All At Sea

January 31st, 2008 |

In a diversion last evening, and after a rather nice Italian meal, Granny Poad took me to the Carling Academy, in Newcastle, to see Steve Wold otherwise known as Seasick Steve (you may have caught him on the Jools Holland show ) and I was quite looking forward to it.

The Carling Academy is a former dance hall that became a bingo hall before its present usage. May I say that it is one of the most useless venues I have ever been in for music!

Perhaps if you were on the ‘dance floor’ the sound might have been okay but perched on a very uncomfortable bar stool on the back balcony it was next to useless. Have the folk that run it never heard of ‘delay’ speakers?

The support was a Swedish(?) seven-piece who’s name I didn’t quite catch - ‘“mumble” and the Dancers’ and their sound guy should have been shot.

As for Steve… great stuff on Three Stringed Trance Wonder guitar, and others, as Granny Poad described him: ‘Like the Martyn Bennett of blues.’ I tend to agree.

My only other problem with the evening? Spoilt by a bunch of ignorant bs to my left who talked, loudly, all the way through - why pay good money for a gig and talk?

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