OFF: Dumpy & Co: short review

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

     Ah, just got back from seeing Dumpy & Co. (er, officially
billed as Dumpy's Blue'zz In'tozzicated, or something like that)
at The Boat Race in Cambridge.  Marvelous evening which ended too
soon.  Dumpy is ... well, a bit _good_ when he wants to be at
that full-on, pedal-to-the-metal atonal blues rock thing :)  Shaun
and Dave T. from Cambridge RockSoc came down, as did (sometime?)
boc-l member Anna.  Should have been more locals, as it was
a bit underattended (OK, it was a cold mid-week night ...)

     Our man Dumpy is a complete nutter, a real biker-meets-
Santa-Claus with a long grey beard floating down over that
bowl full of jelly. Armed with a Gibson SG, a Marshal stack,
and--oh yes--a wah, flanger, and delay.  And he's not afraid
to use them :)
     He's got a three piece, so a drummer and bassist: the
bass player was solid if a bit pedestrian, I thought, though
the drummer none-too-shabby and was credibly mental on things
like "Sunshine of Your Love".  Yes, the set was a solid wall
of biker classics--all British blues rock from the 60s (barring
one short trip to the 70s), with a few brief visits to the
more obvious tunes from Dumpy's Rusty Nuts.  Headbanding *and*
toe-tapping stuff, this.  They could have played longer, maybe
only about 75 minutes they did, or so.  I could have listened
to that stuff for hours to to come quite happily.  Not having
been to any custom bike shows in the UK, only about 25% of the
set was recognizable to me, but as I cut my "rock" teeth on
60s stuff the style was always familiar.  I was grinning like
a nutter and bopping my head the whole way.

     I always rate a good gig by getting an overwhelming
desire to jump up and start jamming, and this was sure one
of those.

     All of it pretty much rocked solidly all the way through--
there were no bad moments--though I remember the good'n'heavy
Cream cover (above) as well as a "Hey Joe", and an enormous
"Baby Please Don't Go" for the finale.  On this last, I was
extrordinarily pleased to see my favorite lo-budget "swooshy
noise" in action: sweeping the knobs on an analog guitar delay
pedal ... whuckawhuckawhockawhackaweedeedeedeedeeeeeeee! \

     Superb :)

     Wandering between loo and bar after the set, I bump into
Dumpy who spies the Hawkwind T-shirt, and we chatted merrily
about Bedouin.  He was pretty psyched by them, as a "head band
with _power_", and said Alan & Co had stayed with him after
their gig up his way. "It always takes me a few days to recover
after Alan stays <grin>".  Said a lot of Hawkfans got put off
by Bedouin for being too loud and in yer face, but _right_on_,
man!  Noting me as an obvious young'un, he couldn't resist
pointing out he'd been at the Brixton Sundown when _Space
Ritual_ was recorded.  I told him he was a bastard, which
seemed perfectly fair :)

     Before I left, as Dumpy was packing up his gear on stage,
he started calling out "Sonic Attack", and it would have been
rude to to repsond :) I think we got about halfway through before ...

     ... Pause ...

     "I think we've fucked the words up!" I said.

     Well, more _authentic_ that way :)


     Good bloke, good band, good gig.  Go see 'em!

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/