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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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ALAN PRICE AND HIS BAND
The Bull’s Head, Barnes, London,
April 9th 2009
I’m
not sure if you’ll have heard of the English
comedian Bobby
Thompson, otherwise known as The Little Waster.
In fact, I’m pretty sure most of you won’t
have. |
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Thompson
was born and brought up in County Durham, Wearside,
and throughout his career remained largely unknown
outside the North, and particularly North-East,
of the country. His dry and misogynistic humour
("Wu got off the train at Blackpool, the porter
came up an' asked if 'e could carry me bag. I said
'Na, let 'er walk'.") was formed and fashioned
by the poverty, unemployment and indebtedness that
had historically defined so many working-class lives
in the area (it was, of course, the home of the
famous Jarrow marchers of 1936): "A man come
to oor door. I says come in, tak a seat. He says
'I'm coming in to tak the lot.'". I remember
people taking coaches from Lancaster to see him
perform in the early 1970s, but his
thick accent was as impenetrable to the majority
in the South as the scenes he described, and success
(unlike the Inland Revenue) eluded him. |
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Coincidentally,
singer, organist, musical arranger of the Animals
and composer of note, Alan
Price, was also born in County Durham,
in the village of Fatfield where Thompson was brought
up. And although Price has lived in comfortable
and uber-middle class Barnes on the banks of the
Thames for many decades, his live show in the famous
Bull’s Head (where he plays around once a
month) has more than a echo of a dour and down-to-earth
Thompson show, even if Price’s accent has
been softened and modulated by years in the South. |
Correctly
assessing the average age of his audience at around
sixty, Price begins with a truly sad story having
recently attended the funeral of drummer Reg Isadore
(famed for his work with, amongst others, Robin
Trower), the victim of a massive heart-attack. “You
see”, he said, like a grandfather sharing
a cautionary tale with a group of wide-eyed innocents,
“Reg wouldn’t take his pills. He should
have known better but he wouldn’t take them.
And then he went out for the weekend and –
well, that was it. Heart attack – gone’.
He lingers on the last word, eyes scanning the crowd
like an Ancient Mariner, for the next one to go.
In what follows there’s enough fiscal misery
to delight the Little Waster - pensions advice (the
diminishing value of pension funds being a hot topic
amongst this particular tranche of the population
at the moment), the falling value of savings and
the dangers of romance with younger women (“you
know in the end they’ll take all your money”).
And there are also a few warm reminiscences of some
of the myriad of distinguished people Price has
worked with during his career, most of whom seem
to have been ‘miserable’. |
This
impoverished running commentary almost became tedious
– but it wasn’t enough to detract from
Price’s performance, or that of his excellent
band. Peter Grant was on bass, Martin Wild on drums,
and on guitar and vocals the truly sensational Bobby
Tench, whom I swear I last saw playing with
Streetwalkers in Banbury way back in, well, you
can guess. Together they made a sympathetic and
at times surprisingly rocking background to Price’s
timeless material and some well-chosen covers (including
‘the most miserable song in the world”,
written by “that miserable git” Jackson
Browne “as part of his divorce settlement”).
Most of which was sung by Price in a voice that,
like his sometime partner Georgie Fame, could have
been plucked from three decades ago. In addition
to some Animal highlights, notably ‘Please
don’t let me be misunderstood’ the evening
was stolen by Price’s compositions for the
score of Lindsey Anderson’s (who according
to Price had “a very myopic view of British
society”) Oh Lucky Man. |

Bobby Tench, esq. |
‘Sell
sell’, ‘Changes’, ‘Poor
people’ (dedicated, naturally, to the Royal
Bank of Scotland’s Fred Goodwin), and ‘Oh
lucky man’ are all outstanding examples of
a truly English song-writing aesthetic, even if
the influence of Randy Newman (composer of Price’s
hit ‘Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear’)
looms large on some of them. And of course these
were followed by his ‘Jarrow song’ (“I
remember that people there used to drink tea out
of jam jars”) which celebrated the famous
Jarrow march and was a top five hit in the UK. All
of which, of course, helped Mr Price take up residence
in lovely Barnes. I wonder what the Little Waster
would have said about that? - Nick Morgan (concert
photographs by Kate) |
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