Not quite the Beatles

This chronicle of evenings spent at the theatre, opera and concerts may suggest that everything I go to is either fantastic or merely good so it is fair to redress the balance and to mention an evening that went less well.

I was never the biggest Beatles fan in the world but I've played most of their albums a few times over the year and, like everybody else, I love a lot of their singles.

So a Beatles tribute band in a local pub should have been a good idea but it wasn't.

The band were a little scratchy with some missed lines, some weak singing and some false playing. Not that they were bad but they were certainly not very good.

Not very good should have been good enough with an excellent catalogue of songs to choose from if only they had managed to craft the songs in to a set with a purpose and direction. Instead it was like listening to a poor recording of a greatest hits collection on random play.

To compound the errors they all wore black roll-top jumpers and stood in the darkest part of the pub with only a normal wall light to illuminate them.

This is a band that needs a critical friend who can honestly point out where they are going wrong and nudge them back in the right direction. With a little improvement in each department they could be worth watching.

Still, the evening was not totally wasted. I left the Fox and Duck around 10:30pm, caught the 371 and spent the next couple of hours in the Willoughby.