Saw JM last Friday at the South Holland Centre in sunny downtown Spadling. Great gig, great band, awful audience. I don’t know what it was, my dear wife reckoned they were if anything a bit too respectful. But then again Spaldonians are a very strange lot, inter-breeding for one thing. All I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the gig. ‘Some People Are Crazy’ made the night although ‘Baby Please Come Home’ ran it close and literally brought a tear to my eye, not that I would admit that to just anyone. They say Americans have no sense of irony, well neither do the folk of Splading, did they not recognise a piss-take when they heard one in ‘Small Town Talk’? I thought not! No whinges about absent friends ‘Dealer’, ‘Big Muff’ (oh how I love that song!) and, surprise, surprise “May You Never’; can’t win ’em all. A quick word for bassist Alan Thomson, brilliant. Fretless playing of highest order. Mind you, that is some band in the true sense of the word. I’m now looking forward to the Stables at Milton Keynes…. For the next national tour, please give Spalding another chance. It’s not a bad venue, and it’s within striking distance of home (some 14 miles or so). We don’t get class acts in our part of the world very often and JM is undoubtedly a class act. We’ll work on the stage/audience banter….. promise!
Richard Underwood
South Holland Centre, Spalding
26 January 2001
