Ventnor Winter Gardens, Saturday September 4th, 1999

Mad Maff's 40th Birthday Party

I've got to Ventnor by a mixture of train and bus. The rail tracks end at Shanklin which is still a tad lively on a Saturday night. The bus rips out through Wroxall past the Fresh Cream and Jesus sign (good Island band that) and winds down into the bottom of Ventnor.

The place is quieter than Gatcombe Church at Midnight. The streets are empty. Nothing seems to be happening. A walk down towards the sea front and you can just hear some music seeping out of the Ventnor Winter Gardens. A far cry from the days when the Pretty Things, The Who, Bowie and the departed, lovable, lunatic Screaming Lord Sutch caught a boat from Bonchurch and gigged here.

On closer inspection the Winter Gardens is buzzing. Mad Maff's 40th birthday party has spilled out onto the tables placed under the stars. Half of Newport is reckoned to be here and probably is. The pubs back at the capital must be empty.

No sign of Vic King but Colin Armfield is inside the glass doors cradling his first pint. The place is buzzing with people. Inside the main dancehall the Lonesome Valley Boys aka Rick East's Hilltop Boys that was are in booting rockabilly mood. Vic comes out well pleased and wondering if they might do a gig like Summer in the Square for us.

'Sporting Life did a set at eight o'clock,' informs Vic, 'I haven't seen them for a while, just Wroathy, Duncan and Roland on guitars, they did May You Never by John Martyn. They are on their way to a wedding gig and dropped in to play for Maff, Pete Byrne was there and I told him about tomorrow's gig.'

Vic and I are in pole position for Paul Armfields set in the outer bar. Paul has come in to tune up his double bass and get ready. He lays down the bass and comes over to say he's more nervous than any gig that he has done. Mad Maff has asked Paul to sing and play his double bass tonight something that Paul hasn't done on his own. The idea is a masterstroke. Perfect to cut across this noisey bar.

Mad Maff comes to announce all the acts tonight. He's practically bald rather like a Kojak character with a pair of distinctive horn rimmed glasses which give him the appearance of Mole from Wind In The Willows. It's his 40th tonight and he's celebrating in fine style. 'Ladies and Gentlemen put your hands together for the incredible Big Paul.'

The noisey bar mometarily stops and gives a rousing cheer then the chatter starts again but no matter this is a birthday bash not a concert at Medina. I can shut out the talk because what Paul Armfield plays is so darn stunning it just scatters anything else like broken glass under a broom.

I'd leaned over earlier and said to Gina Armfield 'you are so lucky you get to hear this every night'. 'Yes,' she laughs 'and I still come out and hear him do it again . . .'

So here with the chatter from the bar to one side there is big Paul Armfield whanging great handfuls of muscular notes from his double bass, fingers pulling and snapping the strings while he growls and sings like a cross between Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra.

In fact he does Tom Waits Clap Hands, love that song and even more so because I've only ever heard Paul do it with the Dance Preachers. The words, the jazz swing of it and Ventnor rapidly transmutes into the Village Vanguard, New York. Paul also slips in a Bab's Gonzales tune to. Being here tonight is like hearing Jimmy Giuffre doing The River from that great video Jazz on A Summer's Day.

Smokin' Dave comes up to add harmonica to the last couple of songs. Well he misses his cue for the first. Paul's shouted for him over the bar noise and no response. 'Well when he gets here this one is in A . . .' and off Paul thunders on double bass leaning into the microphone and singing his socks off. Must be some feat to play bass as good as this and focus on singing as well. Levon Helm always did a good job of that too with the Band.

And it is over all too soon and I want to clap my hands off. Vic is shutting his eyes and blinking all through the set. Colin Armfield is sat there with a big grin on his face. 'We gotta get Paul on a Medina gig to open for a band,' I'm saying to Vic. He nods. Armfield in a concert setting playing bass like this will take everyone's ears off.

Meanwhile on stage Paul Armfield is wiping his brow and fixing to lay down his bass and go. However Sandra O'Toole has come on to sing and play her acoustic guitar. Sandra starts to sing and Paul joins in half way through and the style is totally and utterly different from the stuff he had played moments before. A beautiful melodic bass line flows behind the Irish girls song.

'Phew it's like having Phil Lesh behind you,' I lean to say to Vic and he is nodding. I don't realise at the time that all these songs are Sandra's own. The second one is a corker. Vic and I think it is cover and the next day when we ask her and tell her that she takes it as a compliment. It was. The song is rocky and the lyrics are excellent.

Sandra's got a distinctive and honest voice. Paul Armfield cradles the big bass. He listens to a verse with his head bent towards the floor then he looks up brings his right arm around the neck, places his fingers down, his left hand begins to shape into arpeggios and in comes another superb melodic run which lifts the spirit like the last drop of Guinness poured into a glass.

Just a handful of songs but what a team. First Paul Armfield as the joint rocking songman and then as the sensitive backline for an Irish songwriter. What a craic.

