HFG's Gecko Gig Broadens the Horizons

On Friday the Hastings Independent Press (HIP) published my review of the Hastings Friendship Group (HFG) gig in support of Horizons Community Learning as "Hastings Friendship Expands Horizons" (subtitled 'Quality Music for Everyone and All for Charity'). The previous week the Hastings Observer published a similar review by me under the title "Gecko Groove in Local Good Cause".

I have reproduced the HIP one below, including the picture of performer Jack Apps as used in the newspaper. I have also posted up pictures taken by Valerie Grove on the evening plus a couple (Vincent Turner and Trevor Webb) taken by me.


Hastings Friendship Expands Horizons
- Quality Music for Everyone and All for Charity

Please note that this article originally appeared on page 19 of the October 2nd 2015 edition of the Hastings Independent Press

Hastings Friendship Group (HFG) showcased a range of local musical talent at the Gecko Bar in St Leonard’s on Sunday (September 20) in aid of Horizons Community Learning.

Horizons provides free adult education and personal advice in Hollington, St Leonard’s and in Sidley near Bexhill. It relies on grants, donations and a highly dedicated team of volunteer and paid workers. HFG was founded by Hastings councillor Trevor Webb. HFG has hosted 40 gigs over two years, raising over £3,200 for 20 charities in the process.

Among those performing were Oksana Kirjuskina. She sung two ballads, one in her native Latvian, the other sung in English. Although her version of Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting” was excellently performed, the song made me wish she was still singing in Latvian. Oksana competed in the southern heats of the TV talent show “Britain’s Got Talent” and will hear in December whether she is through to the next round. Judging by this performance she will be.

By way of contrast, Jack Apps (pictured), growled and menaced his way through some self-penned, loosely Americana-style, songs. 

Jack Apps - mean and moody

The bravest performer of the evening was probably the youngest: Vincent Turner, who sang and played acoustic guitar. Playing only his second ever solo gig, Vincent writes his own songs and, like many of the performers, sometimes had to battle to be heard. Vincent also plays bass guitar in the alt-rock Hastings band, Liquid Chaos. Dan Wahnon did urban/RnB unplugged before performing an acoustic cover of the timeless rock n’ roll standard “Johnny B. Goode”.

The best covers performer of the night though, and the hardest working (he played three times), was singer/keyboardist Saspirella Sam. Sam performed jazz and blues grooves, including a rousing “Minnie the Moocher”, a song made famous by Cab Calloway.

Ghostfingers are Mike Guy on vocals and acoustic guitar, and Patrick McGurr on keyboards. They are unassuming but impressive. Their melding of “La Bamba” and “Twist and Shout” got the sometimes distracted audience engaged. Nick Warren played some nice covers, including songs by Tom Waits and Loudon Wainwright III, and performed an impressive version of the Python Lee Jackson/Rod Stewart classic “In A Broken Dream”. The evening was brought to a close by Saspirella Sam. Some £87 had been raised for Horizons.

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Fearless Vincent Turner

Oksana wows 'em

Dan plays it cool

Ghostfingers - spirited duo

Nick Warren - quietly impressive

Saspirella Sam - the hardest workin' man in (local) showbusiness

Trevor gets it on to Ghostfingers

Sam (centre) with Horizons staff and supporters

Hastings Friendship Group - a platform for local musicians and good causes

Hastings Friendship Group is the brainchild of Trevor Webb, who, together with fellow local Labour councillor, Nigel Sinden, and other supporters, puts on fund-raising music events for charity. In doing so they draw on a welter of local musical talent. This week’s very worthwhile cause was the Bohemia Counselling Centre, which for 21 years has, by word of mouth, brought together therapists and those in need of help. It’s very much in that cooperative spirit that musicians and enthusiasts gathered at the excellent Armenian restaurant and wine bar, Café Relax on Marine Court, St Leonard's on Sunday evening.

First up was Jack Apps, a grizzled singer of “nobody else’s songs”; a fact that he underlined mid-set and in conversation afterwards. Jack is a comic too, but when he told me he had been waiting 40 years to be an oversight sensation, it was partly said in earnest. His gag routine, to which I was treated to a personal performance, took me into an imagined alternative Royal Command Performance at which there “isn’t a dry seat in the house” and he has the audience “rolling in the aisles” (gedditt?!!?). More poignant was his opening song, ‘Love The Person Inside’. Perhaps you can’t properly love someone if you don’t love yourself, or if your feelings for another are only skin deep.

Next up was someone from the other end of the age spectrum. Tom Cole is a man who plays covers, but does so very tenderly. He also performed what sounded like an original, and impressive, take on the gospel and blues standard, ‘In My Time of Dying’, stripping it back to its roots in a refreshing rejection of the Led Zeppelin bluster with which it became associated in the 1970s. Bravest performer at the gig perhaps was acoustic guitarist and singer John Bushbridge. He began hesitantly but gained in confidence with each song. Covering ‘Nights in White Satin’ is no walk in the park. 

Paul Crimin has a good voice and performed some interesting material. I may never know what the song was that he said he had never performed before as he, sadly, couldn’t pull it off on the night. Bashfully, he said he should have saved that one for the bedroom.

After what had been a stream of acoustic guitar playing singers, a change in pace and style was welcome. Dan Wahnon and Nina Nicola blended contemporary RnB, pop and rock; at one point in the very same song when they fused Rihanna's ‘We Found Love (in a Hopeless Place)’ and White Stripes' ‘7 Nation Army’. Nina had the voice to carry it off and, as she put it, to wake us up (and drown out some of the less considerate punters).

Sassaparilla Sam is apparently a regular on the Hastings circuit. Big in personality but not in stature, the fedora-wearing guitarist belted out a cover of Irish folk tune ‘Star of the County Down’ and made Van Morrison’s ‘Real Real Gone’, ordinarily a fairly forgettable number, come to life. However Sam’s party piece was Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’, for which he increasingly furiously tapped into its Yiddish overtones in a cranked-up klezmer cum hoedown style. Now the whole audience were engaged.

I chatted with guitarist John Hobden later. He is a mere 80 years of age, first picked up the instrument at the tender age of 73, and first performed in public just 18 months ago. I hope to see him play on another occasion.

The band that helped make the whole evening possible were a three-man Latvian act: singer, keyboardist and electric guitarist, Midnight Cats. The keyboard player doubled up as sound man. The Cats were a little slick for my taste, but their professionalism went down very well on the night.

The fine-voiced Pete Williams, a veteran of these events, performed toward the end of the evening, including a sweet version of 'Streets of London'. Sadly though, I missed Paul Crimin returning to the stage to sing an emotional version of a highly emotional song, 'The Green Fields of France', which recalls the horrors and, for many, pointlessness of World War One. He sung it in honour of Jeremy Birch, the much lamented local Labour leader who was a great supporter of HFG and who, at only 63 years of age, died very suddenly just over three weeks ago. Jeremy had helped Paul, mid-performance at an HFG gig, to remember the words of 'Waltzing Matilda', a song whose original lyrics are famously critical of the WW1 battle of Gallipoli.

• Hastings Friendship Group has held 26 charitable gigs in the 12 months since it began such events. In the process it has raised nearly £2,000 for 15 national and international charities, including many that focus on children. For showcasing local talent for such good causes, it deserves all the support it can get. Trevor Webb is also involved in organising the annual St Leonards Festival, which takes place 10-12 July.