Review – FAB Club
By Liz Montgomery
Here we all are back at the Fab Club for another bumper edition. This week we are celebrating Margaret “Lady Formby”’s birthday in true Fab Club style.
The afternoon features doors open at 2pm for an amazing buffet created by Claudine – full of lovely freshly prepared open sandwiches, breads, filled croissants, cold meats, cheeses, taramasalata blinis (my fave), dips, nibbles, seafood “cake” (real French recipe), fruit and sweeties – especially Margaret’s favourite jam tarts – and much more besides; a mega draw (9 prizes this week for only a pound a strip of tix) and, last but not least, some twenty class live acts across the three sessions in the afternoon.
So quite a mammoth review to complete!
The club is filling rapidly and buzzing with excitement. The official programme is
The show begins with our compere - the diminished-in-girth-but-not-in-height BIG BOB – billed as the “Naked Man” (no, I don’t know why either – but on the weight front he claims to have lost ¾ stone – well done that man, you’re looking good) and fresh from a journey down the M1 from his cousin’s birthday and surprise engagement party in Sheffield.
What a weekend!
He tells all of us performers we have to be CHIRPY as its Margaret’s birthday and he is quite right.
Bob sets the tone with the “Irish Wake Song” – a real classic which has us all joining in and singing and laughing together.
He is in fine voice, although with the diminished girth he is complaining he doesn’t have anywhere to rest the music anymore.
Our birthday star, MARGARET, is up next.
She is still opening presents – even though she asked us not to give them.
The “Leppards” have given her a rose… which turns out to be something a little more risqué and Claudine insists that Margaret models it for us.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Once Margaret has recovered from her Page 3 posing, she flourishes her new pink flowery folder of music, and gives us two great songs on the Ukelele - “Five Foot Two” and “Chinese Laundry Blues”.
A super performance which we all enjoy.
I don’t think she deserved Bob’s comment of “She might be getting older but the songs are really old.”
JO MIGDAL provides us with two quite different pieces, and produces even more musical toys from his seemingly endless collection.
The first number he performs from his seat in the audience, with one of his myriad electronic gizmos.
It’s a poem - a pastiche he has written for the occasion called “Anyone here seen Margaret?” – accompanied by appropriate sound effects (twittering birds, applause…) which has us all laughing.
Then Jo plays a request from Margaret on a beautiful mandolin – “Big Fat Sexy Man” (it’s on his CD).
As ever, fabulous musicianship, a storming tune and great words resulting in big cheers from the crowd.
I just love the line “I’m a wrinkle magnet for dames”. Gosh, how are we going to keep up the standard for the rest of the afternoon?
But believe you me we definitely DO.
HELEN serenades us with some modern folk on her guitar. #
Firstly, the sweet and evocative piece by Joni Mitchell, “Chelsea Morning”, which has some pretty tricky chord changes too.
Then Margaret joins her (but no knickers this time, as they say) and they perform a duet of “Fields of Gold” written by Sting.
This is one of Margaret’s favourite songs, and there are few dry eyes in the house.
It’s a lovely piece.
Oh dear, Bob’s complaining again (no not really, he’s just teasing) – Margaret has already been on twice… but we don’t mind!
A change of pace and style, and TIM ALMOND steps up to perform.
Something old and something new.
The first piece is a new song he has written called “Ten Years On”.
Composed to celebrate his old job, where he spent around a third of each year working in far flung and often quite challenging parts of the world.
As ever he has woven into the words evocative pictures of joys and sadnesses shared, of people often living very very different lives from our own, textures, song sticks, the
And it’s set to a beautiful tune.
He offered a prize for the number of people he has distilled into this song, but I don’t think any of us managed to guess.
Then Tim offers us an unaccompanied song – “The Quiet Joy of Brotherhood” written by Richard Farina, but more widely known as performed by the late, great, Sandy Denny.
I’ve never heard Tim sing unaccompanied before, and it was beautiful and extremely moving.
A more traditional turn next – we are being treated to such a super range of voices, instruments and styles today.
Now a regular performer at Fab Club, CHRIS opens with a great joke about what happens when going to church in with women in flowery dresses in Wiltshire.
You definitely need the genuine Wiltshire accent to perform this one aright.
He then provides us with “While Gamekeepers Lay Sleeping” followed by “Pleasant and Delightful”.
Lovely songs and ones which we all eagerly join in with. [We now also know that he was 6 ½ in 1947, but we’ll be very good and not do the maths.]
