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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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Dave Kelly |
THE
BLUES BAND
The 100 Club, London
November 23rd 2007
They’ve
put the seats out at the 100 Club, apparently
for the Senior Citizens, amongst whom either the
Photographer or I must number, given the way that
some nice young men stand up to offer us their
places. OAPs they may be, but they’re certainly
putting their bladders to a means test given the
number of pints of London Pride that are being
sunk. What with the old-fashioned (and very uncomfortable)
chairs and the booze, it seems like a rather alcoholic
school assembly. All we need are the teachers
– and, masquerading as a blues
band, here they are! |
| There’s
the chemistry master and slide guitar maestro Dave
Kelly (brother of the late Jo-Ann Kelly), Gary
Fletcher (Games and French, and upside down
bass guitar), woodwork and metalwork teacher, and
drummer, Rob Townsend, classics master and rhythm
and lead guitarist Tom McGuinness, and of course
the smartly-dressed Deputy Head Master, Paul Jones. |
You
may remember many of these names, but Mr Jones is
possibly the most famous – ex-Manfred Mann
vocalist, actor, broadcaster and harmonica player.
And he leads the very receptive class in a most
scholarly fashion – kicking off with a short
and very learned seminar on Charley Patton –
it actually gets a little wearing after not too
long. Every song has an introduction; some of the
anecdotes are engaging, like McGuinness’s
story about Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Cruddup's
rat-gnawed stage suit, but the rather patronising
lectures begin to sound like preaching (did I mention
that Mr Jones is a ‘new born’ Christian
who evangelises with his wife?) if not hectoring.
It’s almost as if he’s forgotten he’s
on the stage and thinks he’s back on
the radio. It all gets too much for one wag
at the back of the class. “Sir, please Sir,
get on with it” he shouts. “No, this
is it, this is it!” replies the Deputy Head,
with a messianic fervour worthy of a Fifth Monarchy
Man awaiting the dawn of a new age.
But despite these occasional millennial excesses
I have to say that the Staff Room put up a pretty
good show. The set was divided into two halves,
the first largely acoustic, the second electric
and as a rocking as a gang of old pedagogues can
be. Dave Kelly plays his slide guitar like a dream,
and has a much better blues singing voice than I
remember. Fletcher’s left-handed upside-down
bass playing (how does he do that?) is bewilderingly
good, and he also has a shot at a couple of his
own upside-down acoustic numbers too, including
‘Payback’ from his solo album Human
Spirit. |
Paul Jones (top)
Rob Townsend |
| McGuinness
doubles up on guitar and mandolin (that trademark
sound from his number one McGuinness Flint hit ‘When
I’m dead and gone’) and managed some
tasty old blues licks on his Stratocaster in the
second half, although I can’t help thinking
he’d have been better off playing something
with a bigger sound. And as for the Deputy Head,
well of course he can sing, and write (but his rather
self-consciously maudlin ‘Sonny Boy’
would frankly have been better without the lyrics),
and he can certainly talk for England, but his harmonica
playing at times was top of the class, with some
really intricate work on the high notes. Have I
missed anyone off the register? Hang on, what about
Mr Chippy, the woodworking drummer? Well, if ever
a band was over-serviced in the drumming department
this was it, and I’m not sure that they really
deserve the atomic-clock timing of ex-Family sticks
man Rob Townsend, or his occasional and witty fills.
Superb stuff at the back. |
|
Now,
what did they play? Do you really want to know?
Well let’s start with tune number one, ‘Moon
goes down’. Not many people know that Charley
Patton was born a veteran blues man in 1891 (or
was it 1887?) in Edwards (or was it Bolton? - scholars
disagree on that like so many disputed points) Mississippi,
sometime in the 1890s, or possibly the late1880s
in a small forgotten town that would forever be
remembered as the home of the most influential …
- Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate) |
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