'Cause I'm as free as a bird now/And this bird you cannot change

Friday 11 July – The Druid and I are in The Roman Bath checking out a band that we’ve not seen before, Scandal. Quite how they’ve slipped under the radar I’m not sure. Their website claims to have been first put up in 2000 and their gallery has pictures dating back until 2005. Anyway, the band play rock/blues covers and consists of: Ian Mann (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ady Ingleby (bass), Alan Hopwood (drums), Jamie Reynolds (lead guitar), and Paul Hopwood at the helm of the light show.

I can’t remember all the covers they did, indeed, there were a good many that I either didn’t know, or only half recognised, but here is a selection that I recall: Lynyrd Skynyrd (Sweet Home Alabama. Freebird), ZZ Top (Gimme All Your Lovin’), Cream (White Room), Hendrix (All Along the Watchtower, Hey Joe, Voodoo Chile), Willie Dixon (Hoochie Koochie Man), Gary Moore (Cold Day in Hell), and stuff by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jeff Healy. You get the idea.

The bass was mixed a bit loud, my internal organs vibrating on the low notes is always a bit of a giveaway! In contrast, the lead guitar could have stood being turned up a notch, but overall it was a strong, solid and professional performance.

In a rare display of helpfulness, a lovely lady provided members of the audience with slips of paper printed with the URL of the band’s website. The same lady also took our picture, to appear on the gallery of said website.

They are definitely a band worth watching. Their forthcoming gig list currently has them appearing at the Speakeasy on 3 October and back at the Bath on 8 November.

Times were good, She never thought about the future, she just did what she would

Friday 4 July – The York music scene is in crisis. Melodramatic? Well maybe. It all started to go wrong 3-4 years when York's premier venue, The Barbican, closed. We were no longer able to host the big names in music and the situation is no better today. Tim Hornsby and Michelle Hodgen at Fibbers kept the flag flying for us, but even they stalled on 13 August 1997, the day before celebrating the tenth anniversary of the York live music bar. Barfly came to the rescue and Tim and Michelle stayed on managing the venue which continued to benefit from their contacts, enthusiasm and uncanny knack of spotting a potential good gig.

In June of this year it seemed as if things were actually going to get a whole lot better. Tim and Michelle had bought the old Stonebow Snooker Club and were planning to open a 500 capacity music venue called The Duchess. The opening was first delayed from mid-June until 3 July, and then, the bombshell. Barfly had retained a top legal team to try and prevent The Duchess from opening. A full enquiry will now be taking place on Thursday 17 July and all the booked gigs are now in jeopardy. Tim has Temporary Event Notices for, I think, Saturday's gig and Friday's sell-out with Shed 7 and Chris Helme. After that? Well it all depends on the outcome of the enquiry. There was a post on the Duchess website to solicit support but even that has now been taken down following receipt of a solicitor's letter.

It might be legal but it seems terribly heavy-handed of Barfly to be acting in this way. There is plenty of room for both venues in the city and I for one would be perfectly happy supporting both venues in the future. I don’t want my choice to be restricted by a big corporation.

The Duchess has a page on FaceBook where you can register as a friend, and you can always email Tim with your support.

So that's what's going on, but what is the venue actually like? A and I were there for the, delayed, opening night on Friday 4 July. Access was via a nondescript door set into the side of the Stonebow building and you we descended into the venue proper. There are two bars. The first is in a quiet-ish, chill out area with tables and chairs and a flat screen showing the stage. Through an arch-way and you enter the main area. Off to the right is another area of chairs and comfy sofas, ahead and to the right are the toilets, straight ahead is the second bar, and ahead and left is the stage. There are also little nooks and crannies with table football and quiz machines. The stage itself looks about the same width as that at Fibbers, maybe a bit deeper. The staff are familiar faces and we received warm welcomes at both bars.

The line-up tonight was a bunch of bands that we'd never heard off. This was a charity gig for Mike J, a bloke that has supported local bands above and beyond the call of duty, producing DVDs and generally just being a solid geezer. A selection of local bands decided to get together as a bit of a "thank you", but Mike wanted all the profits to go to charity. Top bloke.

