Chris Sharkey (guitar); Andy Champion (bass)
(Review by Steve T)
Being a self-confessed philistine when it comes to piano-less duos and percussion-less bands (sans Gypsy), I'd have likely given this a miss had I known they hadn't managed to raise a drummer for the second of their fortnightly residency. Big mistake.
Last week at the Caff, Alex Munk of Flying Machines cited Sharkey as one of his current guitar heroes, and I'd heard him with ACV Mk 2 and the World Service Project but hadn't quite realised just exactly how fine a guitarist he is.
Song for my Father, renamed Song for my Mother for International Women’s Day, had Sharkey getting loads of notes without ever losing the sense of the melody. The absence of a drummer can isolate a bass solo in particular, but AC is a monster practitioner and some fantastic comping from Sharkey, subtle and un-intrusive, meant it never became boring.
The bass intro could only be Night in Tunisia, and I realised how seldom we hear this Dizzy masterpiece. In contrast, Night and Day is a perennial these days, here taken at a whimsical pace and the interplay between these two old friends belying their telepathy.
Stella by Starlight into the break.
The Caff was comfortably full and lost maybe a table's worth during the interval which isn't half bad for such a free and unpredictable set of difficult music. Andy stayed on upright throughout with Sharkey using a Tele and something a little less solid which, he being a southpaw and to the right of Andy, I couldn't get a good look at.
Something I didn't know, something by Monk, Autumn Leaves and Isotope from Joe Henderson rocking it up and funking it up, both getting some unlikely sounds using different parts and functions of their respective instruments percussively.
In further celebration of Women’s Day, Sharkey proposed a singalong to finish. This won't go well I thought, but it did and grown men and women, myself included, joined in a rousing finale more akin to an imbibed evening with a pop/rock covers band or a local folkey. Ivor Cutler from 1969 and something about women of the world taking over or, in the words of Private Frasier, we're all doomed.
I had a chat with the lovely new barmaid and asked who will make all the weapons and do all the killing when they discover how to keep the population going without men. We agreed they could keep us as pets, lying around like Tomcats.
Steve T.
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