Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Postojna / Jamski dvorec / Slovenia
Concert date: 24.05.2012
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: 20,00€
A Nine Below Zero show is not something you skip, let alone sleep on. These guys are the real deal on stage, like few others. Energy, magic, a full-blooded dose of blues rhetoric! Behind it all stands serious experience and know-how. A brush with the blues, courtesy of the most soulful masters of the craft. Blues is at its most beautiful, and hits the listener hardest, when it’s played simply and directly. Nine Below Zero are a textbook case of the perfect symbiosis of four musicians, four elements that build the ideal bluesy body. Expectations were high, then.
Dennis Greaves remains the pillar of Nine Below Zero to this day. His mojo speaks for itself. With his gray hair and polished stage presence of incredible charisma, armed with nothing but his guitar sound and vocal delivery, he’s the guarantee of one of the most attractive old-school »white blues« outfits in Great Britain, still kicking away actively since 1977. Harmonica instead of keyboards is Nine Below Zero’s trademark. That’s why the return of original member, harmonica player and vocalist Mark Feltham, in 2001 was like salt in a proper beef soup for Nine Below Zero’s blues rhetoric! No Feltham, no deal. The rhythm section of this legendary band is now in the hands of Brendan O’Neill on drums, a former member of Rory Gallagher’s band, and bassist Brian Bethamm, who left Nine Below Zero long ago after recording the album »Third Degree« with them, but rejoined the lineup at the start of this year. He replaced Garry McAvoy, who is also a familiar name from his years of playing with Rory Gallagher.
Nine Below Zero got onto this year’s Postojna blues festival lineup through the back door, really. At the last minute. As an urgent stand-in for Billy Branch, who had to cancel. Lovely. A harmonica player, Mark Feltham, for a harmonica player, Billy Branch. Sounds more than fair.
As expected, the show was split into two sets of 40 minutes with an, honestly, epic 40-minute break in between. A pause like that must be a precondition set by the venue that hosts the festival, since that’s the only way the owner can squeeze extra coins out of a thirsty crowd. Attendance was great again. Tables packed into every last corner. Nine Below Zero quickly drew their own recognizable picture on stage, with that blues voodoo that reigns above all in their original material, and they won over the crowd above all with the familiar sentiment of their trademark humor, which in an utterly contagious way broke down the barrier between band and audience. The first set closed with an energetic take on Willie Dixon’s Talk To Me Baby, first recorded in the early sixties by the blues “king of slide,” Elmore James.
The enormous break definitely had a “loosening” effect on the quartet itself, who in the second half of the show combined their default laid-back attitude with the fact that there was apparently no need to concentrate all that much, since the guys had jumped on the last train to Postojna as substitutes. This showed mostly in a few unnecessary pauses and theatrical strolls by Greaves off the stage, the emptiness of which Feltham had to quickly fill with his own bits. Nine Below Zero are certainly seasoned old hands, greased with every ointment, and they sweep you right past these remarks with their stage confidence and incredibly self-assured character. Still, you could feel it especially toward the end, when Greaves was already toasting the audience with beer, that the band had their heads somewhere else. Another Dixon cover, I Can’t Quit You Baby, went down well, played by Greaves much softer, looser and more “organic-sounding” than the wild, noisy Led Zeppelin version on their studio debut. The brand-new boogie number A Little Understanding, which Nine Below Zero recorded for the album »The Co-Operated«, a collaboration with Glenn Tilbrook, slowly brought the second half to a close too. The guys wrapped up with the standard On The Road Again, Alan Wilson’s adaptation drawn from the tradition of the original song of the same name by Floyd Jones, known to most people far better in the hands of the legendary blues heroes Canned Heat. Here the guys caught fire again, and it was Feltham in particular who kept the crowd on their feet with his stunning command of the harmonica, riding a wave of improvisational madness, with which the band also said goodbye to the stage, after first getting the entire audience involved.
The encore opened theatrically with a continuation of On The Road Again, followed by one of their best-known original songs, Wooly Bully. The quartet got the crowd on their feet one last time with Roy Head’s soul blues classic Treat Her Right, into which they cheekily wove The Kinks’ standard You Really Got Me (mostly thanks to how well the lead motifs fit together).
Short but sweet! This time with a bit of surplus laid-back-ness, but correct in every way. The band clearly approached the Postojna show a little half-heartedly and not fully focused, even though the smiles on the guys’ faces said they were having a blast. But compared with the previous tour, when they played up to three hours with a mix of acoustic and electric repertoire, it was clear that, despite an attractive and still highly credible performance, Nine Below Zero approached the Postojna crowd a touch reserved this time.
Setlist
first set:
1. Tore Down
2. Homework
3. Can’t Help Myself
4. Can I Get A Witness
5. Last Night
6. I’m So Alone
7. Hard Goin’ Up
8. Madison Blues
9. Talk To Me Baby
—break—
second set:
10. Soft Touch
11. Everyday I Have The Blues
12. I Can’t Quit You Baby
13. Ridin’ On The L & N
14. Don’t Point Your Finger At The Guitar Man
15. Three Times Enough
16. It’s Never Too Late
17. A Little Understanding
18. On The Road Again
—encore—
19. On The Road Again (reprise)
20. Wooly Bully
21. Treat Her Right / You Really Got Me
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