The Last Days of Something Special

Standing outside, the Last Days of Decadence looks like any one of the pubs and bars on Shoreditch High Street. But step across the threshold and you enter the glamorously debauched world of a Prohibition-era Speakeasy.

The decor is authentically 1920s, and the drinks too match. A handful of girls at the bar are decked out in full ‘flapper’ outfits, accompanied by boyfriends sporting suspenders and trilbies, although most are uniformed in jeans and t-shirts. Tonight’s entertainment isn’t rigidly anachronistic either, the theme taking second place to putting on a damn good show.

Our compere for the evening is a flamboyantly camp vaudeville act, who sings and baits the crowd in a sequined Union Jack waistcoat. He introduces a Barbarella-themed cabaret dancer and a stand up magician who shocks the audience as frequently as he entertains. Then the act I’m here to see.

Beth and the Black Cat Bones make an understated entrance to the stage. Refreshingly full of energy they start in fifth gear, belting out their 50s-inspired Blues. Lead Vocalist, the eponymous Beth, has a tight leash on her extensive range, delivering the sort of formidable female voice that characterised Motown.

Rhythm is the essential component of anything you want people to dance to and the Black Cat Bones have that covered. The sturdy drums and bass, played by Charles Benfield and Rob Pokorny, are joined by Jess, as rhythm guitarist, for most of the songs. But when she hits her cue, Jess breaks into wild solos, inspiring envy in the heart of every guitar owner in the room. Having earned the nickname ‘B B Queen’, she never strays into indulgence.

Tonight is Jess’ last night, not that it shows. When they finish their set, the audience won’t let them. Often the encore is merely a convention, with Beth and the Black Cat Bones it’s the only way the crowd can satisfy their cravings.

The Last Days of Decadence is a fantastic venue for an act with the originality of Beth and the Black Cat Bones. Velvet curtains on the stage, mirrors on the walls and martinis on the bar remind you that going to see band should feel this indulgent.

All photos by James Munday, for more of the night click here.

For a taste of the magic that was the old Beth and the Black Cat Bones line up, their EP 'Off to the Moon' is available now. For more information or dates of gigs with their new line up, go to www.myspace.com/bethandtheblackcatbones

There's cabaret every Saturday at the Last Days of Decadence and most of it's pretty awesome.

24 Pesos - Busted Broken and Blue

So you're a self-respecting bluesman who wants to stick on a record and get dancing, what do you do? You invest in a copy of the new album from London three-piece 24 Pesos.

The album is a mix of Beastie Boys delivery, guitar picking that it's a crime not to dance to and lyrical references name-checking the great and good of Blues. Stylistically it flits from acousitcally mournful, dipping a toe over the border with Country, to spitting rhymes like old-school hiphop.

For those afeard that this may be too much experimentation, be like a double bass and fret not. The songs are consistently danceable tales of girls and partying, from the opening track Maxwell Street to the closing ode to the fuller-figured woman, Neckbones and Gumbo.

This album is well worth seeking out and suffers from only one major flaw, it isn't as good as seeing 24 Pesos live.

Stompin' Dave's Electric Band - Mystery Train

Stompin’ Dave Allen is one of the hardest gigging musicians in British blues (if you don’t believe me check out his tour dates) and he never fails to entertain. Now’s no exception as Stompin’ Dave’s Electric Band release their latest album Mystery Train.

As an artist, Stompin’ Dave is hard to define; he sounds perfectly suited to being a solo acoustic performer, but equally so as the front-man for this electrified three-piece. He mostly tours in the UK’s South East but his voice is pure Americana.

The new album is in keeping with that spirit of ambiguity, as Dave shifts from whooping like Jerry-Lee Lewis amid mad piano solos on I’m On Fire to sounding like a 60 year old Detroit bluesman on Mean Sad World. This mix of styles keeps a tight hold on you as the album switches between well known classics and self-penned originals which sound so much like classics that they’ll have you questioning whether or not Stompin’ Dave invented the blues.

Backed by Graham Bundy on drums and Chris Lonergan, playing bass so rhythmically you could set your watch to it, Stompin’ Dave serves up frantic lead guitar and measured, soulful piano with deft skill. The result is an album that not only sounds like it features a host of blues legends, but also sounds as fresh as music did when they were writing it.

Mystery Train is out soon, available from www.stompinstore.com

How to feel blue, part 1

I’ve had a couple of friends talk to me about getting into the Blues lately and the one thing they all complain about how hard it is. It’s a bizarre contradiction; most Blues fans can talk passionately about their favourite artists and tracks but finding a way into the genre is almost impossible.

It might have something to do with the fact that most music stores lump Blues in with ‘World Music’, ‘Easy Listening’ or, if they’re especially small/apathetic, ‘Other’. It might also have something to do with the glut of middle aged, white Blues-accountants who’ll dismiss you quick as you can say Robert Johnson for not having the latest Scorsese box-set pre-ordered.

But fret no longer new-comers. In my on-going quest to talk about the music I love until a court order is taken out against me, I’ve prepared the following must have intro to the Blues.

Son House – Death Letter

Son House will always hold a place in my heart. Robert Johnson might get the credit for being the quintessential Bluesman but an early recording of this song graced the Library of Congress archives before he was even born. He released 21 albums over the course of his long, strangely clean-lived life. Most of these were recorded live in the traditional Delta Blues style.

