I ended up at a gig last night that I'd been looking forward to for a while,
Chas 'n' Dave at the ABC in Glasgow. Light-hearted, pub singalong "rockney" singers Charles Hodges and Dave Peacock have been doing their thing for over three decades, their first chart success being
"Gertcha!" in 1979. A further seven chart hits followed. Before that they'd played as session musicians for various acts from Labi Siffre to Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent. In 2009 they announced that they were retiring as a band, but as is the way with these things, a mere two years later and they were touring again. Who can blame them? The ABC is a decent sized venue and it was mobbed. The crowd were in a party mood (eg pissed) and amazingly seemed to know most of the words to most of the songs, so a lively singalong ensued.
 |
| Big crowd for Chas 'n' Dave in Glasgow |
My excuse for being here? I was 10 years old when Tottenham Hotspur won the FA Cup in 1980 and then again the following year. They were exotic and exciting with Ossy Ardiles and Ricky Villa scoring great goals so became my English team. This was helped by my mum's cockney friend being a big fan and sending us Spurs' calendars, etc. So I had my Spurs kit on at PE and could sing along to great
big daft songs about them by Chas 'n' Dave. Then you had other crowd pleasers for any child of the time such as "
Rabbit" and "
Snooker Loopy". What's not to like?
They are a pretty low maintenance outfit. 69 year old 'Chas' on the piano, his 67 year old partner 'Dave' on bass and one of their son's on drums. They peppered their set with their hits, seemingly randomly deciding upon the fillers as they went along. They really are relics of a bygone era. Songs about London girls darning your socks or not caring about life's stresses because "I got my beer in the sideboard" really aren't going to bother the charts these days.
Anyway, I've seen them now, so I'll give it a miss when they do the next "farewell" tour. My only disappointment was they didn't do the Spurs songs! So if they do a Spurs tour next time, that is something I
would buy a ticket for.
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