I arrived just after 8 o'clock and a bit adrift and too late to catch the first band, the Gilligans. Sorry chaps. The second band were Fist Full Of Yen (in reference, I guess, to the film Kentucky Fried Movie which contains a short film spoofing Enter the Dragon which is titled <>A Fistful of Yen, instead of ...Dollars). The band consists of Kirk Barley (bass and vocals), Laurie Caudwell (drums, backing vocals), and Oliver Pitt (guitar), their combined age was probably less that mine. As the front man was the bass player, they had a very bass-led sound. The songs seemed at first to be broken and disharmonious, a bit like Philip Glass plays indie. As I listened harder they were actually using an incredible number of time signature changes and were a pop version of Mastodon or Porcupine Tree. Not my tea of Yorkshire tea, but I could certainly appreciate their musical skills.

By this time A had acquired a set of ear defenders, it certainly was loud, but then we were quite close to the stage. Next up were Dinosaur Pile-up billed as the lo-fi indie pop project of Matt Bigland from Leeds who plays lead guitar and sings. Drum and bass were provided by either 2 Toms or a Tom and Steve. I'm not sure which. Sorry guys. Vocally, Matt sounds like Caleb Followill of The Kings Of Leon. Musically the band have a Nirvana grungy sound. I liked these.

The last band were Hot Recruit who consist of Luke Beddows (vocals), Alec Wright (bass), Dave Rax (drums), and Tom Warden (guitar). I think that Luke had brought his own little fan club with him as there was a little knot of 4-5 guys, arms around each other's shoulders, jumping up and down and singing along. After a couple of songs the power to the stage died. The bars and some other areas remained lit so I assume it was a fuse-type problem. After about 5-10 minutes power was restored and the band played on. Like so many indie bands, they played like The Jam on speed although I have to confess that they managed to incorporate some terrace-chant choruses that most of the crowd seemed know.

Overall I was extremely impressed by the venue itself. The evening was great value, £4 entrance fee and there was at least one band that I would certainly like to see again.

On leaving The Duchess we stopped off at the Old White Swan where a band had been playing, not sure who, but they were just packing away so we continued on our travels and stopped off for a final beer at The Roman Bath. I couldn't make out who had been playing and we only caught half of their final song. We were both a bit down about the whole Duchess scenario. Oh well, roll on the enquiry and I really hope that it's good news for Tim and Michelle.

And this bird you cannot change/Lord knows, I can’t change

Friday 27 June – A trip to The Roman Bath tonight to watch a band that we’ve not seen before, Stealer, a classic rock covers band. They had just started by the time I arrived and were already into Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town. The band played a solid set of covers in a workman-like manner. Bassist Andy Gooby, bass and lead guitar) sometimes swapping guitar duty with Mick (Sawyer, vocals, rhythm guitar and sometimes bass) to double up lead guitars with Nick (West, lead guitar). Meanwhile, in the background, excellent drumming from Tivvy who managed to resemble Mike Aston from Time Team, with his huge shock of wiry white hair.

The band also form the core of a Lynard Skynyrd tribute band, Ayn't Skynyrd, along with a face that I’ve not seen for a while, Rich Tull, ex-Hazzard County and currently playing with The Naked Flames. The Lynard connections were in evidence as their final two songs were Sweet Home Albama and Free Bird, the latter causing a spontaneous outbreak of dad-dancing in the audience. Well worth watching.

You wanna have peace, gotta love one another

Wednesday 25 June – Yes I know it’s a school night, but three of us are out at what is probably one of the biggest gigs I ever seen at Fibbers, Black Stone Cherry (and on MyFace). A first for me was actually having to queue up outside. Quite why they didn’t just let people in as they arrived I’m not sure. Anyway, it led to an evitable crush at the bar. Luckily the other guys were in front of me and had secured a prime position. Tonight was a capacity crowd and a real mixed bag of people. For once I wasn’t the oldest bloke there, there were some oldies, some middle-aged folk and few youngsters. The other major division was with hair. About half the audience had short or no hair, half had big barnets, and there was even a sprinkling of Mohawks. There were also a fair few woman in attendance, some with their chaps and some in groups.

