Another night at the Horns

Dave D, recounts a most enjoyable evening at the Horns, a pub where he spent much of his youth.

The Horns is without doubt, Watford’s premiere venue for live music, and with that in mind, we thought it was lucky that they would let us play there. Mind you, I do have a slight bit of cache at the Hempstead Road pub, as it was me that got Albert Lee’s band, Hogan’s Heroes, in touch with Denis, the owner, and they now play regular gigs, every May funnily enough!

Well, since my glory days of the mid eighties (see the photo above from 17 May 1984), the pub has changed a bit. The toilets have been tampered with (for the better), and the stage appears to be where the ladies used to be, though it doesn’t seem to affect the sound at all. When the conservatory was built, it was the Watford equivalent of Paris's Pompidou centre, and was a much celebrated arrival. A lot of people thought one might get away with a bit of snogging out the back, though the then Land Lady was sharp to our practices, and would always know when naughtiness was afoot. "It's nice to be nice, but not that nice."

Last year’s closing pub tour gig at the Horns instigated a request to come and open the 2008 tour, and likewise, this latest gig at the pub engendered an invite to close the 2008 season in Hempstead road – it’s almost becoming a tradition in itself! But the pub makes it difficult to turn them down, they have been very indulgent in our Morrising ways.

Another plus note: It seemed that young Julia, Dave P’s New Zealand bound offspring, was only partially sated by her long day in London for our Southbank tour, and required a booster dose of the Morris before taking both her finals and her leave. Good thing too, or we wouldn’t have many pictures to remember the evening by.

The dancing outside the pub, both in the beer garden, and in the library precinct, went mostly well, with the new guys getting probably their toughest workout of the year so far, and then it was into the pub, to open Shane Lamont’s open mic night.

To get things going, the Woodside band played a Medley consisting of Brighton Camp and the British Grenadiers, two stalwart crowd pleasers, and this was followed by the side dancing Beaux’s of London City, in the tradition of Badby, which went down very well with the crowd. People always seem to enjoy dances with sticks in them.

But Woodside Morris Men had more in their pocket for the unsuspecting crowd, and we managed to coax Geoff up onto the stage to perform 'Country Life', or 'I Like to Rise', as many have come to call it. The rousing rendition set the scene for a great night of open mic music, in which Woodside still had a part to play.

After the arrival of my next door neighbour, James, I got up on the stage and did a few tunes, and then came our final contribution to the evening, where James and my good self performed a version of Battle of the Somme, which we have been practising for about two years without getting any closer to playing out. Until now that is. The tune received a tumultuous applause, and was much lauded by the Woodside men, and one or two others. They were our friends though, and possibly they were only being kind, but we still basked in what may have been imaginary glory. It seemed like the right thing at the time.

I’m really rather looking forward to the end of the season now.