Woozies come over to say hi before being pulled on stage with the BMWs. Never seen that bloke without a smile on his face and a good word. And he's hit the sticks for a good few local bands who might have made it all the way with a good tail wind. But sometimes this diamond Wight Island is all too comfortable to even want to try.

So it's into the main hall. Mad Maff's on the door collecting a pound admission for the cost of tonight. For the pound he's got a special programme printed up with all the artists names in and times of their performances. The Imagine Music Team always do a good job with a gig. Inside the hall a massive cloth wall hanging drawing of Mad Maff celebrating his 40th and saying 'I still have a dream . . .'

The big hall looks like it came straight off that marvellous English rock'n'roll film That'll Be The Day. I think, and I'll have to check but I'm sure they used this dancehall for some of the scenes. And BMWs turn tonight has all the hallmarks of a modern day Stormy Tempest and the Hurricanes set.

The sound isn't the greatest in the world in here but no matter Coochy and co just storm it. This is belting hard rock and soul, a bit of Stereophonics and a lot of Paul Weller. Cooch really goes for it. The Gretsch soaring and searing, as he lets it fly through a series of chords and rings lead that always sounds full on. Plays a great style lead through a series of shifting chords.

The sound is meshed together by the rocking bass lines of Bobby Buchannon. The beat rapped up tight by Woozie who gives the skins some welly.

The dancehall is too big to be full, the bar here is jammed and people are starting to dance. The place is full of Isle of Wight muso's and characters, Pete and Heather Short, Milo Lewis, Zarah Smith and Charlie, Steve Sheath, Huey Ross, Steve Double (who is involved in a bizzare cabaret meets the punks charity event at Medina soon, Sinatra meets full on welly merchants, blue rinse and nose pins rave up, should be fun . . .).

Neither Vic or I will stay the full course tonight. We are headed back to Niton at midnight straight after the Jones because we got a gig tomorrow and a late session of music at Vic's country cottage.

Chiz and Russ take the stage, Mark Spencer is no longer on the drum stool and his place is taken by the guy from Bath near Bristol who is in an ambient rock band called Polar (wish I could remember his name but I can't). They ain't as tight as I remember them but they always rock and give it every last inch.

The set really gets going though when the mad Ferret, aka Graham McFarlane, their former keyboard player takes to the stage. The Ferret a mass of ginger hair like a crows nest on his head has the persona of Merlin the nutty magician. And his presence kick starts the stuff up a gear.

The Ferret is waving manically at Pete Burnnen the sound guy to get him plugged in and way to go. He's off bouncing around between solos all around the stage. Simon Clarke is on harmonica giving the sound a bit of belt and it really is kicking at the end.

Dead on Midnight Vic and I have to fly and we are passing out through the crowds into the darkness of a Ventnor night. Right on time the taxi comes down the hill and turns into the car park. We rip back through Whitwell to Niton. Tomorrow morning the taxi firm will be sending someone at 9.30 to pick us up from the disused petrol pumps just up from Vic's cottage.

The sky is jet black here tonight and I say to Vic it's like being out under the stars in Olema. We walk down the narrow Newport Road back towards Niton village and turn into a little rough track drive. Another sharp turn and we are walking towards Vic's front door.

The late night session involves women singer songwriters. It begins with Anne Briggs, a traditional singer with a penchant for diving into canals fully clothed and reckoned to be the first woman in Dublin to sink a pint of stout.

This leads us to Fotheringay because Vic now knows who Anni in Sandy Denny's The Pond and the Stream is: 'Anni wanders on the land, she loves the freedom of the air, she finds a friend in every place she goes, there always a face she knows, I wish that I was there' (Sandy Denny 1970)

Vic's album of year may turn out to be Maura O'Connell's CD which has a stunning version of Planxty's West Coast of Clare and also Shades of Gloria. O'Connells in Nashville these days and here Jerry Douglas has his dobro fingerprints all the music. Stunning mix of Irish and American. A true transatlantic session.

There's also Edi Reader tonight and some Nanci Griffith by way of an introduction to her backing vocalists CD, that of Denice Franke. Denice is from Houston. Islanders Brian and Jan Munro met her last year at the Round Rock Festival in Texas. Her vocal work on Nanci Griffith's video from Anderson Fair is excellent and her own CD is class with Gene Elders on five string fiddle. Gene is no stranger to Isle of Wight Rock either as he is a musician friend of Adam Kirks.

The final material tonight comes from the lady who came and played a couple of times at the Sloop Folk Club in the sixties. Shelagh McDonald recorded two excellent folk cum rocky albums in the early seventies and promptly disappeared from the planet. Even the release of Stargazer on CD has failed to turn her up for the royalties. So we play out in Niton to Stargazer, drink our ovaltine and eat ginger biscuits.

In the morning our taxi man regales us with tales of taking the last party revellers stranded in Ventnor back to Newport at 2.30am before he turned in. A bit of a cracking do in Ventnor. Pity it couldn't be every week.

Mike Plumbley