Venue: The Borderline, London          Date: 27th November 2003

This Borderline appearance marked the end of a short UK tour for these 1960s/70s  Blues / Psychedelic / Hard / Acid Rock legends. Famous for their 'Vincibus Eruptum' disk, they were in many ways the prototype heavy Metal band, taking a heavy blues rock base, adding thundering bass and drums and playing it all at ear-splitting volume, very much the same mix employed by Led Zeppelin to enormous success.

The band's lineup has not been particularly stable over the year and the original guitarist Mose Allison has persued a career as a solo guitarist since the late 1970s. His replacement Dan 'Duck' Mccartney was no slouch on the stratocaster and together with founder member Dickie Peterson on bass and vocals and Paul Whaley on drums they demonstrated that there is still life in the old band.

I should have guessed that the band were going to live up to their reputation when I spied a Marshall stack and 2 other huge speaker cabinets on the stage. A short time after my arrival, the band hit the stage and the volume seemed to be set to 11 as expected. I was really glad that for once I had remembered to bring my earplugs, but at a distance of only a few yards from the stage, they offered little protection.

By the time that the band had rattled off a couple of classic tunes including 'Parchment Blues' the crowd of both young and old rockers were really enjoying themselves and they called out the names of some of their favourite tunes. Dickie calmed them down and reassured them that they'd be played before continuing with 'Out of Focus'. I then took refuge from the aural barrage at the back of the club where I spent the rest of the set. The volume was definitely lower but the club's acoustics meant that Dickie's bass and the drums rather drowned out the guitar and vocals.

To be honest, I didn't recognize many of the tunes they played and those that I did recognize were covers. They did a fine version of 'The Hunter' (a song best known for having been covered by Free) and the old Eddie Cochran rock and roll classic 'summertime blues' which the crowd adored. They pulled them back for two encores and the old rock and roll machine played on till nearly 10:30PM.

Blues-based rock is not and never has been of great interest to me, but all the same it was fascinating to see these old timers on the road once more and to hear the material of a band whose influence in shaping Heavy Metal and Doom Metal is undeniable. They must have sounded really frightening to folks back in the late 60s and early 70s.

Charlie Farrell 28th march 2004