Due to popular demand..

...I thought it was about time to give you a quick update on the happenings in The Dave Howes Band house.

Well, Fingers came back from his cruise all relaxed and tanned. He'd had a great time, as not only did he win the cruise as a prize on a phone-in radio show, he managed to sit in with the on-board band after their guitarist, who was making his debut on this cruise, discovered that he suffered from violent sea-sickness, and proceeded to decorate the stage in what's now popularly known in these parts as the Rockmother apres Motorhead style.

Fingers found himself playing all the usual cruise type cabaret style songs for a couple of hours each night, and much to his surprise he quite enjoyed himself! I guess the fact that he was paid for doing it, and getting free drinks into the bargain may have helped!

But now he's back, and we thought that we should get a shift on and booked a gig to celebrate his return at The Epileptic Juggler in Penge.

On arrival at the gig, Bassman got chatting to the support act, “Mesmerising Maurice, Hilarious Hypnotist”. They shared a couple of drinks and unbeknownst to Bassman and us, Maurice put him into a trance, which meant that anytime somebody said “testing, testing, one two, one two…” he would curl up into the foetal position and moan softly to himself.

Mesmerising Maurice

As you can imagine, our sound check proved to be a surprising one to say the least. (Actually, we were I suppose quite lucky to have got as far as the sound check, our run of luck has not been good lately). Maurice was nowhere to be found. We later discovered that he’d run off with a groupie to a nearby hotel (I don’t know how he does it, he’s an ugly bastard).

Nothing we tried could get Bassman out of his trance and we had no choice but to carry poor old Otto in his foetal position, chuck him into the back of the van and make our apologies and leave.

P.S. The following day, old Mesmerising Mo turned up on the doorstep of TDHB house, brought Bassman out of his trance, made his apologies and left… which was nice.

P.P.S. We spent the remainder of the day saying “one two, one two, testing, testing” at Bassman, just in case.