Concert Rockinghorse & Rough Justice

The new year got off to an interesting, and, to some, a mentally profitable start with the Friday night concert presenting Rockinghorse and Rough Justice. First up were Rockinghorse in their 'new' form.... Kevin Bayley on superb and various guitar and voice, Wayne Mason on keyboards and voice, Clinton Brown on funk-bass, and Jim Lawrey, the tin man, on drums and oddities. Also exhibiting himself for the crowd's amusement and the joys of music was Midge (Flyer) Marsden on wailing harp, percussion and movement.

From Rockinghorse emerged both familiar and new sounds, the most memorable, for me, being "Long Distance Love", with Kevin's vocals and guitar wrenching a sigh from anyone listening. (Interestingly enough. Rough Justice performed the same, later on in the long night and, while Kevin and the rest are not quite up to Little Feat's 'quality', Rick Bryant, in this, could not improve upon Kevin's 'interpretation',)

Yet, Rough Justice.... an old/new, wonderful-boogie band.... left the audience gaping. People seemed not to have heard such sounds for many a year, if ever; Tamla Motown instead of disco? That provided grounds for them either to dribble away to more familiar sources of entertainment, or to stay and look on in admiration. First of all, Bryant's voice (moving easily from Lowell George to James Brown to Joe Cocker to Pigpen) is capable of laying members of the audience on the ground, in imitation of dead bugs (and there was evidence of this phenomenon).

Not to mention the band—small, confident, assured and very capable guitar, drums and string bass—which conjured' up sound that, unfortunately, is not always compatible with Hotel managers' ideas of the "new sound". I mean, who on earth plays Steve Stills so that it turns out like B.B. King and gets away with it? And who takes buzzing breaks between numbers, leaving a cloud of suspense in the air, only to announce a tune called "Walking through the pines" about "a guy on mandrax"? And—who, these strange days, plays "Heard it through the grapevine" and Aretha Franklin's "Eight Days on the Road" incorporating boozy, sleazy sax?

By this stage of the concert, those hoping for a disco evening had trickled away, leaving Rough Justice to get into the "Angry Blues" and "Fool Yourself". All in all, this music is exceptional—to those who find novelty a much needed whiff of fresh air.

There were many pairs of overalls and fifth formers in evidence. I just hope that everyone got something new out of this experience because this is what the varsity musical world really needs—a shot of rhythm and blues?

— Gray Slack