The March of the Mods Blue Beat Rooms, Billericay 28/03/16

This gig finished of a wonderful weekend, having been to the Rubbersoul do at the Bassment on Friday night to see the fantastic Mofingers (BookerT/JTQ style) with DJ sets from Snowboy and Eddie Piller. With a Jazz Funk night at the Tulip on Saturday night and England winning the Cricket and Football, perfect.

I have been meaning to go to this for a couple of years now but always had other things on that I couldn’t get out off. The event starts at 1pm and goes onto 11 and for the Princely sum of £10 you get to see 6 bands with DJ’s playing the best in soul, reggae and freakbeat with a little bit of punk thrown in. I couldn’t get there for the whole day so arrived just after 7 just to catch the second half of Cambridge’s The Sound of Pop Art. A great band that I have seen before who play a mixture of soul, funk, rock, pop music all blended into one. A really good band that seem to have got even better since the last time I saw them. They play nearly all of their own compositions; they have a light summery feel to them which make you feel happy and are highly recommended

The next band on were The Boss, a group from the Mod revival days of the 80’s. I have also seen them before as well; they are also another great band who seems even better now. They started with the Rods “Do anything you wanna do” then as far as I could tell all their own songs till the end when we got the Jam’s “Non stop dancing.” You can tell they are influenced by the Jam, plenty of power chords and snappy lyrics but not copying them. Another band highly recommended.

Non Stop Dancing was the correct song to play at the end of the Boss’s set as the next band were the bollox and had the whole of the club dancing. The Signatures, a 10 piece band who do Northern Soul covers. I love bands who just do soul like Junior Jump, Jackie Wilson says or the Soul Detectives but these are the best I have seen by a country mile (or 25 miles if you are Edwin Starr). They played all the Northern songs that everyone knows “Out on the floor” “Beggin’” “Do I love you” “I’m coming home in the morning” “Landslide” “Right Track,” blinding versions of Frankie Valli’s “The Night.” (whenever I play that in the car it has to go on full blast) and Nolan Porters “if only I could be sure” a lovely song, plus many more ending with the MVP’s “Turning my heartbeat up.” A special mention should be made for 13 year old Hannah (she raised over £2000 for the charity) who belted out “Lets wade in the water” with the band who rivalled the excellent Lee Bonnington as a lead singer. They were that good that my mate Paul who I went with, a diehard rocker even had his feet moving (I must be converting him as I caught him dancing to Eddie Piller on Friday as well, he will be wanting to come to the Sunny Hunny weekender in November with me in November next). I will definitely be going to see them again, not Pauls feet, the band. Summing up this was a fantastic event which even more importantly raised a lot of money for The Teenage Cancer Trust. Special thanks has to go to fellow Gooner Ian Parkins who does a lot for live music in the Essex area. He promotes gigs at Billericay Football Club and the Essex Arms next to Brentwood station under the banner of the Blue Beat Rooms. It was good to see a lot of younger people there as well, all sharply dressed, all dancing and enjoying themselves. The other good thing about these places is that you don’t have to be mod to go there, because I’m not.

Duncan, March 2016.

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