Dead Lettuce/Amity Road/The Sabres – St Patrick’s Day Party

Champions, Bournemouth

It’s St Patrick’s Day and Champions in Bournemouth have the Irish traditional drink Guinness at £2.50 a pint in celebration of the day, which will certainly helps make the evening go with a swing. Tonight we have three of Bournemouth’s major rock acts for the evenings entertainment.

The 1st of which are The Sabres who are one member light, bass player Gareth has decided to go snow boarding, not to worry though, drummer Martin Ramsey’s brother Paul has stepped in on guitar to show an alternative side to the band. The band have decided to put away the electric guitars for one night only and perform as an acoustic trio. They perform songs from their recently released self titled ep which can be downloaded for free on their website. Guitarist Ritchie Adams seems to relish this chance to show off his skills with an acoustic guitar performing stand out tracks ‘Full Moon’ , ‘Last Thing On My Mind’ and ‘Leave It’ amply backed by the brothers.

The highlight of the set is a impressive radically reworked cover version of The Offspring’s ‘Want You Bad’ , which was initially difficult to recognise at 1st until the chorus kicked in. By this performance I am sure the band should bring some of this element of in to their usual set.

Three piece Amity Road are next up, lead guitarist and vocalist Karl Hayman has a new red Gibson guitar to give it’s live debut tonight. The band have just released their impressive debut album ‘Thieves Get Rich’ and there are no acoustic shenanigans for Amity Road they have the full electric set up plugged in and are ready to rock. The band power through a half hour set which shows an mature professional approach from such a young band. The songs include some great riffs with and a number of interesting guitar effects especially the start of the number ‘Crash and Burn’ which rolls around the Champions venue nicely. This is the band’s first live outing for a while and they do suffer from a little from a lack of confidence, I am sure after a few shows the cobwebs will be blown away.

What can I say about Dead Lettuce? There is an element of Spinal Tap about their performance, lead singer Rab in-between comical banter is priceless, he has masses of long red hair and is very committed to his cause of playing rock live and loud. They start of with a tribute to the late great Gary Moore by playing a storming version of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Don’t Believe A Word’ and the two guitarists do Gary proud getting the song near note perfect. The band confess to drinking heavily throughout the evening, saying they don’t need to have an excuse, after all it is Thursday and St Patrick’s day.

Despite their inebriated state they pull off a set full of progressive rock highlights including the seven minute ‘Fugitive and ‘Sonic Reducer’ which sees Rab involved in some serious head banging on stage. A great show case of three bands giving just a glimpse on what quality Bournemouth has to offer.

Set List
Don’t Believe a Word
Colour-blind
Big White Dog
Fugitive
Lonely Road
A-Team
Sonic Reducer
Lettuce Roll

Videos
The Sabre’s