Let's Rock Bristol - Retro Festival

The Let's Rock 80's retro festival franchise is spreading across the country,after having begun at Cookham 7 or 8 years ago it now pops up at 7 locations across the country for 1 or 2 day events.

This weekend it's Bristol's turn, the festival located in the beautiful Ashton Park Estate. Due to some horrendous traffic on the M5, Music News was gutted to miss The Selecter and Blancmange, but just about managed to get over missing Snap!

We arrived just in time to catch Hazel O'Connor who's striking looks and personality are immediately engaging to the crowd, even if the sound man takes a minute to realise she's on stage!

Hazel flings her arms around and bellows into the mic, she has clearly lost none of her vigour and enthusiasm over the years and goes down a storm, the highlight being a thundering performance of Will You.

Hazel and the next 4 acts are all backed by the same house band who it must be said are extremely professional and capable considering the different styles they need to adapt to. Next up being Katrina (minus the Waves) who bearing in mind only really has 2 songs that people know turns on a great crowd pleasing performance. She plays a few very good country rock numbers, clearly more her natural genre than the awful Eurovision winning effort, Love shine A Light. None of the 7000 strong crowd (many of whom don't move from their camping chairs all day but for a few bar and toilet trips!) needed to guess what her closing effort would be, and she sings Walking on Sunshine with as much Joy and gusto as she did back in '83. We all obediently sing along to every word and Katrina walks off stage leaving us all with beaming smiles.

Sinitta's up next and comes bouncing on stage looking great (wearing a tiny costume that compere Dave Benson Phillips likes, a lot!) to take her place in front of her over choreographed dancers. Stock, Aitken and Waterman had an unpleasant vice like grip on the charts for many over produced acts in the 80's, they were successful at what they did, but the ubiquitous pop cheese wasn't for everyone, Music News heads to the bar.

Chesney Hawkes has snuck into the 80's from 1991, literally only having one song, the age defying chirpy chap belts out a few cover versions for a bit of a singalong, Summer of '69, Mr Brightside and I Predict a Riot are adequate time fillers, and this reviewer manages to hold his synicysm for a few moments and remind himself this festival is largely a bit of fun and we all give in and happily sing along to The One And Only. Chesney is clearly thankful for the 3 minute wonder that's kept him from stacking shelves for the last 30 years.

Adopted national treasure,Jason Donavan is next up, another Stock Aitken Waterman product with lets be honest some truly awful songs. Jason can sing though, and makes the best of it as he throws himself into Any Dream Will Do and a stomach churning Especially For You helped out by a backing singer. A glance behind us to see a guy in a Slayer T-shirt singing his heart out to Too Many Broken Hearts reminds us once again not to take the day too seriously. Jason's good humour, banter and looks help carry him through his performance, and to be fair Jase, not too many men knocking 50 can pull off a white jeans and t shirt combo,good work mate!

Now though, it's time for some proper music! Midge Ure, a man with a CV which includes Ultravox, Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy, Band Aid, and his solo material certainly doesn't need to pad out his set with ropey cover versions like a few others do this weekend. Midge and his band give us a proper treat with songs like Loves Great Adventure and If I Was. Midge demonstrates his phenomenal guitar skills with a big solo intro to Dancing With Tears In My Eyes. But the it's the atmospheric brilliance of Vienna that steals the show. Credit to the guys on the mixing desk, the sound is perfect on this awesome performance of a truly majestic song.

The sun is starting to go down now and it's disco time! Shalamar arrive on stage with a massive injection of Funk with a capital F for the Bristol crowd. Everyone loosens up with a boogie to classics I Can Make You Feel Good and A Night To Remember. You have to take your hat off to the band that helped introduce Body Popping to the UK, Jeffrey Daniel gives us a few demos of this tonight to chants of "Go Jeffrey, Go Jeffrey". He also shows off his moonwalk which he taught to a certain young Michael Jackson in the early 80's.

