Cocker & Mussls Alive, Alive o

I have a feeling that it's going to be one of those nights. Peter Kennedy, the lead guitarist for the proposed reformation of Rough Justice, swirls the ice cube? around the bottom of his glass and mutters something about wanting to see Express — a tight Wellington band currently impressing many Wellingtonians.

But Jo Cocker's on, man . . . and, you know, perhaps — even after all this time, just perhaps . . and his band, too. Bobby Keys, Nicky Hopkins . . the mind boggles. Should be worth seeing. Agreed.

The cavernous maw that is the Winter Show Building yawns, its tongue a multicoloured splash of people, Whoever's responsible for such things has sold just about every available seat, not bad considering Cocker's erratic record of late.

Fidget, fidget through Lea [unclear: Maalfrid's] impassioned set. Some quite novel touches to her original lyrics, that girl, delivered in a strident tone and accompanied by her own stark block piano chording, but the pressure of touring with the headliners shows and there's no encore despite calls.

And so, on to Cocker. Taken off the Air New Zealand plane in Honolulu some days earlier for alleged 'boisterous behaviour' — messing around with a tape record — he and Keys had to catch a later flight. Once in the country they made it to Wellington.

Somewhat hazily, admittedly. The WSB isn't the place for sound normally it tends to boom around inside its corrugated iron sheating, but tonight their gear handled things efficiently. And Cocker, despite the feeling that he's a relic from a bygone era and after a long list of what has almost amounted to near tragedy could never again pull it off — at least stayed cohesive, if squiffy. He's said that his stage presence had become less agressive and so it proved. That was deflating; behind all the previously finely-honed spasticity an expectation of the high-wire acrobat bit, and getting someone who appeared to have his toes jammed into a three-point plug.

Some snappy guitar playing from a nameless guitarist, he meandered progressively as the night wore on, and therefore became less interesting. Nicky Hopkins — from the audience stage right his leg apparently encased in plaster and I remember thinking that nothing garishly flamboyant would ever travel the synapses between fingertip and brain. Poetry, Visual proof Peter Townsend's description of a 'total genius was not wrong.

Bobby Keys, the flashy silk-shirted counterpart to Hopkins, and one of Cocker's long-time American friends, held down the other end of the stage, and though the brass section contributed a larger part of the band's total sound than the piano, Keys — in his extended cascades and especially in the involved introduction to Turn Out The Light — stood up.

Older material made up more of the repertoire than on previous visits which turned out to be a wise play. Cocker threw himself into it, gathering momentum, progressively more animated. That Beatles tune. Then Delta Lady, The Letter spiced with varied recent album songs. Exit, reverse. A head-snappingly hot piece of raunch for the encore — the backing voices flew around the primal rasp, the drumming flat tack. Phew! And they knew somehow, that magic moment can only ever be captured briefly.

— Patrick O'Dea