Monday, 21 May 2012

Wham, Twang, Thank You Ma'Am

I went to a couple of very enjoyable gigs over the weekend.

Last night I joined the pensioners at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to see the living legend that is Duane Eddy. He was twang-tastic. And the night before I was in Vienna, in a club called Fluc near the Prater funfair, where I had the great pleasure of seeing The Mokkers - undoubtedly my favourite all-female German garage band at the moment.

While the venues couldn't be more different, and the combined age of the Mokkers is roughly what Duane is by himself, there was a zest to both shows that meant they went well together. Here is one track apiece.

"Rebel Rouser" - Duane Eddy

"Dirty Trace" - The Mokkers

Duane's music is easy enough to get hold of, the Mokkers' less so. They have a few tracks to stream on MySpace and Soundcloud. I would particularly commend "Wild Man" on Soundcloud, which was the highlight of their set on Saturday. But if you want a copy of the five track EP that "Dirty Trace" comes from I think you need to contact the ladies directly at themokkers@gmx.de (unless you are in Berlin in which case you can pop into Holy's Hit Records).

I took a few ropey pictures of the Mokkers which are over on Flickr if you can be bothered. About the only one that came out well is this shot of the drummer, a woman of rare charm.


Another woman of rare charm was Sandy Denny. There is a tribute night to her at the Barbican on Wednesday that I am looking forward to greatly. To warm up for an evening of people singing Sandy Denny's songs, here she is singing a couple of songs by other people (first Bryn Haworth and then her old mate Richard Thompson).

"Moments" - Sandy Denny

"For Shame Of Doing Wrong" - Sandy Denny

We'll finish where we started, with a bit of Duane Eddy. I couldn't stop grinning last night when he did this followed by "Dance With The Guitar Man", as cheesy as they are. Here he comes now...

No comments:

Post a Comment