Week 20

Week 20 - Friday 20^th May – The Globe, Cardiff – The Beatles For Sale - £11.50

“It’s a shame he looks more like Jimmy Tarbuck than John Lennon. . .”

As Sandro and I discussed, there is an important distinction to be made between covers bands and tribute bands. A covers band, such as the incomparable Old Trafford Trio, play covers of numerous bands in one set, whereas a tribute band will only cover the songs of the particular band they are paying tribute to (including any songs that band may have famously covered, of course). In the twisted rules of Gigaweek therefore, seeing a covers band isn’t enough, whereas a tribute band is fair game. With this in mind, if you do go to see a tribute band, who better than a Beatles tribute band?

Our night began at The George with a couple of strawberries before we headed to The Globe, which although far from packed, was busier than it had been when we’d seen Fjords and Larry Miller. Presumably, many of those present were regular attendees of the venue’s Friday night tribute band based shenanigans. It’s also fair to say that Sandro and I were among the younger members of the audience, along with Doris and Winifred.

Of course being the most successful band of all time, there are no shortages of Beatles tribute bands out there, with The Bootleg Beatles arguably being the best known of all. The boys playing at The Globe were called The Beatles For Sale, named of course in reference to one of the fab four’s albums, Rubber Soul. Promisingly, according to their website they’ve worked with such luminaries as Morrissey, Midge Ure and New Zealand’s finest Neil Finn, but less promisingly specialise mostly in weddings and corporate events.

That very website also stated that these lads pride themselves, and spare no expense, in trying to recreate The Beatles’ onstage image, and that much was clear when they took to the stage each dressed in black suits complete with white shirts and black ties, and most importantly, moptops. They were a very faithful act, even doing their best to reproduce the fab four’s stage presence, with ‘George’ and ‘Paul’ singing either side of the same microphone. It was almost like watching the real thing and for a moment I thought we were, until Sandro’s allusion to Jimmy Tarbuck shattered that illusion. That and the fact ‘Paul’ didn’t play his guitar left handed. And also the fact that it’s 2011, but that didn't cross my mind at the time.

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As our mother always reassured Sandro though, looks aren’t everything, and while the material they had to work with was obviously fairly limited, the boys made a good fist of it. They kicked things off with the The Beatles’ first single ‘Love Me Do’, which Sandro decided was my favourite Beatles song. Picking a favourite Beatles song isn’t quite so simple though, even if you let someone else do it for you.

Hit after hit was played including ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Eight Days a Week’, ‘Ticket to Ride’, ‘Get Back’, ‘Come Together’, ‘Help!’, ‘We Can Work It Out’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’, and ‘Twist and shout’, while hit after hit was also left in reserve.

Their set was split in two halves of forty odd minutes or so each, with an interval of around half an hour in between. We expected costume changes for the second half of the gig and there were. Sadly, Sandro’s prediction that they’d now be wearing Sgt. Pepper costumes and my guess that they’d be dressed as giant beetles were both wrong. Instead they wore tan coloured jackets which, drawing on my encyclopaedic knowledge of all things Beatles, were clearly inspired by those worn by the real fab four a famous gig at the now demolished Shea Stadium in New York in 1965, that was the subject of a documentary called ‘Stop Boring Us With Pointless Facts You Willy’.

Surprisingly, ‘Ringo’ was arguably the most vocal member of the group between songs, presumably because his impersonation was the best, and he was actually pretty funny. There was even the odd mention of Penarth peppered throughout the gig, which was more amusing than it sounds.

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“Who was the best?” he asked early on. “Was it Paul or John?” he continued playfully. “Or was it George? Or even Ringo?” “It definitely wasn’t Ringo. . .” said ‘Paul’ whose Liverpudlian accent was next in the pecking order and did most of the talking along with ‘Ringo’. The Starr of the show even got to sing ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’. “I’m not much of a singer,” he admitted after it. “You’re not much of a drummer either,” ‘Paul’ chipped in, “he’s a good talker though.”

‘Ringo’ also tried to instigate a dancing competition for the women in front of the stage, with the prize being the chance to go out back with him to their Ford Transit. Although said with tongue in cheek, if a real Beatle had said such a thing, then I’m sure there would have been chaos as ladies flooded the dance floor, on this occasion only Sandro whizzed in to perform the funky chicken. After a fine rendition of ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘Ringo’ was at it again. “You can buy love y’ know. For about a fiver in Penarth,” he said, tarring my childhood memories of Thomas The Tank Engine for good

For the real band, it must have been difficult to decide on a setlist toward the end of their career, and The Beatles For Sale had the difficult choice of deciding what to go out on, but as soon as they started playing ‘Hey Jude’ you knew they'd made the right one. It was a rousing rendition and a perfect end. The audience were thoroughly entertained, and the band had lived up to any realistic expectations, with a repertoire of ready made classics performed well.

Unfortunately, Sandro and I can only sit back and wonder what it might have been like to see the real Beatles live, but I imagine there would have been fewer mentions of Penarth.

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May

30-6 - Camden Crawl  - ✓
7-13 - Devlin - ✓
14-20 - Beatles For Sale - ✓
21-27 - Manic Street Preachers
28-3 - We Are Scientists