Event Reviews

In the 1962 film, “Only Two Can Play”, Peter Sellers plays a critic having an affair. After a couple of minutes in the theatre, he predicts what the play will be like, files his review and sees Mai Zetterling instead. At the breakfast table, his wife confronts him with his assessment. She asks if he stayed till the end. “Of course,” he replies. “Then,” she thunders, “why didn’t you notice that the place had burnt down?”

I bear this in mind as I write my review of the fifth International Pop Overthrow festival in Mathew Street: not because I’m having an affair with Mai Zetterling but because there was music simultaneously on four stages and it was impossible to see everything. What’s more, the festival ran for a full week and, over the bank holiday weekend, there was over 12 hours of music each day. 150 acts were featured but as most of them were playing more than once, you can usually see the ones that particularly intrigue you. Sadly, however, I missed the Danish dance diva, Christina Groth, and also one of the local acts I enjoyed so much last year, Endbutt Lane. Although I saw the Fast Camels and George Burton perform excellent acoustic sets for BBC Radio Merseyside, I didn’t catch their stage performances and so haven’t included them in my critique.

The main stipulation is that the artists should perform original material and although I heard a few covers, I didn’t hear many, the best ones the Gutterfighters (Liverpool) with a radical, punky shake-up of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock”. The organiser, the fabulously named David Bash, insists that the songs must be melodic and so the standard is high. However, there isn’t much true creativity as so much has taken from favourite bands: I heard little touches of the Byrds, the Band, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Jam, the Beach Boys, Elvis Costello, Blondie and naturally, the Beatles all the time; nothing too contemporary, you know. The bands come from around the world, but it’s mostly the UK and the US with a preponderance of white male four-piece bands in their late 20s. The material tends to be upbeat but I do feel that if your girlfriend has left you and you are living in a flea-ridden apartment in New York and working in a dead-end job, the least you can do is shout about it.

I saw 50 of the acts at the IPO and here is my highly subjective Top 10:

This guy took my breath away last year as his songs were so great and his stagecraft was so good. His face is so teen idol perfect that he could have escaped from Madame Tussaud’s. He has the sculpted looks of a young Elvis and the audience was whistling at somebody they’d never seen before. I am surprised he is still at the IPO as I thought that stardom was around the corner. I loved the modern rockabilly of “I Come Rockin’” and “Miss Sugar Pie”, the gentle wit of “Target For Tonight” and the title track of his current album, “Let’s Be Poor Together”, which sounds like McCartney in Wings mode. A new song, “Hush Puppy”, rocked fiercely and his three-piece band sounded like The Band on the anthemic “Who You Are”. Think Robert Gordon and you’re halfway there, but Johnny Lloyd Rollins has more versatility. Roll over Beethoven and tell Chris Isaak the news. Johnny Lloyd Rollins oozes star quality but I twice heard his guitarist, Chris Holt, say, “Can you guess which one of us is the lead singer?” Don’t do yourself down, mate: you’re okay in a Dennis Locorriere sort of way.

(2) DAVE RAVE (Canada)

Dave Rave had a following in the bands, Teenage Head and the Shakers, and now as a solo artist, he is a Canadian Nick Lowe. All his songs were very good and energetic and he is great fun to watch, being a spindly guy with lots of hair and jerky movements. He played some of old songs but he didn’t want to talk about old bands as that was like “talking about ex-wives”.

Although I like Susan Hedges with her band the Other Kind, she is better singing ballads on her own and if I had my way, I would record a quiet, intimate album with her. In other words, she is a very versatile singer/songwriter who hasn’t recognised her main strength. I saw her on her own at the Cavern because one of the musicians hadn’t turned up and I was glad he’d been delayed! For all that, Susan’s voice has become much stronger since singing with the Other Kind and she performs her songs to perfection. I loved “Nobody’s Fool But His”, which reminded me of the best of Laura Nyro, and also “The Trouble With Trouble”.

(4) NIGEL CLARK (London)

By rights, Nigel Clark, the lead singer of Dodgy, should be in the prime position. After all, he has written and sung lead on many hit singles. His performance in the Cavern was very good and I liked his new songs (“21st Century Man”, “Still Holdin’ On”) but he allowed a friend to play drums, which ruined the more sensitive material. Nigel chided him on stage, “Leave off the bass drum. You sound like someone in a foundry.” Right, so tell me again, what was he doing there? This otherwise excellent set was marred by self-indulgence and also by Rudimentary Confusion playing so loud on the back stage that the sound bled through.

