There are two things that I should point out before beginning this review.
Firstly, myself and Paul didn’t go to this gig in any kind of “ironic” way. And I’m only using speech marks because you can’t see me waving my fingers around in the air like a dickhead. We actually like Chas & Dave. Going back a few years, when the ‘Back To Mine’ CD series were being released, Paul put together one from the perspective of Chas & Dave. It’s brilliant. I now use it for DJing, except the Blur song. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Secondly, it was Record Store Day so we both started drinking in work. Then went to the Murrenger. The woman collecting tickets definitely looked less than impressed when Paul handed his ticket in with his mouth as both his hands were holding pints of beer. To her credit, said staff member returned his ticket to its point of departure.
We may’ve been a bit drunk. We were also in the front row. This was pretty cool, Dave even posed for photos when he realised Paul was excitedly snapping away on his phone.
Basically this was a reunion and a farewell tour. Dave was back. But only briefly. They’ve been performing together since the early seventies so there’s a fair catalogue to trek through. For this final tour though they thought it was appropriate to go back to the beginning for the first half of the show. They played their old pub set right up to Gertcha from 1979.
It’s easy to think of Chas & Dave as a novelty act but watching them play the oldies, American soul tunes, honky tonk piano tunes, brought home how good they were/are at their art. Dave Peacock is a very, very good bass player. You don’t get sampled by Eminem and Wu Tang for nothing!
The break brought more beers and frantic attempts at borrowing money off people to buy a t-shirt. It wasn’t a proud moment but it had to be done*. We also met a member of Jurassic 5. Odd evening. When we went back into the theatre we had a look around at the crowd. Predominantly late middle aged it’s probably fair to say but a sprinkling of younger faces. The couple behind us looked genuinely pleased by the mix of ages. They also assured us that we weren’t pissing them off. This was good.
The second half were the hits. Rabbit, Snooker Loopy, you know ’em. Party atmosphere all the way. The lads at the other end of the front row had clearly come to this in the same frame of mind as ourselves. To enjoy the music, have a social shandy or two and dance. Like Cockneys. You ‘eard. For the last couple of songs, a bunch of men in their late twenties and thirties made twats of themselves by doing the knees up dance in a respectable Art Centre. It was a right good laugh.
Dave shook our hand as he left the stage. Good lad is Dave.
* I finally managed to scrounge 4 quid off someone after the show and am now the proud owner of a Down To Margate t-shirt.
