Saturday 4 April - ding ding, seconds away, round two. We are really breaking the mould here by paying real English pounds to watch a tribute act. The Duchess are not keen on putting on tributes, unless they are really, really good, so we were putting our trust in Tim and Michelle to provide quality entertainment tonight.
Support was ably provided by the lovely Angela Gordon, the dark half of Odin Dragonfly. Accompanying herself on keyboards, glass of red wine, and an alarm clock(!?!) she reeled off a triptych of tunes from Offerings, some stuff I'd not heard before, a song which I think was called Pirates, about two lady buccaneers on the high seas - I suspect this is a semi-biographical allegory about her and Heather (Findlay), and finishing with a cover of a Duke Special, aka Peter Wilson, song (sorry I can't remember which one). Angela has a fantastic voice and it was a true delight to see her performing again.
There wasn't much of a wait before the main act of the evening, The Hounds of Love Band, who are, not surprisingly, a Kate Bush tribute band, took to the stage. I'm not sure where most of the band come from (Sam Leggett - Drums, Richard Luck - Keyboards, Glen Smith - Guitar, Martin Luklinski - Guitar, and Simon Horn - Bass), but vocalist Josie Mills is a local lass from York so this was a bit of a home-coming for her. There are a couple of elements that were going to make or break this performance; getting the music right, and getting the vocals right. KBs music is idiosyncratic and very well known, so no mistakes would be brooked here. And if Josie failed to match the soaring and distinctive vocals things could get bleak. Happily they scored on both points. The musicians were spot on and recreated the tunes perfectly whilst also embedding solo spots that enabled them to showcase their talents to the fullest extent. Josie, who reminded me of Kylie Minogue in her looks, matched Kate's vocals and also appeared to have a huge amount of fun during her performance.
The set was a Kate Bush 'greatest hits' sampling tracks from nearly all her eight studio albums and spanning the 30 years (so far) of her career. They started with: Wow, Cloudbusting, Them Heavy People, Babooshka, The Big Sky, The Man With The Child In His Eyes, and Army Dreamers. The band then exited stage rear leaving Richard on keyboards and Josie to sing Mrs Bartolozzi, from disc 1 of Aerial, how many songs do you know about washing machines! The rest of the band returned for: Running Up That Hill, And So Is Love, Hounds Of love, James And The Cold Gun, The Red Shoes, Moving, and Rubberband Girl. The band took a bow and left, but we all knew they would be back, there was no way they could have got away without playing Kate's biggest hit. And so to the encore, the delicate And Dream Of Sheep followed by the classic, Wuthering Heights. An utterly superb performance and highly recommended to everyone.
As per usual, after the gig we ended up at The Roman Bath for the closing few numbers from heavier-than-yer-average-covers-band, Stealer.
Friday 3 April - and the start of a heavily musical weekend. We kicked off at The Duchess tonight for Hijak Oscar's second album launch. I arrived a little later than I'd planned and was greeted by a staggeringly fine sounding noise and a pint of Theakston's XB, courtesy of The Druid. The fine sounding noise was being generated by York four-piece Undergrass who are: Rob Lumby (guitar), Phil Goodrick (vocals), Dave Chitty (drums), and Danny Lee (bass). As far as I could make out, they played their own material with excellent drum and bass playing, superb guitar work from Rob - including a southern-fried stint on a lap guitar with a slide, and gruff yet still reasonably clear vocals. Phil has a voice somewhere between Chester Bennington and Simon Neil (Biffy Clyro) and boy can he hold a note, fantastic. The songs were well constructed and original sounding and there was ample opportunity for the individuals to show off their musical talents. We were very impressed and afterwards looked around to see if there was an album available, but it appears not at the moment. I will have to keep an eye open for these guys and in the meantime I heartily recommend you to listen to them.
The evening was off to a great start and next on the menu was a band fast becoming a favourite of ours, 98Pages. We caught them a few weeks ago at the launch of their debut album, Broken Homes and the Halfway House. In fact they started off with Halfway House and continued with a good selection of tracks off the album. The album is brilliant, but live they really rock. Another recommended treat for your ears.
Could the evening get any better? Sadly not. We've seen Hijak Oscar on previous occasions going back to 2007. 'A' has never liked their unique brand of vudu-blues, but I've always had a sneaking admiration for them, good songs and tight playing, possibly enhanced by their appearance on Channel 4's MobileAct Unsigned towards the end of 2007 where, in the end, they just walked out of the show. Tonight marked the launch of their second album BlackSheepMoneyBox, but it was a different band. The songs were just a mish-mash, the playing was chaotic, and the vocals were indistinct. Mr Fox insisted on quoting lines from a book of prayers, which no one could hear, and no one was bothered about anyway. There was something about the female singer Gaby Milner that I couldn't quite put my finger on, she just didn't sound right. I found out why later, the singer I remembered was the excellent Emma Keaveney-Roys who apparently left the band sometime in the first half of 2008. So have the wheels actually come off, or was this just a one-off shambles caused by them trying too hard? I don't know. There were copies of their new album on sale but on the strength of this performance I wasn't in the least tempted to part with any cash. A bit disappointing really.
'A' and I rounded off the evening by catching the last half hour of Prime Example at the Roman Bath. It was a pleasant enough way to sup John Smith's but I managed to lose my MP3 player at some stage, which was a bit sad. I have a habit of doing this so I suspect I won't be replacing it unless I can get one chained to my body parts, or maybe a subcutaneous implant... mmm.
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