 Tuesday June 27th 2017
It was a rainy day night. -- Everyone who was out this evening would have had to drive through watersplashes on the roads or paddle through puddles on paths -- But it was dry inside the Six Bells -- That is, in terms of rain, not in terms of drink. I began with a polite request to everyone to not chatter while players are singing or while singers are playing. It can be very irritating and off-putting for everybody else. We're not saying 'No Talking'! -- but please show some politeness. With a reference to The Glastonbury Festival, I did a song that The Killers had performed there over the weekend -- 'Human' . I've always liked this song, even though the lyrics don't make much sense, but then, that could be said of a lot of song lyrics I suppose. My second effort was to celebrate the 50th anniversary this month of The Beatles' 'Sgt Pepper' album. 'She's leaving home' was recorded with harp and strings backing, but I can't play them, so I just used a guitar. Ella Moonbridge kindly agreed to play next. It's never a popular choice to be second on the list, but we all take a turn at it from time to time. Ella had her bazooki tonight, and gave us two lovely songs from Patty Griffin - 'Useless Desires', from the Impossible Dream album, and 'Truth', from the Silver Bell album. Thank you Ella. By this time, the room was filling up nicely, and through the rest of the evening we had a good number of people in 'The Audience'. We had a visit from someone I hadn't seen before by the name of 'Striker'. -- Not his real name, but that is what he likes to be known as. Playing guitar, he sang one of his own songs - 'It's Late', and then Chuck Berry's 'Diploma for Two'. As he had battled his way over from Ardingly in the rain, we invited him to do a third song, and he gave us his version of Billy Bragg's 'Honey I'm a big boy now'. Chris Martin was on duty again on the sound desk tonight, ( thanks Chris), but took a break from that to come up to give us a couple of his own compositions, Sanity', and 'Insomniac's Dream'. Chris had to put up with the sound of chattering in the room while he was on, so I had to repeat my earlier request for 'Quiet please'. Will they ever be quiet? Up next came Manus, with his excellent Jazz guitar style, doing a song by Keith Willson , and 'Blues run the Game' by Jackson C Frank. --- Nice. Simon Watt took to the floor - ( Not literally) - to sing his version of 'Try a little Tenderness', and a very nice take on Bob Dylan's 'Girl from the North Country'. Simon makes some of these songs sound better than they did in the first place. --- Cool. Mike Aldridge was here tonight, but chose not to sing on this occasion. Thanks for coming anyway Mike. A different Mike was here, -- Mike from Hove, (Portslade actually). Apparently you can get good Bacon Butties in Portslade. Mike chose a couple of songs to give us, including Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'. (There are different ways of spelling this word). Time now for a bit of culture in the form of Derry on the old piano, giving us two pieces, one by Bach , and the other by Schubert. -- Or as we used to call them 'Bark and 'Sherbet'. Sorry Derry, I've lowered the intellectual tone. Terry Lees had been waiting patiently to come up, and of course, he is always worth waiting -- for. He told us the story of how in younger days, he wanted to be like Hank Marvin, then later, Eric Clapton, then later, Bert Jansch. As it turns out, WE would all like to play like Terry Lees. He sang us his version of 'Angi' , and Josh White's 'Evil hearted Me'. I looked at the clock, and saw that we had some spare time left. The evening was running quicker and smoother than it sometimes does, so some of us took the opportunity to do a second set. Chris Martin rose from his sound desk chair and entertained us with his 'Ghosts', and his 'I like to be Sad'. Then came Lloyd, who had been hiding away at the back, and not sure about playing, especially as he had no guitar with him, but , borrowing Simon's instrument, he stepped up to sing a Jim Reeves song with very deep notes, followed by an' Old English style' opera piece by Charles Dibden. Back again came Manus with a short number, followed by Ella, doing a nice version of 'Blackwaterside'. Simon took his extra spot, giving us one of his own numbers "Refuse to sing the blues" .... Then I finished off with Gordon Lightfoot's 'Early morning Rain'. -- This nearly finished ME off, because I went totally blank in the last verse and missed the lyrics completely. Ah well, it must have been a senior moment. So, that brought us to the end of the evening, and despite some unexpected difficulties that occurred last week, it all went very well thankyou. Next time will be 1960's theme night, hosted by Simon Watt. ' Be there or be Square' ! Clive Woodman.
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