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There was a time in this country, long before Billy Bragg and Paul Hardcastle, when songs of a vaguely political nature seemed forever consigned to the pretentious poetics of a few bearded nerds playing to ill-attended folk clubs. If you wanted anything like an incisive, illuminating and above all convincing commentary on those troubled years you had to seek out the chroniclers of the American experience.
Artists like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, having quickly outgrown the leaden structures of the protest song, reworked their observations, coloured them paisley, people their stories with grotesque and strange illusions and succeeded in creating something far more sophisticated and telling. T Bone takes his cue from this tradition.
At his most brilliant when displaying a razor wit on the social niceties of big business — "Ridiculous Man," "Hefner and Disney," "House of Mirrors," for example with a group of ill-considered love songs, T Bone kept a sedate audience enthralled for close on two hours. Establishing a relaxed atmosphere in this stuff old theatre was no mean achievement and aided only by an acoustic guitar, this was a testimony to the lost art of understated showmanship.
And if the sing-alongs and "professional unprofessionalism" recalled those precious singer/songwriter concerts of the early Seventies, the lyrical bite located his sensibilities firmly in the present. A wicked adaptation of "Anything Goes," for example, contained this apposite comment: "Terrorists were once alarming, Now they're discreetly charming. On TV shows, Anything Goes." Quite.
And then for the encore — The Coward Brothers — Howard and Henry, alias Mr Burnett and Elvis Costello. An encore that turned into a short set of mad gags and great country harmony. It's easy to see why these two get on so well; both share a love of tricky wordplay, country classics, left-field humour and a profound disgust with the Ways Of The World.
For half an hour or so, Howard and Henry amused and amazed, with the Liverpool sibling in particular displaying a gift for comic timing as well as predictably exceptional singing. From the surreal rockabilly thrash of "The People's Limousine" (their current single) to the beautiful, lingering, "Tennessee Waltz," these lovable Cowards provided an uplifting coda to a memorable evening.
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