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A Nutty French Woman Production!
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Dennis Homes’ 60th birthday bash
2.30 pm and Margaret
begins with a song Dennis wrote: a risqué number about titfers, with
all the usual excellent Dennis rhymes and plays on words, chorus sung by the assembled
thong… I mean throng.
Claudine claims not
to have slept since here return from the US. Crikey!!
About 30 here for
the new season of FaB Club, Dennis’s birthday celebration.
Margaret
follows this with “I feel lucky”.
Last
time I was here, there was a stage…I suppose they removed it in
deference to Dennis, after all he is 60 now!
They
must have thought he was having trouble getting up there… so to speak.
You’d
never think so to look at him though.
Bob is called up
next, and isn’t quite ready, as he thought he would be called on later.
He tells of his adventures at Sidmouth and Dartmoor
festivals.
He
starts with a song to the tune of “Bring back my Johnny to me”,
but the lyrics are somewhat different, and tell of a house of sexual depravity, with every member of the
family involved in something sordid.
Abortion, prostitution, sex change operations……I’d
hate to look in their fridge!
Dennis challenges
Bob to be even ruder… and he doesn’t disappoint. The song is
about his grandfather’s cock. I couldn’t see why it was so funny
, I didn’t see any connection with the lyrics and a male chicken. Still
some people seemed to laugh in the oddest places…Must be something I
was missing.
Act 3 is Mike
Parrott, who plays a song written by the best man at his wedding. “All
I want is you” is the title, which seemed appropriate as Tina, his
wife, is along to listen.
He
follows this with one of his own compositions “Vote for me”: an
ode to the Eurovision songs… He even sings in French…….clever
G*t!!
Seems
a great over abundance of funny songs so far… I will have to put a stop to that!
Margaret brings on
Joe Migdal, who arrives on stage…well, carpet, with a bandage on his
left wrist…oo err! Accompanied by Kathy, who has a 100 year old organ…a
bit like Joe.
He
tells of his last gig at the Jungle goats…err…Jingling
gate…….at which apparently thee was a small earth quake, and all
the banjos fell over..
Oh
dear …broken banjos…how tragic!
He then sings and
performs a great song, “Oh to be in England”……as
ever, with a great sound track provided by his ????????? and Kathy
accompanying also.
Sensitively
performed and sung, as ever brilliant.
This is followed by
a song about a water rat, and several jokes at Dennis’s expense. He comments
that there were still water rats when Dennis was young…….I
thought they still hadn’t evolved
Back
then!
Jurassic Vole...The
movie!!
Birthday boy Dennis
is next up, to do a double spot as it is his birthday,
Happy birthday is duly sung.
His
first song is his own philosophy about music on a 12 string.
As ever Dennis is
animated, gets a foot stomping hill billy rhythm going.
Enthusiasm always
comes through from Dennis, and communicates to the audience,
Great stuff!
Song 2 is a tribute
to ye olde rock songs: sometimes we’ll sigh, sometimes we’ll
cry”, I would find it very nostalgic…, if I had been around in
the 60s and 70s! a lively medley of songs that has everyone singing.
This followed by his
hilarious “red eyed formation drinking team”, a parody of the red
arrows squadron.
He
should put a sign up at his gigs; “Danger; Genius at Work!”
Dennis then plays
“Sunlight Breaking Through The Clouds”, which I was privileged to
hear previously when he asked me to listen to the master CD he had made in
the studio.
After
some initial problems with the backing track……bloody
technology…….he performs professionally, not that we expected
anything else…
Unusual
to hear backing tracks at a folk club, but this exception went very well, it
certainly had everybody’s attention. Deserved applause!!
I had heard it about
30 times when reviewing it, but it was reenergised by the live vocal.
We then had a break
for food, before Liz began the next session with a poem evoking images and
memories of the 60s. “Hey Man”…….It is great when a
poem, or a song for that matter, paints pictures in people’s heads.
This was followed by
a poem about geological soups and extinct critters, odd, as I had bought with
me a fossil I had found, to show Steve and Gill.
No,
not Fiona, but a conulus from the cretaceous period.
Jo then performed
“as time goes by”, unaccompanied. She made up for the lack of
accompaniment with a theatrical and well paced performance.
Margaret then
introduced the leopards. Trevor told a story about Elvis, and then played the song, asking Dennis to play
lead guitar, even though Dennis had never heard it before
What
can I say?
Next song bought Sue
Leopard in on vocals whilst playing percussion for the “Fields of
Peckham Rye”, another audience participation number.
Sues
percussive timing was perfect throughout!
Norman arrived next with a ukulele, and
launched into a 1957 song “Walking My Baby Back Home”.
Nifty
work! He then did a George Formby; “Swimming with the women” quite risqué in its
day I imagine……lots of dodgy double entendres…but who am I
to comment on such things?
Up
Periscope!
This was followed by
Sonia, who did a double act with Claudine….unrehearsed. Claudine played
her handsome new guitar, fresh from California.
The
song was an adaptation of the Beatles When I’m 64 , devoted to Dennis
“Will
we still need him, will we still feed him…” I hope so!
Thus
we arrived at the raffle.
.
I then did my funny
poem for Dennis, and followed with the first performance of “It’s
All Right”, my new song.
Somebody
kindly gave me 11 out of 10! Hope endures!
Claudine had written
new songs also, inspired by her trip to California.
Sweetly sung as ever, given us great
images of her time there, but beyond just a collection of images there was
also a lot of social observation. San Francisco,
Colorado, Palo Alto
and a personal touch for Adrian,
“wide eyed and silent, holding your hand”
A
great souvenir!
She then produced
yet another new song, in praise of Dennis
Homes, drawn from FaB
Club Reviews, and also lyrics from some of his songs.
Dennis
must have been really pleased, and I am sure that everyone else, like me, was
impressed by the obvious amount of research that Claudine must have done!
Then Ben did a Ron
Trueman-Border song, Romeo and Juliet, which I first heard Ron do at The
Rainham Hall mini festival a couple of years ago.
He played a gentle
guitar which suited the song, though he played it somewhat slower than Ron. Sometimes
it is nice to hear a slower version, as it makes the words a bit more
prominent.
He followed this
with an American song, I didn’t catch the title, but he had learned it
from a Roger Mcguinn teaching CD. It is nice to see young performers taking
the plunge and we hope to see more of him!
Thus
endeth the session!
Steve O’Kane
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