Raunds Music Festival

I played at Raunds Music Festival last night, invited by Martin Stephenson to support him. It's a lovely little town, and the gig was in a sort of mega-village-hall; the stage was decorated with lots of painted and decorated Doc Marten's, to celebrate the fact that one of the very early protest marches, even before the Jarrow march, set off from Raunds. The audience was lovely- they weren't expecting me, I wasn't on the bill, but it was a listening night and they were all sitting at tables smiling with their beer. Some even had teenagers doing their GCSE homework with them. It was one of those nights when you get into the zone as a singer; I wanted to be good because Martin had invited me to play and I didn't want to let him down so I tried to sing my absolute best and play as well as I could.
I watched Martin's set- he played a song I hadn't heard before, about Margaret Thatcher, almost a funky rhythm, and finished with Boat to Bolivia, which he doesn't play much solo but it was brilliant. It was a really friendly night and I am so glad to have played there: it was a proper community venue with everyone out and smiling on a warm day.
Martin told me a very funny story about this guy who was an older musician, Freddie Fingers Lee, I think he was called. He did a gig with The Cure supporting him and he absolutely detested them, especially the one with lipstick all over his face, so when they were on stage he went and got his pea-shooter from his car and some aluminium pellets, and stood there backstage taking pot-shots at them all the way through their show, laughing with glee as Robert Smith looked round to see what had stung him on the back of his neck!
Ho-dark-ho, I couldn't help laughing.
I'd like to go and see The Band of Holy Joy tonight, and Dialect, the Geordie rappers, are supporting them, too, but it's so blooming hot and what if I got there and it was sold out and I just had to go home again. Know what I mean?
So instead I'll sit in my room and write a song to sing to people in the audience whose mobile phones go off while you're playing.
Or to those ones who talk all the way through perhaps.
Revenge songs.
Songweapons.
Someone go an buy me a Magnum Classic, pleeeaaasse!