Lazfest - The Angel - July 16th, 2010
Published: July 18th, 2010

HI-ON LAZFEST 2010

Lazfest – July 16th, 2010

Being a part of this band doesn’t always involve merely bringing the most authentic Iron Maiden Tribute experience to venues up and down the country; we’re also readily available for birthdays, weddings and bar-mitzvahs, not to mention good olde fashioned knees-ups. Lazfest was such an occasion.

We were asked to take part in a party being thrown by Steve ‘Laz’ Lazarus, the head honcho of the official Iron Maiden Fan Club, to mark his good lady Sue’s birthday and he’d come up with a long set list of her favourite songs, several of which were Maiden classics. We’d play these songs as well as lend our strings, voices and drums to other tunes when required that other guests would also take part in. The jollities would take place in Laz’s local pub called The Angel, and we’ll gloss over exactly where in the country this is other than say it’s in north east London (more on this in a minute...).

As with any Hi-on gig, this meant a gathering of the troops and, for this one, Dave ‘Give me the rock and the Guinness’ Hurry found himself on the wrong end of a schedule clash, which ultimately meant he wouldn’t be able to attend. Gamely stepping into the breach once again was Mavis ‘Double chips, double chin’ Scurry.

Unless we play in Narberth, any gig means a few hours sat at the wheel of the latest mode of transport for Speed ‘Ee-aye, ee-aye Owens’ Harris, and he’d already been on the road for over two hours by the time he met Mavis (me) outside the Bath branch of Morrison’s.

‘Did I tell you to bring a sleeping bag?’ he asked as we chucked some gear into the back of the car.

No, you didn’t.

Gale of laughter. ‘Sure we’ll find something for you to sleep under.’

What, a pool table?

And off we went.

There’s nothing whatsoever to like about the M4 and, ultimately, the M25 on a Friday afternoon, but as we crawled onto the Devil’s Orbital Highway I assumed that we weren’t too far from our destination. So why did Speed’s Sat-Nav ‘The Lying Cow’ still say we had three hours to go?

‘Surely it’s not that far to Islington now?’ I asked, naively assuming that ‘The Angel’ in ‘north east London’ meant we’d be playing somewhere in that affluent area of London village.

‘No, north east OF London’. Said Speed. ‘The Angel’s a pub’.

Get a road map and you’ll see that north east of London means Suffolk: you know you’re far from home when you see a road sign to Ipswich (well, unless you live there...). We amused ourselves on the crawl around to the M11 by recounting the blue spandex story yet again (ask Speed next time you see him), enjoying a few faltering stabs at Nazi Kaiser Chiefs (don’t try this at home), and playing ‘Name That Tune’ courtesy of an eighties playlist from Speed’s mp3 widget thing. I’d never have had him down as an OMD fan...

The Speedmobile pulled up outside the pub around 7.30 and greeted the band’s Northern contingent, Bruce ‘Leave some for me, public’ Dugginson and Adrian ‘Why have I still got more gear than anyone else. Pardon?’ Swift.

The pub was heaving with Laz and Sue’s friends and family, and we were grateful to see two full guitar stacks (comprising four of Maiden’s very own cabs), a huge Ashdown bass rig plus a proper kit, lights and a fat vocal PA all fired up and ready to go: as this has been organised by a main player in the Maiden camp, so we weren’t too surprised at the fully pro set-up.

As we joined the affable scrum at the bar, the ever-effervescent Nicko ‘Geezah. Geezah? Geezah!’ McBrain Jnr bounded up to offer loud ‘hellos’ all round. Long-time readers of the various incarnations of Hurry’s Diaries will notice that Nicko’s surname in the real world is also Lazarus. Yep, Laz is his dad, so this was an absolute home-gig for the Kronenbourg-suppin’ lad, and he spent the entire evening waving, shouting greetings and chatting with all and sundry when not actually sat – rather sheepishly, it had to be said – behind the drums. Well, who likes rocking out in front of people you’ve known for your whole life...?

The Maiden part of the running order began with cataclysmically loud (yay!) outings for Wasted Years and Fear Of The Dark, which really got everyone going and although we hadn’t wigged up for this one, it sounded great. Other highlights included a great version of Journeyman, with both Speed and Swifty strumming acoustics, and an outing for Seventh Son... that didn’t include anywhere near as many brown notes from Mavis as expected (just 382 of them). Run To The Hills and Two Minutes... followed, although sadly The Trooper and Number Of The Beast fell afoul of the sheer number of tunes that had been planned.

Other highlights included Mavis and Duggers performing a passable version of Queen’s Love Of My Life, even though I started it in the wrong key (twice, actually – Ed), and a truly stunning performance, especially by Swifty, of Pink Floyd’s High Hopes.

Laz got up and played a few, although he kept stopping to laugh about how pissed he was (you couldn’t really tell), and Sue proudly looked on, having the time of her life as glass after glass was ferried in her direction.

We all tucked into a veritable mound of chips that miraculously appeared, and Laz had even organised a fireworks display, and we talked the usual litany of rubbish as the night wore on. We chatted with (note, not ‘chatted up’) Nicko's sisters, and were grateful for the compliments that came our way; it means a great deal for anyone to say that they like the way we approach Maiden’s music, but many of the people here are very close to the real thing.

It all began to wind down around 1.30, and Speed, Duggers, Swifty and I were offered a nice comfy floor strewn with air beds to kip on (I bagged the sofa - cheers Ben!). I found a blanky under which to snuggle, so the Ballad Of The Uninformed Sleeping Bag had a happy ending.

Get four drunken blokes (plus a sober Speed, natch) in a room and comedy basics soon ensue. Duggers fell asleep still clutching a tin of Carlsberg that had been provided by our generous hosts, so Swifty grabbed his myPhone and found some sort of Fart Effects app, and proceeded to play all manner of queefs, squashed frogs and wittering duck noises loudly into his ear. We, of course, laughed like drains as blowing off, sadly, will never not be funny. Duggers slumbered on, bless him.

Duggers, relieved of his Carlsberg, shortly before his 'accident'.

After a few hours of kip, we awoke to the ‘tap tap tap’ of Duggers texting what sounded like a complete book into his phone and, as we came round, with varying degrees of thick heads slowly being dissipated by nice mugs of something warm and milky, our most excellent vocalist made a confession.

‘Lads, I got to tell you, I thought I’d fookin’ shit meself last night. I were fookin’ lying there wondering how I was going to deal w’it. I couldn’t even fookin’ remember where t’bog were. I checked meself all over, but I hadn’t. I wonder why I fookin’ thought that?.

Suffice to say, I thought we’d die laughing. As they say, ‘there’s an app for that’. Legend.

All that remained was to offer some assistance in loading the gear out of the pub, saying our farewells and heading back out onto Blighty’s ‘wonderful’ roads network.

Great pub, lovely people and a brilliant time. Cheers Laz, and happy birthday Sue – same time next year?