And so, two become one. No, the Spice Girls aren’t playing at this weekend event, but tomorrow the lineup will have something more of a pop slant with Bananarama and Ronan Keating gracing the lochside stage in Linlithgow. Sunday is curated by Party at the Palace, whose previous headliners include the likes of Peter Hook and Simple Minds, so it’s a bit of a curveball.
Today’s bands, however, have been handpicked by Let’s Rock Scotland, that festival decamping from its Dalkeith base and merging with the similarly-long-running event in West Lothian. A sign perhaps of the problems facing events like these nowadays, so we should put personal tastes aside and just be grateful that this is happening at all.
What the two days do share is of course a heady dose of nostalgia – Let’s Rock, which almost ‘tours’ the UK, often confused with the similarly 80s-themed Rewind series, and no doubt featuring acts who are similar fixtures on the (mostly) ’80s circuit.
And the openers perhaps sum things up pretty well. Odyssey – the “Rock” in the festival name perhaps more about partying than flailing guitars and screamed vocals – are first up, with their smooth blend of disco and R&B. An early UK hit for the band was ‘Inside Out’, written by Scot Jesse Rae, but as we wind our way in through the considerable crowd, there’s no sign of a massive masked and kilted Scotsman wielding a broadsword on the stage, so we haven’t missed any guest appearance.
Although with no original members, perhaps this isn’t a great surprise – frontman Steven Collazo, son of Lillian Lopez, as close as we get. Despite this, they may have one of the most impressive back catalogues of the day with ‘Native New Yorker’, ‘Use It Up And Wear It Out’ and ‘Going Back to My Roots’ all featuring.
Similarly to the opening act, Toyah is lacking a very special guest. No sign of husband Robert Fripp – to be fair he wasn’t billed as appearing, but still… but it becomes clear that the Songs of Praise / Good Sex Guide and upcoming Strictly contestant is ‘solo’ – her band’s bass drum bearing the name “The Retrobates”. Who are, it transpires, an virtuoso combo tasked with backing up the first few acts on today’s bill, and while what we have is a form of live karaoke, they do so with aplomb.
Ms Willcox is, perhaps, everything you’d expect – lively, chatty, engaging, musing about who might join her in a nude dip in the adjacent Linlithgow Loch (certainly none of the locals who know full well about the green algae problem). Clad in a glittery harlequin dress plus flowing train, she delivers, early on, her signature tune, which to sing you “have to have a lisp” – ‘It’s A Mystery’, and ‘Thunder In The Mountains’.
However, she chooses not to delve into her back catalogue too far for this hits-loving crowd – no ‘Ieya’ sadly – but instead chucking in some covers – a perfunctory ‘Echo Beach’, an energetic ’Rebel Yell’ – and of course, the song she wrote aged 15, ‘I Want To Be Free’. She closes a set of highs and lows in the ditch with “an Arrows b-side” – yes, ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’, a song beyond improvement no matter whose hands it’s in.
Feeling pleased with myself and gaining a Popmaster point by remembering that Jaki Graham was indeed one half of a duo with David Grant (but one year out with a guess at 1986 for their hit take on ‘Could It Be I’m Falling In Love’). Still in decent voice, she’s another of those acts who has had more hits than you might imagine, and delivers ‘Step Right Up’ and ‘Set Me Free’ as we head up the hill in search of the Comedy Tent.
Our search is in vain – there is no ‘wee band stage’ this year, so no chance for sets by the likes of The Snuts – but there will be a bunch of comedians (your joke here) appearing in an hour or so. Instead we opt for Dollar – well, Theresa Bazar’s Dollar to give them their Saturday name. Again, backed by The Retrobates (clever naming, good work team) she is joined by Stephen Fox, who we assume is now the ‘other half’ of the act previously featuring David Van Day. Fox introduces his new partner / boss: “All the way from Australia, and back where she belongs, on stage.” “Thanks Stephen” she replies, in the manner of a newsreader taking the handover from the weatherman.
Despite this, Bazar – looking for the world like the lovely Debbie McGee – has good chemistry with her new partner in pop as they trawl the band’s back catalogue, which seems to have had a bit of a critical reappraisal of late. And yes, ‘Videotech’, ‘Hand Held in Black and White’ and ‘Mirror Mirror’ stand up well as well-crafted tunes not too far away from the more credible electropop of their day. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that the latter track was produced by Trevor Horn.
To be fair, politics was never high on the lyrical agenda of Bazar and Van Day, unlike the next act on the (main) stage. ‘We Don’t Need This Fascist Grove Thang’ is, as Glenn Gregory suggests, as relevant today as it was on its 1981 release. Heaven 17‘s live setup includes a second keyboardist and two backing singers, but no drums, or bass – the latter a particular shame, though finding someone to recreate John Wilson’s original bassline could be something of a challenge.
Instead, synths supply everything required to deliver a string of minor hit singles – the throb of the intro to ‘Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry’ almost unbearable in the photo pit. What becomes clear is just how good Glenn Gregory’s voice is after all this time, even though he discloses how much he hates singing ‘We Live So Fast’ owing to the sheer volume of words it contains. However, he delivers it breathlessly but impeccably alongside ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ and ‘Come Live With Me’, the latter, like ‘Let Me Go’, generating a mass singalong.
There’s time for a cover too, leading to musings that there must be some contractual obligation (or weird PRS chicanery) in place. ‘Let’s Dance’, despite the lack of Nile Rodger, is, pretty much, a note-perfect homage to David Bowie, before, yes, euphoric set-closer ‘Temptation’.
