You can see elements of that same losing yourself in the music side of things in soul and R&B, in Tin Soldier, the go with the flow scatting I heard in a Just Like A Woman on a Van Morrison bootleg from (I think) Bournemouth in the late nineties, the churning instrumental jams of the Quicksilver Messenger Service, the whole Grateful Dead improvisational departure for points unknown, the Bruce Springsteen stadium experience, the sonic storm that comes at the end of a Derek Trucks guitar solo and the modal meandering guitar work you find on Richard Thompson's Calvary Cross or Night Comes In.
From which the astute reader will probably gather that Hughesy's rather fond of that sort of thing.
The astute reader would be right on the money. Through the musical dog days of the early seventies one of the few lights on the horizon were the performers who seemed to be communicating some of the same passion that you find in Tin Soldier.
Much of what little excitement I could track down emanated from performers like Dr Feelgood, Graham Parker, Bob Seger, Southside Johnny, Willy de Ville and, of course, Bruce Springsteen. Many of those performers rose to prominence around the time the punk/new wave movement was rewriting the definition of what amounted to commerciality, and it was the R&B derived end of the spectrum rather than the buzz-saw three chord thrash of punk that I really got into.
Around that time I had a long term unachieved dream of putting together a hard R&B band in Townsville. Not that I had any illusions about fronting the outfit myself. I envisaged myself as the svengali behind the operation, and put a deal of thought into ways in which you might be able to put the package together. My theory was that I'd start with the rhythm section, working bass and drums together towards a situation where those two knew exactly where each was likely to go when things went off into extended jam territory.
From there I'd have added a rhythm guitarist, a keyboard player and finally a lead player before finally throwing the singer into the mix, preferably somebody with a throaty roar along the same lines as Paul Rogers, Rod Stewart, Gregg Allman or one of the performers name-checked a couple of paragraphs ago.
The idea, as far as I could see, was that the band would play pubs and clubs with minimal on the night setting and tuning up. They'd set up in the afternoon, with instruments pre-tuned so that, for an eight o'clock start there'd be no one in evidence till seven fifty, apart from a certain supervisory svengali keeping an eye on things over a few chilled articles.
With ten minutes to go until kickoff the band would appear, devoting most of the lead-up time to vital matters like supplies of liquid refreshment. Two minutes out, there'd be a move to the stage, a brief check that things are the way they were when the setup process had been completed. Right on the dot of eight the front man would sidle up to the microphone and, with a Good evening, we're Demon Rhythm and this one's called... before embarking on a forty-five minute set played as if it was the collective last three-quarters of an hour on earth.
Take a fifteen minute break at the end of the set and repeat until closing time.
Once you’d managed to put that outfit together, which wouldn’t have been the easiest of tasks in the first place, you’d have the problem of finding a way of getting the band noticed, and attracting enough attention to build the reputation as a live outfit that would deliver those gigs. I figured that I had that side of things covered as well.
There was, from time to time, the odd multi-band charity show or Battle of the Bands and I suspected Demon Rhythm, as the newest outfit on the block would end up hitting the stage early in proceedings, which would, as I saw it, tie in nicely with a mission to blow anyone yet to appear off the stage.
OK, the attitude would have been. See if you can follow this.
Inquiring minds would, of course, be wondering what you'd choose as a three-song set in such circumstances. I'd have headed straight towards Small Faces territory for the set, starting with Afterglow of Your Love, following it with All or Nothing and concluding with (of course) Tin Soldier. A reader who happens to have those tracks in their iTunes could sample what would be close to a perfect little ten minute mini-set, and if you were to set the crossfade in your iTunes Preferences about half way across the sliding scale, you’d see that the recorded versions crossfade rather nicely, and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure a couple of little adaptions that would work pretty well in the live setting.
But in that territory we’re still looking at an environment where the short set was the standard modus operandi. As we moved beyond that territory, and as ticket prices went, effectively, through the roof, a half hour set from a headliner isn’t going to be seen as acceptable, and even the hour-long show that sufficed for most acts through the seventies isn’t going to satisfy people who’ve paid over a hundred dollars for a seat, and have probably incurred other significant expenses along the way.
Of course, there are some artists who’ve been instrumental in lifting the bar (as far as concert duration is concerned) along the way. That’s where we’re headed next...