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Bellowhead...
review
Put aside any preconceptions you may have about folk music immediately - Bellowhead has reinvented the sea shanty!
With two of folk music's current heroes at the helm, Spiers & Boden (Best Duo 2006, BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards) brought with them more than their fair share of talented musicians tonight.
The eleven piece band poured onto the stage, fighting its way through the jungle of microphones, cables and stands and took up all manner of instruments. A four-strong brass section, a frying-pan and fork player, bagpipes, violins, cellos, mandolins, accordions... this wasn't at all what I'd expected a folk group to look like. Most of the band members were younger than me and... well... none of them had handkerchiefs on their heads. Even the lead singing, fiddle-toting, tambourine shaking Jon Boden was curiously fresh-faced under his beard.
Nor was this what I'd imagined a typical folk-music audience would look like, almost instantly turning into a writhing mass of pogoing lunatics. I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see a few stage-divers.
The crowd-pleasing second tune entitled Jack Robinson, a medley of three traditional melodies, arrived at a crescendo of fabulousness with every instrument fighting for attention and most of them winning. As any school orchestra director will know, adding more instruments to a band is a big risk, but each Bellowhead member quickly proved themselves to be extremely accomplished, polished musicians. Yet somehow, perhaps because of the sheer number of instruments on stage, they managed to come over as gorgeously ramshackle.
The band have just released their first full album of material, Burlesque  and by the end of the show most of the audience had found their voices. The room was shaking to screams of Fire Marengo and London Town amongst many others.
You can find out more about the band, and listen to a few of their songs on their official website, www.bellowhead.co.uk and, of course, on their MySpace page.
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someone said...
A VIP comment randomly selected for your delight:
"For frying out loud, un oeuf is un oeuf."
Said by Samwell on Fri, 9th February 2007.
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The gem in Brighton's performance arts crown is, undoubtedly, The Komedia - bringing an impressive array of comedy, live music, cabaret and theatre to a diverse audience. In fact, together with the sister-venue in Edinburgh, Komedia are at the forefront of the country's entertainment scene attracting professional and fringe acts from around the globe. The next Komedia date for your diary:
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