Ides of March Noted Review

Congratulations to all performers at March's "noted". Despite the Ides of March title, no-one died and no-one was stabbed - except perhaps for some mild abrasions from John Gracie about Paul Simmon's playing...

Actually, Paul did a fantastic job, both in his natural element as blues rocker to his now more familiar role of 21st Century guitarist to Becca's great singing. She, along with Jenny, William, and quite a few others, flew the flag for the under 20's. bringing the average age down by at least 7000%...

As usual there was the eclectic mix of rock, soul, Scottish and Irish folk (From Iain Glen and Stuart Marshall respectively). Stuart also supplied a line of "Wheels on the Bus" on demand from the youthful section of the audience!

We had a good selection of female singers as well, from Jane's excellent "Songbird" to Jenny's showtime "All that Jazz". Male singers were well represented to, with Tim tackling a Helicopter and William requested Help.

Unfortunately we were denied John Gracie's classical guitar due to a broken finger-nail (Yeah, right!) but maestro Mike played something even too hard for him on the piano, to rapturous applause...or something. He introduced this as the new Novelty section, to accompany the Cheese section and the now regular Comedy section from Paul Thompson and his Thackery songs.

Of course, there were a number of ensemble pieces, and we can now reveal the secret plan of Pete Wilding - to play every song there is, from every decade, accompanied by every musician at "noted"! This month he played 60's Beatles, 70's Who as well as a 00's song, each with different groups! As always we are thankful to our drummers and bassists - this week Peter, Stuart and Dean - without whom these ambitious pieces wouldn't be possible.
I haven't been able to mention everyone, unfortunately (if I've missed you, blame my memory), but over 40 guests and musicians enjoyed another fine night, and one of our newcomers described it as "like a big family!" .