A Song That Reminds Me Of A Certain Event

Way back when, back when I was signing on, early to mid 80’s, not sure what to do with my life, three friends and I decided to put together a country band to play around the northern working men’s clubs. I was a drummer back then. I wasn’t a fan of country music at the time, although I can really appreciate it nowadays (not unreservedly, you understand. I mainly like the old skool and outlaw stuff, like Hank Williams or Kris Kristofferson) and though we rehearsed a few times and put together a set list of the few country songs we knew, we didn’t take it seriously enough.

The sum total of the band’s country career ran to one audition for a booking agent at a club in Doncaster. If we’d applied ourselves, we would have sailed through the showcase and would have been in a position to earn a passable living on the club circuit. Country music, as I’m sure you know, is a relatively lucrative market. We were all capable musicians and the songs weren’t taxing at all, so it should have been simple. As it was, we giggled to ourselves throughout the gig and it was obvious to the booking agent that we didn’t respect the songs or our performance of them.

Among Johnny Cash numbers and Gordon Giltrap songs, there were a fair few Eagles‘ songs in the set. The ones I can recall are Peaceful Easy Feeling, Lying Eyes and Take It Easy. I know they are shorthand for lazy American MOR, but I have a soft spot for The Eagles. I can’t listen to them all the time, (I can’t listen to anything all the time) but I have the Hotel California album on vinyl, and the song Hotel California is magnificent, (which itself reminds me of a disco on a campsite in the South of France).

So My Song That Reminds Me Of A Certain Event is Take It Easy, and I always have a little pang of regret and embarrassment that we didn’t apply ourselves to that audition. It might have opened up a lot of doors for us. But I remember fondly the one bar of 9/8 that The Eagles threw into the arrangement, (bar 8. I don’t know if the Jackson Browne original includes it). We learned that bit properly and got right on the night.