Shalamar were perfect to lift the crowd ready for tonight's main attraction Holly Johnson. Holly slowly strolls onto the stage to the strains of the intro to Warriors Of The Wasteland, the sound is great, Holly's voice is effortlessly powerful, the voice of Frankie Goes To Hollywood is here, and we love it! My personal favourite Frankie number is up next, and we all join in the "Hoo ha, Hoo ha" of Welcome To The Pleasuredome, a tremendous performance of an awesome song.

Holly punctuates his set with some of his trademark biting wit and friendly banter. He includes a few solo offerings tonight, including material from his most recent album Europa. His most successful individual efforts, Love Train and Americanos go down a storm. We're all expecting him to throw in his brand new single Ascension but puzzlingly it doesn't appear. Not to worry, we're all here to hear the Frankie tracks, and after Rage Hard Holly cheekily taunts us, " Are you ready come? "......

The thumping bassline of Relax pumps through the Speakers and we're all transported back to 1983. Yet more Frankie completes this superb performance, the formidable Two Tribes closes the set but Holly returns for a compelling encore of the Power of Love.

DAY 2

We arrive early afternoon on day 2 to catch Living In A Box, minus vocalist Richard Darbyshire. Not quite sure who the guy is singing but he does a decent job of songs like Room In Your Heart and So The Story Goes. The only song we really want to hear is the one they sensibly leave to close the set, eponymous debut single, 80's classic Living In A Box.

Cutting Crew give us a mixture of old and new and leave the crowd happy when they play their debut and only big hit, the power ballad (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight.

Paul Young lays his hat and makes Ashton Court his home for half an hour. Still with a very strong voice he goes down very well cranking out a few hits with a couple of tracks from his new album chucked in for good measure.

Next on the bill, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, before Limahl, before Hue & Cry ( no, seriously! ) and way before Go West is Jimmy Somerville. Now I appreciate that scheduling of artists must change from one venue to the next to mix it up a bit for the bands, but please, this guy should have been headlining today and he drew a crowd to demonstrate just that.

Sadly Jimmy only has half an hour to pick and choose from his enormous back catalogue of hits from his solo career, Bronski Beat and The Communards. What a voice this guy has. His falsetto still as strong as ever he bounces around the stage belting out classic after classic. It's hard to pick a favourite as he puts in faultless performances of You Make Me Feel, Why, and Never Can Say Goodbye, but it's Bronski Beat's brooding Smalltown Boy and set closer Don't Leave Me This Way that really set the crowd on fire on this sweltering hot afternoon. Such a shame he didn't get the time and slot he and the crowd deserved.

The crowd dispersed back to their camping chairs and the bar and for the most part didn't bother coming back for Limahl. Limahl tries really hard though. Kicking off with Joe Jackson's Stepping Out to get things moving, he surprises a few of us by making us realise we remember more than one Kajagoogoo song! Ooh to be Ah and Big Apple have a few people singing along. He then dedicates a cover of Duran Duran's Save A Prayer to Nick Rhodes. It was the Duran Keyboard player who took Limahl's Kajagoogoo demo tape from him
when Limahl was a waiter at the Embassy Club in London to briefly propel Kajagoogoo into the stratosphere.
Never Ending Story has everyone singing along, and of course Too Shy gets the best reaction before the happy chap departs.

There's a commonly adhered to, unwritten rule in performing live. That being, If you only had one really big hit, leave it until last so that everyone holds on until the end of your set which will build towards it. Hue & Cry crash into their set with with the fantastically catchy and successful Labour of Love, and it's all downhill from there. Pat Kane's voice is as strong as ever and he has good stage presence, but as they play lesser known songs like Violently and Looking for Linda, punters are starting to look for the bar, again. Well it is extremely hot, and this Bristol crowd are a thirsty bunch! To be fair though, unless we missed one, Hue & Cry do give us our first and only Prince cover of the weekend in 1999. And bearing in mind some of the ropey covers that have been used to buffer some sets, maybe some others could have done with having a go at one of the purple one's many 80's hits.

