We like to get a Northern perspective from Steve but this time he’s raising some really important issues about hygiene that apply across the country. OK, it’s not a celebration of 2023, but it’s important and without getting too political, it’s all about a general relaxation of standards and lack of enforcement. Here we go:
Now, then. My High Fives list this year is a strange one.
I find that, due to the gigs I tend to go to and the fact that the live music-loving population seems to be getting older on average; or at least those with the disposable to spend on it – you would think that venues would make every attempt not to kill off an ageing clientele for good business reasons quite apart from any moral or humanist imperative.
However, it does seem to me that some are running pretty fast and loose with significant health risks.
Here’s my High Fives for this year.
Glasses that are minging
Please, please, please – do not serve drinks in glasses which haven’t seen the dishwasher. I don’t want to see thumb prints on glass sides, beer going flat with grease within seconds of pouring, or grey, simply dirty glass conveying otherwise pristine beer. It is not the fault of the guy who had the glass before me that he had a burger with his pint – but I do not wish to share it with him, thank you. Alcohol can and does kill a lot of viruses BUT not all and not at the strength of a lot of ‘session’ beer and as for alcohol free for the poor Nominated Driver, a.k.a. Future Patient, well. This is not the sixteenth century, we do not have to drink alcohol to prevent ourselves from dying of some horrible waterborne infection but. Please. If I’m going to pay serious money to buy a drink, please make sure it is in a Clean Glass. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.
Glasses which aren’t glasses
A number of venues I have frequented recently are selling drinks in reusable plastic tumblers. This is an unavoidable fact of life to avoid injury from broken glass in all forms, either on the floor, flying through the air, brandished by a maniac, whatever it might happen to be. BUT. These receptacles are susceptible to getting scratched, especially if stacked twenty high when dirty and these then make them very difficult to wash properly so it is particularly important this happens so that the punter is not inadvertently poisoned by some lurgy-infected crevice in the plastic.
Plastic glasses which aren’t reusable, being re-used
One-use plastic is, rightly I feel, frowned upon now for very real environmental reasons as we slowly wake up to the thought of drowning in our own plastic waste. However, I have, on occasion and in certain live settings, seen what were clearly intended as one-use containers collected in for re-use. This is, frankly, horrible. The plastic of these things is very soft and will not stand up to reuse and ‘washing’. Gorges rise at the very thought.
The Bogs
A frequent and recurring theme of mine. A great many venues, no names and no pack drill of course, make absolutely every effort to make sure the Facilities do not in themselves constitute a health hazard and we have, in the main, come a long way from balancing over a fetid latrine on a plank. BUT. There are those, all of whom will no doubt fervently deny this, particularly on a busy Saturday night, where things start off with the personal hygiene bar set at ‘Low’ and when the four-hourly inspection comes around, seem to open the door, observe the mayhem and carnage and say yep, ‘pretty much as it was’ in that the urinals are still overflowing and you can’t get a pee without complementary wet socks.
PLEASE wash your hands
And it’s not all ‘their fault’. A completely unscientific, unofficial and uncorroborated survey found that around 40% of men at a gig do not wash their hands, you know, with actual soap and everything, after a trip to the ablutions. I have no figures relating to women and therefore would not assume anything. This is completely irresponsible and shows a total disregard for your fellow human beings. I don’t want to cringe every time I grab a metal handrail or put my hand on the edge of the bar. I’m tempted to excuse you if it is during the encore but no, the great pestilence has no respect for artistic merit or the set list.
And with all this in mind I wish you a happy, and healthy, New Year.
With the return of Rosko to the Caroline North airwaves and my show sitting in for Paul Brown on the main album channel done and dusted, we had a weekend ‘at large’ to enjoy and spent it irresponsibly at the final, or so we’re told, annual Skegness Rock and Blues festival at Butlins Skeggy. The night before we set off we went to the New Vic in Stoke to catch Paul Jones and Dave Kelly and to be honest, if any of the acts we were due to see and hear over the weekend were on a level playing field with them, I’d have been happy. And happy I was. A Fab weekend, too much to mention, but for me, the three highlights (other views are available but, clearly, they’re all wrong) were…
Full House. Frankie Miller’s old band, still featuring the stunning guitar work of Ray Minhinnett.
I have previous to declare here. Back in early October 1976, at the University Of Dundee, (who were remarkably well disposed, thank the Lord, to taking in English duffers who’d not exactly exceeded expectations in their A-levels) the band booked for freshers week, just before I started my three-year stint as a resident DJ there, was Frankie Miller’s Full House.
And what a ‘Welcome to Scotland’ that was. My mate the celebrated rock snapper Allan McKay and I had one of those moments where we both knew that was it, whatever happens, we’re doing rock ‘n’ roll in some shape or form for the rest of our lives. It was like facing a full-on storm force wind – and it was the first time I’d been to a gig where a band had successfully welded Rock to Soul to the Blues with some damn strong pop tunes as well. To this day on Radio Caroline I use the personal strapline ‘Rock n Soul Radio’; get these two to meet on a stage somewhere, stir in a pinch of the blues and you’ve cracked it.
And to my absolute delight – and Butlins true intent is all for your delight, (it says so, it always did!) they absolutely nailed it. What a line up band leader and guitarist Ray Minhinnett has assembled here! They say the best musicians attract the best musicians and there’s not a duffer or time-server amongst this lot. From the opening bars of ‘Be Good To Yourself’ through an impassioned ‘Fool In Love’ right though to the final tongue in cheek disdain for the singalonga ‘Darlin’ at the end, (Miller hated the song, which he knew he was going to be stuck with forever once it became a massive top ten single hit, even when he returned to play our venue in ’78, and so do the rest of the band even now, but at least they had the honesty not to short change the punters who wanted to hear it and played it straightish) it was like standing in the eye of the storm again, only 47 years removed. Magic.
For most people in situations such as these, the elephant in the room would be that Frankie Miller was such a unique talent. Which was part of the problem, the record company just didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Nobody, and that’s nobody, could lay a glove on him in his pomp so the guy on the mic is on a hiding to nothing, right? So I was nothing less than astonished to hear the man tasked with bringing the vocal delivery of these songs to life wasn’t just joining up the dots…he was absolutely giving this the best shot you could reasonably expect another human being to give. What a voice has yer man Gregor! Go See wherever and whenever. They had to play a shorter set than normal and I’ve got to catch them out on the road somewhere else now. Truly the Celtic Soul Vision. If you go around not going to see these you might just as well give your ears away.
And I’d have been happy to go home at that point but…..Dana Gillespie and her band finished the proceeding late on Saturday night in the smallest of the four venues; but with mobile phones etc good news travels fast and by the time she was three songs in they were hanging off the rafters. For the uninitiated, Dana Gillespie was signed to Bowie’s MainMan management group and sang backing vocals on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album before releasing the album ‘Weren’t Born A Man’ on RCA records in 1973 which was produced by Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson. Since then she’s been largely concentrating on singing and recording the blues alongside her acting work and is a well known and respected member of the Blues fraternity. But all this just falls away when she lets rip with that band of hers, including the astonishing keyboard thumper Dino Baptiste who is just boogie on legs. Her main area of concern in the songs she performs are those highlighting the strange balance between the attraction and the fractiousness which exists between men and women – exclusively from a female perspective and we’re treated to a set of ripe old blues songs which made the walls blush, starting at Bessie Smith and working downwards. Imagine a more glamorous Jo Brand with A Voice belting out the blues in front of a band who are absolutely on fire and you get the gist. When I say the housewives’ favourite, Jimmy Young, had to be quite forcibly dissuaded from playing her version of ‘Ten Inch’ on Radio One back in the day, you probably get the idea. Time – she’s into her 70s now but you wouldn’t know it for the energy and ‘twinkle’ in the performance – has blessed her with a mellowed, husky set of pipes which just so suit the task in hand. Always good to see a ‘survivor’ thriving, but this was much, much more – an object lesson in how to work a room. This isn’t a relic of the wild times relishing last woman standing status; this is overdue recognition of an outstanding talent. That David Bowie, he knew what he was about.
