Played a busy country pub last night - good crowd somewhat worse for wear.
End of the night we'd finished and 2 girls came up to singer's mic and decided to do a drunken rendition of Kenny Roger's The Gambler (a song for some reason much like Sweet Caroline that seems to have come back in vogue recently).
It could have been awkward but I started to accompany them on guitar (after figuring out they're singing in A major).
It's a simple 3 chord I IV V country song - modulating up a half step midway.
Bass player see's the chords and drummer does a bass drum beat - we'd never played it as a band before.
We pulled it off and whilst not the greatest rendition you'd ever hear the punters went away happy...
Ever have moments like that?
...she's got Dickie Davies eyes...
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2004 or 5 Finn Brothers- Albert Hall- literally on the day Paul Hester had committed suicide.
Neil put a hat and a snare on front of stage all show.
At the encore he came out- he spoke about Hessie then played the C/F intro to Better Be Home Soon and stopped.
The crowd sang the song from start to finish, unaccompanied, without Neil or Tim touching their instruments or singing at any point- perfectly, beautifully and wonderfully.
I actually choked up typing this. It was an incredible moment.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Don't Dream, no amps.
Don't Dream it's Over RAH - lights turned off & no mic. Finn Brothers - YouTube
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
I told him that we knew he was going to be there and were actually planning on doing that to fill a few seconds while our keyboard player was doing a complicated setting faff but as he'd just volunteered he could do the vocal and it's key him know when to come up. Fair play to him, did it in his stride. Didn't really fit within the set but it went down well enough
The first, 13th December 1993 was Verve headlining with Oasis third on the bill. This was well before they released anything. We watched them and thought they were going to be pretty good but what made it memorable was that the power cut during Verve's set but Bonehead and a couple of the roadies came out and played She'll Be Coming Round the mountain. Bonehead was on spoons!
The second was 9th August 1994 so just as Live Forever was released. Some nobhead got up on stage during Bring it on Down and punched Noel and it all kicked off. I was not entirely convinced by the band's hard man act until that night but there was no hesitation at all and they all dived in. Was pretty annoying though as the gig, understandably, ended very early.
Another Neil moment- on his solo tour around 02....
He played Bham Symph Hall- came out for the encore and said "I hear this place has the best acoustics in the world- let's test them!"
He unplugged his acoustic, sat on edge of stage with his feet dangling off and delivered a flawless version of Don't Dream completely unamplified either vocally or guitar. Absolute goosebumps. His voice is one of the greatest of all time.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
The whole crowd shut up and listened to Jeff Tweedy do a couple of unplugged numbers until they sorted out the problem.
Anyway, the acoustics were pretty terrible in there, and we were resigned to going home, but...we started our set and a good 70% of the crowd was made up of our fans and theirs (more of the latter than the former, but probably a few hundred people in total). We got going and the crowd seemed to be sort-of into it, but obviously not wanting to show too much support to another band. Then we hit one of our anthem songs, and...for the first time ever, the whole damn crowd was singing it with us! And, to top it off, there were people coming in from outside to see what all the fuss was about, and they joined in too.
Sure, it's small-fry. But when your band has only ever played tiny local gigs where nobody's really interested and only showed up because you guilted them into it, it makes you feel like a rock star for a few minutes.
This is exquisite- a man so ridiculously musical it's scary.
Frame and Gouldman are just in awe.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Luckily it was dead of night and no traffic, I was driving a Golf GTi and they were in a Ford Fiesta. But I did have to run a couple of red lights on the way to the M25 where I eventually lost them.