Yes this is the exact same line up as the last show I went to (and reviewed for W&H) in the Bard The Poet and the blues nights at The Constitution, but while this gig was actually meant to be happening tomorrow, due to poor editing of web announcements it took place a week early. It's a fact that had PAT FISH worried about being under rehearsed for a solo show as most of his playing at the moment is in his other band: apparently a new wave-flavoured outfit who we will get to hear later this year.
Still not to worry, because as usual it was all very friendly and most of the audience now know each other as well as the acts playing. I made it downstairs just after our host for the night JOE WOOLEY had begun his set and as I arrvied he was playing a great instrumental that had a very Nick Drake feel to it. He followed that by playing some Bach (I think he said it was Sonata number 69 in D minor - sorry if any of that is wrong). Anyway it was very nice indeed and watching his hands fly around his acoustic was quite something.
He then sang Timber Gotta Roll, a fine country blues number and he then explained how his uncle is a bit of a hellfire preacher and to celebrate his 60th birthday Joe treated us to a version of the old gospel tune As long as I'm in this world I am the light of this World. It went down real well and sounded very cool indeed.
He then dug far back in time to dig out the old folk tune Long Lankin that is about a Bogey man and had that feel like it could have been in the Wickerman or Straw Dogs OSTs although the song goes back a couple of hundred years and concerns witches and murder. A truly scary song, then, though I'm not sure how close to the Steeleye Span version he was. Joe finished his set with one of my dad's favourite tunes from the 50's, Freight Train, the old Nancy Whiskey Chas McDevitt hit (I know they didn't write it). Joe did a cool version with some nice picking going on.
Then Pat Fish came on for his first set. He claimed it would be all new songs and opened with a new song that I guess is either called Hot Water kids or I wonder or something completely different. I should have begged Pat for a set list. Either way it was a nice start and he apologised for being under rehearsed before playing another new song, Lets All Do what the Animals Do. It sounded pretty cool and allowed him to go back a song he first recorded in 1984 or so - John Cale's Chinese Envoy. It was a very cool version and was perfect for the week of John's 70th birthday. He then played another cover version of a song I, to my shame, didn't recognise and was about someone called Marlene.
He then went back to familiar territory with a great version of Quality People and finished the first set with a nice version of Shirley Maclaine, as haven't we all had a crush on dear old Shirley M at one point or other.
Out in the smoking garden during the break there was much discussion of 1970's football matches and stars among other things before it was time to go back for the second half.
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I got back down there while MATT SEWELL was playing Take off Your Glasses: a song about it being better to make love to someone with your glasses off!! He then did a song I have down as Nothing and Anything is Nothing. That was pretty good and he finished his short set with a Jacques Brel song about how Jacques hated it when They Called Him Jacky. That made me wish I'd bought the Brel box set I had been looking at in Bruges the week before.
Then it was time for Pat Fish's second set and he announced he was playing all of the Jazz Butcher 'Classic Sex and Travel' LP that originally came out on Glass records in 1985 and opened as it should with Big Saturday to get us in that holiday mood.
He followed up with the marvellous Holiday: all about being an English Speaking Gentleman abroad and has some great observations in the lyrics before my favourite from this album (Red Pets) about getting a girlfriend from behind the Iron Curtain. It chimed with me in 1985 as I went behind the curtain to the old Soviet Union even if I wouldn't have wanted some of the red pets that offered themselves to me, but that's another story: a tale about women that look like shot putters and not the sort of Red pets Pat was after.
Only a Rumour of course meant that Pat asked us That Question a few different ways and the question wasn't what we should all get for President Reagan's Birthday Present. Instead that was the next song as Pat sang of "Red Russians.. shot my rocket down oh how could that happen to poor old Ronnie..." Still we needed to ask What's the matter, Boy? What, apart from having the head of an ass? Well I'm not sure but great to hear these songs live as I don't ever remember hearing some of them live. Having checked a couple of bootlegs from 1985 they weren't in the set much then either unlike the next song - the classic Walk With The Devil - a great old drinking song that was always a live favourite.
The show then finished with Down the Drain a cool song about wanting to have been born in a bar and to spend your days being permanently drunk. A great end to both an album and a show.
Hopefully Pat will be back soon with the New Wave band he mentioned. It'll either be that or next time at the Constitution when he ought to give us all of Cult Of The Basement. That would have been ideal.
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