(It’s an old Spitting Image gag (for those of you old enough to remember the satirical foam puppets). Orson Wells gathers the great and the good into a cinema to reveal (posthumously on film) that he lived his life backwards, starting his career as an old man making sherry adverts, fumbling through an average career as an actor, director and producer, making some critically sneered-at Shakespeares, then climbing to success through a stunning radio adaptation of the War of the Worlds (which had the southern states’ redneck population driving around with shotguns looking for ETs to shoot) and finishing off with his masterpiece, Citizen Kain – a film that turned cinematography and art direction on its head.)
It has always pleased me, that sketch. Maybe not so much now as the first OMN at The Plough was a scintillating party with drums, bass, sax and more artists than you could shake a rainstick at. The second was a good, solid evening, slow at the beginning, but growing into a perfectly reasonable (and much appreciated) jam at the end.
The third week… Well, where should I begin? Probably at the beginning…
Sassy Lozza came with me this week and helped unloading and setting up – and this, make no mistake, is how the tireless OMN organiser makes his or her money. That, arranging the turns and striking the stage again at the end. The OMN organiser has to be ready to forego his or her set list at any moment – and then we sat down outside with East End Bob, the landlord (more of him in a later post).
Psycho Deano turned up, armed with his very own cajon, and Andrew Williams – armed with nothing but an ability to dissemble. Lozza and I began to play and sing to the near-empty pub at about 8:20. Surprisingly, even the half dozen punters there still managed to produce a smattering of applause after each number – no small achievement that early in the evening, I assure you.
At about nine, by which time there has normally been an influx of musos and singers, the ratio of four performers to six punters had remained unchanged (another ten or so were sat outside, enjoying the first of this summer’s sun). No-one had left (a good sign) but no-one had arrived, either (definitely NOT a good sign).
I invited Andrew Williams up to do a few. He took my acoustic guitar, went through his usual routine of explaining how he couldn’t hear anything and being told it sounded fine out front, to which he invariably says that he is deaf anyway. He then proceeds to tell anyone within ear shot (without the use of the microphone) that he only knows obscure songs. “Ah! Here go,” he says with glee, “you won’t have heard this one.” He then launches into a rendition, almost totally devoid of discernable rhythm, of a song that, indeed, no-one knows… Well, a song that you are aware of from somewhere in the dim and distant past that you might have heard once or twice.
His voice is tremendous. He can scale great heights and he sounds not unlike Roger Chapman of Family. His guitar playing, however, is that rare thing in public performance that involves a good knowledge of chords, but an inability to move from one to another, so each song he performs tends to stop and start in mid-flow as he contorts his hand into the next chord shape. Often as he reaches the chorus, he gains some momentum and flow, but then the verse and the middle eight rear their ugly sequences and he returns to his staccato, arrhythmic rendition.
Each song is separated by his explanation (less microphone) of where that song came from, where the next one came from and how we might have heard of it, but probably not…
Bless him. I love his voice and he is certainly a regular and loyal participant of both my OMNs. Long may he ramble on.
I took to the mic again and played a couple of self-indulgent numbers using my looper (Boss RC-300 if you’re interested – marvellous piece of kit), then I got Psycho Deano up to accompany me, then Lozza, then me, then Andrew Williams left, and so we chugged the evening away, just the three of us. Deano sang a couple of numbers (White Wedding – acoustic version – and Sit Down) and mighty fine they were, too. He is a pretty good singer and he has a natural rhythm, which makes him highly sought after at my evenings.
Thus the evening drew to a close. We finished off with 500 Miles and Perfect Day, Deano picked up his cajon and made his way home, and Lozza and I starting packing up. (Did I mention that this is how OMN organisers earn their money?) East End Bob came over. “Well, that was diabolical!” he said. I knew what he meant, but still said, with a delicate amount of surprise and hurt, “What?!”
“Oh, not you, you’ve earned your money tonight, but we’ve got to get more people down here…” And off he went on an explanation of how this is all about getting punters and musos into his pub. I wanted to explain how I know all of this, but that we had spoken on many occasions that sometimes it will fall a little flat. I needed to point out that the first two weeks had been beyond our expectations and he had had good takings from a full pub – in the main because of me. I wanted to say that next week would be better for him. All of these thoughts scuttled around my head, but remained there. There was no point. East End Bob is not one to use his logic or his ears very much. He speaks from instinct, very much in the moment.
After the first two sessions, he kissed me goodbye. There were no intimacies this week. (Actually, I was quite pleased about that.)
The great thing for me was that I got to play as I wanted to play – and God, I enjoyed it.
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