A fun night with Stackridge at the Boom Boom Club

I am a recent convert to Stackridge, even though they have been around for almost forty years, but the concert I saw at the 100 Club in May was enough to convince me to see them again when they played the more local, but harder to get to, Boom Boom Club in Sutton.

The venue is more used to hosting Sutton FC supporters in an after match drink to solace yet another deserved defeat and it is pushed to a few limits to host live bands, particularly one with eight members on stage. My main gripes are that the ceiling is too low and the lighting system is designed more for birthday parties. I blame both for the poor quality of the photograph!

The set was slightly different from that which I saw earlier.

They played many of their old classics, including the progressive tracks like God Speed the Plough and Purple Spaceships Over Yatton, but there were several changes including a new song, Boots and Shoes, which we were told would be on a new Stackridge album early next year.

At the 100 Club they announced the songs but here they did not, perhaps assuming, rightly, that they were playing to an audience of mostly diehard Stackridge fans. Luckily I was able to pick a set list up at the end to get some clue as to what they played, though I know that they deviated from it a little, e.g. they played three songs over the two encors whereas the set list only showed one.

I deliberately lifted Andy Davis' set list as he had rewritten it in large capitals using interesting abreviations, e.g. Purple Spaceships Over Yatton is just PURP, God Speed the Plough is just GOD but Syracuse the Elephant is SYRACUSE. I also noticed that James Warren's set list had Fish in a Glass as Fish up the Arse! These are fun guys.

Indeed fun was a major component of the evening with all of the band smiling, laughing and whispering to each other. This showed a band that thinks as one and they played as one as well. With eight performers on stage and some complex songs to play there was plenty of scope for error but they made it all look as easy to do as it was fun to do.

The music started not long after 9pm and bounced merrily along until the 11pm curfew, treating us to over twenty songs along the way. It was with a happy heart and some tunes in my head that I left darkest Sutton to catch the 213 bus back home.