The Claim’s Reunion Gig ~ They Were Bloody Marvellous
September 21, 2009 by Vic
As kids, my sister and I used to sit with our Nan each Tuesday to watch Vision-On and waspishly pass comment on the gallery paintings with the artist’s age displayed underneath. Along the lines of “That’s good for five…not bad for seven…that’s rubbish for ten.” The process usually has to be inverted for reunion gigs. The Bonzos were wonderful when I saw them in 2006…for 70 year-olds. No such allowances for age needed to be made for Saturday night’s reunion of The Claim.
Ignore the fact that this was one of my Top 5 bands of all time playing for the first time in 17 years. By any objective assessment, this was a magnificent gig, 20 pop songs of exquisite loveliness played by four middle-aged dads with all the zest and freshness of the 25 year-olds they once were.
Let’s get the only downer out of the way. The band had modestly underestimated the interest generated by this self-promoted gig, designed to coincide with the imminent release of their retrospective CD Black Path. As many as fifty people were turned away at the door, some having travelled from afar, who then formed a “rather sad and forlorn party” at a nearby boozer.
In the band’s defence, the venue for Saturday’s gig was twice the size as that of the setting for their final performance in January 1993 and no-one was turned away on that occasion.
The rest is nothing but good news. Like any band reunion, it is not just the protagonists who are renewing acquaintance, but fans who would have been on nodding terms way back seeing vaguely familiar faces, but can’t quite put names to these folk with less hair and wider girths. In some instances, 15 year-olds look slightly familiar, and then you realise that these are the children of so-and-so.
And it was the considerable number of offspring at the show who helped to make this such a joyous occasion. Kids who had never seen their dads play (Callum Best never saw his Dad in a Man Utd shirt, I wasn’t there when my Dad hit his only hole-in-one on the golf course) could be seen in the front row with proud smiles, mouthing every word of each song. It warmed the cockles.
The Claim’s songs (they don’t play covers) have always had a strong theme of family and place about them. They’re country boys, from the tiny village of Cliffe-at-Hoo on Kent’s Hoo peninsula, a desolate part of the world visited by few. Charles Dickens took inspiration from its bleak marshland landscape for the opening of Great Expectations.
The region was not unaffected by Thatcher’s policies and, although not as overtly political as some during those dark days, Read and Arnold did occasionally tap into the general helplessness of living under a regime you had not voted for.
I’ve written about the band previously on Pop Junkie so have no great need to go over familiar ground, but lest the band are new to you, Ray Davies’ observational songs of the struggles of the working man and family life (a la Shangri-La, Situation vacant, Picture Book, Days) would be a good signpost to The Claim. It is not hyperbole to state that their canon of songs rubs shoulders with the greats of musical ‘Englishness’ ~ Davies, Difford-Tilbrook, Dury, Madness, Weller (c. Setting Sons) and Blur. They wrote of similar characters, ordinary people with ordinary lives, with the same insight and clarity as any of the aforementioned.
Of course, The Claim had already played that farewell gig by the time Blur rose to magnificence with Modern Life is Rubbish, a precocious younger brother of their own second album, Boomy Tella. Claim fans will always wonder what might have happened if they’d stuck it out for another year. Black Path, with its eight unreleased gems, will fuel such what-might-have-been wistfulness.
The band have weathered remarkably well, it must be said, as well as their material. This cannot be put down to the Cliffe air, for although frontman Dave Read and drummer Martin Bishop still live relatively nearby, guitarist and co-songwriter David Arnold lives in Brighton and bassist Stuart Ellis resides in Cornwall.
What exactly did they play? Pretty much what you’d expect. I didn’t take notes. It was a ‘Best of’ plus some of the unreleased gems unbeknown to the majority of the audience (Between Heaven and Woolworths, Dear, Being a Minor, Do You Still Feel). I’ll update this with a set list if I can get one.
Please check photographer Phil Dillon’s brilliant snaps on his Flickr site.
For 25 year olds, it would have been magnificent. Indeed, those who did see them back then (c.1987-92), including young Bob Stanleys and Richey Manics, would agree they were rather magnificent. However, for 44 year-olds, it was simply awesome.
Black Path is released on Rev-Ola next Monday (28th September).
[...] completely concur with Vic – the Claim were bloody marvellous on Saturday night in Rochester. Not better than I remember, as I said in the immediate aftermath, [...]
Nice write up Vic, did the gig justice. However, what Vic neglected to mention was his super rendition of Mike the Bike with Arnie and also his short story about a chap called Arnold Lane; very funny indeed.
It was, perhaps, one of the most spectacular gigs of all time, for me anyway. Seeing my old man up there playing songs that don’t sound more than a year old (dad perhaps looks a little more than a year old I must say!) really made the evening for me. What also impressed me was how, after almost 2 decades, no one in the audience had forgotten how the songs went and, in fact, helped David Reed with the lyrics at times.
Many thanks to The Claim for a great night, although I certainly earned my ticket by being something of a roadie for dad!
JBE
Vic is right on the money. I stood there marvelling at how 20 songs could still sound so fresh and alive after all this time and I felt saddened that The Claim never got the recognition they deserved. For an hour and a half, the clock drifted effortlessly back past 20 years, and while it’s easy to romanticise these reunion gigs, The Claim were the real deal.
Medway remains largely a disgrace, still a mish mash of dereliction, failed cosmetic surgey and fatigue and The Claim made an effort to document this where other bands of the time let it go. People will tell you about the Milkshakes and The Prisoners, both great bands, but If you were lucky enough to see a Dentists and Claim double bill, maybe at the Hammersmith Clarendon or, god forbid, upstairs at Churchills in darkest Chatham, you’d learn everything you needed to know about growing up in Medway from just being in that room for those couple of hours. The Dentists would show you how things could be and The Claim would tell you how it was. At the time, I never noticed this but standing there in awe last Saturday, 20 plus years later, singing along to Losers Corner, it all became clear.
If you don’t buy Black Path, and make everyone you know who makes a big deal about music buy a copy, you need f*cking shooting
[...] I leave the last words to Nicholson Burr, someone who evidently does know that corner of the country: Medway remains largely a disgrace, still a mish mash of dereliction, failed cosmetic surgery and fatigue and the Claim made an effort to document this where other bands of the time let it go. People will tell you about the Milkshakes and The Prisoners, both great bands, but if you were lucky enough to see a Dentists and Claim double bill, maybe at the Hammersmith Clarendon or, god forbid, upstairs at Churchills in darkest Chatham, you’d learn everything you needed to know about growing up in Medway from just being in that room for those couple of hours. The Dentists would show you how things could be and The Claim would tell you how it was. (comment three here) [...]