Sadly Georgie Fame's not in the line up this evening, but it includes Andy Fairweather Low, Terry Taylor and Geraint Wilkins. It is very disconcerting that, when Bill walks on stage I think it's my old Auntie Doris, little stick legs and big hair. It’s a great mix of Cajun, blues, rhythm and blues, and numbers written by Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. There are a couple of ballads and a few belted soul songs. The stage is full, with the four guitarists, drummer, keyboard player, two saxophonists, plus two black singers separately giving us Soul Man and I Put a Spell On You. It’s a lively set, and a good-natured atmosphere on stage, with Bill Wyman quietly smiling as he plays his bass. Andy Fairweather Low’s voice blends well with the other singers, and is ideally suited to the Cajun numbers. Geraint Wilkins from Wales sings rich, deep and low, serious blues. I didn’t stump up £5 for a programme so I can’t get all the names but the black singer, the soul diva, is Felicity. Hers is a big voice, full and rounded, great for her and Andy’s rendition of Harlem Shuffle. Good fun.
Glorious 39 strips away illusions. Poliakoff presents the apparent idyll of an English aristocratic family headed by genteel patriarch Lord Keyes (Bill Nighy). He presides over a country estate in Norfolk and his elegant townhouse in London – a world of golden light, romantic ruins, servants, house parties and happy children. But this is 1939, a mere 21 years since the Great War, the war to end all wars, in which millions died, Britain was crippled with war debt, and the English country house system which he so values was almost annihilated. There are many references to the ancientness of his family and tradition, but now, few male servants remained alive or unmaimed to work the English landscape or to be in service to the old families. Fearing domestic and political upheaval, appeasers such as Keyes sought to prevent Churchill leading the country and taking Britan to war, and to buy off Hitler to preserve British cultural and national identity. Nighty is excellent, contro...
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