It was 66 years to the day since Elvis made his first appearance on US TV. This has little bearing on anything that follows, barring the fact that sometimes, with rock and roll, what goes around comes around. The shock to Taunton's sensibilities that greeted Bernie's early promise to 'smash your back doors in all the way to midnight' soon sublimes into a lusty lasciviousness not seen since the Wisconsin Christian Mothers Association tuned in to Jimmy Dorsey's Stage Show to see what all the fuss was about. The man is a big ginger prophet.
When it comes together, it reeeaaaallly comes together. The Racehorse was packed, the set is now two and a half hours of what can only be described as All Killer, No Filler, and the performance was an absolute riot. And quite honestly, we can't understand why it's taken us 4 years to get round to learning some Two Tone.
Mary the landlady did a sterling one woman job of alternately whipping the crowd up into a frenzy and acting as a human crash barrier to save us being crushed in scenes reminiscent of the early days of Beatlemania.
Quite frankly, we can't wait to come back and do it all over again. And we will! See you in April Taunton - stay sexy!
Love you byeeeee
X
The Thorvertones are thought of in the the same way as Saint Nick out in Winkleigh. We come only once a year, arriving in a cloud of coal dust and leaving in the dead of night. Only with us, the collective Winkleigh Pub Rock Stocking is left full of enough Modwardian Spunk to last a full twelve months. Nice.
We loved this gig. It was the full Tones experience.
It had the transition from polite applause to drunken screaming for encores (via total silence following Helter Skelter, but it's a highlight for us, so there you go).
It had tunes everyone knows and inevitably, some that no-one knows - including in
One case, the band. Sorry about that.
And most important of all, it had the promise of a return gig. That's the 2013 campaign underway already. See you after the apocalypse, Winkleigh! Even if we've become a Mad-Max style acoustic punk band on horseback, we'll be there!
Love you, you sexy Winklonians!
X
- posted from a wireless telegraph
The final gig of the year then - and a return to Sidmouth Football Club! Playing Sidmouth at Home is a daunting task for many but not us, having triumphed before we had previous form to build on. Unfortunately for us, we had gear trouble - Bernie's amp was still at the menders (despite having spent two weeks staring at it in a skunk fug and listening to Yes albums for inspiration, the engineer was strangely still no closer to a diagnosis - we think he should actually take that back off and look closer, but hey - he's the professional...). On top of that, a late sound check revealed a dead PA speaker. Arse!
We drew strength by harking back to triumphs from our pre-piles-'o-gear past, and cracked on regardless. A little adversity put fire in our bellies and we played a brilliant set, to a crowd who always really seem to enjoy what we do - and for the first time actually knew the Queen song!
A man of the cloth arrived to give his blessing to proceedings, and the broken PA speaker burst into life! Hurrah! Our own little Christmas Miracle! After that there was no stopping us, Bernie donned the backdrop like a Jedi cape for the closing numbers and we propelled Sidmouth into the Christmas Season on a tidal wave of testosterone and Pub Rock Art hokey mysticism(c).
Thank you Sidmouth, we'll be back to shake up the folk festival! See you in Winkleigh in 2012!
Love you byeeeee!
X
