Blues Night -- St Anne's Catholic Club

The first of what will hopefully be a regular night started with a real flourish last Friday evening.

A standing room only crowd welcomed two contrasting bands, both ably led by Michael Ford.

First up in a topsy-turvy format which saw the support band playing last was top-of-the-bill Yellow & Blues Band.

The sound of the band belied the very young age of the musicians and singers to storm into an up-tempo start to the night.

Including a couple of tracks from their new CD - they had the room bouncing.

Then there was a change of costume and tempo to highlight the voices of the two young girl vocalists, with a wonderful bluesey rendition of Marvin Gaye's Too Busy Thinking 'bout My Baby setting the scene for a rousing finale which included a great be-bop version of Marvin's 'Pride & Joy'. It finished off with the crowd cheering for more.

A short break and up came Michael Ford again -- this time with Blues Breakfast -- with an all-too-short rocking blues set from a band making its debut. A tight set of stomping numbers got the big crowd behind them. All in all a good start to hopefully a regular blues club night in the town.

Garry Chatburn

Nazarites -- New Variety Club

With live music not what it was, I was extremely disappointed to see such a low turnout for a band who had travelled all the way from London to play.

It's not often you come across a Rastafarian band performing in Keighley -- It's not something I particularly go out of my way to listen to, but the band were competent and the addition of a melodica type instrument (which looked like a vacuum cleaner nozzle) leant an otherworldly element to the music.

I'm not quite sure just when my interest began to wane, but it all seemed to become a little less enjoyable after their version of Eleanor Rigby.

I don't like Beatles covers at the best of times, but to hear one done by a band more used to singing about Ras Tafari and Babylon was not something I wanted at that point.

The next few songs got back into the groove, but when the singer began to tell the audience about the Ska musical he was writing, my mind began to fill with nightmare images of Ben Elton and Terry Hall collaborations, and the moment was lost.

The background chatter among the audience also seemed to be steadily rising. All in all it was interesting, but not what I had hoped for.

Antony Silson