I did a wedding tonight in the Lansdowne Club in Piccadilly; the bride was half German-Turkish but grew up in London and the groom was Canadian. He gave me a couple of CDs to play coupled with a request list. During the night most of the tracks on their request list were doing a good job of making the barman busy and as it progressed I found myself basically ignoring their CDs and request list as it was obvious the crowd wanted real party stuff, all of which worked a treat. Anyway, towards the end of the night the groom asked me to play a track from one of the Cds by a Canadian band called Spirit Of The West-Home for a rest. Well of course I obliged and was half expecting the guests to politely join in as it was the last dance but not really wanting to. So I gave the song a build -up and encouraged everyone to join the B&G on the floor for the final song and to my amazement the song was fantastic A real party feel to it and extremely lively, complete with pipers and violins and all sorts of stuff going on. It had quite an Irish feel to it and although many of the guests clearly didn't know it everyone got completely carried away by this fantastic song and the whole crowd were going crazy
I chatted to the groom afterwards and he said this song was never released over here which is a crime against music as far as I'm concerned, cos I'm sure if it had been it would have sold by the bucket-load!
I just did a quick web-search and found the bands website this track is on an album called Save This House which was released in 1990 and is also on their Hit Parade (greatest hits) album released in 1999. You can listen to an mp3 of the track here
Knowing how conservative many British people can be and how safe many are musically, i.e. often not dancing to any music they haven't heard a thousand times previously I wonder whether I'll be able to get away with this track where there aren't any Canadians present , hopefully if the opportunity arises I'll give it a go, cos the track deserves it!.

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Just remembered to add that the track has a slow start, then goes ballistic after 30 seconds or so!

At the moment my soundcard is K ed, not working, so I can't have a listen, but I have marked this post because it reminds me of a gig I did a couple of months ago when a girl (well teenager, about 16ish) gave me a CD by the Shakin' Pirates and asked me to play a couple of tracks from it.

It was a Scottish/Irish gig and I'd broken my headphones earler by stepping out with them still atttached to my ears ............ anyway I couldn't preview her songs and just guessed that they were 'clubby'.

After a reminder from her I did play them and what a reception they received - no they weren't what I had expected either.

Anyway at the end of the night the girls' father came up to thank me for

I did a marquee wedding reception in Foxton, Beds, 3 years ago. The bride was Canadian and Spirit of The West were on the advance request list.

Can't remember which tracks were played but I do remember having to buy their album!