Sunday afternoon and the Chicago Blues Legends Show is on in Reds which is by far and away the best of the ‘big’ venues. The sound in Centre Stage is usually horrible and woolly and the big tent is, well, a big tent. But Reds is crisp, precise and usually a very good listen and so it was on the Sunday afternoon in question. Giles Robson and the aforementioned Dino Baptiste did a sterling job opening for them and on came the first of the Legends, a hand-picked hot Chicago player already doing great things and destined for greater. Jamiah Rogers was the unanimous choice of the old stagers who were due to follow him on the package and it was a brave move as this guy is HOT. We’ve all heard ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’; not like this, you haven’t. And, like all really talented American entertainers, he knows how to grab an audience without seeming to make the effort and in the tradition of the Blues, it tends to be BS-free as well. If you’re rising to the top of a scene as competitive as the Chicago blues scene – at the age of 27 – well…no disrespect but those old lads better be At It, that’s all I’m saying.
Twice Grammy-nominated, John Primer was part of Willie Dixon’s Chicago All-Stars and led Muddy Waters Band from 1981 onwards. A small figure hunched behind a big red Gibson (I think, I was a long way back. Sunday afternoon, I like a nice sit down then) and promptly brought the fields, the city and the Hard Times right to my table.
I don’t know how they do that. How can a musician bring you that Shakespeare’s catharsis thing right to your table when you’re gently sipping a pint of Guinness and are comfortably at your leisure? And there you are, head down and nodding quietly to yourself while the man plays turbocharged Jeremy Kylesque stories of poverty and misery and extreme deprivation and there you go. You Got The Blues. First Time all weekend I genuinely Got ‘Em. And then on comes Billy Branch. He’s recorded and / or toured with Willie Dixon, Johnny Winter, Lou Rawls, Taj Mahal……and he plays the old gob iron like the living spit of Little Walter. And he played ‘My Babe’ and it was 1955, it was Chicago, and it was January, and cold. And then they all joined together and hollered and stomped and wailed.
And when I stepped outside after that because my head was full it was January, and cold.
And the fourth of my three top choices for the weekend – King Pleasure and The Biscuit Boys. Now you couldn’t get further away on the blues spectrum then these. We felt, myself and the legendary Mrs Jenner, that a bit of a knees-up would be a suitable way to round off proceedings for the weekend and this lot did not disappoint and they’re no mugs either, having been in with BB King amongst others. A sort of turbo swing, Jumping Jive / Big Jay McNeely / Cab Calloway / Louis Jordan mash-up meets Bill Haley and the Comets, Madness and Lord Rockingham’s Eleven with Eric Morecombe on slap bass. The lead singer chose the purtiest girl in the room to dance with when he went walkabout and so I graciously donated the Legendary Mrs J to the cause, as if I had a choice in the matter and we went to our very clean and comfy billet, I have to say, back to tea and toast and the back end of Match of the Day, utterly convinced of the stupidity of the decision, whatever the politics to make this the last Rock n Blues Festy weekender.
Outright winner? For me, Full House on points. But then again I got reasons!
Now that the live music scene has come back to something resembling normality, our Man in the North has been getting out to a few gigs again. Here are his thoughts on four gigs in the north of England by George Thorogood, Joe Jackson, From the Jam and Lil’ Jimmy Reed, including a gig at one of Music Riot’s favourite venues, The Picturedrome in Holmfirth.
Cats are supposed to have 9 lives but this cat (in a Keith Richards stylee) enjoyed 4 lives in 9 days (or thereabouts) in various bits of England in amongst a heavy-duty studio schedule back here in the Staffordshire Moorlands…starting with George Thorogood and the Destroyers at the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall. Nottingham’s love affair with George Thorogood started at Rock City over 40 years ago, and now he’s a Major Rock Star, he’s played the Royal Concert hall a few times.
Bless him, he looks a bit ‘lived in’ now compared to the pumped-up All-American guitar slinger who bust out of Rounder Records at me way back in the seventies, in fact he’s 72 years old so he’s excused, but his arm looks in much better nick than when we last saw him in Manchester a fair few years ago when he was all strapped up and heavily reliant on his second guitarist to do some of the ‘heavy lifting’. He certainly seemed to be shifting around the gee-tar quite comfortably this time, and joy of joys as this cannot be said for many of a certain age, his voice is still a very useful weapon.
The rather ‘cartoon’ ‘Rock Party’ gives way to a spirited romp through Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love’ and as he correctly surmises…’and we’re away…’ and the middle eight’ of the gig comprises some good ol’ George favourites, ‘Night Time’, ‘I Drink Alone’ and a rapturously received ‘One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’. Nowt wrong with that. No, Sir. More or less at this point he switches to a beautiful white Epiphone and slide tube, and we get ‘Gear Jammer’, ‘Get A Haircut And Get A Real Job’, and to enjoy the irony of that you have to go back to the days when there was such a thing as a ‘Real Job,’ a crowd-pleasing ‘Bad To The Bone’ and a joyous romp through the Champs ‘Tequila’ and then sprinting home with the title track from ‘Move It On Over’ before an encore of ‘Born To Be Bad’ and a bizarre awarding of a single rose to a lady on the front row whilst the National Anthem played (not the American one). His slide work is still gold standard stuff, The Destroyers, including the old 1970s originals Billy Blough and Jeff Simon still pound along with enthusiasm and yes, there aren’t the physical pyrotechnics and Chuck Berry ‘duck walks’ anymore and it does look like hard work on occasion, which it assuredly is. But these are card-carrying American musicians. You’ve paid to see a Rock Show in the grand manner, and you’re getting your money’s worth. For how much longer, I wouldn’t like to hazard. But right now, you’re unlikely to see and hear a better set of rocking blues here in the UK.
From there to Manchester and the Albert Hall, which is actually a converted Methodist Hall which is over a hundred years old and is perhaps best described as ‘shabby chic’. A medium-sized venue, it has probably the longest walk to the rest rooms outside of a festival setting and significantly more stairs. However, it did, on the face of it, appear to be a charming venue for us to see Joe Jackson go through his paces for the first time since the early 80s.
The local support act were almost inaudible and that should have set the warning bells a-jangling but as they were of the hyper-sensitive acoustic singer songwriter duo I was inclined to put that down to the genre. But Sadly Not. Joe Jackson took to the stage with his band, and as ever the main man cut a dapper figure, almost painfully tall and thin, and straight away we’re in trouble. The opening song is just a muddy mess, ‘One More Time’ completely ruined, Jackson’s voice almost completely drowned. OK, a sighting shot. Come on, mixing desk guy, get it sorted. ‘Big Black Cloud’ is slightly better, but this isn’t saying a great deal. ‘Sunday Papers’ is knowing and brisk, but once again, the cacophony which surrounds him seems to be fighting the voice rather than supporting it.
