There aren’t many bands who can boast a real live folk hero in their midst but with Nick Reynolds the Alabama 3 can confidently claim they have just such a man. Nick Reynolds is the son of the architect of the Great Train Robbery Bruce Reynolds and a fine blues harmonica player to boot. This fact is celebrated around half way through tonight’s set with ‘Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds’ with Nick wailing on his harp and the audience giving the song a resounding cheer. The band comes across as a bunch of renegade outlaws and to have Reynolds in their midst seems somehow fitting for a band that comes on like The Stones if they had sacked Jagger in the late 80’s (after “Dirty Work”) and took on an Acid House groove with Jack Nicholson as lead singer and a reactivated Brian Jones sticking to blues-wailing harmonica. It’s a heady hip-hoppy stew for sure.
With scant introductions to songs its difficult to pin down song titles but there are references to Elvis and John Sinclair with front man Jake Black (AKA The Very Reverend Dr D Wayne Love) telling us he would rather believe in the King than “some long haired dude wandering around Palestine 2000 years ago”. Rob Spragg (AKA Larry Love) provides ample vocal support and loose limbed dancing amongst much shouts of “NEWCASSSSEEEEARRRL” and the impossibly thin Aurora Dawn looks cool and funky behind her huge shades whilst providing powerful soulful back up vocals. Steve Finnerity (AKA Lovepipe) gives us his electronics that feature heavily in the beefed up sound. In his Guy Fawkes mask and shoulder length hair he IS “V” from the cult film “V For Vendetta”.
Songs that sound as they might be called ‘Shoot Me Up’, ‘Stop the Clock’ and ‘We Do it’ are delivered in a glorious hip-hop funk stew that make the band sound like a fantastically updated Talking Heads with Dr Love telling us that they are taking the hip-hop route “because we can.” Wandering mysteriously around the stage plucking a bass is an older guy in a pork-pie hat who is eventually introduced as John “Segs” Jennings who, it is claimed, has come on board the Alabama 3 band-waggon after having been sacked from The Ruts on Sunday for being “too raucous.”
The band are probably best known for providing the theme song, “Woke up this Morning”, for TV’s greatest ever show “The Sopranos” and a tough swampy version is dutifully delivered towards the end of the set. A superb cover of John Prine’s “The Speed and Sound of Loneliness” pops up mid set and underlines their Happy-Mondays-meets-Hank-Williams approach to their sound.
We are in free-fall to the end now and a monstrous “U Don’t Dans 2 Tekno Anymore” has the crowd whooping along. The crowd shout long and hard for an encore and eventually Dr Love returns to claim that the band are the “Chlamydia of Rock n Roll” before dancing us all off into the night. A smokin’, show.
Words and Photo: Greg Johnson
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