Hi there pop pickers!
You have selected for purchase the brand new platter from Walsall’s most blues wailin’ Lonesome Dogs. Please remember to pay the cashier as you exit the store, otherwise the alarm goes off and well, it all gets a touch embarrassing, doesn’t it? All major credit cards are welcome, but we like luncheon vouchers the best, they’re the toppermost of the poppermost!
Lovely, thanks very much, you’re a grand lad!
If, like me, you’re a long standing fan of the bonnie lads known and loved throughout the Yorkshire Dales as Lonesome Dog Blues Band, you may have noticed that they have lost that bit of their name which identifies them as being solely a card carrying, torch bearing, down home ‘blues’ band.
But fear not, this is nothing to be scared of. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. We will fight them on the beaches. Never have so many etc.
Indeed, I like to think of it as being much the same as when funny-man Freddie Davies dropped his ‘Parrot Face’ comedy nickname in order to enter the legitimate theatre. Didn’t do him any harm, did it?
Which rather begs the question, why have the chaps dropped the ‘blues band’ bit of the name? Do they wish to scale the heights of the hit parade whilst rubbing shoulders with the likes of top ‘rock’ bands Bon Jovi and Lieutenant Pigeon or that nice lad, Bobby Crush?
Why oh why can’t the ungrateful little bleeders be satisfied with the critical acclaim that has come their way since the release of their last effort in 2004, We’re Barking Mad, We Are? which even the legendarily tough Walsall Examiner’s critic, Ayesha Brough, was moved to dub as ‘right up there with Liquid Gold’.
High praise indeed. Not ‘arf!
But hey, as Del Amitri and his mates are always carrying on about 'let's kiss this thing goodbye'. My question to YOU, dear reader is, ‘why are you asking me this stuff?’ I am, after all, only mates with Dickie, the ace Dogs drummist, the man on the traps, if you will.
The fact is, even as I write, quill to hand, here in my Devonshire summer home, my mind is cast fondly back to our salad days together as private school young bucks, where, sap a-rising, public hair a-sprouting, we enrolled in the Boys Brigade and over one memorable summer skinned our hearts and skinned our knees, learned of love and ABC.
We discovered Top Trumps, how to skim stones in the correct manner and, as our firm, young bodies ripened, enjoyed tentative, slightly guilt inducing, yet strangely enjoyable mutual mas…that’s quite enough of your ‘one memorable summer’ recollections - Sleevenote Ed).
Anyway, don’t be expecting me to know the ins and outs of the Walsall blues scene, flipping heck, I’m not that blummin' Steve Gibbons bloke!
Don’t worry, pop pickers, I’m just having a funny joke with you.
I happen to know all the lads right well and they are grand chaps. Indeed, many is the time I have uttered the immortal phrase ‘Can I be a roadie?’ and, gents that they are, they have permitted me and my old dutch to lug their gear round for them in me British racing green’71 Bedford. I may not be bright but by heck, I can lift heavy things!
Seriously, the reason behind the contraction of the group's name by a factor of 50% is, as the album title so subtly hints, that the band are ‘not strictly blues’ these days. Indeed, the recording of this fab disc has seen them fall under the influence of such diverse talents as Kenny Lynch, Jess Conrad and Reg Varney!
So, no doubt you are guaranteed to hear all kinds of great stuff on this disc. I haven’t heard it myself so I can’t really say, but I’m sure it’s very good, because they told me it was. And, when you’ve finished playing it, why not play it again, just to check if it’s as good as you thought it was the first time.
Duncan Massey - sleevenotes a speciality
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