The only time I’ve ever seen live music at Spanky Van Dykes is upstairs, which is where I was expecting to find tonight’s gig. Local recording studio JT Soars was hosting a night at Spankys as part of a weeklong celebration of the summer closure of the universities. My main interest was Alex Hale playing a solo set, having seen both of his bands, August Actually and Poirot’s Boys, I hadn’t seen him playing solo before. His fellow Poirot’s Boy Adam Clarkson was also on the bill, someone I’ve written about recently. It was a strange set up for a gig, with the event taking place downstairs in the bar. This of course meant that the whole place was full, but it also meant that everyone was talking among themselves; the irony being that after my last two reports that Adam deserves a bigger crowd, here we was in front of the largest amount of people that I have seen him play to on his own.

Alex had already started his set when I arrived and to try and zone the talkers out of my ears and took a bar stool near the ‘stage’. I’ve played one of his songs on the radio before but didn’t have a great deal of knowledge regarding his solo work. Although I personally am only familiar with a few of his solo songs he has a good stage presence and maintains a friendly banter with those members of the audience that were paying attention.

After Alex there was an electronic act that to my ears just sounded like a lot of noise, so I went outside for a cigarette and discussed my recent commentary on the local music scene with Adam. The two of us have discussed this sort of thing before and it seems that we have the same status as the great ignored among the so-called elite despite the fact that a lot of people seem to be on our side. It’s a weird little world!

Adam played a solo set of Captain Dangerous songs, including ‘Everything Beautiful Reminds Me Of You’ which sounds a lot better as a solo song than by the band as he conveys the emotion of the song a lot better than the poppy sound of the band’s version. A small section of the crowd near the front enjoyed the set, everybody else just carried on fucking talking and ignoring one of Nottingham’s best singers.  I personally think that all aspiring musicians should go and see Clarkson with a pad and pen and make a note of how it should be done.

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