Saturday 21 July 2007

Put on your dressing gown you won’t be going far…

Thursday is a rare mid-week treat, an outing to Fibbers for the, much anticipated, only northern UK full-band appearance for the rest of 2007 of one of my favourite bands. But hold sir; let us tally first with the support acts. Kicking off we have faces familiar in York, Hijak Oscar, featuring Mr Fox on “Our Monica” and vocals, Emma Keaveney on lead vocals (nice voice Emma!), Carl Hetherington on Keyboards, Honey Love on Bass, Dave Hartley on Drums, and Mad Mark on Lead/Slide guitar. They produce a high-voltage bluesy sound. Catch them again Friday 27 July at Fibs when they are supporting Sevenball and Bosscaine.

Next up was a new band on me, The Debuts, who come from Halifax and Leeds. The band consists of Zandra (Vocals), Jordan (Guitar), Jack (Bass), Sam (Drums), David (Guitar), and frankly, they look as if they are skiving off school (except it’s evening, and half-term, doh!) Despite their youth they play competently, although the vocals are mumbled in a Robert Smith stylee and I can’t hear the lyrics. Although that might be because of my advanced years.

The smokers now started streaming back indoors as we prepared for the main event, Four Day Hombre. We moved down into the middle of the room to optimise viewing and listening. It’s been a big 12 months for FDH, seeing the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Experiments in Living; 3 sell-out UK tours; their first European and Irish tour dates; the release of a mini-album Fight Death and a 22-date national tour with Embrace and Delays, plus a month long Canadian tour and more recently appearances in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. I you like Elbow you’ll love FDH, in fact if you have any musical taste at all you’ll love them. Hailing from Leeds, the band consists of; Simon Wainwright (Vocals, Guitar & Piano), Rich Huxley (Vocals & Guitar), Ed Waring (Keyboards), Jason Miller (Bass), Ash (Drums). They are currently recording material for a new album and we were treated to a couple of new songs and one really old one, but essentially this was Experiments in Living: Live! with each track gloriously strung out, fantastically matured and brilliantly performed. The album is great, but live it is sublime. I particularly loved the bolero that is Single Room and audience favourite Inertia.

Friday and a bit of a dilemma; do we trot, Pavlov’s dog-like, to the Old White Swan, knowing full well that Hazzard County are not playing, or do we steer our feet in the direction of the Roman Bath and a Hull band called Penetrators that play “classic rock and blues from the 60’ to the 00’s”? Well lick my own bottom, here we are at the Old White Swan and it is jammed to the rafters. What the blithering heck is going on? Landlord Tom has bought in fem-fronted covers band Under the Covers (no hyperlink, sorry). The John Smith’s and FOR (Female Orientated Rock) must had had a bewitching effect on us because, despite the crush, we didn’t seem capable of leaving. The mix of covers was quite diverse; Pink, Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, Bryan Adams, Scissor Sisters, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Santana. I thought The Cranberries Zombies was particularly left-field and I really enjoyed that. There was a bit more funk that is generally good for me and seeing blokes dance is always a scary sight. The lead guitarist was extremely good (sorry didn’t catch your name) and the bass guitarist, Helen, was excellent. The lead vocalist had a great voice, but again, I didn’t catch her name.

2 comments:

lucybird said...

Is the title of this blog post a song? If it is do you happen to remember the title and the artist? I heard it a while ago but can't find it anywhere! Thank you for your help :)

Anonymous said...

Hi lucybird. Yes, it is a lyric, it's the first line from a track called "13th of the month" off the album "Experiments in living" by Four Day Hombre who are now playing under the name Hope&Social. I'm not sure that you can get hold of of the album these days but their current music is available from http://music.hopeandsocial.com/ on a pay-what-you-can basis