Mr Comedy Man

Our local friend Simon (as opposed to our guest Simon from Glasgow) was the glue who kept tonight's gig together at Nettlefold Hall tonight. He'd let me know that this gig was taking place at the local hall with the aim of creating a promo DVD for The Del Newman Band. I wasn't sure what to expect, but a big crowd certainly wasn't what I had in mind, but the hall was packed. The support band were shouty punks with the average age of 50. The lead singer was a sharp teddy boy dresser with white, pointy shoes - he strutted around the stage cussing at the guitar player who cussed back, to the point where the drummer told them to stop swearing so much (very rock 'n' roll). I wasn't sure whether or not the band would have been better if the crowd had been able to hear the singer's vocals. As it was, I enjoyed the guitar, which was excellent, and thought my ears were perfectly happy that the shouty vocals could be heard only at a whisper.

Simon was MC throughout the gig, though I could tell that he was ad-libbing a great deal since The Del Newman Band didn't come on for a very long time. Poor Si was left on stage giving us snippets of local history, which became more and more funny, the longer he was made to stand there. I knew he was getting desperate when he said "so... B&Q used to be an Art Deco theatre..." He got a laugh for mentioning the notoriously bad store on the high street. Then the bass player came on and Si left the stage. However, the bass player was unaccompanied and Si realised he's have to rescue him. With a pause, he rolled his eyes and launched into "West Norwood cemetery has many famous dead people..." - his seemingly neverending amount of historical tidbits and its inappropriate content for a rock gig had me in tears of laughter at this point. Luckily, Del Newman appeared and saved Simon from divulging all his local history knowledge.

The band were surprisingly very good. Del was quite a crooner and the two rhythm guitarists, lead guitarist, bass, keyboardist and drummer were all superb. The highlight was the female vocalist who I initially thought was just eye candy to lighten up an aging rock band. She was in her 20s, blonde, very short dress, black stilettos and pretty. She could also belt out songs with a powerful, clear voice and had the crowd in her hand. It was most definitely rock with covers of Queen, Guns 'N' Roses, Rolling Stones and Neil Young, as well as their own material.

I'd definitely go and see them again despite the Spinal Tap moments. You would have thought that the sound crew may have noticed that the support vocals couldn't be heard and would have sorted that out, but no. For the first few Del Newman songs, we couldn't hear him, either. Much faffing and microphone swapping later, there was good sound. Then there was reverb. More faffing. Then long breaks between songs as the keyboardist untangled his guitar from a forest of guitars and put it back once the song was over. Good grief.

Afterwards, Si, Lindz, Fred and I went to the local pub and Si tried to recover from being stuck in the melee of Spinal Tapdom. It had been chaos on the other side of the audience, but at least it was over. The band also came in for drinks and we were locked in for a while, which was nice. A proper good Saturday.

Ooh, haven't mentioned the daytime activities. I dropped Glasgow Simon off at Will's house so he could head down to Brighton, then Fred and I walked to Nunhead Cemetery open day to buy some plants off Rebecca who was down from inverness to attend with her mum. We had tea and cake, wandered through the lush, green cemetery, then walked home via Dulwich Park. Lovely.