Where do you start with a night like tonight? At the beginning, I suppose. The Patron Saints weren’t even on the advertised bill, but Kim Volkman had managed to score himself an opening spot at the last minute. With Billy Pommer overseas, Phil Grinder was allegedly spotted in a supermarket carpark, and drafted to take over drumming duties. James McCann had been in the front bar for three minutes when he agreed to Volkman’s request to play bass, and a recalibrated Patron Saints was born. It was a beautifully shambolic set, as rough and ready around the edges as you want dirty-arsed rock’n’roll to be.
Iowa was a strange choice for the penultimate spot on the bill. The Patron Saints had spent 40 minutes lying in a dishevelled state in the rock’n’roll gutter; Iowa had a clean set of strides and pressed shirt on in comparison. But the songs were good, albeit with a pop sensibility that would be subsequently drowned out by the brutal riffs of Endless Boogie.
It was 11.30pm by the time Endless Boogie got on stage. Paul Major, the notional leader of the band, is tall and rake-thin, and his waist-length hair disguising a weathered face that’s seen more heavy duty rock’n’roll than your scrawny body has had hot dinners. The first song starts and just keeps going. Endless Boogie find a Stones riff, and hold it in their vice-like grip for what seems like ages. The grip loosens and the riff morphs into the darkness of Stooges holed up in the Funhouse; ten minutes later, and it’s mutated into AC/DC, and even ZZ Top before that band traded southern boogie for cheesy film clips and plastic pop gimmicks. Half an hour later, and the song – if you can call a half hour jam a song – finishes, and there’s a collective drawing of breath from the attentive crowd.
And it doesn’t stop there. The next jam starts somewhere, in a bar in Texas, catches a lift along Route 66 to a whiskey-filled room in Chicago, and heads across the Pacific to a farm in Sunbury where Lobby Loyde’s holding court, half-smoked cigarette dangling elegantly from his mouth. This is the stuff of rock’n’roll fairy tale, and Endless Boogie is the Pied Piper taking us to a world only the fortunate few have ever witnessed. An hour, and a few songs later, and Major says the band is going to take a break, but they’ll be back. None of this pretentious encore shit here.
We grab a beer, some fresh air and wait for it to start again. There’s two more 15 minute jams, each a lesson in the dexterity of rock’n’roll riffage. It’s a religious moment for anyone willing to bare their soul; later on, a punter will bare more than her soul, just before jumping off the stage into the waiting arms of the crowd.
Three quarters of the band leave the stage, possibly for good. But guitarist Jesper Eklow stays, fiddling with his guitar tuning, and giving no indication he’s finished for the evening. “If one guy stays, you have to assume the rest will come back, too,” remarks a friend. And they do. The third coming is just as spiritually invigorating as its preceding events. It’s dirty, viscous and profoundly alluring. We know it has to finish sometime, but until that time we’re transfixed. When every last drop of rock’n’roll goodness has been wrenched from the evening, it’s over. The atmosphere is thick with love and goodwill and there’s much rejoicing. Can rock’n’roll ever get better than this? I doubt it.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Photo credit: Richard Sharman
LOVED: Every fucking minute of it.
HATED: None of it.
DRANK: From the plentiful cup of rock’n’roll.
