For those of you who don't know, The Fakes are my indie-rock covers band that keep quite a low profile but always do great shows. We've known Frank and James literally since they started the Basement studios and it's a pleasure to play in their venue.
For the uninitiated, a quick history of the band and my involvement with it: I was asked to join on bass guitar back in 2004 when I answered an ad in what I believe was the Dudley Chronicle. It turned out Drewey on the drums and Harvey the singer had been in bands before, they pulled Matt on guitar in from Drewey's work and Steve on guitar from... somewhere, I never found out where. We spent the following couple of years putting together a set of different popular songs, basically choosing them on the basis of what we enjoyed playing. Gigs were not regular because of various other bits and pieces the band were involved with (they're all a bit older than me and were getting married, having kids, etc.) Steve had to leave in 07 when he hurt his hand to the point that posed a significant risk to him should he continue to play guitar, and after floundering around for a while, we eventually recruited Steve (different Steve) on bass and I switched to lead guitar. 6 gigs in 7 years is not great, but you know what, we've kept it together for that long which is more than you can say for any of my other bands...
So this was our first gig in a while! I'm not going to do a track-by-track review of our own gig here. We knew it was going to go well because it always does; we play the right kind of music for the right kind of people. Yes, there were mistakes, there always are, and sometimes I joke that we trade on the idea that everyone's hammered and can't tell if we're mucking it up. Being far less cynical about it, it's more likely that we like to make sure that EVERYBODY in the room is having a good time, all of the time.
The original plan was 10 songs, because of the way things work at the Baseline. So we chose 10 of our heavyweights and got ready to play them, to discover that one of the bands had pulled the gig and it was actually 14-15 songs we could play. Highlights of the set... Opening with She Sells Sanctuary is something every cover band should do at least once, and is not a moment any of us are likely to forget. I was very pleased with myself when we nailed She Bangs The Drums. Our ska version of 7 Nation Army wasn't as well-received as I'd have liked, perhaps we need to work on that a bit more with more references to the style of music. Set closer Dakota was by far the best one we did that night, and possibly ever.
Criticisms? Well, the crowd were reluctant to let us leave the stage - which, for all the gigs I've been doing this year, is a rare and pleasant feeling - but we stuck around for far too long playing songs that we hadn't really rehearsed, and it showed. We know the songs well enough to get all the way through them, but the cracks were there and were getting ever larger. Kudos to Frank for calling a halt to proceedings when he did. Being drunk (as a band) and high as a kite on adrenaline is not a good combination and we need to be a bit more disciplined about that in the future.
For now, though, let's take a moment to remember the mot enjoyable gig I have done for a long, long time...
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