My Pet Band

By the time you've notched up thirty years of dogged gig-going (like what I have), you will almost certainly have ended up with your own Pet Band; the one you keep going back to despite or because of the fact that commercial success continues to elude them, the one who produced at least one perfect, era-defining album and provided you with opportunities to attend obscure gigs in small sweaty venues you'd never otherwise have known of let alone visited (Club 4AD in Diksmuide, anyone?), and the one you watch getting ever so slightly more grizzled and frayed as youthful edginess gives way to wry middle-aged cynicism, knowing that it's actually your own reflection you're seeing in their ageing faces (well maybe I don't look quite as grizzled as this lot, not yet.)

 My Pet Band are called The Flaming Stars, and will almost certainly be unknown to you. They're a North London garage combo, a sort of louche dirty suave flat-pack Rat Pack, doggedly championed by John Peel from the mid-90s onward after forming from the detritus of several other bands to produce their first, peerless single "Bring Me The Rest of Alfredo Garcia." I remember the first time I heard this song on Peelie's show, standing in the kitchen of our old flat scrabbling for a pen so I could write the name of this amazing band down and buy everything of theirs I could lay my hands on (which involved a complex detective mission in those innocent pre-internet days.). When I found out they were coming to Brighton shortly afterwards to play a gig at the late lamented Free Butt it was the start of a long, sweaty noisy love affair which goes on to this day, even though they only seem to get together and play every few years or so now. An occasional assignation with your own past can, of course, be quite pleasant.

 So when last night they came back to Brighton after a gap of fourteen years, to headline appropriately for John Peel Night, I rounded up as many chums as I could coax out to the Green Door Store on a wet windy Tuesday night (eleven, which isn't bad going given that five had never seen them before.). We didn't quite double the door numbers but we certainly helped them along a bit, and after a slightly hesitant start the band kicked in like it was the Old Days and a fine old sexy gig was born. Joe Whitney remains the best drummer I've ever seen, there was some furious thrashing from guitarist Mark Hosking, singer Max Décharné's nicotine drawl remains as languid as ever, and there were even a couple of smiles from the legendarily unsmiley bassist Mr Dempsey. Some of the wedding-reception dancing down the front was a bit distracting, but the band actually looked like they were enjoying themselves and safely behind the dancers I had a whale of a time. Good also to see so many decent quiffs in the audience; my view is that for a chap, if you've got to forty and managed to keep most of your hair it's really the only look worth adopting - trust me, every woman loves a Dirty Rocker. This one certainly does. Anyway, it may be years before I see this lot again but they'll always be my Pet Band and I'll always have a marshmallow spot in my heart for them. Here's a taste for you, and if you have a Pet Band of your own, remember to get along and support them whenever you can.
These things are important.