The Ford Squad who promote these regular nights at the Shrewsbury Arms pride themselves on having an ecclectic line up and this was certainly the case for our gig there on Friday night.
Proceedings were started in a fairly normal manner with a couple of folk acts, Girl Peculiar and Nomad Jones but soon took a strange turn with the introduction of a barbershop quartet called Under The Influence, who certainly put the wind up us with their close harmony set.
Next up was Staffords answer to John Cooper Clarke, The Trent Vale Poet who despite having to battle the deafening karaoke from the back room, had us laughing along merrily to his tales of being beaten up in Wetherspoons. There then followed a potty mouthed Punch & Judy Show by Jamie Fletcher.
At one point Punch lead the crowd in a hearty chorus of "All you need is love", it was that kind of night! There was also supposed to be an act called Men with Bananas who didn't turn up (the mind boggles!)
It was a hard act to follow but we did our thing and got the good people of Stafford up and dancing and generally lived up to our billing on the poster, "Betty & The Id (LOUD)"
The new EP CD's were delivered just in time for the gig and we did a brisk trade with the heroically drunken Stafford crowd, so make sure you're at our upcoming Birmingham shows to secure your copy, see www.bettyandtheid.com for details or contact us at bettyandtheid@hotmail.com. These are limited to 200 hundred copies.
A special mention to the landlady of the Shrewsbury Arms who took great interest in us numbering the CD's round the pub table, served us her own brand Deb's Special bitter and even bought a CD!
Next up is a gig at The Flapper on Thursday 1st May with the great Cobweb Dilemmas.
See you there,
JS