Interstellar Overdrive Exceeded!

May's Open Music Night coincided with International Star Wars Day, 'May The Forth Be With You!'. There was no theme requested but a couple of performers stepped up to the mark and offered up some very topical tunes. I wasn't one of them, opening with ‘Holding The Butterfly’ and ‘In The Woods (Like Bear Grylls)'

Paddy was next up. His first song was about nothing imparticular. Infact the title and conent of the song was a taxonomist's delight, all about nothing at all and the various Latin words for it. It sounded something like 'Floxi Noxi Bulification' which seemed to make up most of the chorus. Paddy's second was his Robot Song, all about the development and disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence. Much more familiar to some of us was his fabulous ‘Fun With Birds’. While those of us that have heard it a few times still delight in the outrageous puns, but it is the reaction of the ones that hear it for the first time that reminds us just how funny Paddy can be when he puts his mind to it.

Third on the stage was Ian with what was probably the best song of the night. He opened with one of his signature pieces, ‘Chocolate Jesus’ and then blew the audience away completely with his rendition of Weird All Malchovich’s American Pie parody that covers the entire Star Wars trilogy. Needless to say that it went, having seen none of the films at all, completely over Shirley's head.

Steve Edgar is becoming increasingly diverse in his repertoire, regularly surprising us. We've heard him perform Jeff Buckley’s 'Lilac Wine', covered famously by Elkie Brooks, but new for us was John Lennon’s rhetorical masterpiece, 'How?' and  The Box Tops' 'The Letter'.

Steve took the opportunity to promote an open mic at Birdingbury Club on Saturday 30th June. The event starts at 7.30pm, and I'm sure he would welcome a few OMC faces to support him.

We welcomed back Lew Robinson
(Lew Bear), a now familiar face at The George, who treated us to some of the songs from his latest album. 'Better off Dancing With The Devil You Know', 'Echoes',

and a song about Drinking on Your Own.

John and Mike began with America's ‘Horse With No Name’ (apparently the easiest guitar piece in the universe, comprising only two chords).

 A bit more challenging for them was Bob Geldoff’s ‘Great Song of Indifference'

After they had been up for the second part of the evening I sidled up to John and whispered

'What was the first song you sang John?

'I don’t want to talk about it it.' said John.

'Yes,' I said, 'but what was the first song you sang John?'

'I don’t want to talk about it!' replied John.

'There’s no need to be funny about it, I just want to know what the first song was.'
'I don't want to talk about it'. Then came the sound of th penny dropping.

Pete and Marian also embraced the STAR WARS space theme singing Kim Jong Ill’s ‘Rocket Man’, followed by The Carpenters’ ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’.

It is always delightful to welcome new performers
to The George and this month saw the arrival of Ray Beck. He treated us to some humourous self penned numbers, the first of which was ‘The Sliming Club at Stratton Blues’ and a heartfelt account of the terrible illness that is man-flu, ‘He’s Got Man-Flu’

There were a couple of new ones from Sandi and Tugrul too. Their first was the lovely Simon and Garfunkle’s ‘El Condor Pasa, (If I Could)’ which sounded fabulous. They were on familiar territory with their second, ‘Da Do Ron Ron’ by the Crystals, or was it Hale and Pace? Sandi had a ukulele for their last song of the night Neil Young's, 'Walking To New Orleans’.

We were treated, if that's the word, to a rare full line-up of MDF, all seven of us. Tracey singing Peter Frampton's, ‘Baby I Love Your Ways’ before dueting with Ross on Josh Turner's, ‘The Longer The Waiting The Sweeter The Kiss’

and because we took such a long time to set up we played a third, a song that MDF haven’t performed for a few years, so to most of the band this was a new song. We had a practice at it on Thursday and it was such fun that we thought we’d give it a go. The Violent Femmes' 'FAT'.

The evening was brought to a close with a bit of help from MDF with Tea Chest Brian leading the collective in the well known and much loved Lonnie Donegan 'Putting on The Style'; including some less than familiar verses, and then a rousing rendition of ‘All Over Now’ by The Valentinos, of course.

Next month’s Open Music Night is Friday 1st June .

And just in case you hadn't heard, MDF will be opening the Crick Music Festival on the Sunday at 12 noon. It would be great to have some friendly faces in the crowd. Actually it would be nice if there were some faces. Please come along and give MDF some encouragement.