Support came from the Sons Of Albion, a five piece from London consisting of Nuno Miguel (guitars) and Francisco De Sousa (drums) both from Portugal, Richard Fulgoni (bass, backing vocals), Barnaby Dick (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), and Logan Plant (vocals). To be honest, the crowd were there for BSC and the Sons didn’t really stand much of a chance. Basically a hardcore rock band with a bit of electronica in the background, the vocals sounded a bit flat in the higher register and the lead guitar was mixed down and muddy sounding, so pretty indistinct.

We had a half hour interval whilst final checks for BSC were being carried out and as the time approached for them to take to the stage we supped up and headed further down into the crowd. BSC came on to stadium-sized roar from the crowd and immediately launched into Rain Wizard from their eponymous self-titled album. On the CD they sound like a cross between The Answer and Nickleback with a bit of Slash-style guitar soloing, live they have the energy and power of Rage Against The Machine or the heaviest of Black Sabbath, this was a real Southern-Fried Grunge Metal fest. There was some serious head-banging on stage with hair flailing in all directions. The band proceeded to play pretty much their entire first album: Backwoods Gold, Lonely Train, Maybe Someday, When The Weight Comes Down, Crosstown Woman, Hell And High Water, Violator Girl, Tired of the Rain, Drive and Rollin On. We were also treated to some tracks off their forthcoming Folklore and Superstition album: the first single to be taken from the album Blind Man, and apparently played live for the first time, Reverend Wrinkle. Drummer John Fred Young was constantly drumming whilst standing up and the band had a great time bantering with the audience. The sound, although grungy in nature, was mixed to perfection with crystal clear vocals and crisp, sharp guitar solos and bass lines.

The highlight of the evening for me was the final piece in a jigsaw started on the previous Friday when we had watched the awesome guitar talents of Chantel McGregor. One of her scheduled encore songs was to be Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, but she ran out of time. Tonight, BSC gave us their take on Voodoo Chile with the three guitarists playing with their axes behind their heads. Probably the best gig I’ve seen this year

Sweet Jesus I’m on fire. She has the sweetest darkest side.

Friday 20 June – and tonight we are taking a chance on going to watch a band at The Roman Bath that we’ve never seen before, the Chantel McGregor Band (and on MyFace). We figured that if they were no good we could always pop down the road to The Terrace and watch a covers band.

I was running a bit late and the other guys were already there. The Druid was standing with his mouth open as Chantel had just finished a sound check that had left him speechless. And that was pretty much how the evening unfolded, as we all stood agog at this diminutive slip of a lass from Bradford who proceeded to rattle through some of the amazing guitar work that I’ve ever heard.

The band itself consists of: Martin Rushworth (drums), Jonathan Clapham (bass), and Chantel McGregor (vocals and guitar). Chantel herself is just twenty-one and already qualified at grade eight and the holder of the prize for outstanding musicianship at the Leeds College of Music for 2006/2007. I simply don’t posses the vocabulary to express the talents of this pint-sized prodigy, you’ll just have to go and hear her for yourself. However, I did get the set list from the gig which I reproduce here to show the type of music that the band play so brilliantly. One Of These Days Ten Years After (in the style of Joe Bonamassa), White Room Cream, Up In The Sky Joe Satriani, Stormy Monday T-Bone Walker (in the style of Eric Calpton), Help Me Joni Mitchell, Daydream Robin Trower, All Along The Watchtower Bob Dylan (in the style of Hendrix), Gold Dust Woman Fleetwood Mac, Had To Cry Today Blind Faith, Tea For 1 Led Zepplin (in the style of Joe Bonamassa), Purple Haze Jimi Hendrix, Red House Jimi Hendrix, For The Love Of God Steve Vai, New Day Yesterday Jethro Tull (in the style of Joe Bonamassa), and Mountain Time Joe Bonamassa.

Check out her website for forthcoming gigs. She’s back in The Roman Bath at York on 6 September 2008 and so will I.

Oh my god what have I done. It’s silent without you

Thursday 19 June – What’s on my CD Player, player, player...

