Blog: Wilko Johnson

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Friday night found me celebrating the (hopefully) successful conclusion to the first week in my new job by heading to CAMBRIDGE, where I was due to meet Mr P Myland in order to go and see WILKO JOHNSON.

We'd agreed to meet by the NCP Car Park outside the station, which seemed simple enough until I discovered that the NCP Car Park outside the station no longer existed. That part of Cambridge seems to be Build New Stuff CENTRAL at the moment, also the headquarters of the International TRAFFIC Association's AGM, so we spent a good twenty minutes or so involved in TELEPHONE KERFUFFLE trying to find each other. Eventually I tracked him down parked round the corner, where some helpful tabard wearers, there to manage congestion, had suggested he wait for me. We then set off and... er... got a bit lost, eventually making it to ANOTHER car park in the middle of town.

The bit of Cambridge we were in didn't seem to have any obvious Eating Pubs in it, so we went and had some SUSHI. Now, this may surprise regular readers who are used to my GADABOUT lifestyle, full of connoisseurship and fine dining, but I have never actually EATEN Sushi before. It always seems to be FISH, which I don't eat, but I found a VEGGIE box and had a go. FOOD REVIEW: it was all right. It still tasted a bit fishy, but I understand that that's the seaweed. I can still TASTE it, several days later, but perhaps that is the effect of a NEW THING. Or maybe it was just slathering it with soy sauce.

That done we went and had a pint of CRAFT LAGER (BEER REVIEW: quite nice) in The Corn Exchange, DELIGHTING ourselves by noting that we were pretty much the youngest people there, then went in to the gig itself. It was scheduled to start at 8:30pm and Mr Johnson and his band (a very excitable, slight varnished, lived-in looking bass player and a young looking, in the circumstances, drummer) came on at EXACTLY 8:30pm. I was most impressed! They then proceeded to play about EIGHT songs all in a row with NO talking in between, and it was PRETTY AWESOME. Wilko did not give the impression of ever having been anywhere NEAR death's door, and GOODNESS ME but they were a ROCKING outfit - they made a RIGHT old racket, it was VERY exciting.

After a while, with song after song and NO chat it also started to sound a LITTLE BIT the same - my brain has only one slot for "BOOGIE WOOGIE (GENERAL)" in its Filing System - but it was never boring. My favourite bit was about halfway through when Wilko SPOKE to us to say he was pleased about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize, and then did a cover version of "Can You Please Call Out Your Window?" It was GRATE!

We had right good seats down the front so had a FAB view, only party occluded by loads of people taking pictures and VIDEO all the way through. The chap next to me was PARTICULARLY keen on taking loads and loads and LOADS of pictures of the same three old men in black shirts playing the same instruments in the same way - I can understand taking a couple of photographs but it's not like there were COSTUME CHANGES - and also JIGGLING ABOUT like mad throughout. I started to get PEEVED by this, but then decided to join in and GUESS WHAT? Not only was it a lot of fun, but it also made him stop. I, however, continued to JIG to the end!

I'd been worried about catching the last train home, so when after (almost exactly) an HOUR of SHOW they announced their last number I was Quite Excited - I thought I might even be able to catch the last QUICK train! I hadn't counted on a) it all going a bit JAZZ so that the last song lasted ten minutes and b) the two, well deserved, encores, but STILL we were out not long after ten o'clock and all was looking well.

What I hadn't counted on NEXT was the fact that it would take us AGES to get out of the multi-storey and then... well, we got LOST again as we were too busy YACKING and not listening to SatNav lady. In the end I made it with MINUTES to spare for the last but one SLOW train, said my farewells to Mileage, then spent a DELIGHTFUL 90 minutes reading the new Squirrel Girl Graphic Novel. COMICS REVIEW: it was GRATE!

And thus ended week one of being in my new job. NEW JOB REVIEW: So far so good!

posted 17/10/2016 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

This makes me happy.
posted 2/11/2016 by Pete W.

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