The song is a typically Son House mix of Christian soul-searching and emotive, rhythmic slide guitar. It also features that fine Blues staple: the dead true love.

Fleetwood Mac – Coming Home

Rumours might be the best selling album of all time but FM’s earlier, perhaps less well-titled album, The Pious Bird of Good Omen is where the true Blues gems can be found. From the distorted electric slide intro and right through its distorted twelve bar blues Coming Home is 2 minutes, 38 seconds of twenty four carat Blue.

Rory Gallagher – I’m Not Surprised

Rory Gallagher is, in this humble writer’s opinion, the greatest electric guitarist the world has known, in any genre. Having said that, I couldn’t decide between songs for just one to recommend, Bad Penny is great, so are Loan Shark Blues and Tattoo’d Lady. I decided that as his back catalogue was so flawless I’d recommend one of his more unusual songs.

I’m Not Surprised is genuinely tender. It tell the familiar story of a man wronged by his woman to a backing of honky-tonk piano and acoustic guitar. Unlike most of the 1970s Blues, this is something you can put on and relax to... although it is equally at home played on an old jukebox in a smoky bar room.

So that’s it for now. Go, listen, enjoy, then tell your friends about these great songs. I hope I’ve given you a range of styles. These are three of the greatest songs ever written. However, even as I write that another twenty spring to mind, so I dare say there’ll be a part 2. The only question now is what would you have on your list?

A brand new hit of old fashioned Blues

Every musical genre has its clichés. There are as few heavy metal tracks about unicorns as there are Rap songs about respecting women and learning to appreciate what little you’ve got. Blues certainly isn’t an exception to this rule as armies of middle aged, white Englishmen will attest, taking to the stage at open mic blues nights to sing about “goin’ down to the roadhouse” and how their baby has done gone left them.

All of this makes me very happy that the new Eric Street Band album is soon to be released on Southside Music.

For those unfamiliar with the other E-Street Band, their last album, the Journey, was a masterpiece of dirty bottle-neck slide guitar and lyrical originality. Their soon-to-be released offering, titled the Drifter, ploughs the same whiskey-soaked furrow.

The essence of good ol’ fashioned blues is still there, songs about drinking, dancing and one stands, usually followed by early mornings on the road out of town, are all there. What Eric Street Band does is to own these stories. They aren’t singing about a 1920s black American riding the roads, they’re singing about four old British guys doing it, and that truth makes the image that much stronger.

It helps that the band is fronted by Denis Siggery, a man whose voice is equal parts Rod Stewart, Roger Daltry and a 72 hour bourbon binge, and that he’s supported by three of the most competent Blues musicians in Britain. But that’s no reason why bands with healthy lungs and livers shouldn’t learn a lot from this.

The rest of us, we just get the joy of listening to it.

Tour dates and albums available at www.ericstreetband.com

Happy Birthday Howlin' Wolf

This past week saw the birthday of electric Blues legend Howlin' Wolf. Here's a little taster, or possibly an old reminder, of the great man's work.

The untold story of Bobbie McGee

“feeling good was easy when Bobbie sang the blues” Me and Bobbie McGee – Kris Kristofferson

It’s a frequent truism in Blues music that artists are often best known by others’ work. Son House is the guy Robert Johnson played with as a boy, Hendrix is best known for covering a Dylan song and Bobbie McGee is the subject of a croon by Kris Kristofferson or Grateful Dead. The truth about Bobbie McGee, however is far more interesting.

One of the most interesting characters of the American Folk revival, Bobbie McGee was never called on by the same fame that went knocking for Dylan, Donovan or Janis Joplin. Yet she undoubtedly influenced a generation of artists and did more for the ‘protest song’ than many who are better known. The proof of that lies in her legend which pops up in works for Richard Berman to Kat Walker to Janis Joplin, as well as those names that have already graced this page.

For those not familiar, Bobbie was a singer songwriter whose work falls into the genre-chasm of one person alone with their guitar. Her work shows clear signs of traditional blues and folk influences. Her stand alone album, Songs for Working Women, features versions of the staple tracks Bread and Roses and the Death of Mother Jones.

Yet her work stands out from the looming crowd of her contemporaries. There is a definitely Country sound to her songs, both musically and in the way they engage with contemporary issues. Her version of Union Maid, a song made famous by Woody Guthrie, opens with a Texas-fried slice of pedal steel but ends with a surprising openness on the subject of equal pay for women.

Writing openly confrontational lyrics, as Bobbie did, was incredibly brave at a time when Feminism had been sitting in the shadow of everything from the Black Civil Rights movement, through opposition to Vietnam to plain old indifference. Many of the issues she sang about are still being fought today and it’s impressive to think she was prepared to raise them as a performer in a time when politically active female singers were unheard of and men controlled the record industry.

The weight of the odds stacked against Bobbie’s work may be one of the reasons it’s so hard to find these days. Her one album is out of print and she fails to even have a Wikipedia page, seemingly the measure of cultural significance. With the rise of new media for music, the balance is being restored and both Amazon and the internet radio Spotify now hold MP3 copies of her album. So go, listen and enjoy the work of a woman who was as talented as she is unheard of.