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Last updated 08/01/2012 18:35:36

               Keep it live                                                                                                                                                                                   

Ocean Blue at The Charlie Roberts  - Wednesday 14th July 2010

“So I walked in and the first thing I noticed was that there was no drum kit..............!” This was Ocean Blue’s Chris Whiteley unnervingly quoting from one of my earlier reviews before roundly accusingly me of not liking duos as I sat down for a chat with him and Terry Pitchfork between sets at a sparsely populated Charlie Roberts. Being quoted threw me for a while and I thought I was going to be in for a bit of tough time but I drew comfort from telling myself that at least it shows that people do actually read my humble ramblings even if they do only remember the (ever so slightly) controversial bits.  As it turned out I enjoyed my chat with Chris and Terry who decided to re-form Ocean Blue a couple of years ago after a 10 year absence, and they went a long way (note the carefully chosen words) towards curing my distrust of any type of live music  performance not incorporating live drums.

Ocean Blue is a highly respected name on the local circuit and it’s easy to see why after the opening few numbers of their set. They opened with Wings’ “Live and Let Die” and Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” with Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars”  arguably drawing the biggest response from the punters. The mix was good from where I was standing about three quarters of the way back with the vocals cutting through clearly and the bass locking in with the drums (not live........sorry, there’s this little drumming devil perched on my left shoulder.....). Yes, there’s a backing track, but as the guys pointed out, they’ve recorded all the tracks themselves (the drums are recorded in real time rather than programmed) with the backing vocals being done by Chris’s sister Helen of Full On fame, and I have to say that it all works rather nicely. I enjoyed Squeeze’s “Up The Junction” before Terry gave Chris a breather, swapping the bass for the guitar and taking us all way back with a medley of Shadows numbers (I still love “Apache” and “FBI”). I thought Chris’s vocal on “Cigarettes and Alcohol” were spot on.

Ian Charles is doing his best for local live music at the moment and as a venue The Charlie Roberts offers a good sized room with decent acoustics so it was disappointing to see a relatively low turn-out. This of course made things more difficult for the band who had to work twice as hard to get any feedback from their audience but I have to give them a lot of credit here as they really put the work in.

Highlights of the second set for me were the evergreen “Johnny B Goode” during which Chris utilized the mic stand fro some great sounding slide effects during the solos, Elton John’s “Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting” featuring a superb lead break and the National Anthem a la Brian May leading into “I Want to Break Free”.I sensed that the lads were probably ready for going home but they’d put in a good shift.

I like The Charlie Roberts a lot as a live venue but we do need to support it a bit more. As for Ocean Blue, well these guys are good. But then you knew that already.

Keep it live.

PJF

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