Build Up
My first reaction when I heard that Mohair were to play a final gig before splitting was that I had to be there, I wasn't sure how I was going to get there or where I was going to stay, but that would sort itself out.
I applied to the boss for a pass and she agreed with the caveat, 'As long as it doesn't cost a fortune!' Hmmmmmmmmm!
Cheapest form of travel had to be the train, didn't it? Wrong! Return from
It's then only a ten minute journey from
Travel sorted, now I had to worry about getting somewhere to kip after the gig. I don't
need five star, although that would have been nice, so I asked Pete if he could recommend somewhere handy. After a couple of days he replied saying that Tim could put me up for the night. Brilliant, and right in my wife’s price range ;-))
With all that booked and arranged, all I had to do now was wait and try and arrange to meet up with some of the regulars from the board. Surely with this being the final gig there would be a good turnout. Over the intervening weeks nearly all the regulars confirmed that they were going to be in attendance. Notable exceptions being Angela, who would be in France, ChrisS who had a prior engagement in
The Journey
Friday 28th September and I have to go into work in the morning, there are a few things to tidy up before I can head off. With these out of the way I head home at lunchtime.
I feel apprehensive before the boss drives me to the airport. I'm not sure why, when I've gone on trips like this before I'm usually excited and looking forward to it. I'm an
experienced traveller and not usually phased by travelling on my own. I'm sure the feeling will pass. Get to the airport about
Due to the fact that I'm travelling light, I checked in online a couple of days ago, this
means I can turn up at the last minute for the flight. So at
in Terminal 2 at
I eventually get through security and to the boarding gate with about 5 minutes to spare.
And there was me thinking I had all the time in the world.
Once on board, the flight was smooth and quick and we touched down in
The Build Up
Looking around I could see that the bar was quite busy, I couldn't work out if this was the normal Friday evening 'pint before going home' crowd or were there others like me who were there early for the gig. I also couldn't help wondering if there was anyone there from the forum, maybe thinking the same as me. I called Aidan (Tour manager) to find out when they would be getting to the venue and he told me they were stuck in traffic and should only be 10 minutes.
The first to arrive was Tom and we said hello and had a beer, he them introduced me to the guy sitting next to me at the bar, 'Stevie, meet KosmicStu.' Typical, I'd been sitting next to one of the guys I was supposed to be meeting and didn't realise. The rest of the band arrived along with Aidan and Matt, aka Bumbag. Matt, was the guitar tech on the road with Mohair for years before getting a 'real' job last year. I'd met him several times over the last couple of years and it was good to see him again.
Everyone was in high spirits and really looking forward to the gig and Pete mentioned that they'd been working on a lot of material over the past couple of days and the set would contain a few surprises. Excellent! I'd been hoping for some older and less well known material in the set. He wouldn't divulge any secrets though but did say he was sure I'd enjoy the set.
While the band and crew were getting fed, myself and Stu had a look through 8 of Tom's scrapbooks. He'd noticed them in a cupboard that morning and thought I'd like to see them.
He was right.
The books go way back to when Mohair started in 2001. There was everything in there. Newspaper clippings, tickets, passes, posters, everything related to the band. One newspaper clipping in particular caught my eye, it was from The Greenock Telegraph in Nov. 2005. This was the story I'd read in my local paper that first got me interested in the band. After reading the piece in the newspaper I went to the website and had a listen to the tracks on there at the time then went to see them play the following week. The rest as they say is history. Strange to find it in Toms scrapbook.
The other thing that greatly interested me was the alternative covers for Small Talk. Tom must have gone through 30-40 alternative covers before he got to the one that was used. All of them are preserved in the scrapbooks. Some of them are just plain awful, while others are fantastic. I'd like to get a hold of those books for a few days and share some of the material with you, it's very eye opening.