I’m drowning in new music at the moment, 2008 is proving to be a rich vein of musical talent and that is no bad thing at all. My latest two purchases share the distinction of being very well crafted packages from established bands that showcases the amount of love and commitment that each band has made to their creations. These are not just products, they are, the M&S of products. Enough of the waffle already…

Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

First up is Elbow’s new album, their fourth to date, The Seldom Seen Kid. The great thing about Elbow is that you know that on the first listen, all the tracks will sound the same. It’s only as you play the album over and over, that the swarms of unrelated sounds gradually coalesce into recognizable melodies, vocals, etc. The lyrics are personal, meaningful and compact. Phrases are only repeated to build tension and release, and there isn’t much that you could actually call a chorus or a verse. This is more like poetry set to a sonic background. The package itself has a wonderful booklet containing the lyrics alongside artwork by rail enthusiast Oliver East. For the first time the band have done everything themselves, recording, mixing and producing. The album is mastered using a dynamic system that makes it sound too quiet, in fact you are advised to TurnMeUp to experience the fullness of the sound (I turn everything up to 11 anyway).

1. Starlings starts The Seldom Seen Kid with a clockwork, gentle wash of background noise, somewhat similar to Genesis’ Carpetcrawlers before being punctuated by, seemly random, bursts of short-lived orchestral chords. Great waves of sound surround Guy Garvey as he begins to sing “so yes I guess I’m asking you / to back a horse that’s good for glue / if nothing else”.

2. The Bones Of You is one of the emotional high-points of the album, with a soaring, infectious chorus “five years ago and three-thousand miles away”. We are borne along on waves of flamenco riffs. As the track fades, you can faintly make out the strains of Gershwin’s Summertime, and pedestrians can be heard walking passed the studio.

3. There are gorgeous touches of piano through Mirrorball that gradually transform into lush stringed sections.

4. If you’re after monstrous guitar riff and bass runs, check out the middle of Grounds for Divorce. Done with a kind of country-style, with plenty of big whoa, whoa, whoas, pedal steel guitars, and handclaps.

5. I found An Audience With The Pope slightly plodding but with an interesting, Chinese sounding intro.

6. If I had to pick perfection from perfection it would have to be Weather To Fly. Starting with high-pitched vocals over piano, it drifts into beautiful lyrics, touched with Sigur Ros styled horns, the melody looping round and around, with Peter Gabriel-esque vocals.

7. The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver (I kid you not) has drum-beats striding in huge boots all over it. In the middle is a quiet section before the whole thing builds up into a gigantic industrial rhythm.

8. Elbow are nothing if not different, but The Fix is different even for them. Co-written by and featuring on guitar and vocals the Sheffield troubadour Richard Hawley, this track tells the story of a horse race fix. The sordid tale is unfurled along a furtive bass line and some sneaky brushing on snare drums.

9. Some Riot comes in with a Pink Floyd-ian start over Craig Potter’s keyboards. There are no drums at all. Guy Garvey is almost reciting the lyrics. Ethereal.

10. A passionate celebration comes with One day Like This. Lots of strings. A soaring chorus. A choir sings “so throw those curtains wide”. This is a happy clappy anthem in the style of Sgt Pepper. “Holy cow I love your eyes.”

11. The final track proper is Friend Of Ours, written, I suspect, in memory of “Bryan” who died two years ago and to whom the entire album is dedicated. Starting with acoustic guitar, the track gradually eases in a plaintiff piano and the lightest of brushing on the snares. Guy’s vocals are gentle, cracking with emotion. Later we get the string and brass and even electric guitar, but this is terribly subdued stuff. Heart-rending music.

12. And finally, the bonus track, We’re Away. A crooner’s song, I can imagine Guy on stage, in a suit, singing into a bulbous microphone like some high pitched Frank Sinatra.

Very highly recommended.

Feeder – Silent cry

Offering number two is Feeder’s sixth studio album, Silent Cry, gorgeously presented in a stylish black slip box with gold lettering, and artwork by award winning designer / typographer Nils Leonard. Coming two years after a “Best of” and three years after the last original material, fans have waiting a long time for this. I for one was not disappointed. The current line up has been together for six out of the band’s sixteen year life-time, and they have honed their own distinctive sound as well as pushing out fresh ideas on this album. Like Guy (of Elbow) Grant Nicholas has also kicked the big name producers into touch and taken over most of the recording for himself. Now, I’m not sure if it’s just me but on some of these tracks Grant’s vocals have a vibrato that puts me in mind of Martin Rossiter (singer with Gene back in the ‘90s), now that is one beautiful voice. If you’re a Feeder fan, you know what they sound like so here are just the icings on the cake. If you’re not a fan, shame on you, buy this album at once!

