Gig at the Pells - Tongue and Groove

There are cover bands, and there are cover bands. Tongue and Groove, playing at the Pells tonight, fall into the latter category. These guys rock. They call themselves ‘a classic rock and psychedelic pop band’ and are led by Phil Rhodes, a man who puts the ‘psycho’ into Psychedelic (it nearly works). Rhodes is a performer so suited to the role of glam rock lead singer you wonder why he doesn’t head a revival of the genre: we saw him at the All Saints Centre a couple of months back: he strutted, he posed, he brandished his microphone stand and he sang. Boy did he sing. Well-chosen stuff, too. Jean Genie, Brown Sugar, Come Together, Lust for Life, Break on Through, Vicious, Twentieth Century Boy. They have eighty songs in their repertoire: the sixties and seventies stuff is interspersed with more recent numbers, all of an ilk. Champagne Supernova, Let Me Entertain You, Purple Haze. We rang Phil on Wednesday. “Walking on water is going be a tough one to pull off,” he said. And “due to health and safety regulations the idea of an inflatable stage had to be binned. But look out for surprises.”

There will be a bar, there will be a barbeque, there will be a bouncy castle for the kids. If you’re particularly brave you can take a night-time dip in the spring-fed pool. The whole affair is organised by the Southover Bonfire Society. Should be quite a bash. DL