I’d arranged by phone earlier to meet up with Martin Carpenter (carps), I’d booked two tickets and only needed one, Martin required my spare for a mate of his. He duly arrived and we introduced ourselves and sorted out the ticket. I was happy to be able to help out carps as he was the guy who sent me the only missing link in my Mohair collection. I had been scouring everywhere trying to get a copy of the SLIDE EP by Trooper when Martin sent me his copy. He didn’t want payment so it was good to be able to pay him back.
At this stage myself and Stu headed through to the back room where the gig was to take place. It was quite a small hall but it looked like a proper venue. You could tell there had been hundreds of gigs in the place. Pete later mentioned that they had played there about 70 times under different guises over the years.
The band, Aidan and Matt were setting up the gear and going through a brief sound check, they were careful not to give anything away about the setlist for later.
Once this was sorted Tom invited myself and Stu to have a look through some boxes of stuff they had brought with them to sell. ‘ Help yourselves to anything you like.’
Wow! It was like Alladins cave.
As some of you may know, I like to collect as much Mohair stuff as I can and certain things are very difficult to get a hold off, as mentioned earlier, the Trooper CD’s are like gold dust, also there is the never released version of EOTL backed with Bubble on the M1 label. No wonder they are so difficult to track down, it looked like Tom had kept them all to himself. Boxes and boxes of them, all this time gathering dust in his mothers attic. Stu and myself were like kids in a candy store. The stuff we left behind was then going on general sale at knock down prices. Don’t be surprised if some rare Mohair material appears on eBay over the coming weeks. (Not from me I might add.)
By this time the place was starting to get a bit busier and Stu’s Dad had turned up. Turns out his Dad is ‘GreenDave’. I think I may have been told this last year in an exchange of emails with Stu but it had slipped my mind.
Also around this time Lee (h4rfy) arrived with his wife Nicky as did Angela’s daughter Corrie with her husband. (Forgive me, I can’t remember his name). We all had a right good blether about this, that and everything. Also as I’m sure you can imagine the wee voddy’s were flowing good style by this stage. Hic!
I headed out from the back room for some air and bumped into a pair of yellow crutches in the main bar. These belonged to Vicky (vicki79), she was there with her fine Scottish boyfriend Iain (Iain Mc). We had a chat and introductions were made to everyone else. We now had quite a good gang considering no one knew anyone on the way in. We also hooked up with the one and only Aaronhammer, gig recorder extraordinaire and his brother Luke. (LukeH)
Last of the expected faces to arrive was Robin (Going2Lose) with his girlfriend Debs.
More drink was bought, more nonsense talked and things moved closer to showtime.
It was amazing to meet up with Robin at last. We have been in regular contact over the past year, first through the messageboard and then through MSN. We’ve done a lot of work on our fansite mohairfans.com Robin is responsible for all the great graphics you see on there. We are currently working on another project for later this year or maybe next year. We’ll let you know ;-))
Vicky seemed to be under the impression that I’d promised her champagne tonight, I don’t know where she got that impression, did no one tell her I’m Scottish. I hate national stereotypes as a rule but I was willing to let it go this once. As it turned out however the bar had none anyway. I did try, honest……
Lots of photos were taken by everyone, including someone who took our picture and tried to sell it to us for £4 each!! Aye right!
The Gig
By the start time the venue was jammed full, I’m not sure about the capacity but there must have been 300 people crammed in. This was my 7th Mohair gig and I’ve seen them play everything from 20 people to thousands at the SECC. Although this was quite a small venue, the fact that everyone was there purely to see Mohair made for an electric atmosphere.
The band took to the stage to a tumultuous roar and launched into Octopus Chunks, this set the tone for the evening, a kind of greatest hits set.
Almost every time I’ve seen the band play it’s been pretty much the same set list, i.e. Small Talk. Not this time though.
You could tell from the off that everyone was really up for it. The crowd and the band. After blistering through Octopus Chunks they followed on with Little Voice and then a reworked version of Life. The crowd were loving it and the cheers between each song were deafening. Another blast from the past followed with a brilliant rendition of Bubble which the crowd lapped up. More old material was to come. After a raucous version of Talk Of The Town we were treated to
It was evident also that the band were really having a great time. I don’t know whether it was because the pressure was off, ‘this is the last one just enjoy it’ or because the crowd were so obviously on their side right from the off, whatever it was it worked.