1. The album kicks off with their single, We Are The People, standard Feeder-fare in the style of Comfort In Sound, except a good bit heavier, as indeed the whole album is.

2. Itsumo kicks bottom with some serious Placebo inspired guitar and drumming work.

3. Miss You would, in the hands of any other band, be a hardcore wall of noise, but Feeder give it the clarity of a rock anthem with a catchy hectic riff,

4. Tracing Lines starts life as a Strokes’ track before unveiling an Oasis-like chorus, some serious indie-rock playing and a tidy guitar solo.

5. The title track, Silent Cry, was the first track on which I noticed the “Rossiter effect”. The song itself starts dark and emotive and develops into a rampant rock-beast by the second chorus.

6. Fires, I love this track. I can just imagine the crowd, lighters aloft singing along to the hypnotic, lines "she lights the fire, she lights the fire."

7. Heads Held High, starts like an acoustic Foo Fighters track, then explodes into glorious anthemic choruses.

8. A fuzzy ‘kazoo’ sound (keyboards I guess) kicks off 8:18, which alternates wildly: Quiet – Loud – Quiet – Loud - Middle 8 – Quiet – Loud.

9. On Who’s The Enemy I can hear that Rossiter vibrato again in Grant’s vocals. There is a fantastic, pompous Muse-like guitar/string section in the middle, "Running away, losing our way, we're fighting with ourselves but who's the enemy?"

10. Space, is just a little musical interlude before…

11. Into The Blue, takes us off to stylish, sexy, garage rock.

12. Guided By A Voice, features lots of ooh, ooh, oohs over white noise.

13. Sonorous, has that Muse thing going again, sort of Black Holes And Revelations. The sound is a bit Richard Ashcroft and a bit Rossiter. This track is another of the album highlights.

14. Yeah Yeah, the first bonus track, pretty standard Feeder stuff

15. Every Minute, This reminds me of a Kings Of Leon track, but I can’t quite put my finger on which one.

The tears of the world keep falling/Until we stand together

Friday 13 June – no live music this weekend, so you’ll have to put up with me drivelling on about something else instead.

So, Uriah Heep, that’ll be some crusty old band from the seventies then. New album produced by Mike Paxman, the man that guided Judie Tzuke’s career? Hardly a credible advert for a British prog band. But let’s not judge a book by its cover. Wake the Sleeper is the Heep’s 21st studio album and for me, symbolically, is the key of the door to the prog-rock mansion.

Their first studio album for almost ten years, this is a true return to the form of 1982’s Abominog. The replacement of Lee ‘The Bear’ Kerslake by masterclass stick wielder Russell Gilbrook makes a pleasing enhancement to the Heep’s bottom end sound, while Trevor Bolder (he of The Spiders From Mars) takes over on bass.

This is exceptionally good music played by exceptionally good musicians, exemplified by the Bolder-penned Angels Walk With You with it’s incredible mid-riff crisis between the guitar of Box and the keyboards of Lanzon. Even now I have the chorus of Overload zipping around in my head. There isn’t a duff track on this album and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Ya boo sucks. I’ve got tickets to see Black Stone Cherry at Fibbers on Wednesday 25 June. So I thought that I’d better get someone to buy me their album. Thank you Father’s Day. I knew they would be good, but their eponymous studio album is absolutely top notch. A bit like The Answer or Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Slash-style middle-eight riffs thrown in for good measure. BSC have the knack of making individual and original tracks that somehow retain the band’s essential sound. Outstanding tracks are: Rain Wizard, Lonely Train, Hell and High Water, and their cover of The Yardbird’s Shapes of Things. BSC are currently touring with Def Leppard and Whitesnake and are due to release a new album, Folklore and Superstition, in August this year so I’m guessing that they will be showcasing new material. As you might have guessed, I’m really looking forward to this gig.