Completing a gradual progress to full bands, fellow Sheffielders ABC. Well, Martin Fry and A.N.Others to be exact. The frontman is, like most acts on the bill, the sole founding member, but to be fair, who could name the rest of the heyday lineup anyway? He even eschews his trademark gold lame suit for a rather less sweat-inducing salmon pink number and launches into their / his perhaps third most famous tune, ‘When Smokey Sings’. And four decades on, it’s still perfect, as is the rest of the set which follows, with great recreations of the original tunes by the hired hands – including backing vocalists and trademark sax. Particularly impressive is the bassist on How To Be A Millionaire’ – now, this fella could have done a job on ‘Fascist Groove Thang’ an hour previously.
We get some standard chat about the crowd being too young to remember the ’80s – Fry himself, despite looking a little like a cross between Martin Kemp and Davld Lynch, is still lithe and in fine voice. We’re also treated to ‘Tears Are Not Enough’, ‘All of My Heart’, ‘Poison Arrow’ – in fact, so many top tunes there’s – whisper it – no room for a cover. Instead, Fry runs through some sort of “shout out” list namechecking the likes of Annie Lennox and Jim Kerr (sadly he has been led to believe that he’s in Edinburgh but we’ll let that pass). And then, ‘The Look of Love’, which is as ’80s as it gets. In a good way.
Another one-man-band, but this time with a difference. The Skids are now Richard Jobson and Friends, with a slightly complicated situation meaning that Bruce and Jamie Watson are concentrating on Big Country. However, that bassist looks familiar… it’s Fin Wilson, of Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, and this means that the guitarist situated stage right, among the dry ice, in a hat, sunglasses and a beard must be HIS bandmate Martin Metcalfe.
So the Skids legacy is in good hands as they kick into a string of hits – ‘Charade’ and ‘Of One Skin’ (preceded by a bit of ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’) getting the punks in the crowd bouncing. Jobson says that live gigs like this make him feels like he’s “ 16 again… and then fucked after the first two numbers”. The between-song banter is engaging as ever – the frontman recalling being told to stop rambling on and just play the songs, but, he admits, the chat is to get him get his breath back before he begins his Duracell dervish act again, bounding around the stage just like he did back in the days when he – without Stuart Adamson’s assistance – wrote the “shittiest song ever”. Fans of ’TV Stars’ and its “Albert Tatlock” chorus are appalled at the disrespect shown to the finest song of the era by its creator. Indeed, an admittedly excellent cover (yes!) of another punk classic ‘Compete Control’ pales into insignificance.
There’s more chat – we can (mercifully) only ponder which member of Pan’s People took a young Jobson’s virginity – and more top tunes, including ‘The Saints Are Coming’ – not a U2 cover, we’re advised – and, ahoy! ‘Into The Valley’, which compere Pat Sharp later informs us he wore out after he’d bought it when he was a kid. The excellent set is however rendered null and void by an inexplicable semi-acoustic cover of ‘Starman’, which the band apparently only learned that afternoon, and it shows. If we can only blot that out then we’ve witnessed a timeless exhibition of some of the most enduring songs of the punk era.
Got to be honest, I’d be struggling to name you more than one Go West hit song than ‘We Close Our Eyes’. It’d have helped if we’d stayed for their set, but dinner called. Although we can identify their cover, a version of ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’.
We can only assume that the presence of Peter Cox and Richard Drummie – yes, the two original members – was to provide another breather for any members of The Skids who were due to play a set with Big Country.
As it happens, the aforementioned new setup means that Bruce and Jamie Watson – who engage in some father-son banter/slagging – are joined by a new vocalist in Tommie Paxton. Though, unnervingly, he looks remarkably like the band’s late frontman, Stuart Adamson. Indeed, if he’d dyed his hair black then there could have been some calls for assistance from the ever-present St John’s Ambulance workers, such is the spooky resemblance.His voice is pretty spot-on too, as you might expect for, it transpires, a man formerly employed in tribute act Restless Natives.
A towering, highly convincing ‘Look Away’ is pretty much Big Country encapsulated, compete with searing solos and tongue-in-cheek guitar hero poses. Sadly, the wind seems to be carrying the band’s riffs off into the ether, spoiling ‘In A Big Country’ and rendering ‘Harvest Home’ almost unrecognisable. The band may however have found the answer to their ever-changing lineup and could be worth seeing live – indoors.
Speaking of bagpipes – which we weren’t, and we got through the review without describing the brothers Watson’s guitars as such – it’s a pleasant surprise that Lulu – returning to her homeland – isn’t piped onstage. And similarly, she kicks off with ‘Shout’ – but without the, er. “shout”. Instead, it’s a slower, almost smoochier take on the Isleys classic, followed by a version of ‘Haetwave’ – the Holland Dozier Holland / Martha Reeves one, not the Blue Nile’s, before you leap in there.
Ms. Lawrie is in reflective mood, every track having a story to it, delivered in her recently-rediscovered Glaswegian drawl – and to be fair, she has plenty of stories to tell, whether it’s Bond-referencing, or related to Neil Diamond to precede ‘The Boat That I Rowed’, or Grammy or Eurovision-themed. And she can lay claim as the only act here who has a Bowie cover that anyone needs to hear – her excellent take on ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, obviously.
She could also – like Heaven 17 – take some of the credit/blame for Tina Turner’s renaissance having penned (along with her brother Billy) ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’. That’s the title of her memoir, though it seems there’s another one on the way, with a film also in the offing. “They must think I’m about to pop my clogs – but I’m not going anywhere!” she laughs, before launching into a tune she recorded with some boyband – “can’t remember their name”.
It’s another cover to close – but you can bet he’s a close personal friend slotting into the remarkable story of Lulu. And ‘I’m Still Standing’ is as good an epitaph as we’ll get.
