Saturday 5 February 2011

Support your local band

Being in a band is great.

It ensures that you carry on playing an instrument and learning new pieces of music, it forces you out of the house to rehearsals when you might just be tempted to blob in front of the television and it gives you an excuse to go into music shops and try out ridiculously expensive instruments and amplifiers that you have no intention of buying whatsoever.
Whether these were ever the reasons that anybody first decided to join a group I have no idea, but certainly, once you have got past the expectation of chucking in the day job and setting off on a world tour with all the attendant joys of fame, fortune, fornication and freely available recreational pharmaceuticals, it's the small joys of the hopeful, amateur rocker that make it all worthwhile.

My band, "Nightflight", rarely gets to play to huge crowds, typically playing pub gigs, the occasional function or local fetes or festivals.  With the varied mix of solid rock covers, power ballads and original material in our repertoire, we can cater for quite a varied audience and even add customer requested songs to the set if we've had reasonable advanced warning. So far (touch wood) we've never got it hopelessly wrong, so the response is somewhere between favourable and very enthusiastic. this is particularly gratifying when you've played an original song that folks may never have heard before.

One downside to being in a band is that it's often not so easy to get to see other bands play. As I work a rather complicated pattern of shifts for my "day job", it's quite unusual for me to be at a loose end on a Friday or Saturday evening. If I'm not actually at work, my band will probably have a gig shoe-horned into the date that is available. Yesterday evening, however, was one of the rare occasions when Blight-of-my-life and I were able to go out and see some of our friends play for a change, so it was off to "The Navigation Inn" in Macclesfield to see "Amandla".

Three quarters of "Amandla". Sarah must be at the bar...

"Amandla" are a local four-piece band and they have been delivering quality blues and rock to the good folk of East Cheshire for ages. When Blight had what is known as a significant birthday, a couple of years ago,  they played at her party. I've been lucky enough to play alongside two of the guys. Corin has depped for us several times when we've carelessly lost our drummer for one reason or another, and it was Ross (the one with the hat) who invited me to join him when he was putting together a band a few years ago and lured me back into performing.

I'd forgotten just how good they are. They opened the first set with a Pink Floyd medley which began with the introduction from "Shine on you Crazy Diamond". Ross has absolutely nailed the guitar tone for this and when the Corin and Al (bass) joined, nobody in the pub was left with any doubt that they were in for something special.
Since Sarah joined them, "Amandla" have been able to broaden their repertoire to include material which would not otherwise be such a comfortable option. Alanis Morissette's "Ironic", "Call Me" from Blondie and a cracking version of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet" have all found their places in the set, allowing Ross to concentrate on the bluesier stuff from Buddy Guy and Dr Feelgood.
To top it all off, they finished the night with their Rock Classics medley; fifteen minutes of pure and unadulterated joy. 

So altogether a splendid night out.

If you get the chance to see them, do yourself a favour and grab it with both hands. 

4 comments:

  1. My favourite bands, are local bands. You can see some of them on you tube or my space. One is Mad dog Mc Rae, crazy irish rock folk band, another local I only ever go to see when he's at home 'in the local' is Seth Lakeman, another is 'Jail House' a cornish rock cover band who are old faves at the local pub. Our fave pub 'The Barleysheaf' is a live music venue and we go, when we have the money to folk on a wednesday and rock on a thurday. In my dim and distant past, I worked for many years at the Cornwall Colliseum and really love live music, I agree, everyone should support local music

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  2. I used to support The Rumble Band, a twelve piece soul motown danceband, but they changed their lead singer, (I liked the one before) and they seem to do a lot of private parties and not many open gigs these days. Shame because the music is brilliant. rumbleband.com if you want to look.

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  3. I've just had a look at Mad Dog McCrae, Jailhouse and the Rumble Band and they're all shining examples of why people who ought to be old enough to know better are the throbbing heart of real music.

    I was especially interested to see the You Tube clips of Jailhouse, as they seem to be doing several of the same covers as us and it's good to compare arrangements.

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  4. This sounds like a fab night out... we haven't been out for ages and ages to anything like this - but we used to go a lot... I say used to... long time ago... and we... well not the current 'we' - which means its 25 years since I supported a local group (apart from the one's my son was in that is)... you have given me food for thought.

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