Matty Cassidy, to be fair, has a busy evening. There are three bands playing and he’s in all of them.
He’s a rock star though. MV sees him at the end, and although it had been about a million degrees in the Rock Club at the Billesley Pub, there’s not a drop of sweat on him.
The first of his triple-shift is his superb Real Villains outfit. As classically sleazy as rock n roll can be when he gets his harmonica out for “Contradiction In Terms” it’s a thing of beauty to anyone who’s ever loved the very sort of sweaty Friday nights that this was made for.
The title track of his glorious “Old Souls” album changes the pace and maybe is the hangover after the night before, but as ever, when he finishes his singalong “Same Old Me (Brand New You),” it is impossible not to get swept along.
He’d barely been off the stage for 10 seconds before he was back on it, this time for a few songs as The Balladmongrels. But their singer, Tyla J Pallas, is missing.
Eventually, he appears, seemingly in Spike from The Quireboys’ suit, and they rattle off a few songs from their brilliant “Trouble” album from a couple of years ago.
All joking aside about the sartorial choices, the selection they play, including “Ballad Of The Knucklemen” and the title cut, prove it to be exactly the sort of thing that Tyla should be doing, and the more mournful “How The Beautiful Fall” is a vehicle for what is the perfect raspy voice of a troubadour.
So, at 10:30 on Friday night, Tyla and the current troupe that are his Dogs D’Amour appear with a joke about Viagra and some of the best songs ever written.
That means they open with “Billy Two Rivers,” and I’m instantly that kid again who bought “Graveyard Of Empty Bottles” while on a family holiday in 1989 with the pocket money my gran had given me because I’d read a review in Kerrang.
It’s worth pointing that out because in the great pantheon of UK rock bands, it might be that Dogs D’Amour are a footnote to many, but to some of us, these songs, like “The Last Bandit,” “I Think It’s Love Again,” have been with us all our lives.
To be truthful (and I’m aware this makes me strange), I don’t like “jokes,” and some of Tyla’s oxymorons pass me by. Still, for all the knockabout stuff, there’s a fragile work of genius like “Bullet Proof Poet” or “Heroine” (there’s a reason The Wildhearts covered it) or “No Gypsy Blood,” which is played at “the same speed as 89,” according to the man himself.
He’s got a gift for melody, “I Don’t Want You To Go” and “What You Do” show that as much as the hits they pepper the end with.
And, “How Come It Never Rains,” “Drunk Like Me,” “Satellite Kid,” and the one about “Just because you’re the good guy, don’t mean you’re gonna to win them all” are among the best that anyone made from 1985-1990.
On the one hand, you kind of think it’s criminal that a man with this much talent is having his set interrupted for last orders, instead of playing “The Last Bandit” to thousands, but then you ask yourself: would you want him any other way? And would he want to be any other way?
Put it like this. After he’d finished “Errol Flynn” no one had left and the host asked if he wanted to sing one more. Wolverhampton’s finest merely swigged his wine and said with that irascible smile: “I haven’t practiced anything else…..”
How can you not love The Dogs D’Amour?
