Imitation That Is More Than Just Flattery

Tucked away in the late television schedules last night were two programmes on a rock venue, the Limelight, a converted Methodist chapel in Crewe. The BBC2 programme was an introduction to the various artists who play there and the follow-up programme on BBC4 saw all of the featured acts performing.

The 'tonight Matthew I'm going to be' factor was removed from your mind as soon as you heard these guys sing, but boy could they play their instruments, in fact the vocals, with one exception that I'll come to later, were so poor as too be embarrassing. The bands featured were: Pink Fraud, Stairway to Heaven, Purple Snake, Limehouse Lizzy, Cobain, T.Rextacsy and Are You Experienced? The picture above shows John Campbell the star of the show, in fact John's devotion to the cause extended to squirting his guitar with lighter fluid and setting it on fire. He then managed to sell the fire damaged plank to a 'classic rock' fan for seventy quid, unfortunately John's devotion doesn't extend to playing the guitar left handed.

All the artists seem to agree that they weren't in it just to imitate their chosen heroes and the most telling contrubution came from the Phil Lynott lookalike who said that he felt let down that he could only ever honestly call himself an entertainer rather than a musician. The desire to recreate the look and sound led to some strange wigs being worn and the sight of a fully grown adult wearing a school uniform t recreate the authentic AC/DC look seemed a bit bizarre. something the guitarist in question was himself quick to acknowledge. In Pink Fraud the guy wearing a wig to look like Dave Gilmour actually looked like Julie Christie whilst standing next to him on stage the person taking the Roger Waters role was a dead ringer for Dave Gilmour - bizarre or what? The lead singer of T.Rextacsy seemed to think he was on some sort of spiritual quest, explaining that he had begun to look like Marc Bolan shortly after Bolan died back in 1977. He proudly boasted that he had Marc's old tambourine, which was fine, that he'd had his two guitars altered to sound like Marc's, which again was fine, and that he actually wore some of Marc's old clothes on stage - which was weird.

Anyway as I said the vocal weren't up to much with one exception and it was one of those hair standing up on your neck moments. The keyboard player in Pink Fraud played the intro to Great Gig In The Sky and you thought to yourself, oh yeah how's this going to work, well step forward a young housewife who had been previously seen backstage carrying her young baby. Claire Torry's vocalising on the original track have made it one of the most easily recognisable pieces of music in rock and this unassuming woman in Crewe stepped forward out of the dry ice and made it her own. There was a brief yet discernible gasp of admiration from the audience who then broke into spontaneous applause. You had to feel sorry for the band who put in hours of brilliant musicianship only to be upstaged by four minutes of vocal gymnastics.