They were building towards a crescendo over the last few songs, Stranded, La Song, Keep It Together (Pete’s trumpet playing getting a huge roar) and then, ‘This is our last song.’
It had to be End Of The Line and the place erupted and I think every single person in the hall was singing along and the noise was incredible. The band stretched the song out as far as they could but eventually had to finish. The noise the crowd made was more like 3000 than 300. The band left the stage after several waves to the crowd. Of course that was never going to be enough on an historic occasion such as this. After a couple of minutes of the crowd chanting their name, back they came for a final time as Mohair.
They had 4 more songs to go and they were awesome, first up was Bombshell, this was a song I’d hoped they would play and it didn’t disappoint, then we had another golden oldie in Brown Eyes Blue and then surprisingly (for me anyway) Damned If You Do. Surprising because I still think of this as a new song due to the fact that’s its never been released anywhere, and I thought they may have held this back for the new project. It’s a cracking song and it was great to hear it. That finally brought us to the last ever Mohair song. It really was no surprise to hear the opening to Thin Air.
When you listen to the lyrics it really is the most fitting song to finish with.
‘we just want to stay together’, ‘we don't have time for this’ and ‘high time for a change’ It really was quite emotional and there were a few tears shed in the audience.
When they finished they took a bow and left the stage to the strains of ‘We’ll meet again’ playing over the PA.
Aftermath
The group of us who were standing together made our way back into the bar and got a few drinks in and dissected the set, the general consensus was ‘Awesome!’
Personal highlights for me were Octopus Chunks, Bubble, End Of The Line, Bombshell and Thin Air. We all hung around for ages talking and drinking and having a laugh. We even had a couple of games of pool with Vicky deciding to use her crutch instead of a cue with predictable results.
We were introduced to Tom’s younger brother, (Badgerboy) and it’s not hard to tell that they are related. Two peas in a pod springs to mind. We also met up with the mighty Sybil after the gig finished and introduced ourselves, she was also on the lookout for Champers but as mentioned earlier, there was none. She had to make do with a JD & Coke.
I had a chance to speak to the members of the band formerly known as Mohair after the gig and they enjoyed it as much as anyone and they were all very upbeat about the future. Here’s hoping.
Just before Tom left myself and Aaron managed to get the 4 boys together for one last Mohair group shot. A historic picture indeed.
With that everyone started drifting off. Tim and his girlfriend Emma (Who I’d met earlier) were heading off and as I was staying with Tim, I was off as well. This was when I noticed that standing next to the speaker all night was a mistake. They were talking to me on the 10 minute car journey to Tim’s and I couldn’t hear a word. My ears were still buzzing next morning, making hearing difficult.
Saturday
After a fine breakfast served up by John, (Tim’s Dad) & Josie (Tim’s sister) myself and Tim headed down to unload the van at their recording / rehearsal studio. Aidan was waiting for us and we unloaded the van and left all the gear in the studio for the next time. It really is a great wee set up they have. Two rooms, one is a relaxation area with pool table and couches and stuff and the other is a studio. Fully soundproofed with a mixing desk and recording equipment, a brilliant place to go in and make a lot of noise and record anything of interest that comes out. They have this place for the next couple of years so hopefully more great music can come out of there before too long.
After that it was the parting of the ways, Tim headed home and Aidan dropped me in
All in all a very tiring, but rewarding two days. I met up with a great bunch of people who I’d only ever spoken to on the message board before, saw a brilliant band play a blistering gig and generally had a great time.
Huge thanks to everyone for their kindness, particularly Tim for putting me up, and here’s hoping we’ll all meet up again sometime soon. Apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten, I met so many people that night I’d be surprised if I haven’t missed someone.
Ladies and Gentlemen THIS IS THE END OF THE LINE.
