Inside the pub there was a homely feel to the place and it was good to be out of the rain. Seventies Bowie
I'd spent the afternoon walking miles, exploring the many different sites of Brighton, I was knackered and glad of a sit down. There’s much more to Brighton than meets the eye, or the media, it’s a mix of all things and all people, and if you can’t enjoy yourself here you can’t enjoy yourself anywhere. There is wealth and there is poverty, there is the seaside and there is the inner city, there are folk clubs and there are hip hop clubs, there are up market restaurants and places you can get a meal for less than a fiver, and then there are some great pubs, of which The Druids Head is one. I got a pint of Doom Bar and sat near a big guy with piercings who was reading a paper. He had a small anxious looking dog next to him, one of those dogs that always look sad in such a way you want to feed it your crisps.
A little later one of the bar staff introduces me to Paul who runs the open mic night. Paul asked me what sort of music I play and I explained the beat poetry, he didn’t look too convinced, I mean who would be? The very thought of poetry is enough to put most people off, and poetry mixed with electronica, how could that be? But Paul still agreed to a slot and I was grateful to him for that. I wouldn’t want to have been in Brighton that night and not played something.
A few guitarists drift into the place and they are clearly regulars here as they talk about the previous week, and a drunken night of revelry, laughing at how they didn’t remember much of the event. The man with the anxious dog folds up his paper and leaves, and two cougars arrive, settling to watch the evenings entertainment. A Father and Son who dress the same and look the same, apart from the difference of years, prop up the bar. A bar fly in a skull cap is dipping in and out for a smoke. Another table fills with some performers and despite the rain, the place is starting to feel busier, though its still a quiet night according to Paul.
Paul kicks off the night and he’s an accomplished musician. He plays several songs, one of which is about a Café called Nia’s, which as a coincidence I visited earlier in the day for a coffee and to shelter from another burst of rain. He sings another song about baby steps, not sure if that’s the title, but it’s a fine tune and silences the audience in such a way to hear a penny drop.
There are a more singer song writers after Paul and they are all top quality. It makes me glad I didn’t bring my guitar and strum out a few protest songs because these guys can really play. The picking is some of the best I’ve heard and my strumming is so very basic in comparison. There are so many good guitarists around these days and they make it difficult for crap guitarists like me!
The diners look like they enjoy being serenaded by the free music and the sweet picking fits in neatly with the ambience of the place. I start to wonder whether it’s an all guitar affair and then Sanity Valve take to the stage.
Sanity Valve are Mos Prob and MC Flurry and they should be called Insanity Valve or Insane in the Membrane. This is comedy hip hop and Mos Rob is sporting one of those toy mobile phones on a toilet chain round his neck. MC Flurry is hooded and trying to look dangerous, but when you’re named after a pudding it doesn’t quite work, which is the whole point. They play a track called ‘Touch Your Fuckflaps’ which I’m half expecting politer members of the audience to get upset by, but no-one seems to mind. This is anything goes Brighton after all.
The next day I check out Sanity Valve website and they put up some neat comic strips of their fictional (I hope they are fictional) escapades in gangsta town. There is also footage of some of their other shows which look equally bizarre. I’m glad I saw Sanity Valve play, I'm not being unkind when I say they were bad, but they were bad in a good way, and it’s always a bonus when something completely left of field turns up on these nights.
During Sanity Valve’s set I also got talking to Rob and Cath who were performing next. Rob is ex services, ex prison and he now teaches. When I was kid that was the worst sort of teacher you could get. They usually teach sport and get you doing one hundred press ups on a muddy football pitch because it would 'do you good'. It never did me any good. But Rob seems a decent enough bloke, though he does say the kids he teaches are all evil, and that’s exactly what our PE teacher used to call us.
Rob and Cath play some covers and bring things back to down to earth after Sanity Valve’s eclectic attack. They play Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, Just Looking by Stereophonics and All Out of Love by Air Supply. All good songs in my book, though not something I would normally listen to. I was going to tell them I enjoyed their songs but they left fairly sharpish after they'd finished and then it was my turn.
I’d had a good few Doom Bars when I got on the stage and being even a little drunk in charge of the kaoss is not a good idea. The slightest touch in the wrong place and the pad will do something completely unexpected, a twist of the wrong settings or a turn of the wrong dial and it’s heading off over the hill with you running behind it trying to play catch up. Kaoss plus poet. Anyways, despite this I managed to get a decent beat going, though it wasn’t what I’d planned, I just went with it. It was a messy session, but one which was made fun by a good audience. I finished with The Return of the Bed Bugs and wished everyone a good night, and not to let the bed bugs bite.
Afterwards at the bar I was joined by the bar fly who had buzzed back in after another cigarette to discuss tape loops. He told me how a friend of his had once used reel to reel tape recorders to create noise music. We agreed those reel to reels were brilliant instruments in their own right and it made me remember the one I owned in the late 80’s and how we did all sorts of weird reverse music with it, songs like Don't Kill Yourself (Backwards). I sold it for next to nothing at the time and wished I’d kept hold of it.
A guitarist and singer called Ollie Friend is playing Solid Air by John Martyn so I say farewell to the bar fly and find a seat so I can listen more intently. I love John Martyn and this is a beauty of a song. Ollie does it justice and also plays some neat songs of his own. We find out he’s doing really well in a national open mic competition and if successful could win fifty thousand pounds. Good on him. I would imagine all of the guitarists who played on this night could do really well in that kind of competition, the talent has been brilliant and I would happily come back and do it all again.
Outside The Druids Head it had stopped raining and I found my way to the sea front. The bed and breakfast where I’m staying is about half a mile West from here. The waves are crashing against the beach and the neon lights of a fish and chip shop are flickering in a large puddle. A giant lobster is watching me as I walk by. There’s a drunken crowd formed outside a nightclub and they are shouting at each other. Oh You Pretty Things! is going round my head. I take a deep breath and look out across the black coast line that stretches out before me, it’s been another good night for me in open mic land and Brighton is many different things to many different people. To me its a great place for music and song.
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