felt like we were guitar heroes that day*.

The gig then came around that weekend. We had the stage to ourselves and oodles of time to play with before anyone arrived so we took our time getting our minimal set-up (amps for the guitars, a simple PA for the vocals) just right, then went our separate ways to park cars, get changed, grab some food and the like. Doug and I sat outside with squeaking styrofoam cartons of deep-fried whatever from the local takeaway, blethering aimlessly but engrossingly until everyone was back and the audience began slowly filtering in. Over the next couple of hours our better halves arrived, the Average Folk Band played a few songs, Ruth & Andy turned up with a load of visiting friends, and we finally were on around 10pm.

Christ, it was brilliant.

The Barfly set was still fresh in our minds and I’m pretty sure we played even better than the rehearsal. The crowning achievement was our run through Take Me Over (“that sounded like Nine Inch Nails” said Waxy, on hearing our first performance of it earlier this year), where we turned things up to 11, smashed it out of the stadium and [insert hyperbolic metaphor of choice here] so hard that a little girl ran away across the dance floor, hands clamped over her ears. Rock & roll!

We trotted out a load of radio friendly covers during the second half to get the audience up and dancing. Charlie coaxed a gaggle of giggling nurses to sing backing vocals on Twist and Shout; Andy arrived on the dance floor with a cartwheel inches from Davis’ face, and we finished with a messy, sprawling cover of Crossroads where we tried (and failed, but gloriously so) to channel Clapton, Baker and Bruce through our sweat-dripping instruments.

The silence rang in my ears after the clapping and cheers subsided. Sweat was rolling down my sides under my shirt, and my bass was slick with condensation. What a gig.

* Q10 in Glasgow is similar to Verden in this respect: its rooms are damp-walled caves formed by the arches of a disused railway bridge, with temperamental amplifiers, fungous couches and peeling paint, and still it seems to lift rehearsals a bit above the average.

After the meal we threaded our way between the drunken Saturday night lunatics and over to the Central Hotel. We found a table in the dining room, turned over to the many teuchter revellers for the night, and sat down to chat away the rest of the evening. Enough sound leaked in from the main stage to lend a celtic air to proceedings and eventually we wandered through for a dose of pleasant but slightly uninspiring music. The Captain and I walked the three miles back to the south side at 3 am, steadfastly ignored by each and every cabbie in favour of homeward-bound five-packs of wobbling sequin-dressed tarts. Despite the extended traipse home though, it had still been a good night.

* * *

On Monday I joined Jeff, Devon, Neil & Vanessa at Jez’s sister Rowena’s debut art show up in Tollcross, and, when prompted by Jez for my opinion, I made the offhand comment: “I like the framed prints best.”

“You mean the ones that aren’t by my sister?” he replied, rather impressively pitching his question without a hint of disappointment.

“Oh! Ah. There are two artists on show? I do like your sister’s drawings too—”

(“They aren’t drawings – they’re done with graphite, not pencil,” he interjected smoothly, politely illuminating the deepening hole I was in.)

“—but my own sister was doing some woodblock printing recently and that’s why the lino prints caught my eye.”

All of which was true, and yet somehow rang splendidly hollow. I would post a link to some of Row’s work to prove that it really is good, but sadly she would appear to be utterly absent from the web.

* * *

On Thursday night I was over in Edinburgh yet again, this time for a gig down at the Bongo Club. Keef’s new band were playing, and despite his youthful enthusiasm for Coba Fynn gigs I hadn’t returned the favour since 8 Million Ways to Die, back in the days of Tiny Monkey.

Keef brought me up to date with the current inhabitants of the Castle Street flat, all there to cheer him on, and I questioned Amanda, the new occupant of my old room, about how she was getting on. “Seen any fights at the gay bar? How’s business at the brothel?” Fortunately for all of them (I’d had a few jars earlier with some work types and was in an extra-garrulous mood), my chat was drowned out when the Kirstyn Knowles Band took to the stage.

I’d listened to a few of their songs on their Myspace page (and you should too), and it should have been a great gig. They played extraordinarily well as a group and had obviously been practicing hard. Keef is a particularly strong drummer, and he and Garry the bassist were a compelling rhythm section.

