Experience Beck, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 06/07/2024.                     

Guy D’Angelo- guitar, Aurelius Sciuka – keyboards, Rob Statham – bass, Ollie Usiskin – drums

Experience Beck Rock The Marr’s Bar! 

What a rocking performance from Experience Beck on Saturday! The first set kicked off with ‘Freeway Jam’ from the 1975 ‘Blow By Blow’ album that had guitarist Guy D’Angelo enthusiastically strutting and channelling Jeff Beck with his Fender Strat, Aurelius Sciuka adding intense interjections on his two keyboards, while Rob Statham kept the solid triplet bass groove throughout with Ollie Usiskin driving on the kit.

The next lively banger was ‘Blue Wind’, from the ‘Wired’ album released a year later, followed by the epic Billy Cobham number ‘Stratus’, which included a whizzy synth solo from Aurelius as Rob held down the iconic 16th-note baseline with total elegance! The reggae-inflected ‘Behind The Veil’ from the more recent ‘Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop’ album was a joy to hear played live.

Next up was ‘Led Boots’, the rhythmically intricate opening track on ‘Wired’, which was also performed as an encore on the same stage by FNUK back in January, precisely one year and one day after Jeff Beck’s death and featuring his keyboardist of six years Jason Rebello in the line-up. This performance started with a drum feature from Ollie before the band got into the stonking groove with another great solo from Aurelius.

The first set closed out with ‘Scatterbrain’ with its breakneck 9/8 meter followed by ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’, both from the ‘Blow by Blow’ album. The latter, written by Steve Wonder, was introduced by Guy’s ‘weeping’ guitar and gave Rob a delightful solo on bass, reflecting the impressive performance of a very young Tal Wilkenfeld on the ‘Performing This Week At Ronnie Scott’s’ 2007 album.

After a short break, while the band refuelled and I changed the on-stage GoPro batteries, the band returned, opening the second set with ‘Beck’s Bolero’, incidentally his first solo recording, released in 1967 as the B-side to ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ before appearing on the Jeff Beck Group’s debut album ‘Truth’ in 1968.

A return to ‘Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop’ included ‘Big Block’ next, followed by ‘Star Cycle’ from the 1980 ‘There & Back’ album. ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, written by jazz bassist Charlie Mingus as a tribute to saxophonist Lester Young, was then performed for the third time this year at a Music Spoken Here event (first was FNUK in January with the formidable Paul Stacey on guitar duty, and much more recently the Joni Mitchell version from the band ‘Hejira’ in June). Guy’s solo guitar introduction this time round put the ‘whammy bar’ to good use, not just for tremolo but also bending the sustained open-string notes. We also got another lyrical solo from Rob on the bass.

Another Stevie Wonder piece ‘Superstition’, followed, before the gloriously bluesy ‘Brush With The Blues’, which again featured Rob on bass, with Aurelius providing the rightly reverential organ sound accompaniment from his Nord. ‘You Know What I Mean’, the opening track on ‘Blow By Blow’, featured another synth solo from Aurelius and a determined drum solo from Ollie.

‘People Get Ready’ closed out the set to enthusiastic appreciation belying the disappointingly small audience for this incredible performance. For the encore, Guy performed a solo rendition of ‘Where Were You’, again putting the ‘whammy bar’ on his Fender Strat to exquisite effect, before being joined by the rest of the band for a reprise of ‘Freeway Jam’, with which the whole splendid evening had started two hours before.

Experience Beck will be playing in the West Midlands again next month, at The Robin in Wolverhampton on Sunday 25th August, with a somewhat more ‘mainstream’ set that includes vocalist O.J. Jennings. I had the option to include O.J. in this performance, but felt the band’s original instrumental line-up and jazz-rock focus was better suited to our Music Spoken Here theme. The band deserve the support of a larger audience and I hope the added vocals and broader appeal of the more mainstream material will reward them with a good turnout at The Robin. Nonetheless, the support of those that were able to make it on Saturday is hugely appreciated, as always. It’s you who make it happen.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out my interview with Ollie Usiskin last week in The Vault, where you’ll also find a video from Saturday night, later in the week.
https://musicspokenhere.club/the-vault/

DAVE FULLER