Stage times have been creeping behind schedule all day so we're wondering if set times will be cut. You might think so when I say Kid Creole only plays 3 songs, but when those songs are 9 or 10 minute long epic party fiestas maybe he does get his 30 minutes after all. Kid Creole is a larger than life character dressed in an oversized purple pimp suit. He slides and slinks across the stage backed by his trio of glamorous backing singers/dancers (the Coconuts) and an impressively large band with instruments ranging from, guitar, bass, piano, bongos, drums, trumpet and trombone, and a few more I've forgotten.

They put on a fantastic show and really get the crowd into the carnival atmosphere with extended versions of the lesser known but great fun, Casual Sex, and then massive 80's style 12" versions of Stool Pigeon and of Course the brilliant Annie I'm Not Your Daddy.

We seem to be getting further and further behind schedule to the point where Soul II Soul barely get 15 minutes, they only have time for 3 tracks but Jazzie B, Caron Wheeler and co are pure class. Keep On Moving and Back To Life sound as fresh and powerful today as they did some 25 years ago. Just as we're wondering why they've played their biggest hits early in their set they walk off stage!

Pat Sharpe and Dave Benson Phillips do a great job of compering the day but us the audience would really have appreciated a bit of a heads up on what was going on with timings and set times.

Go West had a fair few hits in the mid 80's and kick off with a storming version of Don't Look Down. Both Richard Drummie and Peter Cox look pretty good for their advancing years and Peter has lost none of his great vocal range.

They reel off the hits, Call Me, King Of Wishful Thinking and We Close Our Eyes all have the well lubricated crowd singing and shouting along. Bizarrely their cringeworthy karaoke style version of Sex On Fire gets the biggest reaction from the crowd..... I blame the combination of alcohol, hot sun and lack of cloud cover !

Headlining today are UB40, or are they? Well, they are, sort of. The thing is, The unmistakeable and irreplaceable voice of UB40, Ali Campbell left the band in 2008 in a horribly acrimonious split. You can't blame the band for wanting to carry on, but to replace such an iconic voice would prove hard. They recruited Ali's older brother Duncan who had previously had nothing to do with the band,or the music scene in general. Ali, incidentally has started a rival UB40 with ex band members Astro and Mickey Virtue.(Google it, it's an interesting,if sad story!)

Duncan's voice isn't a patch on Ali's and he gets a lot of help from brother Robin on vocals tonight, either trying to back him up or drown him out! It's a strange experience watching them. The music is still there, and they are amazing. This large band have for the whole being playing together for over 30 years and that's evident in listening to them. But as soon as Duncan walks on stage a couple of minutes after the rest of the band tonight and starts singing, there's confused and puzzled looks all round as people start squinting at the big screen to see if Ali is just having an off day or has been replaced by an imposter, unfortunately it's the latter. To Quote Ali himself, he pretty much sums it up when he said " If you went to see The Rolling Stones and Derek Jagger turned up instead of Mick you’d feel a bit peeved"

Some of us already knew the score but some that didn't just used their feet to vote. The remaining crowd tries to make the best of it and sing along to absolute classics including Stick By Me, Homely Girl and Red Red Wine.

The sax intro of Food For Thought resonates through the crowd and for 5 minutes all is forgiven. All said and done UB40 have been part of the British conciousness for decades and have given us some outstanding original reggae and a host of great covers that they've made their own. They've shared some of these with us tonight and it was very enjoyable, just a great shame that their great voice couldn't be there with them.

Overall this weekend has been a pretty accurate cross section of the 80's, a complete mixed bag consisting of some classic songs and songwriters, mixed with some absolute drivel, some outrageous haircuts and a disproportionate amount of Frankie Says T-Shirts, all thrown together to create a whole lot of fun.

These Let's Rock 80's weekends and one day events really are worth checking out. Each one has a slightly different line up. Check out the link here to see if there's one near you, and don't forget to pack your hairspray and leg warmers!

http://www.letsrock80s.com/