Unfortunately, the sound guy was a complete donkey. Kirsty’s vocals were barely amplified at all, and the levels for the rest of the instruments were all over the place. Incredulous looks were traded around our table with each new, even more crappy adjustment to the mix. The band were good but my word, the sound was criminal.

We all hung around afterwards to catch the last band, called The Gallery. We blethered away, waiting for them to start. I said hi to Doug, who arrived just after Keef’s lot had finished. The music began suddenly and we all shut the hell up; partly because it was too loud to talk but mainly because the band was incredible. I’d place them somewhere near Biffy Clyro in their Blackened Sky phase, only with talent. I stood agape, occasionally confiding to Doug some pithy insight—“Fuck, these guys are good,” or “Bloody hell! Did you hear that?”—until they finished, and stunned, we applauded.

I’d demand that you go to their website and listen to the songs on it, but the two recorded tracks there are oddly flat compared to their live performances so I’d recommend catching a gig instead. They were so impressive I wouldn’t be surprised if, in five years’ time, I’ll be able to wave dismissively at them on Later…with Jools Holland and tell whoever cares to listen that I saw The Gallery way back when, in a converted student union in Edinburgh. Tremendous stuff.

Doug was kind enough to put me up in a spare room in his flat that night, and as an unexpected bonus, locked me in the next morning. I was able to sleep off my hangover until he returned my emergency text message, telling me where to find the spare keys. A puncture on my cycle to work made me even more ridiculously late; I rolled into the office just after noon to a round of applause from our chortling customers and tucked in to their complimentary lunch. Good times.

* * *

I was happily typing out this entry on the train home tonight*, on my little fold-out keyboard, when a couple of young kids looked up from their McDonald’s and came over to boldly ask if they could have a go. I slid the phone+keyboard over to them and pointed out how to make capitals, delete letters and so on, and answered their questions.

“What are you writing about, mister?”

“I can’t really dress this up, kids—I’m writing about me.”

So they played away and were eventually herded brusquely off the train by their dad at Falkirk High. I felt a little sorry for them: their dad had been occupied with his own mobile the whole time, eyes barely leaving it and occasionally issuing a distracted order to “Sit down Justin, sit down Britney. Leave the man alone,” while nursing a Coke. By the look of his eyes as they got off the train, he’d been nursing something a bit stronger before they’d boarded. The kids were inquisitive and bright, and the dad just the opposite. Depressing.

* Yup, that’s right—I’m writing about what just happened as I was writing. This entry is turning into a philosophical Möebius strip.

Now you may remember we play the Liquid Ship occasionally, as part of the nominally acoustic Free Candy Sessions. Our man Dochan, Free Candy head honcho, apparently likes our slightly ramshackle, electric blues motif and has invited us back there a couple of times to round off proceedings. The most recent session, just before Christmas, saw us on last again after a variety of singer-songwriter and earnest indie types. They were uniformly impressive, I must admit: music mag clichés like “soaring melodies” and “heartbreaking lyrics” would have been richly deserved.

Unfortunately, singer-songwriters and earnest indie types do not seem to come with an excessively generous sense of humour or even moderate thickness of skin. The penultimate act were emoting with every wavering fibre of their sensitive souls but ended up killing us rather too softly, so that the garrulous mass of Coba Fynn fans more or less drowned out their coffee shop guitar stylings. They were rather disappointingly foot-stampy about the whole thing, which seems like an unfortunate trait to display in the cutthroat market economy of free entry gigs. At one point, a particularly exercised member of their fanclub actually yelled “Shut the fuck up!” at the enthusiastic contingent of junior medics come to see Charlie, to no appreciable effect. This chap was a prize idiot, I must say.

We took to the stage afterwards, waved gaily to the backs of the departing shoegazers and rocked the fuck out. I can safely say that the Free Candy Sessions have, Dylan-like, made the jump to electric, even if some killjoy naysayers can’t handle the truth.

Anyway, back to Barfly. We watched the first act—the Springsteen-esque Alan Cassidy—open the night, then clambered on stage for our set. My parents (breaking their Coba Fynn duck by coming along to the Liquid Ship, and being just as taken aback as everybody else by all the mean-spirited shushing going on) had thought that the first half of the Free Candy gig had been a little stilted, and that we got into our stride by the second half. The same thing happened here; we plodded through the first half and finally pulled it together by the time we hit East on the Westway. We got to, and absolutely nailed, All My Secrets and then unveiled our pièce de résistance: Chris (oft-mistyped as ‘Christ’, although in these circumstances it was something akin to the second coming) took to the stage to play slide guitar for Locomotive Blues.

