Well, it was a good idea – have a theme for the evening, just playing songs I like from the 80s, with maybe a couple of years either way to allow for Elvis Costello’s earliest and best or Woodface era Crowded House.
Of course it didn’t work out that way. I ended up playing Glen Campbell, Neil Diamond, Elvis Presley. Kenny Rogers‘ Ruby don’t take your love to town for Godssake! Shakin Flippin Stevens’ Green Door! WTF??? No Aztec Camera, Waterboys or Squeeze as advertised in the poster. Though I’m not sure that anyone ever takes notice of the posters. I might as well just write “Live! Some shit or other! Whenever!”
I did do a few of my own songs, so that’s a bonus. My old friend Si Blades, drummer with the short-lived Kings of Inertia, joined me for the (one day it’ll be a) classic Still Got The Blues For You and the best song in the world (with the word assholes in the title) Assholes and a few others that I’d written earlier that week. But yep, all those songs I’d been rehearsing all week, jettisoned at the drop of a hat or the sup of a pint.
Honestly, I don’t know why I bother writing a set list… oh hang on, I don’t write a set list. So that there’ll be where the problem lies…