Friday 16 October - Sorry, there was a bit of radio silence last week as I was at a wedding. Anyway, I'm back to normal this weekend as we kick off at Fibbers with, apparently, one of the top ten British blues guitarists of all time (according to Guitar & Bass magazine). Support tonight came from Mark Wynn a York chap who plays in the troubadour tradition, a bit like Bob Dylan or Woody Guthrie. I didn't recognise any of the songs he played/sang, but he sang clearly and strongly, and his playing was excellent. I think he plays around York fairly regularly and I would recommend looking out for him.
There was a rather noisy element to the audience, but these were swiftly drowned out by the headline act, Matt Schofield and his band. Matt was born in 1977 in Manchester but grew up in Fairford in Gloucestershire. These days he is based in Canada and typically performs with an organ trio, a slightly unusual format for a blues band. He is currently touring his 2009 album Head, Tails & Aces with a four-piece featuring Jeff 'The Funk' Walker on bass, and replacing Evan Jenkins with Alain Baudry on drums. The fourth band member is organist Jonny Henderson who plays a Hammond organ, performing bass lines using his left hand, and playing chords and lead lines with his right hand. All very clever stuff. I was a bit sceptically about the whole "top ten best blues guitarist..." blah, blah, but as the set unfolded Schofield did indeed produce some blistering guitar solos the likes of which made my jaw ache as it was dropped open for so long. I didn't pick up much of what he played; there was Betting Man, effectively the title track from Head, Tails & Aces, All You Need, and Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home, a cover of an Albert Collin's track I think. It was an exceptionally good gig and I thoroughly recommend that you try and catch Matt on tour. Researching him afterwards, I noted that he has also co-produced albums of another British blues guitarist that I've seen relatively recently, Ian Siegal. Ian is also gracing the boards at Fibbers, sometime later this year.
As we had an early finish, we sprinted gracefully across town to The Roman Bath to catch the last half hour of The Penetrators. Not the old punk band (actually the first live band I ever saw), but rather a classic rock covers outfit. A four-piece outfit from Hull, The Penetrators consist of Andy Bolder (guitar & vocals), Ian Bolder (guitar & vocals), Haydne Carter (bass guitar & vocals) and Mike Wright (drums). They were playing Genesis' I Can't Dance when we arrived, and our ears were treated to a bit of AC/DC, Whole Lotta Rosie, The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin etc. We've yet to catch a full set by these guys but they sounded pretty darn good to me.
Saturday 17 October - Always on the listen out for something new, Saturday found us in the bowels of The Duchess. Well, me at least. 'A' was attending a call-out from work and was a little late in arriving. In fact he missed the first support band, Idiot Savant. I'm not sure there's a category box for these chaps. It was all a bit Divine Comedy gone completely avant-garde. Art-rock? No idea. It was different, let's just leave it there.
The second support act were We Fell To Earth an electronic rock band from London, of which the main performers are Wendy Rae-Fowler and Richard File. Dave Okumu and Leo Taylor of The Invisible play drums and guitar on the debut album, but I'm not sure if they are part of the touring band. File joined UNKLE after DJ Shadow left and subsequently met up with Fowler whilst working in LA. The UNKLE influence is retained in the work of WFTE, it's millennium-era post-trip-hop with File and Fowler as Tricky and Shirley Manson. The drums are tom heavy and there are stray bleeps and bloops in the spaces between the drums and vocals. It's polite, well-produced music, but a bit too middle-class to be worthy of the label "interesting".
The headliners, on the other hand, were a complete different kettle of kittens. The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo from London, Robertson "Robbie" Furze (vocals, guitar) and Milo Cordell (programming, keyboards, synthesizer, vocals). For the live tour they are joined by other musicians who provide bass, percussion, and backing vocals. I think they also had multi-instrumentalist Daniel O'Sullivan with them, ferreting about in a metal case, pushing buttons and hitting things. I guessing that most of the material they played was from their debut album A Brief History Of Love, released in September 2009. I also understand that they are supporting Muse on tour in November 2009.Their music is a bit like Spiritualized, or Spacemen 3 (I've not heard SM3 so the comparison comes from 'A'), a cross between trance-dance and drone-rock. I remember one track, Count Backwards From Ten, but the others passed me by so I couldn't identify individual tracks. This blissed-out electronica is not normally my cup of Yorkshire but I thoroughly enjoyed this band so that must make them pretty good. I'm also listening to quite a bit of drone-rock at the moment, although I would have put TBP at the fringe of the genre, so I was probably more receptive than I might otherwise have been. This was a great end to a great weekend of music.
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