Jackson’s keyboard work is nothing less than sumptuous, though. ‘Real Men’ is a compromised delight and this leads to tonight’s cover where he wryly observes he usually likes to do one cover in a set from a band he likes….but this time he’ll do one by a band he really doesn’t like, and promptly launches into an extremely well-arranged and thoroughly enjoyable cover of Abba’s ‘Knowing me, Knowing You’. And then a bit of a break before ‘Blaze of Glory‘ ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and ‘Fool’, and it becomes increasingly apparent that either 1. It is nigh-on impossible to get a decent sound in the venue, OR; 2. The sound guy is clueless. In any case, the drummer plays with a lack of sensitivity and touch which is almost breathtaking. It’s as if he’s employed Animal from the Muppets to ruin the set for him. A couple of songs where Jackson plays and sings solo underlines this. In mine own humble, he’d have been better off touring solo with his keyboard and maybe somebody on a cajon or something. ‘Sing You Sinners,’ a cover of the Tony Bennett standard leads into what for me was the highlight of a frustrating gig, a re-arranged and vocally – led ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him’. And it is apparent, as it has been all night, that his voice is still Right There. ‘Different For Girls’ is played completely straight down the line and is a serious high point and ‘I’m The Man’ is played with an energetic, punky joy which gets them dancing in the aisles. So we’re all warmed up and it looks like He’s The Man and he’s going to pull triumph from the teeth of near – disaster; the assembled knows what’s coming. ‘Stepping Out’, top ten hit both sides of the Atlantic, and they’re ready to celebrate and dance. So the band elect to play it as a slow ballad. Which of course it can be sung as, lyrically that much is clear. But under the circumstances, Why Would You? Classic case of just because you can doesn’t mean you should. F for frustrating. He was good, It could have been soooo much better. Would I go see Joe Jackson again? Probably. Would I go to Manchester Albert Hall again? Probably not.
Ah, well. Sup up your beer and collect your fags. A hop and a skip around the uncharacteristically parched Pennines and here we are in gorgeous Holmfirth, and all dressed up for my favourite music venue in the entire country, the Picturedrome. And a revisit to From The Jam for the first time in a good few years as well.
And they are on top form from the off. Neither of the main men, Bruce Foxton or Russell Hastings are in the first flush of youth and the intersong raps often focus on the effects of statins and the magic of stents but they play with brutal conviction and drive. ‘Broooos’ even manages a couple of eye-watering scissor kicks and I’m speaking as a contemporary here.
We are Having It tonight, it seems.
Early set highlights are a stinging ‘David Watts’ which really underlines the band’s (yes, this one and the ‘previous’ one) links back to the 60s beat boom, but without the corny guitar tricks, angelic harmonies and ersatz American accents which compromised so much of the home-grown, R’n’B based pop music of the time. They go for ‘A Town Called Malice’ early in the set which is, some might say, brave; a nailed – on encore barnstormer all day long, but with a body of work like this I guess you can afford to take a risk or two.
‘Pretty Green’ and ‘Saturday’s Kids’ are just a joy to hear. What great songs they are – and they’re played with power, energy and verve and – the voices work SO well together. Russell Hastings seems very comfortable in his role and it is gratifying that there are almost as many ‘Russell’ shouts as there are shouts for ‘Broooos’.
Bruce himself doesn’t look entirely comfortable at some points in the set or indeed totally happy though goodness knows why, if I was caught up in the middle of that lot I’d spend all my time delighting in the fact that I’d found a way to take these songs out on the road again and put them in front of people in the manner they were intended. ‘That’s Entertainment’ is a full – on pull out the stops electric version and ‘Start’ is pure 60s beat-boom magic. I absolutely delight in The Jam’s Motown and soul covers from way ‘back in the day’ so it is with ‘throw myself about all over the place’ abandon I greet ‘Heatwave’ which even includes the headlong vocal ‘call and response’ stuff towards the end. ‘Strange Town’, ‘In The City’, ‘Eton Rifles’, ‘Going Underground’ (after an EXTREMELY lengthy wait for the band to come out for the encore, apparently due to ‘discussions’ about the encore songs) but by this time the whole place is reduced to a sweaty, heaving dysfunctional mess, the front is in full mosh mode and that magic feeling you only get when a top bunch of musicians have taken the place with them has broken out and pervades the sweat – soaked air.
That’s the way you do it. GO and see them and that’s an order.
Home and a big breakthrough for me – I’ve been asked to do a ‘cover’ shift on the main Radio Caroline album channel, having produced over 200 shows for the Caroline Flashback ‘oldies channel’ and I am totally made up. But before I lock myself away in the studio and start to understand the way all that works, gig number 4, a short drive across the moors through England’s highest village to Buxton and a visit to the charmingly sedate Pavilion Gardens, where Louisiana blues legend Lil’ Jimmy Reed is on the bandstand.
Now, Lil’ Jimmy is not actually called Lil’ Jimmy Reed. His real name is Leon Atkins but that’s where the kidding stops. This guy learned his trade playing gigs with the REAL Jimmy Reed, you know, ‘Shame Shame Shame’ and all that, and his peers, so it is not unreasonable to assume our man is knocking on a bit. Indeed, he is the dangerous side of 80 and can reasonably lay claim to being one of the last ‘original’ purveyors of Louisiana Blues.
And what a bunch of ‘sidemen’ he presents to us tonight (or doesn’t, he barely addresses the audience at all apart from through his music). On keyboards, Bob Hall, long-time collaborator with Alexis Korner, and a relatively youthful 80, Hilary Blythe on a U-bass, and the drummer with Ten Years After during the glory years, Ric Lee.
Hang on, let me do that again. This guy has played Woodstock. Yes, THAT Woodstock. He’s not going to waste his time.
And he isn’t.
The band shuffle on, looking like a group of retired schoolteachers albeit in a concession to ‘showbiz’ dressed in cabaret-style glittery stage apparel (with the exception of Ric Lee, he’s clearly having none of that old malarkey).
And promptly proceed to light up the stage with some of the best and most authentic blues you’ll hear this year or probably ever again.
We get ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, we get ‘Caress Me Baby’, we get ‘How Blue Can You Get’, ‘We Get Big Boss Man’…but it almost doesn’t matter what we get. Reed just glides around his guitar with the assurance of a man who has HAD to play for a living for years and years and years, wherever there was a dollar to be earned and the band just roll with it. There are a few hilarious interludes where Reed, who sure don’t say much, tries to let the band know what key to start in by mouthing it across from one side of the stage to the other. Now, communicated like this there ain’t much difference between A,D,E or G, with, as critics might say, hilarious consequences. I’d be tempted to get different coloured paddles and wave them about at the start of each song but that would probably just lose some of the charm. Nope, he don’t talk much. I think I’d also advise against the audience walkabout with the guitar. He’s so stick thin and frail-looking, I was genuinely worried he’d ‘have a fall’ as people say about elderly folks. But then again you also get the impression that Nobody Tells Him What To Do. After the break, where the merch stand is hammered so much they actually run out of CDs, he disappears to the bar for three songs, which is unusual as he’s doesn’t drink, giving the band opportunity (which it didn’t look like they were expecting!) to do a few of their own songs prior to his re-appearance.
But sing….he opens his mouth and the pain and weariness, struggle, soul and strain of slowly lifting himself out of the shotgun shack in which he was born and raised, all fall out amongst a magical cascade of scattergun electric blues. He plays slide with just his fingers. He uses his hands as percussion. What A Player. What A Voice.
As you might expect with that pedigree, the drums are absolutely rock solid and perfectly in context and in fact all the musicians manage to make a telling contribution to the evening’s events without ever drowning or obscuring the business end of it all, which would have been near-sacrilegious.
Make no mistake, this man is the Real Deal and he might well be able to lay claim to the title Last Man Standing. I left the venue thinking that I probably won’t see anything like that again. And that doesn’t happen every night.
So, four very different live experiences. You pays your money, you takes your pick. But what I will say with total conviction is it is SO good to be able to get out and enjoy a whole range of live music again. What was once a lifestyle, now feels like a privilege. Whatever it is that floats your boat, GO. Just go.
4 for George Thorogood, 3 for Joe Jackson, 5 for From The Jam, and 5 for Lil’ Jimmy Reed.
