Snap and Scribble

Last night, i went to see my old mate Terry playing with a local band, the Surf Rats, in a hall behind a pub, just round the corner from home. When i walked into the hall i thought i’d accidentally stumbled into an old folks variety evening or something – but then i realised, strewth! these people are probably about the same age as me! There were a few faces i recognised from when i was a kid in this area.

I guess when the wind’s in the east and there’s a gale blowing, the waters of the river estuary could be encouraged to ripple a bit, but i’ve never seen anything you could mistake for surf in these parts! Most of the time, the tide’s out and a fair bit of the river is just a wide expanse of mud, so maybe the Mud Rats would be a more appropriate name for a band from Maldon! But you can always dream, i guess!

Anyway, despite the rather incongruous name, they’re a pretty good band. I’m not a big fan of the music genre that could be loosely described as rock n roll, but i did enjoy about half the songs they played. Pills was a good one. And i enjoyed Hank Williams’s Wild Side of Life too – although i much prefer the Kitty Wells song, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels – which is a reply to Williams’s rather misogynist original, with a similar, but better tune.

One song i particularly hated, though, was Things We Said Today, originally by the Beatles, i think. It’s a dismal dirge of a song – and i brought back memories of a period that i think of as the decline of The Accidents – a band i played in in 78, with Terry. It was the phase when the band was changing from a not too bad punk band into a wanky pop band – and i was too punk and not pop enough, so i got kicked out!

But that was the good old days, and i can barely remember them. I don’t think i’ve heard the awful Things We Said Today since then though!

All in all, it was a good night. I didn’t manage to stay till the end of the gig though. But i’m not by any stretch of the imagination a late night person any more. I wake up too early, and don’t drink enough to stay out late having my ears battered by loud music and listening to drunks dribbling on!

I’ll go and see them again, i’m sure.

Now if they could just stop that bloody lead guitarist playing those horrible lead guitar bits and get him doing something useful…

That, of course, was one of the great things about punk music – the appalling lead guitar sound was unceremoniously given the boot! The poxy things seem to have crept back in since then though – sadly!

Weirdly, i seem to be going to Rock n Roll gigs a lot more than i used to these days – i saw Wilko Johnson and his band playing in the same hall less than a year ago!

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