Thursday, September 11, 2008

Let's Make A Racket - XXIV

It's Thursday again (sheesh, these days it seems like we have a bloody Thursday every week) and today we'll be dipping once again into that cheesy old Cheese Mechanics live cassette tape known to discerning Norwich rhythm'n'blues fans as "Cheeses of Nazareth".

PLAY THIS LOUD AND DANCE!

No guitar solo to speak of in this one, but today it's party time with my favourite cheesy "sanity band"!
Short, sweet and somewhat pungent, this is an extract from a Cheeses' gig displaying us in what passed for our ridiculous pomp.

Believe it or not, Neil (who sings this) is a quietly-spoken abstract painter and film-maker, but put him up on stage and he gets progressively worked up into such a frenzy that the English language disappears and is replaced by "Neil-Speak"
"OoKAR jugs RAAAR by ookya GYAAAR!" as he sings at one point and as we say on Neil-World.

Our Neil and Our Dive (I know I've posted this pic before but it's the only one I've got of the two of us where we don't look like the miserable old sods we truly are).

This - especially toward the end - gives some idea of what a Cheese Mechanics gig was actually like.
Between all the guitar solos we'd whip in one of these; short, sharp and ludicrous.
It's a basic law of physics, stick a Bo Diddley riff into the last set and you're guaranteed a floor full of drunken girls in various states of undress, shrieking and giggling and occasionally flashing their boobs at one another.

In fact I enjoyed re-living this so much I'll also stick in the next track from that gig, even though I've posted this one before: "You Got Me Running", aka "Any Way You Want."

If you left a Cheeses' gig without a big fat cheesy grin plastered over your face then we weren't doing our job right.



15 comments:

Alifan said...

Got a nice grin on my face at those.....not enough of your solos but great nevertheless.....If I remember rightly when Steve said you were going to slow it down a little bit, you ended up being faster!!!!!

dive said...

You remember it well! Steve would invariably follow "We're gonna slow it down a little bit" with a ludicrously fast count-in of "ONETWOTHREEFOUR!" before racking up the pace.
We were nothing if not predictable.

Scout said...

Boy, you're right having to grin after listening to that. It's such a great way to start this otherwise dull day. You should put this in your sidebar so we can listen to it every day.

dive said...

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Robyn.
We did have fun back then.

Katie said...

I agree with Scout -- a great way to start the day! I had to turn it down a bit here at work (a co-worker came in, darn it all!) but I did listen to it at full volume last night (some of us lucky ones get to start our Thursday Racket on Wednesday night!). I might have to come back and listen again once my coffee wears off.

dive said...

Ah, those pesky time zones sometimes work in our favour, Katie.
Whenever my coffee wears off I find more coffee helps.

Maria said...

Shall we dance, Dive? Because after that, I need to get up and mooovin.

Jules said...

Wonderful Dive - and I am so excited I have been able to download it - first time ever!!! Really is my sort of music. Was just listening to Blues Traveler on my laptop and would love to have your album too!!!

My toes are a tappin' and my hips are jiggling - whoa !!!

neetzy said...

You guys rocked. I am wearing my cheezy grin. You sounded like you were having a great time! Rock on!

dive said...

Maria: I'm afraid I dance like your dad … only worse.

Jules: Woohoo! At last a decent connection! Pity it was for such a crap song, though.
Hey ho.
Perhaps when the Benauts come home they can copy their CDs for you.

Neetzy: We did indeed have a good time. That's what sanity bands are all about. You can ignore all the crap from your "day job band"; ignore managers, audiences, studio engineers and greedy accountants and just head down the club with your friends and let rip.
Sigh …

savannah said...

too much fun, sugar! ;) xoxox

dive said...

Cheers, Savannah. You should have been there.
xoxox

Joy said...

There's a lot of love and energy there! Like it!

dive said...

There's a lot of drunken, shouty people there!

neetzy said...

I want to join your band. I can play a mean jaw harp, washboard, tambourine, I suck at guitar (I had a few years of lessons). I went to an arts and crafts festival and was playing a "strumstick" marketed by a cute Jamaican dude who was trying to "be jammin" with me. I was jammin badly but we attracted a bunch of people who were potential buyers. They offered me a job! I be jammin. It didn't sound too bad!