Just when we thought this year’s High Fives had run out of steam, this one appears out of the Northern mists from our regular contributor Steve Jenner celebrating ways of not retiring, a subject Allan knows a lot about as well. They were both bitten by the music bug at an early age and the infection seems to be getting worse with each additional year they put on the clock. Here’s Steve’s take on things to celebrate from 2021.
Well, what a weird year and a very personal set of High Fives to match. I must be one of the very few people in the broad and massively varied ‘church’ that is the music ‘industry’ who has done quite nicely out of lockdown, thank you very much. I don’t feel terribly comfortable about saying that knowing how many of my fellows of all ages have had whole futures trashed, but the truth is the truth and I can’t pretend anything else. Without a penny coming my way via the government, I’ve had, paradoxically, the most fulfilling broadcasting year I’ve had for ages. Here’s why/how.
Home broadcast studios. In the right hands, a few hundred quid’s worth of kit which is just about OK to knock out the odd dodgy podcast, can be transformed, with admittedly hours of work on jingles / production components / music sourcing and working on such fascinating subjects as mixer pre-sets, into a right little killing machine. In the space it takes for a school desk, in the corner of the spare bedroom. Do not omit the ‘hours of work’ bit though. With this, you only get out what you put in.
Retirement. Is lovely but isn’t quite so lovely when you can’t go anywhere or do much. And anyway, you don’t ‘retire’ from the ‘music’ ‘business’; if you stop before It’s Your Time, it gets back in touch with you. First part of the ‘memoirs’ have been written and 90% sold, and in recent times through the Radio Caroline bookshop. But the Devil Makes Work For Idle Hands…and the mind starts to wander. ‘So… I wonder how Radio Caroline recruits presenters? It might not be ‘conventional’ but there’s got to be some kind of… way… and lo and behold, after a while, I’m offered a gig on the ‘heritage’ channel of The World’s Most Famous Radio Station. Up till then I’d been doing a few shows for the local community stations and thinking, ‘well, that’s about it, then’.
The Radio Caroline Flashback SOS, 8AM–10AM Sunday mornings. The whole point of Caroline’s ‘Flashback’ channel is it plays oldies from the time before Caroline went to air in early 1964, as much of the stuff they played early doors was pre–‘64 anyway; lots of 50s, lots of pre-Beatles; through to the end of offshore broadcasting in 1990, with the focus on 60s and 70s pop singles so folks who remember and /or enjoy the Caroline ‘glory years’ have a chance to do so once again. The main channel plays both classic and contemporary/new album tracks, as Europe’s ‘first album station’, but that’s not my gig right now. And you kind of have to be a bit careful assaulting the ears of a generally more ‘experienced’ listener base at that time on a Sunday morning with too much ripped straight from Slade’s Greatest Hits et al. So, it takes a degree of subtlety to weave listenable audio textures and remain ‘pop’ whilst still delivering a show which has substance, heart and soul, and still rocks, albeit gently at times. And there’s no point delivering everything as if you’re ‘curating’, as far as I’m concerned; you’re given a great jingle package to play with, and if you set the studio up right with sharp–sounding software you can drive that thing hard, the way it was back in the day. So that’s what I try to do, and it is massively rewarding when it works. Suddenly going from being a local commercial radio presenter to receiving e mails and messages from listeners in over 20 different countries so far is mind-blowing. Far Out, Man, in a truly cosmic 60s way, in fact.
But, lovely though it is to do the Sunday morning show, I was only massively made up when I was offered a shot at a new 9PM slot on Friday nights as well, The Caroline Flashback Weekend Warm–Up. Yes please, I’ll have one of those. Because this meant I could play all those huge, thumping great upbeat hits from the years in question in a quick-fire, up and at ‘em Friday night style with pace and directness; just like you had to do when playing 45 singles on a boat at sea and armed only with a few old school cartridge tapes to squirt in amongst the vinyls to give the DJ a chance to breathe. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. I get to the end of one of these and I’m absolutely worn out. They need energy, plenty of ‘front’ and in order to keep all the Caroline Flashback shows immediate and fresh-sounding, I record them ‘as live’ in one hour segments, straight through, no VT or other mucking about. And that focuses the mind somewhat.
And then the local commercial radio stations we sold in 2019 sold through again to one of the two major broadcast companies who now control the vast majority of UK commercial radio… who promptly networked them and gave them national branding…..thereby creating demand for a new, local commercial radio station on our ‘old’ patch… and so we set up Peak Sound Radio as an online radio station to carry on from where our old High Peak Radio service left off! And starting in September, I got the Monday breakfast show and the late-night Lovetown slot 6 nights a week, all of which recommences after the New Year Bank Holiday and the schedule changes which Christmas and New Year always brings.
Bring on 2022. Muso comment of the year? ‘Getting an extra hour in bed when the clocks went back this year was like getting a bonus track on a Black Lace album….!’ Push pineapple, shake a tree, pop pickers.
Time for an apology here. Things have been so busy here at The Riot House that we misplaced this review for a couple of weeks. Steve Jenner went along to the traditional closing gig of the Leek Blues & Americana Festival and sent us this review of The Achievers and Greg Brice at The Foxlowe. And thanks also to Pauline Felstead for the shot of The Achievers and to JR Mountford and Dave Swarbrook for finding the photo at really short notice. When you read the first paragraph review you’ll see that it’s appropriate that it’s been published the day after the Lord Mayor’s Show. We’re looking forward to October 2022 already. Over to Steve:
It was last night of the proms for the Leek Blues and Americana Festival. It had also been a busy week in radioland; and not really feeling much like it in all honesty I headed for central Leek more in hope than in expectation. The main event had been a couple of weekends back and the town certainly had a feel of ‘After The Lord Mayor’s Show’ about it. However, the Festival had been a triumph over considerable adversity and the gig certainly deserved a show of support at the very least.
Which just goes to show, sometimes when you really can’t be…sometimes you should force yourself out. Just occasionally it pays and this was just such a gig.
Firstly, Greg Brice. Looking like a cross between a primary school teacher and Manfred Mann, an unassuming presence with vocals in the upper range and an absolutely lovely guitar sound, very mellow and ‘rounded’ but also with occasional sharp and genuine stabs of the blues in there. Very slick slide playing once he’d found the tube, and some of his own songs which stood up well. Definitely a class above what I could reasonably expect at this time of night.
And so to The Achievers. Radio 2 like them. Blues and Americana radio jocks are playing their records all over the place. A mixed bag in terms of presentation, they come from Stroud in deepest Gloucestershire and they look a bit like it. However, off we go and it is instantly promising, a situation helped by an absolutely crystalline sound, well done you knob twiddlers. Bit more volume needed for the excellent lead guitar picker for me, he’s good, don’t hide him away – but they sounded great. Really great, and that’s not always the case in small-to-medium venues.
Anybody who writes a song where the central premise is ‘everybody loves you when you’re dead’ is alright by me. The easy charm and twinkling humour of their frontman and lead singer Steve Ferbrache soon wins over the battle-weary and we’re definitely off and running.
And what a vibe they have. It just rolls. Rhythm section is light and tight and they keep lobbing in sub-Motown fills here and there which are delightful to observe. Songs about unrequited groupies and what it is that gets you out of bed. Tea, apparently, in Leek, according to a significant percentage of the assembled. A few songs are lobbed in taken from their latest album ‘The Lost Arc’. They’re funny amusing, and also a great dance band, which is a trick and a half to pull off.
