Saturday 19th May Great Green Concert Featuring cowfisH, Talamasca and Shindigg At Beverley Green Fair (2/3) Words and Photos by Michelle Dee

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

And so, reader to cowfisH www.myspace.com/cowfishpearls, a name you may remember from 2004 when they were placed second to Shindigg at the Best Original Band competition Springhead Pub in Hull. By looking at the band’s recently created (now multi-award winning) website www.cowfish.me.org you will observe that the band have had a number of different members pass through their doors since they began.

With the latest line up they have lost a lot of the lighter side to their music that oft got them the label of being a folk band. Eagle eyed readers will know that Simon and I have already coined the term trig rock to describe the new configuration and direction. The band open with the reworked Rat Song then its lights, camera, action as cowfisH they have that extra ingredient, that magic which allows you for the duration of the set, to forget who you are and lose yourself in their world. Where I’ve Been and Time part 2 follow and I tell you, you’ve never seen a band have more fun on stage.

You can’t talk about cowfisH and not mention the amazing guitar styles of Mike Allen. Since he began playing with the band they have undergone a radical change. Mikes medium is space. Space, to express the guitar and the sounds it makes in the most dramatic and eye-catching way. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most thrilling guitarist I’ve seen since starting to write about music in 2003. He plays like a dream and moves like he’s on fire. He fires up the rest of the band, the crowd, everyone. He brings back the athleticism, the glamour, the vitality of guitar men from rock n roll years gone by.

In one amazing set he gave us the duck walk popularised by Chuck Berry, the high knees of the Jimmy Page strut, the grind, the Irish jig and Elvis legs. During one song he stands back to back with front-man Tim O’Connor heads on each others shoulders in a move I have dubbed the Diamond Back due to the striking shape created. Guitar leaps and bounds pour on and off the stage – at the start of one number he jumps off the front of the stage, runs up the bleachers into the seated audience sans guitar.

I‘m told that Tim was terrified when Mike appeared thirty seconds later, a body forming out of the smoke, running at break neck speed towards him, undertaking a death defying leap back onto the stage then mid-song picked up guitar, swung round made his cue and opened with a flamboyant Townshend wheel. The jump was either incredible or foolhardy or incredibly foolhardy, I was feet away and saw how close to injury he really was; inches away from kicking a pint glass over, crashing into the monitors, tripping on the leads and less then a toe hold on the edge to propel himself forward.

These songs are well crafted, potent, intelligent rock songs, coming at possibly the most exciting period of cowfisH’s history. The newer material such as Pornography, Harder Faster and Second Coming suggest a more rakish side to the band. Having lost the female vocalist, some years before, the songs are now more raunchy perhaps, more edgy certainly, but maintain the degree of subtlety within the lyrics.

Continued .... Next Page (3/3)

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