Golden Oldies
Rachel Johnson
It was the coldest night of the year and all I wanted to do was nod off in front of Newsnight. Still, we late-life, babyboomer rock chicks never rest in our quest to bring you the pick of the pops; so I padded up in my Uniqlo layers and trudged to Subterania under the A40 flyover in the snow.
Why? Well, Beverley Knight MBE, our sole, home-grown soul sista, Wolverhampton’s Aretha, was fronting the Staks band for one night only a mile up the road.
Martin Amis said that ‘if anything bad was going to happen, it would happen under the Westway’, and thither I was trudging on my own, to review the dark and stormy Knight (see what I did there?). But still. Duty called.
Subterania was freezing, it was a small venue, and Staks is not so much a band as a movement. Everybody wants to be with this band. The small stage was crammed with 15 bodies – but it felt like dozens – raising hell (note to self: in future, treat gigs like shooting weekends, and have earplugs and ear defenders in pocket).
There were at least three knockout female backing vocalists on stage at any one time, and every time I looked a different wriggly blonde or sinuous brunette was Dreamgirls- ing into the mic.
I must mention the warm up acts: Steve Overland, a Golden Oldie who belts out covers (if you were going to cover one Beatles song, would you really pick Norwegian Wood, and end your performance with a moan that sounded like a puppy whimpering before his first bath?).
And Roachie, a young male singer built like a Sub-zero American fridge, who funked the place big-style. But we were still waiting for the main event and Newsnight was over and I was missing This Week with Andrew Neil, but then Beverley Knight came on, and I suddenly felt it. We all did.
We felt the difference between volume, energy and sheer electricity. OK, the woman was wearing a metallic, sequinned, plunging catsuit but she still changed the molecules in the room. She had it. When she came on and belted out Piece of My Heart, we were in the presence of a star. When she performed I Can’t Stand the
Rain, I videoed the whole thing on my iphone. I am still waiting for a small child to show me how to turn the video the right way up so I can upload it for my long-suffering Instagram followers to savour as much as I did.
During a pause, the artist said, grinning, ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’
And you know what – it did narrowly beat watching Newsnight in bed, yes. Very nice indeed.