Last weekend was a busy one – it’s not just in terms of blog posts that I’m still catching up halfway through this week!

Saturday night (yes, just a few hours after my previous gig in a different city!) was the last Filthy Spectacula gig of the year, at the Fox and Firkin in Lewisham.

We had an unusually well-matched support act in the shape of Brighton’s Edwardian goth-punks The Iron Boot Scrapers. They have violin, cigar-box guitar and a sousaphone on the bass line; of course I loved them! We will be holding you to the Brighton end of this gig exchange though guys; we have to get in on that scene …

The Fox and its sister venue the Magic Garden in Battersea are unusual among pub-venues; not only for being very cool, having superbly crazy-stylish interior decor, putting live music on at weekends and paying their bands reasonably properly, but also for asking their headline acts for very long sets. As a result, the time we’ve headlined each venue has led to us playing everything we know and putting a bit of time into learning more songs!

This time, that meant a 17-song epic set spanning a good 90 minutes of high-octane rather drunken (chiefly the crowd!) debauched fun. You might even say it was Firkin awesome.

(and the following night I saw Tower of Power in Camden, who were any-adverb-you-like awesome, and they played about the same length set. So I reckon that means we’ve made it)

Album recordings coming up – but see you in February if not before for more Filthy live action …