Old Samuel & Fighting Fifth Husky live in Llanelli February 2017

Last week Old Samuel make their first visit to Llanelli , playing alongside Fosta’s own Fighting Fifth Husky. Following some musical ramblings, this week, Fosta kicks off the column with his take on the night.

Reviewing bands for the Herald over the last few years has revealed to me the cyclic nature of musical tastes. A few years back the fashion was for rockabilly bands such as The Urban Voodoo Machine, The Frights and Kidwelly’s Monsterometer. Rockabilly obviously started in the fifties, then had its second coming in the eighties with The Stray Cats and The Cramps. Rockabilly seems to always have a comeback every thirty years.

The current crop of new young bands we have had playing in Llanelli, such as Discount Columbo and Wind Shake have favoured nineties Brit-Pop and shoegazing bands such as Ride and Cud, who were heavily influenced by the ‘British Invasion’ bands on the sixties, particularly The Kinks. Again, a thirty year cycle. The odd thing about these bands is that they’re playing music that was popular about five years before they were born.

Going by that logic, the next generation of bands coming through will be taking their thirty year cycle from early hard rock bands, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath etc. which had its re-incarnation as grunge. This would explain why you now see Nirvana t-shirts for sale in the children’s section of clothes shops.

On Saturday, we had Old Samuel from Cardiff making their first visit to Llanelli. The band started with some shoe gazer type tracks, although singer, Brett, also plays in the grunge band, Recluse, and their songs became more upbeat and rock orientated as their set went on, making them sound more like Radiohead to me. The band did bring some Dungeons & Dragons style costumes with them, although they decided they were too cumbersome to wear during the gig, relying on just a wizard’s hat for the bass player. This did suit them better than going for ‘the full Gwar’. The pub was full early with a large crowd out after the rugby and I received a lot of positive feedback from the crowd.

Old Samuel live Feb 17

Joining Old Samuel were my band, Fighting Fifth Husky. We decided to try something different at this gig and we didn't plan a set list, instead we played whatever we thought would work with the crowd at any particular moment. If there were a lot of people up dancing, we'd play something they could dance to. If they were sitting down listening, we'd play something we hoped they'd find interesting. If they were ignoring us, we'd play a cover that we thought would attract them back. It seemed to work as everyone had been out for the rugby and were in an easy going mood, although the problem with being that relaxed was that we didn't keep track of what songs we played or how long we played for. It did seem to make for a good party atmosphere and we had a good few people dancing but I don't think I'll end a gig lying down to solo again. (Fosta)

Fighting Fifth Husky live Feb 17