Day 291. There's every possibility. (18/10/13)

Okay, so, since the 'gig not a party/party not a gig' isn't happening tonight (please tell me that none of you are stood outside the club in the rain waiting for me. If you are, I'm really, really sorry. I did send out Facebook and Tweets and texts and carrier pigeons and stuff and I  hope to god I didn't miss anybody) I'm reverting back to my original plan for Friday 18th October; I'm off to see the very great Michael Head (ex Shack, ex Paleys) at The Kazimier.

But while I'm out.... Here's how the night would have been.

Round about now my friend Emma was going to take the stage. She was going to do four or so songs, acoustic covers, songs everybody would know before we came on and did songs that nobody but us would know. It would have been great, Emma genuinely has one hell of a voice.

About 9.30 we'd take the stage. Four of us, three microphones, me at centre stage (choice of other band members as it was my party/gig, my natural place on stage is to the left of the singer as you look at it, I've always stood there)

I would welcome everybody, thank you all for coming, inform you that (as I don't do public speaking)  you should consider this as the bit where the birthday boy gets up and makes his speech. With guitars. For about forty minutes.

I would then give you the grand opening 'earlier this year our Kev asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I told him that I had no idea, hadn't thought about it. But that was a lie. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to do this'

And on the word 'this' I would hit a harmonic on the guitar, bending it with wah and whammy bar (think beginning of 'Welcome to the Pleasuredome'. A quick count of 4 from the bassist and bass and drums would rumble in, Paul and I slashing guitar notes as the intro builds, major drum roll and we quite literally explode into 'Stand Up', the first track of our first demo tape. It's a hell of a start and sounded awesome in rehearsal.

'Caught' and 'Ken Harris Said' follow as they did on the tape. Mally quite fabulously on vocals for the first two, Paul moving in for the third. Our fourth would see us trot out our second demo song, White Horse (see what I did there? Trot? Horse? Please yourselves) in all our genuinely synth driven proper eighties majesty.

The fifth song jumped from 1985 to 2008 as I announced that I had spent 2007 fed up of the fact that people were writing truly bland 'anthems' for the city of culture year and I'd been determined to write my own but with my usual timing we didn't quite get round to playing it until 2009. We had written two songs called Paradise Street in our time as a band, this was the second. My lovely new Rickenbacker would make its live debut at this point.

Songs 6, 7 & 8 would all be Paul's work, my favourite songs from the final days of the final line up; 'Because I Love You' (a love song that swings) 'Driving Down' a country rock number and 'Be Strong' short, sharp, jangly and a touch R.E.M.ish. The 12 string is back for this and stays for the last song of the set.

Which is the song I wrote for my wife, the song that I wrote about the night we met. There's a full introduction for this, you'll hear it when we do it (early next year most likely), I'm not putting it out here.

The song is 'The Girl Who Saved My Life'. It's the best thing that I've ever written and it's for J.

Cue rapturous applause.

Obviously we'll do encores for you; the first one is Apache by The Shadows, learnt at long last as my dad's requested it for years. (he knows, I've told him, he'll hear it in ours tomorrow) then one last number, a cover by the one band that me, Mal and Geoff have always agreed on. 'Thats Entertainment' by The Jam.

And then I would finally be able to start drinking, about three hours after everybody else.

All this will happen, somewhere, sometime soon, possibly in this exact manner, possibly with some changes, whatever, you'll all be invited.

Until then.....imagine that's how the evening went.

Splendid wasn't it?