Retro Record Bag

It's been a while but tonight saw my return performance at the Retro Bar Record Bag DJ extravaganza. O yes, I was raring to go. Me and Chris got there especially early to bag a place on the running order and a seat only to find the place seemed to have been taken over with the over-spill from a party upstairs. Mildly annoying but I had no doubt that my setlist would empty the place slightly. Unfortunately, Don and Roberto arrived too late to get a place on the playlist.

Chris went first with a lovely '70s Supremes set which was slightly spoiled by a stuttering CD deck for the first track but he soon got back into the groove. It was nice to hear the Supremes above the chitter chatter of the Retro punters.

I was up next to play my carefully constructed set of:

'Our Velocity' - Maximo Park
'Perfect Girl' - Kim Wilde
'Yes, I'm A Witch' - Yoko Ono
'God Don't Hold a Grudge' - Boy George
'I Wanna Go Out In Style' - James Whild Lea

I'm very pleased with this set. It is guitar-based energetic pop/rock, building and building into wild guitar thrash, ending with Jim howling at the moon in guitar hero heaven. The lyrics are, to a degree, both complimentary and contrasting, with Kim singing about how she's not the perfect girl and Boy George singing about how he's not the man his family wanted, while Yoko sings about how she's going to 'stick around for quite a while' and Jim sings about 'going out in style'.

And I was offered the opportunity for a sixth track because everyone was coming in under-time so I played 'Funtime' by Boy George. It's another guitar track but I really played it because it doesn't have any quiet bits that would be lost in the noisey chatter of the Retro.

I'm pleased that I played the Maximos before the single is released and I'm the first (and probably only) to play Jim Lea at the Retro. A couple of people came up to me to ask about the Kim Wilde song, so that's a good thing. That's another Record Bag under my belt, so it's time to start working on my next...