Chris is followed by
Dennis performs “Elvis Presley Directing Traffic” which is a fun love song of sorts, with a great spoof Elvis Rock’n’Roll ending.
As ever, Dennis engages us all with his impish delivery, strong clear voice and fine finger work – and a great twist at the end of the song.
The chorus has us all singing along.
Then he plays a version of “I’m leaning on a lamppost” especially for Margaret.
He has rearranged it for 12-string guitar – just watch those fingers go – amazing.
How does he make it look so easy?
A quick 10 minute break, another plateful of delicious food, and we are ready to roll with the next session. Bob opens the session with an excellent joke about a little old lady stopped for speeding.
First act on in this session is SIMON OLIVER.
A recent heavy cold left Simon unable to sing for some days, and he picked up his Irish whistles for the first time in a while.
He tells us that these instruments were his first ventures into live folk performance in
And he gave us two lovely evocative numbers. The first – “A Still Quiet Place” – best known as performed by Clannad on the treble (I think) whistle, followed by a medley of “Titanic” and “Ashacannon Farewell” (apologies if that is horribly misspelled) on the
standard whistle.
Next up is the elegant GLAD (or to some GLADYS) – welcome to the Fab Club – who provides us with two great Ukelele numbers, on two different instruments. Firstly, a feisty performance of “Fanlight Fanny”, a song which always makes me laugh, and which was one of George Formby’s big hits in the thirties and was featured in “Trouble Brewing”, possibly his best film.
It has great images all the way through.
Then “Sitting on the top of
We had a bit of a false start next as we were supposed to have ARABIAN FANTASY, but the CD player threw a wobbler, and we moved on – such was the pressure of programming, while the management sorted out the technology.
So our next performers are the ever unique –
TONE DEAF LEOPARD.
I admit I have the T-Shirt!
Interviewing them later on, I find their choice of numbers has been partly determined by only being able to perform the songs they need no song book for today. Perhaps Margaret has left them speechless?
I think not.
They open the set with a brilliant bootsale find of a cuddly toy lion singing “The lion sleeps tonight” apparently with no off switch.
Breaking into ….”Teenager in the Bathroom” This was the first song I ever saw the Leopards do, having missed their Fab Club premiere, and I have never recovered. (A) if you see this performance you will NEVER ever be able to listen to “The lion sleeps tonight” in the same way again, and (B) if you have teenagers, you will be giggling insanely for days.
They follow this with “The Roadkill Café” – off J19…. A great song in total TD Leopard style.
Truly brilliant.
MIKE PARROTT has to follow the Leopards.
What an act to follow!
But rising completely to the occasion, and after a dreadful joke about rowing (Mike, I need to discuss with you that I AM an ex-Oxford rower…), he provides us with two great songs.
Firstly “Girls of
This second number is a beautiful whimsical piece about boy trying to meet girl in Acton, but completely defeated by too many Acton Stations and the lack of mobile phones (as the words say, the song wouldn’t work with mobile phones).
It’s a sad song as they never, ever, meet – and she leaves after an hour, and he waits for another 2.
As the chorus goes…”Missing in
We move back into more traditional mode with
MO BAKER, who is – along with everyone else this afternoon - in splendid voice.
She provides us with two great songs, firstly with Eric Bogles, inimitable “Aussie Barbeque”.
A great funny song for Margaret…Just to give you a “flavour” …
When the steaks are burning fiercely
When the smoke gets in your eyes
When the snags all taste like fried toothpaste
And your mouth is full of flies
It's a national institution
It's Australian through and through
So come on mate and grab your plate
Let's have a barbecue ..
Fortunately we are all still enjoying a much more delicious buffet without the questionable additives mentioned through this great singalong!
She follows this up with a rather more serious song about working in the mines.
I am embarrassed to admit that I asked Mo about the title of the song after she had performed it, then somehow failed to write the details down.
It was a beautiful but very sad song about sons going down the coalmine.
Modern, and also strongly Britsh but also redolent of a number of the laments that come out of the
Mo told me she was about to go home to Cornwall for a few days, and the song also brought to her mind the failed Cornish tin mining industry.
A lovely performance,
We round off the second section with Big Bob finding he is being rescheduled without permission – the programme is creating itself as he speaks…. So next we are onto EITHER OF US.
For those of you unfamiliar, this is the duo of TIM ALMOND and CLAUDINE LEMOAL – but with a slightly complicated history behind the name.
First they perform that superb Gerry Colvin song “Watching feathers falling from angels”, Tim’s complex counter-rhythms and harmony as ever complementing Claudine’s strong vocals and melody.
