Ox opened and I voted with my feet and went to the Mill Bay. Then came Renegade with some fancy feet line dancers. Turned out to be the guy who looks like a Comanche called Luke and his drum machine (remember the Tom Taylor benefit gig).
Having caught a few songs from Gypsy's Edge at Yelfs Cellar Bar with Dick Taylor last week I was right up for their full set. It was a stormer. Dick Taylor playing some amazing stuff behind Carl Prints lead guitar. Prints played some superb head turning guitar licks. They did the old Janis Joplin standby Ball and Chain, a couple of their own songs Back Seat People and The Earth Turns plus a couple of Pretty Things classics. I had never seen Dick Taylor do LSD or Old Man Going with the Pretty Things so this was a great bonus. The band did Sympathy For The Devil and finished with a self penned encore called Time.
Jessie reckons it's just like Gran Canaria (Is this some hot, sweaty foreign place? Ed). She's says there are a lot of old people about and that I am one of them. There's the Jones' on the beach. There's muso's and wino's but no rhino's. Personally I didn't care for She Said. They sounded like a kareoke duo which would have gone down well in Gran Canaria. I asked Graham McFarlane of the Ferrets if he would write a play called Kareoke By The Sea.
The Blue Nuns were more my kind of biscuit. Jessie enjoyed them too. They sounded like the Allman Brothers. They did a set of covers including ZZ Top, Cream, Groundhogs, Canned Heat and Hendrix. The Jack Green Band weren't on my wavelength either but the Jones' certainly were. They easily had the biggest audience of the day for their 35 minute set. Chiz and Russ were dishing it out to the old hands who had managed to shut the Saturday night revelry at The Central down. Graham McFarlane was his usual madcap self whamming out the notes on his keyboards while bouncing around.
The pubs were open, the sun was out and the music kept coming. Some great, some indifferent but a darn sight more alive than those responsible for halting the music on Saturday nights at The Central.
Pete Turner