Missing Words #2

Saved by The Jam

Carrying on with the missing words series, this story came to light a couple of months ago and wasn’t included in the book.

In the mid ’80’s whilst plying my percussive trade with Cairo we were sometimes booked to play shows which were somewhat inappropriate for our particular style of music. One such gig took place at a ‘charming’ venue called The Lively Lobster in Sale. I’m pretty certain that at that particular time, circa. 1985, the word Chav wasn’t used in common parlance, but if it was then the OED definition would probably read thus: Chav n. ‘Frequenters of a certain venue on the  outskirts of Manchester’. An acronym of Council House And Violent. Possibly.

We noticed an air of tension from the first note and we quickly realised that this was not our target audience, but rather that we were indeed their target for them to vent their poorly disguised indifference and vitriol towards. As anyone who has been on a stage whether it is to sing, act or play an instrument, the reaction of an audience is very important. You feed off their enthusiasm and feel appreciated to be up there performing for them, and you in turn want to give your best performance in response to this. Unfortunately we couldn’t have felt more unwanted or under appreciated if we had walked onstage and proceeded to disembowel Golden Retriever puppies as an act. We carried on in a professional manner as best we could but at the end we just started to take the piss a little, which made our popularity plummet to new depths of Chilean mine proportions.

We packed the gear down as the last chord was still ringing, as quickly as we could trying not to make eye contact with anyone, but unfortunately a few of the ‘boys’ had come over for a word. I don’t think they were too keen on us, and after a little bit of banter which started off as good natured then escalated and  I think included the questioning of our sexuality and our geographical place of residence (sheep shaggers etc. etc.). I had kept out of it up until now but went over to give solidarity to my mates and to try to get out with heads and tails still attached. As I walked over one of the locals noticed that I was wearing a pair of grey bowling shoes as worn in the past by The Jam. This obviously tripped a switch in his head and in the blink of an eye things turned from sour to sweet as his friends all cottoned onto the fact that I was a massive Jam fan, and that we did have something in common after all. From that moment onwards the lads got the stuff into the van whilst a couple of us upheld the peace regaling tales of the bards of Woking and expressing opinions on The Style Council and music in general. We escaped intact and never went back.

The place has closed down since as I can’t seem to find it listed anywhere. The most up to date notification was of a firework being thrown into the place a few years ago. How apt. That’s  how we felt.