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Marcus
Malone Band with support from Giles
The
Robin, Wolverhampton
Thursday 4 November 2004
|
If
your idea of a good night out is Museum Grade blues, faithfully
executed reconstructions of songs by Lucile Bogen or Scrapper Blackwell,
then The Marcus Malone Band is not for you. If on the other hand
you want an hour and a half of good-time-double-barrelled-sawed-off-twelve-bar,
then get yourself along to a Marcus Malone gig.
 |
| Marcus
Malone |
From
the menacing opening number 'Drowning Man' to the tempo-flipping,
early ZZ Topp-esque finale number, 'Blue Radio', Mr Malone and his
band delivered a tight, extremely well-played show, engineered to
kick-ass.
This
is not to suggest that these gentlemen do not know their musical
heritage. They do, intimately; they just wear the mantle lightly.
Listen carefully and at moments you can hear spirits from Robert
Johnson to Jimi Hendrix come shining through.
Malone's
extraordinary voice defaults to a sound not unlike Paul Rogers in
the best of his Free days, but then moves effortlessly into areas
more usually occupied by Bobby Womack or even, on occasion, James
Brown. His guitar-shredding technique perfectly compliments the
pure lyrical sweetness, and the Stevie Ray Vaughn-like lightning
fills of stupidly talented lead guitarist Stuart Dixon. While the
rhythm section of Chris Nugent (drums) and the bass of Jonathan
Banks (looking and sounding like a young Donald (Duck) Dunn), provide
a fluid yet brick-house-solid base.
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| Marcus
Malone |
The
band play only Malone's original material, and while the lyrics
are not exceptional, ("kiss your tender lips, caress your fingertips"),
with this much well played music, who the hell cares? It's rocky,
powerful, funky, evil, sexy, creepy and loving by turns, but usually
lyrical and always, always powerful, in-yer-face, good time blues.
Their
stage presence is great, that of competent, confident musicians
having a great time doing what they do best, which is playing music.
The usual look-at-me poserness of men-with-guitars was almost completely
absent. On the one occasion that Mr Malone attempted to do the "Rock-Star-Thang",
he fell off the stage and couldn't get back on for some minutes.
To his eternal credit, he didn't miss a beat of the guitar duet
he was playing at the time. Let this be a lesson Mr M. You don't
need to do it.
 |
| Marcus
Malone |
They
really are a party in a box, and if there was any justice in the
world, these guys would be the very definition of popular music.
A very
honourable mention must also go to Mark Koehorst, Piet Koehorst,
Carolyn Evans and Terry Shaughnessy, who are 'Giles', the Lancashire-based
support band.
Look
out for these guys, with their combination of new material and interesting
reworkings of standard tunes (most notably a version of the Rolling
Stones' 'You Gotta Move'), they are shaping up to be one of the
better prospects for the next few years.
Written
by Mark Etchells
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