17/12/2009 Ginger's Birthday Bash @ The Garage

Subject	Ginger's Birthday Bash @ The Garage
PostedDate	12/17/2009
	This was always going to be a great night, and I made sure I got my ticket early as I knew it would sell out well in advance - and it did. Ginger's birthday gigs are always a bit special - this is the third one I've been to and definitely the best, although the previous one at The Garage came close. This one was outstanding!  The ever changing lineup on stage was great. I think most us us could guess a few people who would be making an appearance, and some of them were a given. However, there were some real surprises! A bloke from Snow Patrol, and Olga from the Toy Dolls in particular! Also playing were ex and current members of the Wildhearts, AntiProduct,  The Loyalties, ex-Towers of London guitar/drums guys The Rev and Snell, Dirty Harry, Chris McCormack, CJ, Willie Dowling, Conny Bloom, Chris Catalyst, Vix from Fuzzbox, and many more. Another surprise was the appearance of ex-Quireboys bassist Nigel Mogg - rather bizarrely while chatting to him later I found out we both went to the same school! As Nigel lives in LA these days and is rarely seen in London it was quite strange seeing him turn up on stage as a guest twice in a week! Particularly as I never thought I'd see a member of the Quireboys sharing a stage again with the guitarist they once sacked.  The setlist was a fantastic mixture of Ginger solo, Wildhearts, Silver Ginger 5, Super$hit666, and even Clam Abuse songs - with covers including 'Ramblin Rose' (MC5), 'Pump It Up' (Elvis Costello), amd 'Surrender' (Cheap Trick). I'd spent the week listening to all my Ginger CDs to prepare - I didn't bother listening to the Wildhearts as I thought there would be few (if any) or their songs played. Wrong! I was surprised at the amount of Wildhearts stuff played as I was expecting Ginger to concentrate more on his own ample catalogue of material, and also we'll be hearing plenty of Wildhearts stuff next week anyway, but it all went down a storm so no complaints there - and there were some real rarities played. We got about 13 Wildhearts songs in the last half of the set - Harry singing 'Vanilla Radio' was particularly memorable as she sung part of the song from the barrier and then crowd surfed! At one point Ginger said the next song would feature "the most childish man in the room on drums!". 'Funny' I thought, 'but Jon 'Random' Poole plays bass not drums!' - but then Jon played the drums on the next song anyway! I knew that Dirty Harry would be appearing, so I was hoping that maybe 'If I Was You I'd Kiss Me' might make an appearance as she'd sang on an old demo version of the song. We didn't get that song thrown in with the other rarities though - maybe next year? It was good to hear some old SG5 and Super$hit 666 stuff which I never thought I'd hear live.  I didn't bother taking my camera as I knew The Garage would be rammed and taking decent pictures would be virtually impossible, so all you'll get from this gig is a picture from my phone of all the performers lined up on stage at the end. It was great to meet loads of friends, and the atmosphere was terrific as expected - this was definitely one of the musical (and social) highlights of the year!