A night at the Rock Opera...

Morley has a second hand music shop in the Bottoms area, the shop is called "Sounds 'n Stuff" and the owner, Stewart Pollard, also teaches guitar to youngsters.

He has now come up with the bright idea of forming the Morley music Trust and held an inaugural concert last Friday.

The event kicked off with a session from fresh faced local Band Tytania. It wasn't to my taste, sounding rather Iron maiden/Black Sabbath, but what would I know, I'm on the home stretch to 50 so hardly qualify as "the youth of today". I found their music loud, rather turgid and also rather dull to watch but as far as I knew it was their own compositions and they played/sang competently. Certainly their camp followers cheered them on.

The second performer was Ricky Harding, a small, white haired rather friendly looking chap with faun coloured shoes & slacks that didn't make him look Rock & Roll at all. He reminded me of an elderly uncle with witty banter and there was no immediate clue that he was an Axe God- until he started playing. Ricky could play in a wide range of styles and held the audience with his dexterity. It had been billed as a guitar demonstration and it was exactly that, he explained the style and purpose of all that he played. His opening song had hit a few discordant twangs and he later apologised for this, having inadvertently cut his fingernails rather too close to the show.

The final set was from a band called GreenMac who played a mixture of blues style numbers and early Fleetwood Mac songs, being a sort of tribute band to Peter Green, the pre-massive success days of Fleetwood Mac before the Girls joined and they went big time. The main man in Green Mac is Dusty Miller, who runs a guitar shop in Leeds. These guys looked like rockers and played a tight set, although the addition of a vintage Hammond might have nicely rounded the sound to my ears. Dusty sounds a bit like Clapton when singing and my favourite song from their set had to be Man of the World, the least favourite being Albatross that I find just as lethargic today as when I first heard it in 1969. (I much preferred Lily the Pink and Obladi-Oblada also in the charts at the time).

UPDATE- Corrected as per comments, cheers.