CMAT and The Boomtown Rats appear at Jools’ annual Hootenanny

CMAT and The Boomtown Rats are heading into new duties on New Year’s Eve as they join a star-studded Jools’ Annual Hootenanny line-up also featuring Jade, Jungle, Kathy Sledge, Marc Almond, Paul Carrack, Ruby Turner, Toby Lee and Queen’s Roger Taylor, more of them anon. It’s good to see Bob Geldof returning to his main occupation of making music.

There has been a pronounced Irish flavor to the flow Later with Jools Holland run with the Gurriers, who also got to do their post-punk thing at the show recently. Asked how it all came about this year Hot Press Round Table Summit, Pierce from the band told us: “Bribery… No, we played in a pub at Other voices. The guys from … Jools Holland should have gone home but for some reason they were still there and heard us sound check. They stayed and really enjoyed the concert, so we were on their radar.”

Charlie took over and added: “We got a text from them about a week in advance so we didn’t have much time to get nervous. The weirdest thing was picking a good spot next to Jools to see the other bands and this old boy walked over and planted himself between us, and I looked down and he had cheetah shoes on. I thought, ‘I love your shoes!’ He said ‘thank you’, looked me in the eye and I realized it was Roger Taylor. You were shooting the breeze with him playing the drums on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ thinking, ‘How the hell is this happening?’ “

Unfortunately, the Jools team won’t be reuniting the Gurriers with their new bezzie, Roger, on New Year’s Eve, but it still promises to be a stormer of a show!

In the meantime, there are more words of wisdom from the Gurriers to come up with, which is a Christmas crunch of a long read!