It was brilliant.

Chris sat atop an upturned beer crate and plucked the opening notes on his Shaftesbury with a nonchalant air, fretting with a borrowed slide. (“I was shitting myself,” he told me later.) Doug started on the hi-hat, and I joined in with the same syncopated beat. We trundled through the intro, Chris’ guitar wailing and growling down to the turnaround with us. Doug hit the kick drum to open the chorus, and then, basically, we melded together into the musical instrument of God. St. Elmo’s fire licked around the neck of Davis’ Stratocaster. Doug and I fell into a shared voodoo rhythm section trance. Charlie sang the blues of the plantations and the deltas, and Chris channelled Robert Johnson through his fingers.

Man, I’m getting misty eyed just reminiscing. If there’s ever been a more perfectly performed Coba Fynn song that either I’ve seen or played in, I can’t remember it.

After us, Val Verde and Nine Circles blew the audience away—I can see why they came all the way from Dunfermline—and there wasn’t a single mutter about “respecting the integrity of the music” or any such nonsense. What a night.

The next morning, we gathered in Charlie & Penny’s west end pad for a magnificent breakfast, and talked in hushed tones of the last night’s gig. It’s the same each time I see Chris & Leyla: almost as if last year was just yesterday, and we talk about nothing in particular until it’s time to say goodbye for another year or two. As it was, they took their leave after that breakfast are en route to Australia (via Prague) by now, but it’s going to be a long time before I forget this particular visit. Guys: you are fantastic.

A few hours earlier (and, falling victim to the ridiculous British Summer Time, an hour early), I met up with Charlie, Davis/d(e) and Penny at Rab Ha’s, and somewhat thrown by my unintentionally prompt arrival, sank a few pints until we could reasonably head along to the concert. We arrived, obtained our shiny ‘AFTERSHOW’ passes and were eventually let in by the least suspicious security guard, identified only by a serial number on his shirt. Thank you, THX1138—or whatever your human name is.

It was a pleasant evening. Tim furnished us each with a beer from the band’s rider, chatting enthusiastically with us about our recent demo and earnestly asking us each to sign it. Penny stood in admirably for Doug, drawing a picture of a penis on it. THX1138 popped his head round the door, saying “Ten minutes guys,” so we took our leave, grabbed another pint from the porta-bar at the side of the hall and took up station with all the old farts at the back to watch the show.

Ash have decreased in size to be a three-piece band since I last heard anything about them (when Ruth took some photos for them at a gig of theirs in Dundee), and proceeded to rock their way through a fairly stripped-down set. Afterwards, we wobbled backstage again, helped ourselves to a few more Red Stripes and congratulated them heartily. I would have bestowed hearty congratulations on anybody by that point, but fortunately they were richly deserved. I took a circuitous taxi home, fell into an oblivious, snoring sleep and was late for work the next day. Rock and roll, people. That’s what it’s all about.

* * *

The week trundled by unexceptionally, with a couple of honourable exceptions: watching Heather Mills’ rambling excoriation of the press with Jeff & Dev on Wednesday night, we descended into an ill-informed and hence extremely entertaining bout of scoffing, culminating in Devon’s announcement: “Ha! She doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Ouch. Is it libel if it’s true?

Other than that, Ash and I drove over to Edinburgh again at the weekend for Jez & Serena’s engagement party. There were glorious arrays of cake, so Neil and I were happy as abstinent and driver respectively; there was free flowing champagne, so everyone else was happy, and there were babies and pregnant mothers on hand to make us all smile apprehensively at our respective better halves. Congratulations, guys—I think you’re going to be very happy together!