But is it the Blues? Nope, by their own admission. Does it matter? Nope, this is the closer for the Leek Blues and Americana Festival. But is it Americana, then? Well, in bits. There’s the aforementioned Motown tricks and occasional Gospel-style (I kid you not) outbursts and twangy great country slices here and there and a harp blower of considerable elegance, and Lindisfarne keep bursting through the door accompanied by Little Feat and Jonathan Richman but really, this is a classic slice of Britishana rather than anybody else’s ana. Despite the originality of their songs you keep hearing snatches and throwbacks from all over the place; was that the ghost of ‘Back In The USSR’ I heard somewhere in there…and why do I keep referencing Janis Ian part-way through another of their originals?
Had they been ‘around’ in the seventies, they would no doubt have had half a dozen hit singles along with a few top 50 albums and all the rest of it. And in fairness, in the context of a music industry that barely exists any more in conventional terms, they are, well…Achievers. And they are a bloody good night out. So good they kept me away from the wonderful Reefy Blunt and the Biftas who were playing across the road until very late in their set, who on the evidence of a brief visit before taxi time were brilliant fun, which is always the problem you are presented with as a punter during the Festival ‘proper’ but isn’t that a lovely problem to have? So, a brave and unusual way for the Leek Blues and Americana Festival to go out on for 2021. And if the organisers can make such a decent fist of it in this godforsaken year, then this time next year, Rodney…!
“Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”…Gerry Marsden, front man of Gerry and the Pacemakers, died yesterday, aged 78.
Gerry and the Pacemakers took a rejected Beatles song, which had also been turned down by Adam Faith, and turned it into the first of a string of 3 UK Number 1 hits on the bounce, culminating in “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Along with The Beatles, they were right at the spearhead of Merseybeat.
As such, and as a son of Toxteth, he would always be associated with the town of his birth and it was in this context I enjoyed my one and only meeting with him. My brother Paul had cause to work with him in a live context on occasion but a few years ago whilst working as a national press and media officer with the Plain English Campaign, I attended a dinner with him on the occasion of his award of an honorary doctorate from Liverpool John Moores University.
The ceremony took place in Liverpool’s huge and impressive Catholic Cathedral and afterwards we were at dinner and I found myself sharing tables with him and playwright and ‘Brookside’ creator Phil Redmond. Queen guitarist Brain May, who was vice chancellor at the time, was also present. Gerry was charm itself, very entertaining and good company, just like the simple, smiley pop songs he took to the top of the charts.
But of course “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became a monster song, with far greater relevance than as a UK chart-topper for a Merseybeat group. And to an extent, so did “Ferry Cross the Mersey”, which I can remember singing drunkenly along to with a bunch of mates on a retirement ‘do’, whilst swaying from side to side on such a ferry, on our way to drinking the Wirral dry one afternoon.
And for me, his finest recording was the American top ten and last big UK hit, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”, which I absolutely will play next Sunday on my Caroline Flashback show on Sunday. Radio Caroline was instrumental in ‘breaking’ these hits, they were absolutely typical ‘beat boom’ songs of the period, emerging with that first great rush of offshore pirate radio; so it is only right that I should.
Gerry succumbed to a short illness not connected to COVID 19 in hospital. A blood infection had caused problems with his heart, which, following a triple bypass had, yes, a pacemaker fitted.
Gerry and the Pacemakers fitted that classic marginally pre-Beatles ‘beat group’ mould. They had a run of big hits, expanded into big production ballads with their main man looking for a career either on the stage or the telly as an all-round entertainer and when that started to dry up, made a good living out of cabaret and revivals and sixties package tours. Because at the end of it, try as they might, they couldn’t quite break out of being frozen in time, in a particular moment of social and musical history.
Our contributor Steve Jenner now presents a two hour show on Caroline Flashback every Sunday morning between 8 and 10 am.
THERE AIN’T NOTHIN’ LIKE THE REAL THING, BABY
Now, I’m not much given to reviewing the telly; but on this case I’ll make an exception. The BBC 4 screening of ‘Everything – The Real Thing Story’ revealed an astonishing period piece and a real journey back to the most seminal year in my life, 1976.
I was an eighteen-year-old gigging jock working a balance of my own mobile gigs with Paul and agency gigs via New Junktion Discotheques, or NJD, probably the busiest and most prolific DJ agency in the East Midlands. We worked hard then; three gigs a day was not uncommon at the weekend, then lugging tons of vinyl around in clapped-out vehicles born in the sixties whilst wearing an evening suit in the middle of summer.
For me, it will always be the summer of an unloved sling-out single the other jocks didn’t want anything to do with but I loved; “Dancing Queen” by Abba – and a frantic charge to the top almost in spite of a total lack of cool. But it was also the summer of Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, Barry White, Billy Ocean, Philadelphia International…and in July, one single punched to the top on the dreadfully old-fashioned Pye Records, and stayed at number one for 3 weeks during that hottest of hot summers. Just like when Cliff finally got a handle on that authentic American rock ‘n’ roll sound with “Move It” back in the year I was born, finally, in 1976, a soul band emerged who sounded slick enough to be American and to this day I only think they made it to the top because nobody found them out until it was too late – apart from the fact it was a stonking tune, of course…and they were Scousers.
Scousers.
Let’s just give this some context here. This is a bona fide black British number 1 single during a year where singles sold in industry-defining numbers. And this at a time when casual racism of a different kind to that encountered today was absolutely endemic. If you were black British, it just wasn’t happening for you. And they did it. They got to number 1 in the UK and stayed there for three whole weeks.
The Real Thing. “You To Me Are Everything”.
Paul worked with these guys on a few occasions as did most of the working jocks I grew up with including the Legendary Barry Jarvis and many more besides. They will always remain fixed in our memories, though, for the time Paul and I were broadcasting from the Newark Festival site as Newark FM about 20 years ago, and they were on the bill and played an amazing set. But for me the follow – up, “Can’t Get By Without You” always sits within the piece of flint I call a heart because, at the time, me and the future Mrs J were parted for the first and so far only time in our lives so I could clear off and Get Clever Somewhere, and at the time we had no way of knowing if/when that would be coming to an end. (And the usual dribbling lust stuff about wanting to live together when you’re 18 and it is the mid-seventies and you both live miles apart, that sort of thing.)
They started life as The Chants and were spotted by Paul McCartney, who arranged for The Beatles to back them on a number of occasions. They became The VPs (Vocal Perfection; I know, not the best name you’ve ever heard) and were re-named The Real Thing after their long-time manager, Tony Hall, had an epiphany moment when looking at an old Coke advert strapline. They got on ‘Opportunity Knocks’ with the unlovely Hughie Greene, a sort of prehistoric ‘X-Factor’ for those too young to know, and won, and even had a minor hit, but the record business just didn’t know what to do with a black British act in 1972.
They dropped the covers, released another single, which scraped the top 40 and even got on ‘Top Of The Pops’ but Savile, ‘just for fun’, reversed the band and song name intentionally as a jolly jape and nobody clocked the name as a consequence and that was that. But the club scene was changing and so was music. They grafted away, making commercials and jingles for production hotshot Jeff Wayne who was working on a little album which did alright in the end…”War Of The Worlds”. Their voice parts were eventually dropped from the album but the meeting did lead to them being introduced by Wayne to teen heart-throb David Essex who was on a hot streak which started in 1972 with UK top ten ‘Rock On’. They backed him in the studio and on tour and were transformed by their American tour with Essex. They dropped the matching suits and dance routines schtick and started picking up credible column inches from magazines like Black Echoes and Blues and Soul Magazine.
But that don’t pay no bills.
A few more singles stiffed and they finally met producer / songwriting team Ken Gold and Mick Denne in the spring of ’76. They’d written this little tune called “You to Me Are Everything” in about ten minutes. Simple beyond belief, it just hits the spot as a song, written by a man, for a woman he just can’t do enough for and therefore knows he’s on the ‘vulnerable’ list.
