Hob-Nobbing

Last summer my band The Slaves played a gig at Chris Gray’s Troubador recording studio in Falmouth. This was part of the Falmouth Arts Week celebrations, and we looked forward to strutting our stuff at such an unusual venue. Chris carefully rearranged his workplace to provide a really great atmosphere. All ready to belt out our electric folk mayhem, then.

We played on the middle floor between an arts exhibition above, and the toilets on the ground. The arty toffs who visited the exhibition stayed to come to our gig, get pissed and dance around with surprising aplomb. A lady named Miff had organised the shindig. She was eventually persuaded to dance too, overcoming initial reluctance and my romantic overtures which involved leaping from the stage and lunging lustfully at her with my tongue dangling out (could've been worse I suppose). All part of the act folks.

It turned out that among the audience that night was no less than Spider Stacy of The Pogues. That band! What they did with Irish music has been eulogised over many, many times and has given us all such a buzz.

At the end of the gig, Spider joined us on stage and sang Dirty Old Town, a song we’d never played previously. It went well, particularly because he told us the key he wanted it in; Helen even took an instrumental break - full marks! Spider was a down-to-earth, unassuming person, and was a pleasure to do business with. Over the next couple of weeks we all bought Pogues CDs, and in turn awaited massive orders of our album Mental Notes from Spider and all his mates.

This was only our first foray into playing with celebrity guests. Since then we've performed with some huge names, including SOME TEXT MISSING