The 27 Club isn’t a club, it’s a way of life. Or, to be exact, death.
Dublin singer-songwriter Jack Lukeman is becoming an August Edinburgh regular, but this year his show is a little different. Ostensibly a set of covers of some of his own favourites songwriters, tonight’s material is drawn from that mythical collective of musicians who have succumbed to the clutches of their maker – or, in some cases, Satan – at that early age.
Following a video inventory of the ‘club’s members, Lukeman and band fire up their “Musical Time Machine” with a rumbustuous ‘Alabama Song’ – qualifying via Jim Morrison. Brecht is not part of the team proper, living to a relative ripe old age of 50, but for a showman such as Lukeman his barroom ballad is an ideal opener.
Janice Joplin is a Marmite thing I guess – I prefer cats to be put down quietly and humanely – but her stodgy blues is given some new life by Lukeman, who is clearly a fan. As must be the case with the Rolling Stones as Brian Jones’ part in the group is acknowledged by a man who has a better voice than Jagger. The dead-at-27 guitarist’s work is reproduced faithfully on a stripped-back version of ‘Paint It Black’, though ‘Ruby Tuesday’ could be seen as overkill given the 75 minutes allotted to squeeze in… what, 50 acts?
Of course, what we get is a selection, hand-picked by our host. So while it would have been nice to hear something by the Minutemen, or The Gits, or even Jacob Miller, they are consigned to mere footnotes in this musical history. We do get the Bunnymen’s ‘Killing Moon’ – co-written by Pete De Freitas, it is of course more about Ian McCulloch’s best-known and most trademark vocal, but happily, Lukeman nails it while putting his own distinctive stamp on the song.
A more obvious entrant into the morbid hall of fame is Kurt Cobain – the grunge icon’s mother famously decrying “that stupid club”. Our host is the perfect shaman and showman, with visuals that combine his silhouette with a live video feed, as monochrome images of the departed flicker past. Or in the case of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, the lyrics stack up to form a shrine around the Seattle singer’s picture.
From then on it’s a race against time for the audience as we try to imagine who will be next on the roll call.
To long-term Lukeman fans the show is an odd idea given Lukeman’s songwriting prowess – he always throws in the odd cover version, but even his Brel-themed show last year was a mix of his own material and that of Belgium’s greatest export.
Robert Johnson is first on tonight’s timeline (Louis Chauvin and Alexandre Levy absent tonight) and we get ‘Love In Vain’ stripped back to mandolin and vocal as Lukeman takes his instruments on a tour of the auditorium to great effect. Conversely, Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ is less successful, perhaps due to being devoid of its trademark lead guitar. Conversely, ‘The Crystal Ship’, one of three Doors songs, is a genuine show-stopper, displaying the singer’s remarkable voice to full effect.
Meanwhile, a simple acoustic ‘Up on the Roof’ for original Drifter Rudy Lewis is another high point, while Big Star’s ’13’ (co-written by Chris Bell), is perhaps the most obscure tune on the list but one of tonight’s best.
The hour-and-a-quarter passes remarkably fast, but there’s time for an encore – and although Lukeman has successfully navigated his way past the 27 mark, he slips in a cheeky self-penned ‘dedication’ to the dead. But ‘Keep Dancing’ is one which shows that as a songwriter, his own material ranks alongside anything else featured tonight. Roll on next year, and indeed, his next album.
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