And the rest, as they say…
It was released to no great fanfare on 14th May, 1976. The band, consisting of the Amoo brothers, Eddie and Chris, and their childhood friends Dave Smith and Ray Lake, were potless at the time. Chris Amoo was so broke that when the single broke into the top 40 a few weeks later, he couldn’t afford the bus fare to his manager’s office. The Jenner lads nipped down to Frank Sisson’s record shop in downtown Hucknall and invested in a copy. Chris Amoo now had his bus fare.
It climbed to number 22 on the UK chart, with a bullet, the next week.
My diary tells me that between us we played 8 gigs that week. That’s how it was. We played it every night. Clubs, restaurants, pubs, weddings, you name it.
Gathered round the radio on Thursday…it’s up to number 5.
Next week, it’s at Number 1. And it stayed there for three whole weeks in the face of huge competition. Should have been massive in the States but a truly horrible cover by Frankie Valli murdered the single’s sales potential there.
The follow-up, “Can’t Get By Without You”, was only prevented from going to the top by, you guessed it, Abba.
Home to Liverpool and here come ‘The Black Beatles’, which probably didn’t help much.
The first British Rock and Pop awards took place in November 1976. They won ‘Best New Group’.
Then they released their third single. It did OK enough to persuade them that writing their own stuff wasn’t a bad idea. But as American acts had learned over many years, just because you got to number 1 doesn’t make you exempt from ‘stop and search’.
Feeling increasingly straitjacketed by ‘the hits’, they produced “4 from 8”, as in Liverpool 8. And it was a whole bunch more funky and socially aware and less ‘poppy’ than ‘the hits’.
Pye spent a fortune promoting it and it stiffed. The gritty album sleeve was years ahead of its time for a UK album by a soul band and evoked the spirit of Marvin’s “What’s Going On”. The country would next hear from Liverpool 8 when Toxteth exploded in riots a couple of years later.
They admit they were a bit naïve. Radio playlisting is a binary choice. Play that. Don’t play that. That’s a hit. That isn’t. Programmers don’t spend ages losing sleep on the sociological implications of a song on popular music radio. Does it programme well? Is It A Hit?? Is pretty much the sum total of the consideration.
So, even though it didn’t do it at the time, “Children Of The Ghetto” became a slow burner, eventually getting the recognition it deserved and being covered by the likes of Courtney Pine and Mary J. Blige on the way to becoming accepted as the courageous ground-breaker it truly was.
“Whenever You Want My Love” got them back on the chart and on more familiar territory and that led to films like ‘The Stud’ with Joan Collins. This gave them a very dodgy disco hit with the truly awful “Let’s Go Disco” which to be the fair to the band they freely admit was just pish. I remember opening the envelope from the record company to find this in it, I played it once and binned it straight off. You’re better than that, lads.
A couple more minor hits and then another stonker, the stellar “Can You Feel the Force”. I’ve still got two 12 inch copies of this, one on horrible coloured vinyl and one being the exceedingly rare Jon Luongo remix version which would probably change hands for a few bobs given the right buyer. And then came the eighties, electro, new romanticism and suddenly they were yesterday’s news. And an astonishingly ill-advised tour of South Africa did their reputation No Good At All.
And then, a lifeline. One the likes of which has never been thrown to a band on this scale before or since.
Ten years after “You to Me Are Everything” was released, a ‘decade remix’ was issued. And, to the band’s astonishment, it went storming into the top ten.
The record company did the same with the band’s other old hits. Same thing happened. It was as if the summer of ’76 was being relived ten years later. Very weird. What wasn’t weird, though, was that by now, these lads were seasoned veterans who knew how it all worked and they weren’t about to make the same mistakes again. With the exception of original band member Ray Lake, who, struggling with inner demons which appeared to some to have roots in his early life in ‘care’, disappeared further into an abyss of drug-taking, eventually resorting to crime to feed his drug habit. He left the band in 1991, eventually succumbing to what some believe was an intentional heroin overdose nine years later. He was just 48.
The three remaining members, Chris and Eddie Amoo and Dave Smith continued gigging, gigging, gigging as The Real Thing; and as I’ve already mentioned, boy, did they play a blinder at the Newark Music festival when we were encamped there with Newark FM. It was also good to see fellow ‘Newarkee’, Leee John of Imagination, arguing their case during the documentary.
The film, directed and produced by Simon Sheridan, is played with a completely straight bat; it is an old school, unmessed – with documentary film with some cracking old footage and a melting pot of socio-musical wisdoms.
Sadly, older brother Eddie Amoo passed at the age of 73 shortly after the documentary was recorded. But Chris Amoo and Dave Smith are somewhere in the world right now being The Real Thing. Doing Everything. And That’s Not A Bad Thing, I would argue.
Aaaaaagggghhh!! My ears!!
AAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!
That is SOOOO chuffing loud.
In an attempt to impress The Girlfriend (later wife, must have worked) I purchased two tickets with intelligent deployment of pocket money in December 1974 (could have been December ’63, why let the truth get in the way of a good yarn) in order to get to shake the dandruff to the latest and greatest exponents of your heads down, non–stop, mindless boogie.
AAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!, again, I say. There’s loud and there’s 70s gig rock show loud. Nothing, and that’s nothing, prepares you for the onslaught of 70’s gig rock show loud.
The Beatles more or less ragged it in at the Shea because the weedy PA setups of the time meant they could hardly hear themselves play; but the lack of any intervention by local authorities – though it would soon come (see Paul in “Broadcast Brothers: On The Radio”) in terms of noise abatement meant that a wall of Marshall stacks = welcome to a life of tinnitus.
Very much still a ‘blues’ based 12-bar operation at the time, an investigation of the playlist from the tour reveals that they probably kicked off with “Junior’s Wailing” and featured “Railroad”, “Roll Over, Lay Down” and “Roadhouse Blues” before going off to a cross between a roar from the assembled male RAF greatcoat wearers (non-negotiable) and screams from the (largely) girls who had seen them a couple of times on Top Of The Pops – 1974 was indeed largely both sexist and tribal – before returning to chunder their poptastic path through the live DJ’s greatest fear, “Caroline” (‘oi, mush; play some Quo or I’ll do yer!!!’ – usually after the first slow dance of the night and ten minutes before ‘thengyew, gunnite’ and mains off) and “Bye, Bye Johnny”…
Coach down there, bunch of school mates and a few others can’t remember who, big, barn-like theatre (seemed like a cinema to me, but probably wasn’t) and possibly Snafu or Sassafrass in support but I can’t quite remember…Brushed denim loon pants wafting in the fan-assisted breeze…curtains of long, centre-parted hair tumbling over Telecasters…and LOUD. Very Loud Indeed.
Followed no doubt by the attempt to purchase alcohol whilst looking about 16 and sounding about 12. Fag smoke. Chips. 12 bar blues. Sort of 12 bar life. Back to school. Everybody has to sometimes Break the Rules.
Oh, I just don’t know where to begin…Accidents Will Happen. In late 2018, this venue played host to the early dates of an Elvis Costello tour which didn’t get much further. He was diagnosed with a form of prostate cancer and despite some lurid headlines, he recovered and here he is back treading the boards many, many years after angry young manhood.
So it seems a little impolite to, well…I dunno.
The support act kind of underlined the problem here. Singer/songwriter Ian Prowse was very hale, hearty, full of verve, vigour and twinkle, a combination of scouse/Irish wit and charm and poppiness. Clearly thrilled to be playing such a big venue with such a ‘name’ he claimed his eight-year-old daughter came out to see him in Liverpool on the first night of the tour; and that was ‘the first time she’d seen him’ which I don’t think is quite what he meant. He also offered to buy everybody a drink if they met him at the merch stand after his set…careful, Ian. Last time one of our lot made a similar claim it cost me thousands. Seriously though he was very listenable as were his fellow troubadours but the lack of a bass guitar can very rarely be compensated for by a keyboard, I reckon. The final song in the set, “Does This Train Stop on Merseyside” is a bit of a stonker as well. Keep eyes and ears open for Ian Prowse. A good listen.
