CF: TCB.

Coba Fynn, I think it can safely be said, are back in business. By all accounts, Friday's gig was a roaring success. We set up and soundchecked without too much fuss (despite being subjected by the sound guy to a long explanation of how, not to put too fine a point on it, he gets his rocks off to the visual memory of some of the female musicians that occasionally play at Cabaret Voltaire), spent an hour or so disposing of cars and meeting up with our other halves, necked a couple of quick beers and were straight on.

The way had been prepared by Dead Monkey — happily not, as I had initially wondered, a cruel pun directed at the late Tiny Monkey — with a fairly relaxed style of indie. We hustled onto the stage, spent a brief moment checking everything over and then didn't so much launch as amble straight into David Lynch's Lunchbox Blues. It went well. There was clapping.

By halfway through the set there was also dancing. This is a new one on me for these little gigs; foot tapping and the odd whistle abound in normal circumstances, but dancing is seemingly brought on by abandoning any pretence at musical relevance and laying down a big, fat blues rhythm. By the time we got to Hoochie Coochie Man, we'd loosened up (in my case, the angle of the neck of my bass had declined by about 5° from the vertical. This is as relaxed as I get during gigs) and laid it out with as much grit as we could muster. What a brilliant song.

We finished on She's Not There, hovering near extinction for a few bars in the middle, but pulling it together to scrape our way to the end. Except that we didn't finish. We could hear a sufficient number of voices shouting "Encore!" amid the clapping for us to throw the to-the-minute timing of the evening to the wind and to plunge through an unrehearsed but (I think) successful Crossroads.

"So what did you think?" I asked everyone I could lay my hands on.
"Brilliant!" they all said.
"Not bad," said Keef. I knew I could trust him.

Seriously though, we all really enjoyed playing, and I can't thank everyone enough for coming along. I've been periodically spamming the great and the good with gig invitations for a couple of years now and it never ceases to amaze me that they A) still come along and B) still profess to enjoy themselves.

* * *
Still riding high on the post-gig euphoria, I approached the flat's now-regular Hogmanay party with enthusiasm. Dave, Gill and I brought back a load of communal beer from Tesco (a one-party party, perhaps?), and once I'd finished loading up the iPod with suitably happy music and had concealed Jeff's personal liquor stash under my bed, I poured myself a generous White Russian. I drank it. I rinsed and repeated a number of times, welcomed the new year with flailing arms and then took a little nap. Ash roused me from my "sleep" and guided me gently out of the flat. This was a good thing, because pretty soon after that the contents of my stomach were russian back out again.

Jeff never found his spare booze, the party finished five hours after my hasty exit and the new year got off to a distinctly queasy start. A classic year already, I think.

P.S. Mart took a load of photos of the 'Fynn's return. Also, check out his post-Monkey music!
P.P.S. I must also say thanks to Thomas of the ever-entertaining Proxy for taking the gig's organisational reins over the past couple of months. Cheers!