The AGMP January Blues Festival is one of the highlights of the year, not only in the quality of the headliners on all the nights, but also in the choice of support acts. I don’t know what resulted in the selection of the support act for Nine Below Zero on a prime Friday night slot at the 229 but, sad to say, they were truly dreadful. I’ve personally never experienced anything quite as amateurishly bad. Luckily, the headliners turned in a magnificent performance to make up for what had been a poor start to the night.

Surprisingly, given that they play the sort of R’n’B music I really like, I’d never see Nine Below Zero before. Maybe it was because they burst onto the scene around the time that lots of other fab bands like The Jam, Squeeze, XTC and a stack of other worthies were in their pomp that they got overlooked (even though the music papers sung their praises at the time). They seemed a little bit New Wave, but not as musically adventurous as other New Wave acts; influenced by the Blues and R’n’B, but not perhaps as authentic or original as young Blues acts like The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

The band are currently touring to celebrate their second album, 1981’s ‘Don’t Point Your Finger’, produced by Glyn Johns. Front man and guitarist, Dennis Greaves, commented on the night that they spent a lot of studio time asking Johns about his work with The Beatles, instead of recording. I hadn’t heard that album before but listened to it ahead of the gig; it’s superb! There’s an expanded 28 song version of the album that includes a live set from the year it was released, which is well worth a listen, but seemingly unavailable to buy. I’d always thought of them in the same category as Dr. Feelgood. In one of his occasional humorous comments from centre stage Greaves called the audiences attention to a bloke wearing a Dr. Feelgood T shirt, adding “Oi mate, read the room!”.

They started the set with the opening track from ‘Don’t Point Your Finger’, the high octane, double stop riffing ‘One Way Street’ with Mark Feltham’s fast harmonica playing featuring heavily, as it did on all the songs. Their music is classic British R’n’B, fast paced, guitar driven with catchy choruses, drums pounding away nineteen to the dozen and locked in tightly with a solid bass line, wailing harmonica raising the adrenalin level to a fever pitch. More songs from the album followed ‘Doghouse’, ‘Three Time Enough’, ‘Don’t Point Your Finger At The Guitar Man’, ‘Ain’t Comin Back’ and many more, all up tempo head nodders, apart from the catchy, and slightly poppy, ‘Helen’. They pretty much played the whole album, including their version of ‘Rockin’ Robin’ which led the way to the last part of the set where they put their inimitable stamp on a number of well known songs like ‘On The Road Again’ (perfectly suited to Feltham’s impressive harp playing) and selections from their debut album ‘Live At The Marquee’, like the Four Tops ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, the Jazz turned Blues classic ‘Riding the L&N’ and the Otis Rush hit, ‘Homework’.

Earlier in the set, bassist Anthony Harty (a man with a very impressive list of bands he’s played with over the years) had vacated his spot briefly in order to give the band’s original bassist (and schoolboy friend of Dennis Greaves) Peter Clark a chance to share the stage, which was a nice addition to the evening. The fourth member of the band was Sonny Greaves, son of Dennis, on powerhouse drums, who provided some youthful energy. It was a memorable evening, which was rounded off splendidly when the band returned for two encores to bring the house down with fabulous versions of ‘Woolly Bully’ and ‘Can I Get A Witness’. Pure Magic.

Review, Photos and Video: Simon Green