“Is this a supergroup?” asked a friend of mine as we took
our places last night in the third row of this tiny, historic, yet barely half-full Hastings cinema. If about 250 years of
combined experience playing with some of the most important western musicians
of the 20th Century fits the bill, then The Prisonaires are
definitely a supergroup. While not household names, any blues, jazz-rock, folk,
or rock enthusiast will understand that these gentlemen were pivotal to some of
the most ground-breaking music of the 1960s and '70s. Yet there were plenty of
empty seats in a venue that only has 48 of them.
Acoustic guitarist and leader of the band, Alan King commented
wryly that scheduling a gig during an international football tournament is
always a disaster. But can it be that south-coast music buffs preferred staying at home to watch telly in the hope that Argentina would defeat the French, than attending a gig of this quality? When The Prisonaires finished their set a member of the
audience stood up and shouted that it was the finest gig he’d seen in Hastings in
years. It was one of the finest gigs I’ve seen anywhere in years.
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| Alan (left) with Bobby Valentino (fiddle), Les Morgan (drums) and Tony Reeves (right,bass) |
Musical impresario, Alan King was a doyen of the famed 12
Bar Club, the ‘60s Soho music venue that gives the name to Dr King’s ‘12 Bar
Music’, the platform for this and for some forthcoming Electric Palace gigs.
King told me outside the Gents – the Electric Palace is so small that
the toilets are never far away – that he is lucky enough to have played with his
favourite guitarists, Davy Graham and Bert Jansch, and his favourite singer,
Miller Anderson. For many years King also played with his favourite songwriter, Alan Hull (of
Lindisfarne).
The aura of Graham and Jansch hung over proceedings as King opened
the set riffing on the rite of passage folk guitar tune, ‘Anji’. What the
advance publicity promised would be a hybrid of The Pentangle and Can, “with a
touch of Miles Davis’” jazz-rock-funk fusion, was underway. ‘Anji’ went from
sounding like The Pentangle were performing it, to something with a lot more
attitude. Almost like Fairport Convention’s ‘A Sailor’s Life’, but lifted
beyond even that wonderfully free-flowing, folk-jazz hybrid However I couldn’t detect the influence of
Can on this or on any of the other tunes The Prisonaires performed last night. It was
undoubtedly an eclectic set though, and The Prisonaires have certainly embraced
Can’s determination to kick against the musical pricks.
What happened on ‘Anji’, and throughout the gig, was a
superannuated jam session without the tedium that that would normally imply. Each
number, often only loosely based on professed connections to an original tune, has
a distinct concept behind it that’s usually conceived of and initially worked
up by Alan King. It might be a radical reworking of a known tune or the fusing
of diverse tunes and elements together – the second number was inspired by
‘Sketches of Spain’ era Miles but went all over the place. King communicates
with some band members via SoundCloud
(“or just by text”, grinned guitarist Paul Baverstock). Rehearsals are live. Some
band members, like the audience, may be hearing a number for the first time. To
carry this off you need musicians of a very high calibre and, as importantly,
imagination.
Alongside King in this endeavour last night were virtuoso
fiddle player Bobby Valentino,
who at 64 is one of the youngest in the band. Valentino was in The Fabulous
Poodles, worked extensively with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and has played
with Dylan, Knopfler and Petty. He is part Stephane Grappelli, part Jean-Luc
Ponty, but is mostly just himself.
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| Bobby Valentino |
On electric lead guitar was Paul Baverstock.
Paul, who also spoke to me outside the Gents, said that he was in the celebrated
London band that nearly made it big in the early ‘80s, A Bigger Splash. Their
first single, ‘I Don’t Believe A Word’, was produced by Sting who also, with Eddie Reader, sung harmonies on it. It
made it to the influential BBC Radio 1 review programme, ‘Roundtable’, but had
the misfortune of being followed by Prince’s ‘Kiss’ which, Alan said, blew
everything else out of the water that week (or pretty much that decade). Last
night Paul’s impressive pedal affects assisted him in alternating between a blues-inflected
rock guitar sound that often echoed Dave Gilmour, and being a Hammond organ virtuoso.
Paul was loud for a small venue but was darned good.
To his right in the all-star
line-up was Tony Reeves. Tony has a strong
jazz feel to his impressive electric bass playing; hardly surprising given that
he was founder member of fusion band Colosseum and later joined Curved Air. Like
Alan, Tony started out on the folk circuit. He’s on Davy Graham’s first two
albums. A few years later he joined John Mayall’s celebrated Bluesbreakers,
along with Mick Taylor who a few months later replaced Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones.
Reeves has also played with, and produced, John Martyn and is the bassist on a Sandy Denny LP. By contrast, as a
Pye Records’ plugger in the mid-60s, Tony promoted, and then played on, Tony Hatch’s
‘Sounds Orchestral’.
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| Les (drums), Tony (bass) and Paul (guitar) |
In the centre of the stage, and often, my friend observed,
making sure that the whole thing held together, was drummer Les Morgan (who’s performed with leading
UK blues artists Alexis Korner and Jo-Anne Kelly, and with singer Chris Farlow).
Les isn’t musically ostentatious like Paul, but, as good drummers often do,
provides backbone (and flair) when some of the showmen occasionally threatened to take
proceedings off on too conflicting a set of tangents. Alan King told me that
the band also normally features Mike Paice (a Jools Holland sparring partner)
on sax and harmonica, who, to King’s surprise given the unusual combination of
instruments, gels successfully with violinist Valentino.
Among the most interesting musical adventures of the night was
a number influenced by Miles Davis’ darker funk-fusion phase that also informed its title, ‘It’s About That Movie Time’; and a latin jazz excursion based on a
number by jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell. In something of a preview of his own forthcoming set at The Electric Palace on 21
September, King took the band on a further musical diversion: ragas. He found suitable
accompaniment from Valentino, before Reeves and Baverstock somehow worked out their place in the evolving mix. The Prisonaires' ‘raga rock’ is wholly its
own thing, and has been a decade-long musical preoccupation for King. No easy
nod here to George Harrison, The Byrds or even L. Shankar. The September gig by
Dr King, possibly accompanied by some other members of The Prisonaires, will be
well worth seeing.
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| Getting in tune? Les, Alan & Paul |
The closing number was introduced by Alan as a fusion of two
pivotal Jimmy Webb songs: - “the greatest anti-war song ever written”, ‘Galveston’,
and the “greatest love song ever written”, ‘By The Time I Get to Phoenix’ – but without
the words! This was an extraordinary musical idea successfully realised: you
could hear the trace elements of both Webb classics in the heady mix.
On a sweaty night out in Hastings some thirty odd people had
experienced a real treat, and they rightly gave the band a rapturous response.
Cries for an encore were understandably resisted though as the band, tired and
thirsty, had done what they set out to do – whether Can were in the house or
not.
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