Faster, Late Joys! Learn! Learn!

I'm reposting a trio of blurbs about new songs The Late Joys sped-learned for our gig at the Baker Street Pub & Grill just before Easter. Originally published on The Late Joys blog, the first two posts explore the reasons we chose a handful of the songs; post three is a recap of what turned out to be our longest-ever gig: four hours of music making (thankfully with breaks, though not the way we intended...).

The first post, "Faster, Late Joys! Learn! Learn!" considers "Love Her Madly" (The Doors), "All My Loving" (The Beatles) and "Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)" (Squeeze). At first blush this seems an eclectic grouping, but I'd argue (and I did) that there's a strong Beatles-esque through-line that connects these disparate musical bon bons.

Post two, "The Late Joys Troll For New Songs" delves into The Pretenders' "Middle of the Road," "You Don't Know Me," which I wrote for my musical play, The Road To Wigan Pier and which received its first airing in eight years at the Baker Street gig, and then I go all wishy-washy and can't decide what song to explore next, so I just name a lot of the new ones we added with brief reasonings and descriptions.

The final post is a recap of the gig, with photos. Several songs received the attention of our official bootlegger and we may well post some snippets of the good stuff if the recordings turned out okay.

Since the gig The Late Joys are embarking on a continued course of education, adding more covers to the set, partially because it's always good to add new material and partially because there are few bands in our area playing the sort of stuff we do and we want to be the go-to band for all things Brit-Pop! (or at least that fall into that rather expansive net of "songs we like that influenced us").