Rhod Gilbert the comedian is driving a white van, in search of the UK’s Best Part-Time Band (BBC4). He’ll be joined by people who know a bit more about music than he does: Jazzie B from Soul II Soul, Hooky from Joy Division and New Order, and, in this first episode, Midge “This means nothing to me, oh Vienna” Ure from the 1980s.
First to Edinburgh, where they meet and hear ska band Bombskare, led by Scott who used to do tech work but that didn’t fit in with the band, so now he delivers meat in a truck. That’s true dedication and love: taking a pay cut to deliver meat for the sake of your music. Midge wants to hear joy in a ska band, and he does. Who’d have thought it about ska from Edinburgh (McSka?), but Bombskare are bloody brilliant.
Likewise blues from not way down south but way up north, on the Clyde Delta. (It means something to Midge, oh Glasgow.) Sung, with passion, by Greig the window cleaner.
Belfast next, where all-girl band Wookalily are tracking country and bluegrass back to its Celtic roots, in between marking and lesson planning (they’re teachers and teaching assistants, mainly). Then it’s back on the ferry to Wales to hear Johnny Cage and the Voodoo Groove, self-confessed scuzz-bombs chasing the rock’n’roll dragon, says Gilbert, who’s from round these parts. I don’t know what it means, but it sounds about right, and they too sound fantastic, tight and chunky, as Midge says. Still in Wales, they see R&B band Pieces of Mind, who supported the Who in 1965 and reformed recently, with a combined age of about 850. That’s old style R&B; no twerking, sadly.
I love this show. It has nothing to do with ridiculous, unreal dreams. Or Simon Cowell, or spinning chairs. There are, as Gilbert tells the audience at the live event, no prizes, no recording contracts, no Christmas number ones. It’s about the real world and real people in real bands because they love music. There’s something very reassuring about that. And some of them are brilliant. Maybe this is the place to start the campaign to get Johnny Cage and the Voodoo Groove to number one for Christmas.
