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Simple. For a start, singer out the front, guitar bass drums behind. Not two guitarists, none of this lead and rhythm bit. One guitarist. Follow that template and you've got, among a multitude of others, The Who and the early Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart out front (who were, of course, the prototype for Led Zeppelin). You can add any number of similar outfits after that, but the most significant in this regard are, of course, Dr. Feelgood.

According to legend The Who were a two guitar outfit up until the time they opened for Kidd & The Pirates (Townshend: They were a truly tight band, achieving a powerhouse sound with just lead and bass guitars and drums. We decided to go the same way, Roger allowing me to take over on lead guitar so he could concentrate entirely on singing. That's lifted straight from his autobiography, where he goes on to describe Pirates' guitarist Mickey Green's influence on Townshend's emerging technique).

Remove the singer and give one of the remaining trio the vocal duties and you've got the classic power trio. Start with Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience and you can note any number of examples along the way, including The Jam, right up to Silverchair and beyond.

Start listing those who started out in one of those vocal/guitar/bass/drums quartets or a power trio and moved on elsewhere and you've got a whole extra stream of influenced artists.

And, of course, you've got what we're looking at here with the singer from one of the most obvious successors to Johnny Kidd & The Pirates in front of a power trio lead by one of their most significant torch bearers.

Given the backstory, of course, I was always going to buy this.

The January 2013 announcement that Wilko Johnson had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer was one of the things that set me off to re-investigate the Dr. Feelgood back catalogue last year. That exercise rekindled a long-standing affection for the Canvey Island quartet that had me picking up a copy of Oil City Confidential, Julien Temple's 2009 Dr. Feelgood doco, and learning of this collaboration in the process.

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© Ian Hughes 2012