Black Tree

Paul Middleton's Angst Band at Blues Bar, Harrogate

Went to see Paul Middleton and his Angst Band at Blues Bar in Harrogate last night and boy are they good. I think most of us take it for granted what a pleasure it is to see and hear them, since they play every Wednesday at Blues. Their residency makes it less of an event to promote and surround with the interest of a single show. So there’s no fuss, just a great band playing away to 40 or 50 people every Wednesday. Part of me feels its criminal that there’s not 100 people or more each week but the idealist in me loves the fact that Paul’s the gnarled journeyman, existing on music (and one or two other substances) alone, under-appreciated by most, a slave to the music, the very essence of rock and roll.

Despite the fact he’s been around for forever and a day, when he sing, shouts and rants it feels like he’s singing those words for the first time in his life. The passion and feeling is tangible and its the same each of the four or five times I’ve seen him. I don’t really know how his voice copes with it. Perhaps a healthy appetite for illicit substances helps?

The band are a lovely motley crew consisting of Paul on vocals and acoustic guitar (he’s all the Angst!), a friendly and very tight youngish drummer, his dad sat tucked away at the back, resembling a American southern drifter, baseball cap pulled down, long white hair and beard on electric guitar and mostly playing one of those country and western style sit down slide guitars. Then there’s a great young base player and a truly amazing lead guitarist with hair that could easily be topped with that trademark black top hat of two famous guitarists. Great licks, great solos and great guitar hero style gurning!

Their music is rock and blues but not just that same rock and blues played in a million pubs up and down the county. There’s something slightly different that makes their music unique and their own. Quite obviously this appears to me to be down to their songs, style and the collective sum of their parts. They don’t just churn out the same old covers, they play their own songs which are clearly Paul’s songs. The band are more just an accompaniment to Paul’s poetic rants and protests. His songs are like old American civil rights protest songs but delivered by a gnarly old Yorkshireman about issues here and issue with modern life. He does have the power to hold your ear with his words and there are sparks of genius. Subsequently let down with his ‘fucked up miserable old Yorkshireman’ off mic ramblings. Last night and another time I’ve seen him he was joined on stage by a fiddle player who is clearly very talented indeed. He adds a even lovelier dimension to the motley crew being well dressed and perhaps Jewish in looks, they just look an incredible sight of different people bought together to make great music. Oh and the fiddle adds a additional layer of feeling and quality to the tunes. I hope he comes back to play with them again.

I spoke briefly to the drummer in the interval who was a nice bloke and said they only get together to play this gig really, never practice and don’t really have a great deal in common. This is obviously a recipe for sometimes intelligent, sometimes ridiculous but always great rock music.

If you’ve never been to Blues or never seen Paul Middleton and the Angst Band, or even if you’ve not been for a while, I definitely recommend it. Have some beer, get tipsy and get down and dirty in Blues on a Wednesday with some great shouty rock poetry. I’ll be the one singing to the ‘Predudice’ song,  swaying a little with a Sagres in hand.

Hi think I want to have my fingers in a lot of pies. This phrase now makes people feel a little sick and we all know why. It’s taken on new meaning.

However, I want my fingers in lots of pies for a few reasons, firstly being that variety is the spice of life (oh Jesus another idiom!) and I want my life to be full of productive and interesting elements (life’s rich tapestry??), and secondly in these somewhat disturbing times of economic insecurity, I feel I need as much as possible to fall back on should the shit hit the fan. Maybe adding well known British phrases into blogs could be one of my fingers or even a whole pie?

At the same time, the last thing I want is to be a jack of all trades and a master of none, I mean spreading one’s self too thin can be what makes people generally unsuccessful as they are middle of the road all-rounders rather than being masters of their chosen trade. However being such a master of one trade could mean that you could be ignorant to the wider world and also cause you to be socially inept.

As I probably am a bit of an all-rounder, I’m gonna try the fingers and pies theory due to the clear fact that variety is indeed the spice of life. Not too many pies though, that would be crazy. I mean, I need to relax too. But is this how I relax? The work/life crossover lines are so very blurry now, I’m not even sure.