Elvis, on the other hand…the tour is called Just Trust 2020, and we kick off with a ‘sighter’ from the ’81 ‘Trust’ album, “Strict Time”. I usually allow bands one or two to get settled and to let any gremlins work their way out so we won’t dwell on this one much, followed by “Clubland” and “Greenshirt” which, although intense seemed to be pretty much all over the place mix-wise. I know the venue has a bit of a reputation for wayward sound but this was a really wild ride, a sort of rumbling, grumbling mess. It seemed to these ears that the opposite of what should have been the case was the truth; they were playing like they’d only just met. And with former Attractions Steve Naïve on keyboards (lots of them) and Pete Thomas on drums and with a settled line-up in the Imposters, this took me rather by surprise.
And come the first of the ‘Hits’, the towering majesty of “Accidents Will Happen”, another problem seems to emerge. Occasionally in later life, singers will not be able to hit particular notes. But this doesn’t seem to be the problem here…his vocal range still seems to be there…but the timing is all over the place and sometimes he just seems to be ‘chasing after’ the song; which is a problem for the sharp, angular, quick-fire demands of many of his older hits. His singers/dancers throw themselves about all over the place to give the impression of concerted, rhythmic responses to the music, but they can’t throw me off the scent. I dig in for an evening of irregular but profound wincing. Great, great song, though.
And then “Better Watch Your Step” and a clutch of others…but I’m SO distracted by now. It isn’t just the timing…he’s Very Flat on occasion…then he’ll throw in one of those soooo Elvis vocal trills and you’ll forgive him…and then for the next 30 seconds he sounds like he’s in the wrong key…the mix is beyond muddy and…I’m not sure he can actually hear himself. Can he hear himself?
“I Don’t Want To Go To Chelsea”. Love the song. She’s last year’s model. It’s a killer. Band layer it intensely but he’s chasing the song again…why? I can’t sing but I could probably read the lyrics so they’d actually ‘fit’ the song… all over the place…
…into one for the 2018 album “Suspect My Tears” and possibly because it was written when he was an older man, he does actually get this one to ‘fit’ and glory be, the mix slowly starts to get a bit tighter and more ‘approachable’. After which I’m treated to Elvis telling me he hates me in “Radio Radio” complete with bonkers ‘Farfisa’-style organ and intense and angst-filled playlist envy. Sorry Elvis. Just not radio-friendly, that one.
“Watching the Detectives” is, though. Backlit in eerie green, Costello as ‘spook’ comes to the fore and, at this juncture, it is important I mention the guitar playing. His various ancient and weird-looking guitars and barrage of foot pedals are no doubt very necessary for despite the barrage of keyboards Steve Nieve bounces around behind, there is only one guitarist and it is EC. And the guitar sound is universally excellent, very subtle and supple where required, very sharp and incisive in ways which the interesting but wayward voice now seems less than.
Sitting down at the piano we get the ‘country’ section of the show, including a quite rambling and off-key “Good Year for the Roses”. Always a broken heart/broken voice job, this seriously pushes the boundaries on that particular concept.
From that to another from the 2018 album “Look Now”, “Burnt Sugar is so Bitter” a song co-written by Carole King and this is a right old work-out on a song which tells one of the oldest stories in songwriting in a typically direct way. This worked really well, Steve Nieve’s rattling, empty ‘ice rink’ organ sound giving a hollow, almost ‘Northern Soul’ feel. And speaking of which…”High Fidelity”, a hit from the ‘soul’ album “Get Happy”, which once again, seems to leave his voice behind. Otherwise, just great. But…
“A Whisper to a Scream” jerks us back again to “Trust” and it is an intense delivery, which then melts in to the sublime “Alison” from the first album recorded for about six quid in 1976/7 depending on who you talk to. This is gorgeous and even though the voice does that wandering thing again there are moments within this when all is forgiven, just to hear it ‘live’ again; especially when that folds seamlessly into a marriage with Motown beauty “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”. Every tune is working to a crescendo now and it would be spectacularly unfair to point out that despite the compromising of songs by a meandering voice, the audience are really warming to this and 80’s FM radio A-lister “Every Day I Write The Book” arrives right on cue and as described in the brochure.
And then “Pump it Up” nearly blows the roof off the place. At the end of it, this guy is a showman. Nobody is going to leave this venue feeling like they’ve been short-changed, I will say that much. And as is the current vogue for encore avoidance, the band stay on the stage and soak up well-deserved applause for a strong and professionally-delivered set. Not their fault the old lad’s struggling to hold a tune on occasion now.
And our final tunes for the night are the “Give Peace a Chance” section of the show and who can blame him? Certainly not I when this commences with “Shipbuilding”. Written by Costello and long-time Madness producer Clive Langer, I have to say I FAR prefer Robert Wyatt’s tremulous, fragile version but I’m here tonight and I’ll take this….but he’s off wandering again and he can’t point at not being able to live with the pace of the song here…and it’s all a bit so-so until he finishes the song on a shimmering, jazzy ‘When we could be diving for pearls’ which just seems to hang in the air and really does force listeners to face the compromises we make with the world in order to be ‘of’ the world.
Which, of course, rumbles straight into a spirited, very ‘dashing’ rock ‘n’ roll version of “Oliver’s Army” which ‘only’ got to Number 2, combining fairly ‘confrontational’ lyrics with the sort of piano that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an Abba single. Part of our ‘Should have got to number 1; God, where were you?’ club repertoire, anyone would have been excused for thinking that was that, as it could well have been, but pacifist’s corner ended very appropriately and rather touchingly with Brinsley Schwarz’s “What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding” and that was indeed it, standing ovations all round the crowd no doubt shuffling off into a cold night warmed to the cockles by the memory of familiar tunes played stirringly….and how many of them would recall great acres of vocal creakiness the following morning?
Absolutely well worth going to see but an increasingly flawed masterpiece as the vocals struggle to live with the songs he’s created, I’d like to think he was throwing stuff about when he got off stage because he couldn’t hear what was going on or he’d just had an ‘off night’. But. Maybe it is Twilight Time.
To paraphrase rock snapper Allan McKay, ‘in the unfortunate event of Armageddon, the only survivors will be rats, ants and the Technics 1200 record turntable. And Dr. Feelgood.’
Starting out from Canvey Island in 1971, much has been made of the ‘no original members’ thing over the years. But you can trace the ‘blood line’ through this band going Way Back. As members have left or died, they’ve been replaced. Nothing ‘tributey’ about that. That’s reality. That, in part, is why I published “Rock ‘n’ Roll Twilight” in the first place. Bass man Phil Mitchell and drummer Kevin Morris have been with them since 1983, and so both recorded and toured extensively with main man Lee Brilleaux. Guitarist extraordinaire Steve Walwyn has been with the band since 1989; and even relative ‘newbie’, vocalist and harp player Robert Kane has fronted the Feelgoods for over 20 years, celebrating his 1000th Dr. Feelgood gig as long ago as 2007.
So let’s have none of that ridiculous sniffiness. As George Michael once said, ‘listen without prejudice’ (though admittedly that didn’t turn out well).
First though, a bit of a larff.
