The King’s Head Hotel Louth

All exceptional musicians have to re-invent themselves occasionally to keep their, and their fans, interest to a maximum! Although The Red Kites have been playing for a while now this was the first opportunity for me to see them and just how good it is to see these guys performing live.

As to be expected a couple of weekends before Xmas the town was not buzzing however the faithful turned up for the two sets the first of which featured classic covers such as “Pass Me Down The Wine” from Oasis, KT Tunstall’s “Hold On”, Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon”, Brown Eyed Girl” and, of course, the must have “Mustang Sally”.

Snow Patrols “You’re All I Have” kicked off the second set followed by the wonderful Neil Young “Rockin’ In The Free World”. Chuck Berry songs are always popular however I think this was a first time at The Kings for “Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller” which was immediately followed up by the world’s greatest blues singer, John Lee Hooker’s “I Want To Hug You”. This was seriously good stuff and made even better by the fact that Lynne now plays the harmonica, and extremely well I must say, it adds a fantastic extra dimension to any band…youngsters note!

An already superb night’s music continued with “Shake Your Money Maker” , “Hush”, The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love”, “Tulane”, a tremendous Led Zep “Rock n Roll” and for an encore, and probably another first, Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”. All excellent stuff, a night of quality track choices played with enthusiasm and professionalism, Louth should be very proud of them. They’ll be back!

As usual Crossfire had a big following of fans at The Kings for their heavy drum and bass rock songs such as “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?”, “Teenage Kicks”, “Chelsea Dagger”, “Black Night”, “Sex On Fire”, “Use Somebody”, “Honky Tonk Woman”, “You Shook Me” and a “Whole Lotta Rosie”.

This is an extremely competent band however they seem to be struggling for enough songs these days and when the very busy crowd shouted for more they had to repeat several of the songs from their first set. Not that their fans minded but I feel sure that they could easily find another half a dozen or so classic songs that would fit in well with their already well-rehearsed act.

Crossfire will be back the weekend after Easter on Saturday 10th April 2010.

The Kings was heaving with The What fans for a thoroughly entertaining, enjoyable and in the end, quite a late Friday night. As usual this extremely capable band were playing through Balding Bloke’s superb sound system which showed off their talents to the very best.

All the usual favourite tracks were there from The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, the awesome Joe Cocker version of ” With a Little Help from My Friends”, The Zutons and Kaiser Chiefs, and just when we thought we had heard everything they could do David Bowie’s 1972 classic “Ziggy Stardust” was unleashed upon us…now that raised more than a few eyebrows:-)

Needless to say their fans didn’t want them to leave however the coolest guy on the planet asked if he could sing a song…up stepped Raz for Barry White’s “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything”, now that was definitely a first at The Kings.

Not be outdone Zane C, after months of trying to get him to sing,  decided this was THE moment for the brilliant Chuck Berry  classic Johnny B. Goode and did the entire band do it justice or what? And just when we thought that was it they surprised us once more, and what a finale…again with Zane on vocals and for me one of the best songs ever written and performed, The Blues Brothers and “Everybody Needs Somebody”…a great performance to finish off an absolutely brilliant night. March 27th seems an awful long way off before these guys are back.