Mascara Bar, Stoke Newington, London
Mascara Bar, Stoke Newington, London – Saturday 15th February 2025
There are some venues / bands / gigs that you just HAVE to write a blog about! Some nights have so many cool / funny / interesting things happen that we really need to document them. This was one of those.
Sometime in 2024 we get booked in to play at the Mascara Bar in Stoke Newington, it seems to be an up and coming venue with in-house PA and regular good nights where great bands play there. We’ll have a bit of that. The date gets booked for February 2025. They say we can have whoever we want to play alongside us. We invite our friends The Hornets, they are a great little 60’s and r’n’b styled band from West London who complement our skiffle and rock ‘n’ roll style nicely. They love gigging so they are well up for it.
The day comes and Ted arrives to pick me up before we head on over to grab Eddie. We’re travelling fairly light today because the venue has an in-house drum kit and Eddie is borrowing a guitar amp from The Hornets. They’re nice guys like that.
We arrive at the venue, which is on a busy main road so we have to park in an adjacent road. No problem though, we can carry most of the stuff. As we walk to the venue Ted spies a parking spot considerably closer so we dump what we have in front of the stage at the venue and Ted heads back to move the car and grab the last bits.
At the venue we say our hellos to soundlady Julie and to Buzz and Rusty who are already here. The Hornets and crew are here as well, having already soundchecked, so we greet them all like the old friends they are. Top guys, top band.
We set about setting up and quickly realise that the one stage monitor (to be fair, the stage is pretty small!) is in the wrong place for us so after moving it to the centre of the stage we agree that it works better and we can hear more of the vocals etc. We’re done. Time to chill out, chew the fat with The Hornets and wait for the audience to arrive.
Everyone from The TR5’s, except me, go off for food, I decide to hang around.
Time ticks along and people start to arrive who are here to see us, there’s my old mate Dave Floyd, there’s Chris from Ealing, there’s Keith in the pork pie hat, there’s photographer Melodie and plenty of other familiar faces who are becoming regulars at our gigs. Despite the venue being on a busy main road there doesn’t seem to be much outside footfall though, the people coming in are just dedicated fans or followers of either band. That’s no problem though. It’s now time to rock.
We clamber on to the stage, trying not to knock into each other and we proceed to plough straight into a full-on energetic set. The middle section of the set features all 11 tracks that we are going to be recording for our 2nd album, in May, and we’re trialling them in the order they may end up being on the release. There’s “Showdown At The Ace Café” about an incident between us and another band, there’s the self-explanatory “Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Will See Us Through”, there’s “Take Control” about needing to be in control at gigs so as not to be taken advantage of by other bands / venues / promoters and there’s “Two Faces Of Love” which Buzz introduces with “I wrote this song after a disastrous experience with a Mexican prostitute, this is called “Two Pesos of Love”. This sets off much laughter and the rest of the set continues in the same vein, lots of banter and lots of relaxed rocking, which culminates with Eddie and Rusty jumping off to play on the dancefloor. Great fun!
Next up it’s the turn of The Hornets and they work hard to give us all a cracking set of 60’s and r’n’b styled tunes plus a few covers (“I Can’t Explain”, “All Day & All Of The Night”, “Johnny B Goode”). They are tight, energetic and entertaining. How they manage to keep straight faces when a member of the bar staff decides to enter the dancefloor (which is only really inhabited by 2 people a little bit worse for wear who are spilling a little amount of their drinks) and enthusiastically mop the floor is beyond me! Easily one of the funniest things I have seen at a gig for ages. It was hardly turning into a swimming pool and in all honesty it was maybe a bit rude to mop the floor while the gig and the dancing were still going on anyway. Very strange! Me, Ted, Eddie and Hornets manager Barry exchange looks of disbelief!
As The Hornets set draws to an end we collar Barry who tells us that things are getting weirder and weirder. The Hornets have had to play until 11pm, but apparently, after 10.45pm we have had to let people in for free. It transpires that people have been waiting in the bar until the right time and then they all pile in for free to catch the last 15 minutes! The place is absolutely packed now! It all starts to make sense, the venue is open til late (3am) so all the locals arrive after the other pubs have shut. We feel this is a bit naughty though, having to let people in for free. We decide to just let it go. We’re tired and keen to hit the road.
Having loaded up Ted’s car we are then greeted with the highly unusual sight of streams of Amish riding around the streets on unlit electric scooters. Not a sight you see every day! Very comical!
The journey home is quick and painless as Eddie regales us with a story of how he spent a crazy night on the streets of Bath, hanging around with random women (and guys!) only to have to walk back to his hotel room around 5am! There’s a lot more to the story (just as Ted and I thought he had finished there was more getting added!) so when we drop Eddie off at home Ted and I just look at each other, breathe a sigh of relief and burst out laughing. If you get chance, ask Eddie about his Bath story. It’s a classic!
Just when we thought there couldn’t be any more fun to be had tonight, after dropping Eddie off, Ted and I are driving through the back streets on our way home when we pull up to a T junction. It’s gone 1am at this point. As we are sat there a car comes along, driven by an elderly lady, on her own, driving very very slowly. She cuts the corner, almost hits us and then proceeds to veer across, mount the verge and continue on her merry sweet way behind us. It was like something out of a dark comedy film!
I told you some gigs are worth writing about!
Lucky