The Cave: An Evening in Liverpool

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I like Liverpool. I’ve only been a couple of times but the place always seems so friendly and the buildings so elegant. It’s the exact opposite of the picture that Brookside painted all those years ago. Some of the Liverpool stereotypes do live up to the billing though; Liverpool never fails to show us, in abundance, locals that use phrases like ‘ay’, ‘erm’ and ‘calm down’, to the point where someone shouted ‘ay’ across the street before we had even parked. We were here, in keeping with the theme, to visit the famous Cavern Club, but before that we decided to grab some cheap food in the local Wetherspoons. While in there, we watched the majority of the Champions League final where Manchester United got well and truly beaten, much to the delight of the Liverpudlians. The one Manchester United fan in the pub was mocked to embarrassment and soon disappeared from view, possibly muttering words like ‘Mickey Mouse cup’, as sore losers often do.

As we made our way down Matthew Street, we were besieged by dodgy looking people trying to offer us cheap drinks, free entry and probably some kind of drugs to pull us in to their bars, and though we were tempted by the drunks slumped outside, we carried on anyway and sloped into the Cavern before anyone could club us over the head and drag us into Flares. There is a wonderful feeling as you climb down the stairs into the murky basement that now doubles up as one of the most famous bars in the world. It’s almost like you are taking a step back in time to the heyday of all music, even though the place has closed down twice and been knocked down once since the Beatles started out here. The owners have done a magnificent job of bringing the place back to its former glory though; while it is probably the most obvious tourist trap in Liverpool, the place isn’t tacky and souvenir filled, nor is the beer an extortionate price. What they have maintained, above all else, is the atmosphere. There are people from every walk of life there, on the two occasions I have been we have seen Americans, Canadians, Chileans, Brazilians, Japanese and Manchester United fans. Only the United fans were mocked for what they were, and on another night even they might have gotten away with it, because nobody cares who you are here, everyone is there for a good time and to listen to good music. I’m struggling to think of another club where these are the priorities, obvious though they are.

For an extra charge, you can go into the big room of the cavern and watch a better known band, but we are cheap and were more than satisfied in the main area where a house band were playing mostly Beatles hits with a few others thrown in to break the night up. Purely by coincidence, but entirely fitting with the day, the band was called The Cave Dwellers. Tonight, in between their own set, they were inviting anyone who wanted to jump up on stage and sing along, or play along if they were musically minded. It was a recipe for karaoke nightmares, but The Cave Dwellers kept everything moving along nicely. I could be wrong, but whenever somebody really bad got up and started singing like a constipated frog, the band just seemed to up their game, making sure that focus was taken away from the frog but without being obvious. If that was the plan it was well executed and slick, because tonight you could easily enjoy the good and laugh at the bad without it ever getting too ugly.

I kept an eye on the time as the night wore on. While I was more than happy to keep downing Black Sheep Ale and sing along to the Fab Four, I was aware that Emily was sober and had the drive back home ahead of us, so the first sign that she was ready to move and I decided it would be time to go. Emily seemed happy to carry on though, so we left it until the last possible moment, that being five minutes before the ticket on the car park expired, before we made a dash across town. The clubs were now in full swing; the touts had given away their cheap drink offers and were now probably selling pleasant selling soap in the male toilets, the people that were slumped over at eight o clock were suddenly the life and soul of the party, buoyed by Red Bull or Jaeger-Bombs, and the crowds were everywhere. I noticed a fleeting glimpse of fear in some of the others, because this kind of scene normally leads to a fight, a broken bottle and some stitches in Wolverhampton, but in truth that never looked like happening here. Even so, we moved on with gusto, found the car park with minutes to spare and made our way back home.

We left Liverpool sometime around midnight and so were well into the early hours by the time Emily pulled up at mine. From there, Emily had a good 20 miles more to drive, so she headed straight off, just in case a late night cup of tea relaxed her enough to make her nod off and end up in the River Severn, but I persuaded the others back into mine for a brew and a few rounds of toast. As we drank our tea I reflected on the day, and like the caves themselves, we had once again pushed ourselves through the darkness and into the unknown in the same way as when we went star-hunting a month ago. Once again, I had thoroughly enjoyed it, and as my mind filled up with the plans for our musically-guided away days over the next year, some of which will be fun, some interesting, some potentially epic in scale, I couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of excitement.

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