After playing the White Hart a couple of weeks before, we received another last minute request to play a birthday party, this time from a guy called Chris, who was friends with Mike's dad Paul and my Dad through their folk band, Bad Habit. Chris wanted a 'rock band' to play his Nephew's 16th (or perhaps 18th?) birthday. We told him we didn't really know any covers but he still wanted to book us and said he'd pay us £100 if we could play for around an hour and a half. We wanted money to put towards recording and equipment, so, although we weren't massively keen, we said we'd do it.
I remember thinking the New Beehive was a right dive when we pulled up outside. It looked better from the inside though and the basement, where we were due to play, was quite nice. We set up and waited for the partygoers to arrive.
After leaving it as long as we could, we began our first set of four songs. Even by playing a bunch of older tracks, we had nowhere near an hour and a half's worth of material so Dad and Paul performed a brief Bad Habit set afterwards to pad things out. Novacain valiantly mugged along on a few tunes, as did Chris and one or two of the other folkies who were at the party.
The atmosphere was friendly and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves but, even so, I felt a bit weird about following Bad Habits sing-along Irish folk standards with another set of our own songs. Or at least I thought it was going to be a set of our own songs... While I was plugging my guitar in the rest of the band started playing a shonky version of the God-awful Queen song, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Apparently someone had asked Leigh if we could play the track and he'd said "yes". Even though we didn't know how to play it. Awesome. I felt like a total berk as we trudged through yet another verse. As a massive Queen fan, at least Leigh knew the words this time, unlike "Day Tripper" which we'd attempted to play at the White Hart, but it was still pretty shocking. The rest of the second set went well though.
Chris played a surprisingly good version of Dylan's "Country Pie", the booze began to flow and somehow we found ourselves on-stage for our third and final set having agreed to play some rock n' roll classics. That we didn't know. Sigh. I'd learnt the opening lick to "Johnny B. Goode" when I first started playing guitar in the mid-90s, but I didn't know the rest of the song, and Leigh didn't know the lyrics. Unperturbed, we managed to fluff our way through a minute or so of ersatz Chuck Berry. Back To The Future this was not. Worse was to follow when we tried to play "Route 66". The only bit of "Route 66" we could remember was the "get your kicks, on Route 66" lyric. Not a solid foundation for a public performance of a track. We lasted 30 seconds this time, before the crowd allowed us to get on with songs we actually knew how to play.
We wheeled out the likes of "Second Time Around" to prop ourselves up as we stumbled towards the finish line before ending with "One For The People" and "Sibling". It wasn't the most professional show in the world but Chris and his nephew seemed really happy and I think we might have even got more than the £100 we had agreed on. Boom.
I remember thinking the New Beehive was a right dive when we pulled up outside. It looked better from the inside though and the basement, where we were due to play, was quite nice. We set up and waited for the partygoers to arrive.
After leaving it as long as we could, we began our first set of four songs. Even by playing a bunch of older tracks, we had nowhere near an hour and a half's worth of material so Dad and Paul performed a brief Bad Habit set afterwards to pad things out. Novacain valiantly mugged along on a few tunes, as did Chris and one or two of the other folkies who were at the party.
The atmosphere was friendly and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves but, even so, I felt a bit weird about following Bad Habits sing-along Irish folk standards with another set of our own songs. Or at least I thought it was going to be a set of our own songs... While I was plugging my guitar in the rest of the band started playing a shonky version of the God-awful Queen song, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Apparently someone had asked Leigh if we could play the track and he'd said "yes". Even though we didn't know how to play it. Awesome. I felt like a total berk as we trudged through yet another verse. As a massive Queen fan, at least Leigh knew the words this time, unlike "Day Tripper" which we'd attempted to play at the White Hart, but it was still pretty shocking. The rest of the second set went well though.
Chris played a surprisingly good version of Dylan's "Country Pie", the booze began to flow and somehow we found ourselves on-stage for our third and final set having agreed to play some rock n' roll classics. That we didn't know. Sigh. I'd learnt the opening lick to "Johnny B. Goode" when I first started playing guitar in the mid-90s, but I didn't know the rest of the song, and Leigh didn't know the lyrics. Unperturbed, we managed to fluff our way through a minute or so of ersatz Chuck Berry. Back To The Future this was not. Worse was to follow when we tried to play "Route 66". The only bit of "Route 66" we could remember was the "get your kicks, on Route 66" lyric. Not a solid foundation for a public performance of a track. We lasted 30 seconds this time, before the crowd allowed us to get on with songs we actually knew how to play.
We wheeled out the likes of "Second Time Around" to prop ourselves up as we stumbled towards the finish line before ending with "One For The People" and "Sibling". It wasn't the most professional show in the world but Chris and his nephew seemed really happy and I think we might have even got more than the £100 we had agreed on. Boom.
Set list (Novacain)
Set 1
- The Way She Talks
- Back Row Exit
- Step To It
- Sibling
Set 2
- Crazy Little Thing Called Love
- One For The People
- Quick Release
- Gibbsy's Street
- End Of The World
Set 3
- Johnny B. Goode
- Route 66
- Second Time Around
- Party Politics
- Scarborough Warning
- One For The People
- Sibling
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