Anyone old enough to remember the classic all-nighters at The Flamingo Club in Soho’s Wardour Street back in the sixties could tell you that this concert - excellent though it was - bore scant resemblance to those amazing marathon sessions.
I’m not complaining. Things may be a little more sedate these days but it was a privilege to see and hear some of the finest musicians of their generation re-creating a taste of their glorious past.
Original club survivors like Alan Price, Chris Farlowe, Bobby Tench, and Bournemouth’s own Zoot Money and Colin Allen (both regular Flamingo house musicians for a couple of years) were joined by the great Maggie Bell for an evening dominated by classic blues, soul and R&B.
It was a sublime show with exemplary musicianship from a band driven by Price and Money on keyboards, Tench on lead guitar, Allen on drums Peter Grant on bass and a superbly punchy two man brass section in the form of Kim Nishikawara on sax and Howie Hallworth on trumpet.
The sound was spot on and the performances genuinely thrilling. Highpoints for me included Bell singing Try A Little Tenderness, Farlowe’s reading of In The Midnight Hour and a rabble-rousing ensemble version of We Gotta Get Outta This Place. There were big cheers for returning south coast heros Money and Allen and, bizarrely, repeated plugs for the nearby Beales’ department store from Alan Price.
Jeremy Miles