The Talking Heads is my occasional retreat from a world inhabited by Sad FM radio, daffy duck presenters and God awful musik.
Every Monday night around 9.30 The Candle Club presents great, good, average, indifferent performers according to your tastes. The Candle Club is an open mic evening where anyone might get up stage, from those who just practise guitar in their bedrooms to those who deserve a bigger stage.
Clive Roberts and Simeon have been running it for a good two years now, damn near 52 weeks of the year. I've seen more people in the Candle Club at times than the Talking Heads gets at a gig. The fact that Clive and Simeon's impromptu showcase can fill the pub up week after week is testament to there being an audience for music rather than pap.
No two Candle clubs are alike. Sure there are the regulars, but week after week entirely different duos and lineups roll up to play. All they have to do is put their name down on the Candle Club board to be invited on stage. Regular performers get their around nine or quarter past to peg their name down and the whole thing gets going at a respectable half past nine. So guys like me who have a habit of finishing work at seven don't have to break their necks to get there.
Tonight might have been picked from any over the last few years. Here's the flavour of it:
It all begins when Simeon, the tall folkster grabs his guitar and kicks off the proceedings with any song that takes his fancy. Simeon is the wisecracker, the guy with the clipboard and sense of irony. He's probably watched too many Eric Clapton videos for his own good because he likes to place a newly lit cigarette under the strings past the nut of his guitar.
Clive is the quiet spoken amiable sound man, adjusting levels, avoiding feedback and forever battling and uncrewsing mike stands. 'Why can't they all be the same height?' I imagine him to ask as performers of all shapes and sizes continue to confound his set up. Tonight he has his Hawian shirt on. Looks a bit like that bass player from Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers.
Tonight the first act on are Steve and Hamish. Steve's here every week. He sings and strums not unlike J. J. Cale, bluesy, understated, laconic. Last week he and Hamish raised the nerve ends with Dylan's Knocking On Heaven's Door, Hamish playing acoustic with licks right out of the Band circa the Big Pink.
Tonight Hamish has plugged in his Fender electric and his torches the songs with a trail of sparking, snappy chords and lead licks. Phew.
Just two numbes or ten minutes is the rule which is subtly broken by the next duo. Young guy gets up and plugs into the PA an acoustic and is followed by his mate, all blonde hair flowing, not unlike Shawn Phillips. They manage to get in three songs and the blonde guy really sings, a bit inaudible but with great control and range while he kicks out the rhythm on his black acoustic. What makes this damn special is the other guy. Jeez he lets go some real blinding lead guitar licks. Don't have a clue what the two covers are or what they called the original but no matter this kind of stuff just knocks daffy duck radio into the dirt.
At some point regular Richard gets up. He tends to do just about the same three songs everytime I go there. He's not the greatest guitarist in the world but I think his songs are capable of being developed, better songwriter than performer, tonight he adds a country rock number, not sure what it was but it was my kind of highway stuff. He dedicated it to Ian another regular floor singer.
There were two women who got up last week in different spots who had great voices. One had all that Janis Joplin by way of Elkie Brooks soul down, all the high wire octaves and dropping down to the bottom of the barrel blues. It was the lone girl last week with the electric guitar who struck me as having the more natural voice of the two. Just made singing look so effortless and did her own songs.
This week the same girl has turned up with a sax and a guitar playing partner. The guy did a John Martyn song and something I don't remember what it was called and handled the vocals. The lady handled the sax and a bit of backing vocals, pity we didn't get the chance to hear her sing some more.
Sid, who I've seen before is a real diamond in the pack because he is a performer who puts the lot in, a kind of wisecracking folkster who goes for the funny bone. Tonight he's reworked a popular song into the Viagra song complete with close to the bone lyrics. Excellent.
Ian's another regular with a penchant for either poetry or long self penned songs. Tonight he does his song about cheese. He has a dry, unbothered senses of humour about his performances. And when he decides to play harmonica with someone he can blow real well.
As always Rick the punk gets a late spot. Not exactly my kind of taste in music, this kind of cranking out Sex Pistols are Gods rock'n'roll anthems with a battered old electric guitar and a tortured voice but there you go it takes all sorts and that's what makes the Candle Club varied.
This week we must have been short of acts because the list was completed by ten to eleven. Simeon got the blonde guy back on to do some numbers. He pleaded to come off after the third because he thought he'd played enough. Then someone persuaded a girl in a long dress and long black hair to come up and sing a song. She did one of those Irish heart string pulling traditional songs.
Simeon decided we couldn't all go home feeling miserable and so assembled Richard and himself on guitars, his complete with the Eric Clapton lit cigarette and Ian on harmonica. They stomped through Mama Don't Allow. Sid coming up on stage to sing a line about Cleo Laine and on Simeon's invite "We don't allow Clive to drink no beer in here" the said Clive Roberts jumped on stage to sing a chorus as he drank the last quarter of his pint down. So the words came out like a gurgling tap through his beer glass.
The Candle Club no two nights the same. The only thing guaranteed is that it runs every Monday night regular as clockwork.
Mike Plumbley