The use of Van Morrison as a reference point here is quite deliberate. Having heard a number of unofficial Morrison concert recordings, there are nights when Van idefinitely seems to be heading in that direction. His widely noted inconsistency as a live performer would, in such circumstances, be caused as much by the difficulty of consistently reaching that state as it would by his notoriously volatile personality.
The astute reader will, of course, have twigged to the fact that there's a much more obvious example of what we might term divine inspiration than Sufi mysticism, which is, of course, why I veered away from referring to the gospel roots of the old rhythm and blues.
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 concert 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 carefully 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 organizing 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.