Oh how life flies on by. 30 years can happen and yet…you know it’s been that long , you can plot the turns you’ve made, the decisions good and bad, the teeth, the hair, the wrinkles you’ve lost and gained, the loved ones you find, make and miss. All of this happens in real time but still, it flies. Life’s short but the hours are long.

I’m a lucky so and so. It’s sometimes hasn’t felt like that but, when I quit being a divvie I can recognise it. Saturday 9th November 2019 I recognised it as 16 Tambourines played our first gig together in almost 30 years. Dave, Sue, Tony and Tony are some of my very favourite people and we were joined by another, Perry, for the last song. We’d chased dreams together, sat in drafty vans travelling the length and breadth, made great music , laughed, cried, got drunk, stoned and then, it stopped.

The music business is a tough gig, it’s all or nothing they say. Well we sort of got nothing but it didn’t feel like it in November as we sold out our little gig in Liverpool’s 81 Renshaw Street and played our songs with joy and, I’ll say it, skill and fire. I thought we were great and our lovely audience seemed to think so too. If you were there thank you for a great night – a great gig is a two way thing – and I saw some people as overwhelmed as us. It’s a wonderful honour to play music to other human beings who enjoy it as much as you do.

I know I’m sounding sentimental and a touch hyperbolic but I don’t care, I had an evening to remember. You never know what tomorrow knows, life’s taught me that, but I really hope that on some tomorrow soon, we’ll do it all again and others will come and have as much fun as we did on 9th November 2019, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. As I said life flies on by.

Review of the gig at Pennyblack Music

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