Bye Bye Kylie, Hello Breath of Fresh Air

Now, I’m not being unkind when I say this… But by his own admission, our favourite busker’s voice did have a bit of a nasal element to it. Not that there is anything wrong with that. After all it’s never done Kylie any harm.

Anyway, a week or two back, the doctors offered our Robin a nose job. “I should be so lucky” he said, and within no time at all his head was spinning round, round, round, like a record baby, as he was wheeled into theatre to have a Black & Decker drill and several lengths of chimney sweeping rods pushed up his nasal passages.

I have to say, as nose jobs go, there was little or no cosmetic benefit. Well, you can’t improve on perfection, can you Robin? 🙂  At least our man can breath easier now and can actually sing a semitone or two higher too, as we witnessed when he belted out “Copperhead Road”, “Goodbye Marianne” and “The Sound of Silence”.

I’d go as far as to say he sounds even better than Kylie now. But I’m sorry Robin… when it comes to hot-pants, Melbourne’s Miss Minogue still has the edge!

Whilst on the subject of our Australian neighbours, this week saw the return of Karen White to our shores. When she was visiting family in Ruthin this time last year, Karen played us a Showcase Spot. And so it was nice to see the “Quintessential Quirk”, as she is known in Queensland, turn up out of the blue for our Singers’ Night.

Karen sang us three songs from her new (about to be released) album entitled “In These Shoes?” which is a tribute to Kirsty MacColl. They were: “All I Ever Wanted”, “Dear John” and “The Butcher Boy”.

Lynda Degney got our feet tapping with “Blue Grass Music” and Tom sang “Clickety Clack” plus the new song he’d written last week called “Wonder of my World”.

Richard Davies took us on a musical ride to the “City of New Orleans” with a set that also included Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”. John Ryder’s set included Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way About Her”, and Ros sang “Crying Time” and Hank Williams’s “Leaving Now”.

Richard and Wendy Eastwood produced a fine selection, both individually and duetting, with a fair sprinkling of Jim Reeves, John Prine and Crystal Gayle. During Wendy’s solo set, Tom Degney was thrown in the deep end and asked to accompany on the mandolin as she sang “Let’s Swing”. He shrugged “I don’t know that one”, but by the end of the second bar he was “swinging it” like a pro. You’d have sworn he’d been playing it all his life.

In the finale spot this week was Joe Lyon. Having already given us “Mist Over the Mersey” and “Comedians and Angels”, Joe sang one of his Beatles favourites, “Strawberry Fields”  and for an encore, sent us all home with “The Goodnight Song”.  The 1992 Jim Boyes song, which he had learned from Andy Crimes (of Welcomme, Finnan and Chrimes) was the perfect end to the evening.