With a name like that, the band only had to be halfway good to get into my Top 10. They had Merseybeat and psychedelic influences, but the accordion veered them towards the Americana of The Band. I enjoyed “I Got This Feeling” very much. Like most bands, they had a self-produced CD for sale and it is equally good. Their road manager and tour organiser was the UK country singer and songwriter, Roger Humphries, who surely deserved his own IPO spot.

(6) IL COMPLESSO DI ANDREA (Rome)

Most of the European acts were singing in English even though it was their second language. This Italian band stuck to their own language but this was no barrier to the audience appreciating their highly melodic songs which took in several influences including the 60s bands, the Police and old-style Italian Eurovision entries.

(7) THE GOOD INTENTIONS (Liverpool)

I love this Americana band from Liverpool, if that is not an oxymoron. They had more of a country feel than most of the acts and they were so grateful to be at the IPO that they gave free CDs to the audience, all with photographs of Antony Gormley’s statues on the front. I loved the way that the Good Intentions name-checked their favourite acts in their songs such as Neil Young and Jimmie Rodgers.

This was an unexpected act and I liked it all the more because of that. Ralph Alfonso is an endearing Canadian beat poet who performs his songs to appropriate rock backings, which are provided by other musicians on his own Bongo Beat record label including Ari Shine and Dave Rave. He performed a tribute to Billy Fury, pretended he was the paramedic the night that Gene Vincent died, put himself on the road with Jack Kerouac and praised fellow Canadian Simon Dee for being a hero of British pirate radio. I didn’t catch enough of his guitarist, Ari Shine’s act to pass judgment but I loved “Call It A Day” and he had the festival’s best tattoos.

(9) ALUN PARRY (Liverpool)

I made a special point of seeking out this Liverpool singer/songwriter as I had heard him on BBC Radio Merseyside’s “Folk Scene” and been most impressed. Unlike the 60s, not many people are writing songs with a political bite and as he had greatly upset the National Front with one of his songs, good for him. Nevertheless, he needed a tad more personality on stage and the song I enjoyed the most was a cheerful list song, “You Are My Addiction” with such lines as “I can be your night of passion, you can be my flannel nightie”. Alun has plenty of potential but he needs to look as though he was enjoying himself: sorry, this is sounding like a school report.

(10) PETER AND THE PENGUINS (Norway)

This very enthusiastic band from Norway was firmly entrenched in the 60s and their “I Want You” sounded like the Hollies doing “Twist And Shout”. The crowd at the Cavern pub loved them, especially a very good version of the Searchers’ US hit, “Bumble Bee”.

Honourable mentions:

The Fore (London) with their short and passionate, up-tempo songs reminded me of the Downliners Sect…There was hard rocking with Geordie accents from the Hungover Stuntmen…Kelly’s Heels (London) were hampered by a broken guitar string but I loved the torrid drumming from their bearded drummer…Imagine acoustic psychedelia performed by Peter and Gordon and you have Leonardo’s Bicycle (UK)…The Fischers (Blackburn) had a witty, post-modernist song about radioplay with the lyric, “What do you want me to say?”...The pre-teen band Blackout (Los Angeles) has potential but the lead vocalist’s voice is about to break and they will sound better next year…The wildest performance came from the female organist in the Confusions, a punky band from Sweden…30 years ago the Diodes were a Canadian punk band: they looked too o-l-d to be doing it now, and their hit, “Tired Of Waking Up Tired”, took on a new meaning: good sound though…Same applies to New Yorker Bob Poremski, who had good songs, but a bulky man in Hawaiian shorts and shirts with an electric ukulele shouldn’t be asking “Why must I be a teenager in love?”: “Why can’t I be a teenage in love?” would be more appropriate…Seesaw (Austria) had a fine 60s sound but “Everything’s all right until it isn’t” was both the most repetitive lyric of the festival and the silliest…The Liverpool band, the Jacs, got a great reception and one of their vocalists has a voice that is even rougher than Kris Kristofferson’s…I loved another local band, K115, with their Blondie sound and lively lead singer…Seven from Oslo also had a great looking lead singer and when she gave me a copy of her CD with her nipple on the front cover, wow, well, she was making me happy: oh, the music’s good too.

On reading through this, I realise this that you are more likely to get into my Top 10 if you are on early in the festival. By Monday night, festival fatigue had set in and even if David Bowie himself had walked on the stage, he would have found it hard to make my Top 10.