Johnny ScrollerNow listen up, because I’m only gonna say this once; well, this year anyway. You have one, and only one, chance to witness the musical phenomenon that is Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes live in the UK this year. Sorry to anyone living outside the home counties, but this one’s in London, at The Forum on Thursday June 22. Now, go on, ask me why you would want to see (and hear) Mr John Lyon and his soulful/bluesy/funky/rockin’ rebels? It’s easy; they are dynamite live, with years of experience behind them, and a lot more in front of them. But why are they so good? Well, it all dates back to the Jersey shore in the early seventies. If you’ve read Springsteen’s excellent autobiography, you might have noticed the name Southside Johnny crop up once or twice.

They played in the same bars on the Jersey shore and they learned the same lessons. You had to be good and you had to work hard; five sets a night wasn’t uncommon. It’s a philosophy Bruce, Johnny and Steven Van Zandt (Little Steven or Miami Steve) share; get the best musicians you can and work them hard every night. If you don’t, then good musicians get bored and fractious. So the E Street Band and The Jukes play long sets where the written setlist point roughly in the direction of the actual set. Both singers like to throw the band curve balls to make sure the attention doesn’t start to drift; Bruce picks requests from placards in the crowd and Johnny calls the tune that he thinks continues the journey best. With a huge back catalogue of great songs written by Springsteen, Little Steven and Johnny himself (along with keyboard player Jeff Kazee) and the odd cover, the band never plays the same set twice. You might get lucky on the night and hear an a cappella version of “Walk Away Renee” (or at least part of it) that will stop you in your tracks, or you might hear a horn solo suddenly morph into full-blown New Orleans jazz. You might hear bass player John Conte sing “Tutti Frutti”; you just never know.

And that’s why Southside Johnny still has a fanatical following in the UK; you go to a Jukes show with only two expectations; you’ll be entertained by great musicians and you won’t know what’s coming next. And those expectations will be met, and surpassed, every time. It’s real songs, real instruments, no autotune, no sneaky recorded fill-ins or ‘vocal reinforcement’; it’s for real. You can find out just how good they are at The Forum on June 22. See you down at the front.

And, in a bit of breaking news, Southside’s new vinyl EP “Live from E Street” made the Billboard Blues Album Chart last week at #10.

Steve’s been writing for us on an occasional basis for a couple of years now and his work is always worth reading. With this feature, the only stipulation we make is that the list is five items long (and we don’t always get that). Otherwise you can say whatever you like as long as the lawyers approve it. We all love going to gigs and we see a lot of live music and that’s great; we see things that we love. The downside is that the more gigs you go to, the more you see of the things that aren’t quite right. Here are some of those from Mr Jenner’s experience this year:

1) Beer – a tale of five lagers.

lager-lager-lagerNow, when I go out to see a band, I like a beer. To be honest I like a beer when I don’t go out to see a band as well which is why I also have problems with 4. But for the sake of the good Lord, why, why oh why do some venues insist on dishing up five – count them – five – draught lagers AND NO BITTER? WHY?? Take the O2 Indigo as exhibit A. Gorgeous venue. Excellent sight lines, marvellous acoustics, washroom facilities you could picnic in – and NO BITTER! My most recent visit there was to see Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul and what a breathtaking gig that was. But it also happened to coincide with the night when the Guinness was ‘off’. (What does that even mean? It was past sell-by? It was giving off a sulphurous odour? WHAT?) And so we were offered a wide range of near – identical fizzy light brown chemical substances which could loosely be described as ‘lager’ (and don’t even try to tell me British Bud isn’t ‘lager’). I wasn’t expecting an array of twelve real ales and a couple of nice porters, but – not even John Smith’s, the last refuge of the scoundrel? Bah and humbug.

2) Music Before The Event.

mixtape11Music selection before the band comes on can be a very mixed bag. This seems to vary between ‘let the roadies pick it, we couldn’t care less’, or ‘let’s put the support band’s album on, we couldn’t care less’ through to ‘I’m the bass player and I’m going to treat you to a selection from the very darkest corners of my record collection – a variety of tracks so obscure you’ll only just recognise them as ‘music’, and that means I’ve won….’ I feel pre – gig music choice is deceptively important. It sets the mood and tone and can almost be seen as a statement of intent. Try not to do any of the above. Might I suggest a suitable pre-set approach might be along the lines of; ‘these are the songs written by others that we wish we’d recorded, played by other artists we admire’. That’d do it, generally speaking. Special mention to Brian Wilson at Brighton who seemed somehow to have managed to persuade the ghost of the James Last Orchestra (ask your grandma) to record a medley of his greatest hits. Strangely mesmeric and it worked!

3) Support Band PA.

mixing-deskIt’s the oldest trick in the Guinness book of gig skulduggery – get your sound engineer to torpedo the mix for the support act. Sure helps you look even better when you come on. But really; do headline bands STILL need to be doing this to the poor souls who have ventured forth to warm up the crowd for them to entertain? We went to see Jools Holland at Ipswich Regent recently. The sound for the support band was so poor that even if my life depended on it I couldn’t tell you the name of the band or indeed the title of any of their songs. OK, maybe it was the band’s own fault, maybe it was nothing to do with the main act’s PA crew. But it still often is, and come on guys, we’re better than this. Especially when the support band has been hand-picked by the headliners because they think they’ve got something. There’s no kindness or even particular advantage in handing over a poisoned chalice. And why headliners keep referring to the poor dears as ‘Special Guests’ whilst abusing them thus is a bit of a laugh. If you were a guest in anyone’s house and they treated you like that you’d be on Facebook like a shot and don’t try to tell me otherwise.

4) Slim Seats (Is Not A Slide Guitar Player).

venue-seatingI’m sitting on my chair at the rather lovely MEN Arena. As big venues go, it is not a bad watch and very user friendly to get in and out of. If only the same could be said of the chairs. They seem to use this system where the ‘temporary’ seating in the auditorium kind of clips together in a very intimate way; and the chairs are slightly smaller than Ryanair to start with, and they are by no means alone in this. And, as luck would have it, a similarly ‘bonny’ bloke appears to be the tenant of seat K27, the seat which is cheek – literally – by jowl with The Author. Flopping down adjacent to me, spilling one of five types of homogenous lager on my arm and presenting profuse apologies through a mouthful of stadium dog, I’m already feeling my sixty – odd – quid entertainment experience is being compromised. Ken Dodd better be pretty damn good now.

5) (Ain’t Got Nothin’ But) The Ladybog Blues (Again Mama).

ladybogsVenues, promoters and bands themselves often bemoan the relative lack of female punters and offer various socio – politico – entertaino(?)- reasons for this. The truth is much simpler. There are not enough bogs for women. It is not rocket science. As a bloke you cruise past, cheerfully unzipping before you so much as reach the door, whilst the queue for the ladybogs has already lit a campfire and are preparing a bivouac for the night. And it’s not even a good chortle for the average bloke; they’re tricky blighters, these women. I know. I’ve been kept by one as a sort of house pet for the last forty years or so. As a token bloke, they hold you personally responsible for all life’s discomforts and they take it out on you as a representative of the foul brood who have brought them to this ignominy. Please, ye great and ye good, if you make one resolution this year, it has to be more ladybogs in music venues. And High Five to you, too.