John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett first entered my flat by stealth when in 1977 Polydor Records sent me a copy of a single called “Really Free”. Like many record labels they were desperately casting around for ‘punk’ acts to sign in ’76/77 and picked this lot up from Pete Townsend’s Track Records label as they were basically taking what amounted to a scattergun approach but amongst the dreck this decidedly odd little single stood out. We gave it some plays, radio picked up on it and within what seemed like five minutes the duo were ‘On Top Of The Pops’ in time-honoured fashion and it became a ‘proper’ top 40 hit in the days when that meant Selling Stuff. The only problem being that as far as his musical partner is concerned, John Otway is a Complete Prat. A most unlikely ‘pop star’, he took the fast route back to obscurity by winning an international gurning award on Top of the Pops, and famously making a complete ass of himself by unsuccessfully attempting to hurdle a PA stack on BBC 2’s ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ TV show and ending up with his knackers in a splint. It could have been A Lot Worse.
He then proceeded to pay for the rest of his ticket back to nowhere by releasing a full-on, big-production ballad, “Geneve”, which completely stiffed despite the record company spending eye-watering amounts of money on promoting it (and record companies don’t forget that sort of error of judgment in a hurry) and, to further compound spectacular failure, not telling his musical partner WWB that he had neglected to give him a ‘name check’ and it was in effect a solo record for no other reason than that he did SO want to be a ‘proper’ ‘pop star’. Mr. Barrett was on his way to a gig at the time with Mr. Otway when he heard it introduced on the radio. Strangely enough, he didn’t turn up to play the gig that night and the duo had the first of about 27 ‘splits’ thus far.
Back on stage together and both now either 70 or pushing it, on first appearances it is difficult to resist the conclusion that for some strange reason the ghost of author Roald Dahl has dyed his hair black and decided to tour with a grumpy version of half of Chas and Dave. And a Wheelie Bin. More later.
However, be that as it may, we are treated to a spirited gallop through ‘Louisa on a Horse”, their second single, sort of accompanied by a scraping, raking fiddle contribution by Barrett. This is followed by ‘The Hit’, which they make a monument out of, informing the assembled ‘this is as good as it gets – the bar is over there!’ and stopping part way through in order to drag five minutes out of the thing. By which time, half the audience are in hysterics and the other half are wide-mouthed and not necessarily in admiration.
“Beware of the Flowers” features Barrett on Wheelie Bin. When he wishes to make a contribution to proceedings he opens a brown wheelie bin which is strategically placed by his side which contains an FX machine from which emanates ‘rock guitar’ noises and other things, brilliantly timed with deceptively well-rehearsed comedy in the opening and closing of the bin (no, really! Very funny indeed. I will take the recyc out with some trepidation after this.)
They then make a spirited but ill-judged attempt to pay tribute to Rolf Harris’s “Two Little Boys”. I always thought seeing as Rolf had done a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, Robert Plant and his mates might have at least returned the compliment by having a shot at said tune, but no. It is left to Otway and Barrett to right a historical wrong. Which isn’t a good thing, necessarily…
Otway then explains the reasons for the 27th split being Barrett’s refusal to play encores so the audience are encouraged to go for the compromise which is that they’d stay onstage whilst the audience make a whole load of noise and then they’d do “Geneve” as a ‘not’ encore. During which shenanigans Barrett takes a tenon saw and tries to cut the acoustic he’s playing in half (whilst playing it), then assaulting it with a hammer before stomping all over it for no apparent reason. Then and once again inexplicably a set of bagpipes disguised as Bagpuss come into play. Otway then sweeps off like the ‘star’ he ‘is’ and Barrett is left onstage to offer the mangled cheapo acoustic, which cost him £30, to the first member of the audience to stump up £33 (inc artistic ‘tax’) as a charitable donation at the merch. Ermm…….I was only massively entertained. Never left a show which has Otway in it anything other than grinning like an idiot. And this was no exception. Folk meets pop meets rock meets country, somewhere around the crossroads marked English Eccentricity.
But let us not delay too long here as this is all about the Feelgoods. On the band march at the allotted time, to a Friday night ‘full house’ welcome and straight away you can see they’ve clocked this could be Very Good Indeed. There is already a sense that we’re Having It.
We start with a whole bunch of ‘oldies’; “Drives Me Wild” as a ‘sighter’ whilst they bring Robert Kane’s mike forward a bit in the mix, “No Mo Do Yakomo”, I Can Tell” where Steve Walwyn lets that flamethrower Telecaster loose for the first time tonight, “Been Down So Long” and “Down by the Jetty” which once again reminds the assembled what a wealth of great R and B songs this band have in their locker which very rarely troubled the UK singles chart (but goodness me, they shifted some albums).
The next segment of the evening’s proceedings features Steve Walwyn on slide guitar with some great blues vocals and harp stabs by Robert Kane. This guy is a great rock singer by any measure but can he sing the blues….it is no surprise he was with The Animals 2 before he joined the Feelgoods. Anyone who at any point found himself in Eric Burdon’s shoes is, we can perhaps agree, none too dusty, but the band reel off a vinegar version of Elmore James “Dust my Broom”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin” and of course whilst you’ve got the correct weapon to hand, “Back In The Night”, their mid-seventies jukebox shaker which introduced a whole bunch of Brit rock fans to the Joy of Slide, if Rory Gallagher hadn’t already done so.
This, then, is the first of the ‘juke box hits’ section of the show as we gallop in rapid sequence through a jumping, pulsating “Roxette”, taking a few minutes out for a slow blues band showcase in “Shotgun Blues” where all the band members show what they can do. Steve Walwyn makes a claim to be the best guitarist Dr Feelgood ever had (and not only the longest-serving) at this point (controversial, I know; when you’re talking Gypie Mayo and Wilko Johnson as the primary contenders) and Phil Mitchell’s rumbling, sinuous bass is absolutely killer here, and then we’re off to shake that jukebox again as we blast through a rabble-rousing if slightly misfiring version of “Milk and Alcohol”, and a spirited rip through the thoroughly ‘wired’ “She’s A Wind Up” followed by the sharp, ‘all elbows and knees’ jerkiness of “She Does It Right”.
Everything they do has that precision of the heavily-gigged professional rock act. This is no occasional run out, or a 20-date travelling circus. This is what they do and what this band has done, in venues of this size and bigger and smaller, since 1971. That’s nearly 50 years. And I shudder to think how many gigs the band has done in that time.
After that and in a perfectly-judged set there’s a mélange of what should have been a massive radio drivetime hit “Going Back Home”, “Down At The Doctors” (Got to number 48 on the UK singles chart…….hellowwww…..!) “Gimme One More Shot” and they’re off.
And of course they’re not going to get off that lightly. We do indeed get one more shot and it’s a spectacularly dense and intense “Mad Man Blues” followed by the flip side of Roxette back in 1974, the ultimate encore machine, “Route 66” and then they ARE gone.
Never mind all the sniping about who’s who. These lads are rapidly becoming a national treasure in a world of phonies and one-trick-ponies. From the greasy sleaze of the ‘sneaking out the back door with a grin’ stories to the workaday, careworn, bluesy lyrics, from the red hot and rocking juke-box smashes to the smouldering, powerful blues workouts, this is the way to celebrate the end of the working week alright. Need a shot of Rhythm and Blues? Go see the Doctor. He might be considering retiring. Or he might, in some incarnation, just go on for another hundred years. Because Dr. Feelgood is a sort of collective; a sort of ‘idea’, born largely out of the energy and vision and drive of one Lee Brilleaux. But despite the fact that Lee isn’t around to see how well his insistence the band carried on after his death worked out……why stop now?
Postscript: And in the pub across from the venue afterwards, the esteemed and venerable Nook, we fell across the lucky man who is now the proud possessor of a sawn – off acoustic guitar. They didn’t event throw in the tenon saw for his £33.
Reckons it is going straight on e Bay.
