(Review by Lance).
Pop and soul and rock 'n' roll a-plenty with soul being the dominating force from a band that had the floor awash with more gyrating bodies than you'd find at a Dervish convention.
Despite the powerful horn section few, if any, of the brassmen had more than a 4 bar break concentrating instead on providing the easily identifiable ensemble backing to Thornley's cover vocals.
Unusual to see a mellophonium although I remember when Stan Kenton had a whole section of them in the early '60s - hadn't seen one since!
Ian Wynd, depping for Dave McKeague, did a sterling job powering the horns and the vocals along with drive and precision.
Thornley is a good frontman his vocals in step with the originals and his guitar-playing hits just the right groove.
Among the dance floor classics were Any Love; You to me are Everything; Great God in Heaven I Love You; Play That Funky Music; All Night Long; Hold Back the Night; Land of a 1000 Dances; It's Not Unusual; Dancing in the Street; Superstition; Proud Mary; I Will Survive and Living La Vida Loca - not a Cole Porter in sight!
Memories of my misspent youth flashed by as the bodies did the Mashed Potato or was it the Watusi? I also wondered why there are invariably more women than men on the dance-floor? Possibly it's because the men don't have handbags to dance around.
So although it wasn't a jazz night, it was an enjoyable night.
Lance
Ben Thornley (vocals, guitar); Robert McBurnie, Steven Symonds (trumpets); Chris Bentham (trombone); John Philip Rudkin (mellophonium); Phil Rosier (tuba); Ian Wynd (drums).
1 comment :
Another top band - another booty shaking Hoochie Coochie night! I did wonder how many of the booty shakers noticed the brass line up - and thought to themselves 'Goodness me - is that really a mellophonium?" I've always liked shaking about a bit to 'Play That Funky Music' - it was a massive number one hit for Wild Cherry, a fairly pedestrian rock band. And I like the background story to the song - not the fact that it was a bit of a rip off from 'Fire' by the Ohio Players ....... but the one about the band playing a gig in Philadelphia at the start of the disco boom - the crowd was getting restless, and apparently a black guy in the audience shouted out 'Play some funky music, white boys'. The band leader, Rob Parrisi, remembered - and wrote the hit song. I was lucky enough to hear Prince sing it at his Glasgow Hydro concert in 2014!
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