Doctor Feelgood
Whatever purists may think, this is the Feelgood we've got, keeping a uniquely British form of RnB alive in an age of autotune. It's literally what Lee Brilleaux wanted - who are we to argue with that?
Doctor Feelgood were the biggest and the best, but only one of countless pub rock bands that rattled the foundations of the Top Alex in Southend, the Grand in Leigh, Crocs in Rayleigh, and countless other sweaty, smoky, beer-stained pubs in South East Essex in the seventies. They were not just an Essex band, however, they were a Canvey Island band, briefly thrusting this otherwise undistinguished corner of the Home Counties into the spotlight. Sadly Wilko Johnson, their sole songwriter, was gone in the first couple of years, subsequently followed by the whole rhythm section. When Lee Brilleaux, who soldiered on until the mid-nineties, tragically died of lymphoma no one expected his backing band of guitarist Steve Walwyn, bassist Phil Mitchell and drummer Kevin Morris to pick up the baton and run with it. Yet nearly thirty years later, Morris and Mitchell have now been in the band far longer than even Brilleaux. With Gordon Russell recently replacing Walwyn, it's only "new boy" Robert Kane - vocalist for the last twenty-five years - who now differs from the early eighties line-up.
With no support for the evening, the band launched into the first of two blistering sets without ceremony or fuss. Notching up a bewildering mix of the old and the new, it was hard to keep up with- or recall - what had played, as one classic riff trumped the previous song before you'd had time to process it. Post Wilko, it felt like the Brilleaux era had an embargo on Johnson compositions, but these days it feels like the band has great fun plundering the entire back catalogue. She Does It Right and All Through the City from their debut album sat comfortably alongside the later Take a Tip and Milk and Alcohol. Gordon Russell handled both playing styles with ease, but to my mind was most at home the insouciant style of Gypie Mayo. No mere tribute act, the band continues to record new material, the likes of Mary Ann, Damn Right I Do and Put the Blame On Me standing up remarkably well alongside the songs of old. Unencumbered by invidious comparison, the new songs came across as fresh and invigorating, showcasing just how good a singer Robert Kane is. He gets a lot of stick for not being as good as Brilleaux, but then who is? Who will ever be? His stage antics continue to mystify - a weird mix of elfin pixie dancing, orthopaedic stretching and gurning - but when pinned down to the microphone he always does a song justice.
Meanwhile, you have to give credit to the no nonsense bass playing of Phil Mitchell, his stoic stillness in seeming defiance of Kane's peripatetic antics. Kevin Morris is equally understated behind the drum kit, the noise produced not quite matching up the daintiness with which this big man drums. Returning, yet again without fanfare, for a second set, we were treated to the same mix of the old and the new, a judicious inclusion of covers adding to the recipe. Mike Morgan's If my Baby Quit Me, Bo Diddley's I Can Tell and Wilson Pickett's Ninety Nine And a Half are just three of many songs the band made their own. Even Down at the Doctors is really a Mickey Jupp song, after all. That said, I thought it telling that while they might have closed on this signature number, they preferred to do so with Give Me One Last Shot, probably the first big song the current line-up can count as their own.
The inevitable encore followed, with the surprising double of Riot in Cell Block No 9 and Route 66, and while Gordon Russell somehow resisted the urge to machine gun the audience, Wilko style, it proved a fitting, and actually quite moving, nod to things past. Goodness knows they must weary of old lags moaning that they aren't the real Feelgood. While, as an unrepentant Essex expat, my misspent youth involved hanging out in the aforementioned dives alongside the Thames Delta, I do struggle every time I hear Milk and Alcohol introduced with a Sunderland accent, it's, frankly, time I got over myself. Whatever purists may think, this is the Feelgood we've got, keeping a uniquely British form of RnB alive in an age of autotune. It's literally what Lee Brilleaux wanted - who are we to argue with that?