Then a number of us are called up to duty for an ensemble piece. “ A Song for Margaret”, which Claudine wrote for Margaret’s birthday last year.
We have been sent the songsheet, but it’s all mildly chaotic.
So we have Mike P on acoustic bass, Mick on bog drum; Tim, Claudine, Dennis, Helen, Nora all on guitars of various flavours; Mark Reed plays African drums because he can’t get his 12 string into tune, then the rest of us growling away on backing vocals.
And we all sing and strum and drum and celebrate Margaret’s birthday, with Claudine claiming this is all a rehearsal...but we are performing for real!
Another break for more snacks .. yum (but there is still lots left).. and a slice of Margaret’s very delicious birthday cake.
Part 3 opens with the genuine arrival of ARABIAN FANTASY, who have been performing at the festivals around the area for some time now.
Margaret tells us that on one occasion they waited half an hour for their music, the engineer had forgotten they were on and had gone to Tescos!
No problems like that here at the Fab Club fortunately, and the CD player and PA now behave themselves. Firstly a great duet piece by MARGARET and BARBARA in striking red and black and silver.
Graceful and flowing – the piece is rhythmic and hypnotic, and looks difficult.
They are then joined by the rest of the ensemble and the five of them perform a piece to a quite modern arrangement.
They spin and whirl in complex patterns – a fabulous kaleidoscope gently jingling in the late afternoon, bringing oriental grace to this corner of
Me (LIZ) next. I asked Margaret at the break what she whether she would like “funny” or “nostalgic” and she said “funny”.
Oh dear, I only have two funny poems so far – so out comes “Shoes”. I enjoyed writing this poem so much, and its also fun to perform – so just right for Margaret.
It’s all about that age old battle between men and women and how many pairs of shoes we have.
Then Margaret had asked me to write something for her birthday (that IS scary) and I performed “A Poem for Margaret”; somehow the beginning turned out quite challenging, but ends up, I hope, celebrating Margaret. There is a special message for Margaret when you see the poem written down. Phew! My bit is over.
Now we are treated to HILLBILLY EXPRESS – featuring Pep on Banjo and vocals, Terry on Guitar and vocals – and Owen – who has his drumsticks and brushes and has forgotten his drums… so performs all the percussion very inventively.
So we get a little bit of the bluegrass boys.
First its that Buddy Holly classic, “It doesn’t matter any more” with Owen using brushes on the African floor drum; then a great version of “Wipe out” – As we all know drum solos are a key part of this tune (in fact some bill this as the greatest drum solo ever), and Owen plays this Bongo style on the floor drum and is stupendous.
Claudine and Margaret are up and jiving at the back. The party is bubbling! Finally they perform “Tribute to George” – I can’t imagine why!
Great words, great fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing them again at Fab Club. They can also be seen regularly at Ongar Folk Club.
MARK REED has now got his 12 string guitar in order, and firstly tries out a version of the Roy Orbison penned number “Claudette” but reworked by Mark as “Claudine” – but it’s not working right.
The perils of trying out a new number.. So he moves rapidly onto other stuff, breaking into “Wild Thing” – yes the tune is familiar but the words are really quite different. Let’s just say I’d think twice about eating at that ex-girlfriends house !!
And the song features impromptu backing from JoJo and the Leopards (now THERE’s a name for a band) - GRRRRRRRR!!!!
We really should have recorded the sessions this afternoon – it’s almost impossible to describe!
And I mean that in the best possible way…
Then Mark performs “The Dog Song” – about the worlds most knee obsessed dog, as ever a favourite number at the Fab Club – maybe because is a little bit rude!
MAUREEN claims she is going to provide us with some culture next.
Drawing from her famous big file of stories, poems and other humorous ephemera, firstly she provides us with the tale of the “Three
Then Mike Parrott has provided Maureen with a new recital for her collection “The Surrogate Father”; a classic tale of mistaken identity involving the potential mother and a door to door childrens photographer with an enormous Canon (camera, of course, tut tut what smutty minds you have). We are all crying with laughter. Thanks Maureen – and Mike.
A new face, and voice, to me is MARK – who gives us two great unaccompanied songs, one relatively modern and one very traditional.
He apologises that he has a cold (and thus needs some liquid medicinal support) – but if this is singing with a bad voice, I am looking forward immensely to hearing him again with a good voice.
First is “Tim McGuire” , it sounds traditional but written by Leon Rosselson; a super story song about a pureborn pyromaniac.
He then follows