We went out last week to see Belly of a Drunken Piano — a Tom Waits tribute act Ash had fallen upon in the Fringe programme — at the Assembly Rooms. We met up with Ally G, Jez and Serena down at the Star Bar for some pre-show chat and a few pints, and somehow (I may have been plugging the RF‘s new layout) Ally and I ended up having an extremely rock and roll conversation about typography. (Maybe I’m being slightly disingenuous: Eric Gill for instance, designer of the ubiquitous Gill Sans, was a deeply weird chap into incest and bestiality among other even less savoury things, so perhaps it isn’t such a staid subject.) We headed up to the show at midnight, grabbed a drink in the venue and took a seat front and centre. I will be honest: I don’t quite see the luminous greatness in Tom Waits that Ash does, but with a pseudo-Tom in front of us, belting out drawly bar-room numbers through a light haze of alcohol and fatigue, it wasn’t bad at all.

We had a last, giddy jar in an almost deserted Grand Cru on the way home. The majority of the clientèle had tallyho’ed onto Po-na-na or Garibaldi’s, so we were able to take the booth of our choice and blether in peace for a while longer before the staff shooed us out at 3 am. I’ve been an unrepentant festival sceptic so far this year, but I have to say it was a great night out!

Friday was the 7^th anniversary of the ‘Fynn’s first ever gig, and although we weren’t playing in the same place as we had done back in 2000, Coba Fynn had a long and illustrious history of rocking Fury’s before I joined and I was intrigued to see what all the fuss was about. Ash and I jumped in the Trøll, dribbled through the glutinous Edinburgh traffic* and then hared along the M8 in time for the “strict” 6-6.30 setup window.

Just to give a bit of context, Fury’s lurks on a tributary of Glasgow’s no-way traffic system, with a strip bar and the carbuncular St. Enoch’s Centre for its nearest points of reference. It shares genes more with a fallout shelter than a club and to say it has sound quality is something of an oxymoron. We rose to the occasion and churned out a mediocre set. It really did blow: the sound on stage somehow went south between the soundcheck and our set, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the presence of the crowd (thank you both for coming) altering the acoustics. So, unable to hear much of anything, we played shoddily through an abbreviated set and got the hell off the stage.

That is the last time I make a Titanic crack about a gig.

Fast forward to Sunday though, and everything that went wrong with Friday night was miraculously reversed. A practice beforehand tightened up the playing and sorted out three new songs; a venue small enough for un-mic’d amps gave us a great sound and an appreciative audience made all the difference. The Average Folk Band, headlining after us, were stonkingly good and provided an excellent soundtrack for the rest of the night. Hurray for the Universal! I sincerely hope we get to play there again, and I think Fury’s has been edged out of the ‘Fynn pantheon…

The gigs were bookended with a pleasant day in the sun with Ash: we lounged around beer gardens (drinking coffee, oddly enough, but then cafés with outdoor tables are few and far between round these parts) and ambled along the north sides of the New Town streets to keep the sun on our pasty faces. It feels like summer, or something like it, has finally arrived and everything looks rosy from here!

* I don’t whether it’s a hardening of the mental arteries as I get older, the fact that had I’ve more occasion of late to use the car than usual or whether the traffic really is worse, but my God! I can’t drive within the Edinburgh city limits between 8.30 and 6pm without being overtaken by A) insensible rage and B) chancing bastards in the bus lane.

After Davis/d(e) and Charlie had minutely tuned their guitars with the volume all the way up for the audience’s benefit, we gamely skiffled our way into the Belle & Sebastian stylings of David Lynch’s Lunchbox Blues. Apart from some slightly over-loud bass (at least I’d remembered to turn it on), it slipped past in three short minutes of indie goodness. We finished, they clapped, and the ‘Fynn was back.

We proceeded through old and new songs for the next twenty minutes or so. Cracks in the rhythm section’s composure appeared and healed up periodically, while the tuning of Charlie’s guitar proved somewhat elusive. We got to Locomotive Blues, barrelled messily but (I think) winningly through it and ended on a high note. G, if I remember rightly. They clapped again and a few die-hards shouted “More!” We politely declined (Charlie: “We don’t know any more,”) and called it a night. Even the Captain was impressed. The first test is over, and a few more practices are all that stand between us and the main event at Cabaret Voltaire on the 29^th.

This band shit is awesome.

On Saturday night, the musical shenanigans continued. Ash, Jez, Serena and I went to Henry’s Cellar Bar to watch an acoustic set by Mark Morriss of the newly rehabilitated Bluetones. We wound up in the Cameo Cinema bar; I wound up drunk, and Mark wound up being subjected to a half-hour, blow by blow account of our recent tour of the South. Good times!