When I was told that I would be sent to review one of the headline acts of London's only 'One Man Band' festival, I quite predictably, had images of Dick Van Dyke waltzing around with a big bass drum tied to his waist, and cymbals clashing on his ankles, etc.
I was really looking forward to it, not least because of the eccentric traditional connotations and invented instruments. I saw a man perform in a music club in Salt Lake City once; his guitar was made from an old bicycle, it was a wizard performance. I was foolishly thinking along those lines. Silly me.
DUKE SPECIAL'S set was part karaoke, part heavy-handed piano bashing, with vocals that sounded like Michael Ball with an Irish accent. Also, since when did a One-Man-Band require the use of an iBook?
His performance was very much along the same light as BC Camplight; the earnest, heartfelt, "tough lad with a fragile heart" type of thing. But personally, I don't buy into self-emasculation. Wistful lyrics such as: "I feel like a falling dawn" made him sound like a wet pansy. At least BC Camplight used to be a boxer.
Walking into the dimly lit venue, ram-packed full of Shoreditch Haircuts and the East London Bohemian lot (probably hailing from the Home Counties), I didn't know what to make of it. He didn't make an entrance for a start, he just ambled onto the stage and started tinkering about on the keyboard, hunched over a microphone that was far too low; I felt uncomfortable just looking at him. In fact I thought he was a roadie until he started singing.
The nearest thing we got to any traditional One-Man-Band-ism was when he played the piano and simultaneously stamped on a tambourine on the floor. There were a large number of prompts on the stage, I'm assuming that they were instruments but I've no idea because they didn't really get a look in during his set. Although at one point he held a transistor radio into the microphone. Genius. I've never seen that done before.
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Oh, and there was some angst-ridden cymbal clashing, while he was harping on: "I've let you down, blah, blah, heartfelt effin blah.." He looked like a kid throwing a tantrum in a supermarket cause his mum wasn't giving him any crisps.
From that point onwards the set descended into something like a horrid low-key musical. I wasn't kidding when I said he sounded like an Irish Michael Ball (with dreadlocks). All the songs sounded the same and the lyrics were on the mundane side. "I don't love you, everyone knows." or even, "Last night I nearly died, but I woke up in time."Oh please, bring on Elaine Page or send in the clowns.
There was a helluva lot of piano-bar music being stomped around. But even here, there is a lot to be said about subtlety, something that Duke Special was severely lacking in. He displayed about as much musical delicacy as a fluorescent pink JCB ploughing through a bird sanctuary. Yet the audience were whooping and clapping along, probably because it was the cool thing to do.
Forgive me for coming across as harsh. I just feel I was mislead a bit over what to expect. Rather than Dick Van Dyke, I got wave-upon-wave of Badly Drawn boy B-Sides and low-key Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque horror piano ballads. I'm sure that you could hammer out any old clap-trap to the right haircut and you'll go down well for the sake of fashion. I feel it was a case of the Emperor's New Clothes in this instance.
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