Occasionally I reminisce about gigs we did. This was a favourite of the late Jake Stratton-Kent who lived in Frome at the time.
So in about 1979 I was still singing and blowing harp for the Bad Detectives whenever they got gigs. We got asked to play the Cellar bar in Taunton which is about 30 miles away from Frome. I had the idea of hiring a coach and filling it up with our Frome friends. This was done without any knowledge of what the Cellar bar was like. We got down and set up the kit and it became apparent that this was a biker hangout. Not many people there initially but we did notice that the girls were drinking pints something we had not seen before.
We started our set and we started getting jeers from the small crowd. At first I was winding the small crowd saying things like 'this is by Led Zeppelin. Oh no it's not and so on. Then suddenly an additional load of bikers turned up. Big blokes who I later found out they all worked for Taunton meat haulage - they were big. We were just into the song Psychotic reaction and all hell was let loose. Someone got hurled through the air crashing into the drum kit and all over people were fighting. I said to everyone nearby to grab some kit and get outside. This was when we realised we had to ascend stairs to get out and we had a job of reaching the green outside. Outside we piled up the kit. The bikers seemed to not follow us outside they were content to chase us out. So we had to wait for the coach - the police came to guard us and it transpired someone had been stabbed though not seriously. We managed to get home all right with no losses of equipment. But ever after that we have always been hesitant in bringing a crowd to gigs. Some gigs expect you to provide an audience of friends but we have never done it. Once at a gig in London we got asked 'where are all your friends?' We used this as a title for a CD we did.
