This sold out acoustic solo show from legendary Quireboys front man Spike along with support from Matty James Cassidy was always going to be full of old friends and drunken bonhomie of the season, the show opened with a set by Matty James Cassidy who you may know from the BalladMongrels or Filthy Angels he opened his solo set with the down at heal song about how things were back Home in Ireland, his rich vocals making plain what happens When I'm Bored, well most of the audience thankfully weren't bored or didn't complain that After All was an original rather than a Bowie cover.
Tell It To The Ghosts hinted at all sorts of dark secrets and surviving all the bad behaviour, before he went properly East London with a cover of Ronnie Lanes immortal classic How Come that got lots of the audience singing the chorus, before telling the first on the nights tales of Tyla as an intro to How The Beautiful Fall a song he wrote with Tyla in the BalladMongrels all the pitfalls that can turn a beauty into an old crone came through the dark blues strumming, of course if you hang around with Tyla too long you'll end up in Trouble of the sort that gets drowned in Whiskey. Matty then closed by getting us to sing along on a new song Brand New You, Same Old Me about a partner who is trying to change and clean up their act, while their partner is still on a hellbound train, this went down well and most of the audience sang along.
After the break Nigel Mogg got onstage to introduce Spike and Chris Heilman and Spike welcomed us with his normal banter before they opened with Roses And Rings that featured some cool guitar from Chris and Spike's loose improvisations and full throated vocals, Spike then told a long story about playing gigs opening for Torme who Chris used to play guitar with, with Chris going out with the last Flake girl before they played the chocolate bars famous ad song as salaciously as some of the adverts were.
While Spike made sure, we knew that Raining Whiskey was on the last Quireboys album Wardour Street, before stumbling through this Frankie Miller drunken classic heartbreaker. All I Need Is You was Spike really singing Teddy Prendergrass and not sounding too soppy doing so, As expected my notes get more unreadable, so I guess we heard Black Eyed Son before hearing a very funny story about Lita Ford and her husband Chris Holmes, who Chris Heilman got mistaken for, surely he wasn't that drunk or wasted, while Spike made sure he was well oiled by the time they got to Here She Goes Again we were all ready to sing along.
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Spike then took us back to his blues roots with a great version of the John Otway hit House Of The Rising Sun, although Spike emphasised different parts of the lyrics, this was a great fun sing along. Spike then I think got Matty James Cassidy back up before he told us he would be playing a Lonnie Donegan song, no it wasn't My Old Mans A Dustman but a very cool version of I'll Never Fall In Love Again that Tom Jones had a huge hit with. He then brought a couple of the Soho Dukes up and things got properly messy on a version of Ralph McTells Let Me Down Easy I think it was. The ramshackle run through A Stone's Throw that morphed into You Can't Always Get What You Want before they closed with Just My Imagination that was not super smooth soul, but was certainly heartfelt.
Spike came back solo for the encore and chose to play The Anti Nowhere Leagues first single, going all punk folk, on a great looser than loose take on Streets Of London, the Ralph McTell classic that was a suitable way to end a nicely messy night in Maryland.
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