After this introduction, anyone reading this will think that this bloke is far from suitable to write a Harrogate based online magazine aimed at Harrogate residents, though that’s exactly what me and my great friend and writing partner Ian D Marshall are going to do. I suppose that by using a letter in his pen name, Ian thinks he’ll be portraying the same image of high culture, intrigue and intelligence as maybe W. Somerset Maugham or Reginald D Hunter. I see him more as the bloke I know who’s throat closes up and goes into anaphylactic shock when he eats a nut.

This is not Ian. It's Reginald D Hunter

Really, Ian is a great writer, possibly the best photographer in the Harrogate area, a sound businessman, has a huge consumption of music, arts and culture and is generally a great bloke. He also seems to have his fingers in a lot of pies then … and maybe all of us do and I’m think way to much about fingers and pies?

Anyway for all the reason above, Ian and I are going to try to provide the people of Harrogate with our own take on what’s going on in and around Harrogate and what’s sparking our interest in general. We’ll do the usual stuff like gigs, restaurants, what’s on, etc but we’ll also just spout our thoughts and feelings of what it’s like to be from this area and what gets our goats or tickles our fancies (barf!). We don’t really know much else yet so it will be totally organic and the main thing is that it will be for fun, for us, for the people of Harrogate and just for the hell of it. I’m sure there’s a rich seam of intelligent young(ish) culture vultures out there who don’t take themselves too seriously whom we can interact with and maybe one day work together to make something really really lovely.

There’ll be plenty of contributing writers to the website/magazine too so if you’re interested give us a nudge and get on board. Keep you posted.

Oh and it’s called STRAYWORDS. Tell your friends

John Power ... not in Harrogate

Last night, I went to see John Power (ex Cast, the LA’s) with a couple of friends at a bar called Rehab in Harrogate. Despite the music being great, the whole thing just left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth with an overriding feeling of embarrassment.

We paid £13 each for the tickets which for a start is £5-6 too expensive for going to a gig in a cafe bar. There was about 50-60 people there and it’s not a small place so it wasn’t rammed. It’s an odd place and over the years has been loads of bars and hasn’t quite worked. I can tell they’re really trying to make it work but so far it lacks a bit of a soul.

The support was from Micky P Kerr who I reckon is one to look out for over the next 12 months. He started off bravely with some spoken word pieces. Really liked it as it’s not the usual kind of thing you get in Harrogate and his words beautifully towed the line between cheeky Northern humour and serious heart felt issues. Credit Crunch Christmas is his proper Christmas single, funny, clever with observance beyond the obvious.

He then picked up his guitar and played some soulful and catchy pop folk tunes, with most of them accompanied with a just beautiful cello. The music was great but Micky was been out voiced by about 10-15 knob heads who seemed like they’d walked out of a recruitment consultancy Christmas party and wanted to drink, shout and dance like Liam Gallagher wannabies. They weren’t the least bit interested and should have pissed off to Wetherspoons to their brethren.

Micky made a few unnoticed snide comments about them and continued with some hilarious Northern indie rap tunes. He really is quite the wordsmith, with a wholly unpretentious, mildly offensive Northern manner. Just the funny side of arrogance and tunes that would be equally great backed by hip hop beats or jangly indie guitars.

John Power came on and you instantly knew he felt uncomfortable. It seemed his own, the venue’s and much of the crowd’s preconception of the gig were poles apart. He was coming to do an intimate acoustic gig on his own ideally to a set of open minded people, playing bluesy folk tunes from his new album. For some reason therefore, Rehab had put him on a stage with disco lights pulsing all over him and the same bunch of chavs were constantly just shouting at him to play ‘Sandstorm’ and the rest. He was so awkward and said he wasn’t playing that stuff. I felt so embarrassed for him, mainly cos he’ll probably just have thought how much of a 2 bit hick town Harrogate is and what a shit gig and bunch of knobs.

The truth is, most people at the gig enjoyed it for what it was, great music. Great music stripped down to just beautiful, old fashioned folk and blues stories with some bloody nice guitar licks to boot. Just spoiled a bit and John raced through his set without barely a breath between tunes.

Harrogate is a great place and the more gigs and other decent art and cultural stuff we attract the better. If only the gig had been down the road at the fantastic Blues Bar, it would have worked a dream. Perhaps Rehab just need a bit more time and aren’t used to holding these gigs, perhaps I’m being a bit harsh and it was just me that felt pissed off with these people.

Either way I doubt John will come back in a hurry. I’d love to know what he thought himself.