Everyone likes a story about a live show, so here’s one for you. I saw Mike Peters play solo on the Sunset BLVD sometime around 2009. Tiny bar wedged between the Whisky and the Rainbow. Might’ve been called Cat Club — I can’t recall. Cause there’s nothing better than aging! What I do recall is how good he was. And there couldn’t have been more than 30 of us in the audience.
I’ll say this, too: I was never a big fan of The Alarm. Too close to U2, if you ask me. Or, as Harold Bloom called it: “The Anxiety of Influence.” But if you were listening to the radio or watching MTV in 1983 — which we all were — you couldn’t avoid “68 Guns”.
OK, so I just Goooogled Mike Peters Cat Club shows and it was the Cat Club, and he played three consecutive Fridays for the month of April to celebrate his 50th birthday: the 3rd, 10th, 17th. I can’t recall which one I went to. But I do recall this like it was just the other day: at one point, he asked the room if anyone had a request. I asked him to play the one song that influenced him the most.
He grinned and played London Calling by The Clash. (Photo credit here.)
Mike Peters passed recently — 29 April 2025. A little over 16 years to the day after my Cat Club Show Story.
His acoustic version of London Calling was amazing.
And cancer fucking sucks.
