Danny Duchamp And Friends

Danny Duchamp and Friends – Review Performed 17th September 2010 Friday night at the Masonic Tavern The old Tavern may not be long for this world as the developers lick their lips over the prospect of rebuilding history, but the old walls have rarely had as good a time reverberating to the sound of inspired blues/rock. Danny Duchamp sent the crowd into raptures with the best blues piano you will hear anywhere near our latitudes. Hard bitten and hard singing blues vocalist Mark Foster (from Auckland’s best Blues band The Jukes) ripped out our hearts with renditions of years old standards from “Shotgun Blues” to the Stones “Sympathy for the Devil”. Danny Duchamp then set alive acoustic and electric guitars – giving the echoie Dylan’s “Times are a Changing” a new power with his clear urgent vocals and a return to the best of the 90’s in the form of the Smashing Pumpkins “1979”. Then young cool songstress Erin Dun moved the audience with a Carly Simon style blues set and the band played on with that easy tight sound that only the very best of musicians achieve. And when the evening seemed complete Danny Duchamp strode on for one last song – Jimmy Hendrix’s “Hey Joe”. But where Hendrix drove a guitar to make you feel for a hard man gone bad, Danny Duchamp strongly drove a piano to create a new view of this soul gone bad – Danny’s playing and singing made you feel he had been a victim all his life. There never was hope– yes it was the blues. The show was the best. Just to hear that last song by Danny Duchamp made this hateful critic of mediocrity happy. This boy is great. You have to see him – live. So the show will go on. Already a tour of Auckland through the summer is being planned. Some of the best artists in this fair city have put up their hands to be “Friends” in a Danny Duchamp and Friends show. The names I’ve heard of already are artists from Katchafire, Snaggin, Shot Gun Alley and Riverhead Slide. One of the Friends playing some base for awhile on Friday was an older gentleman who went by the name of “Bob”. Bob has been a leading musician in Auckland since the early sixties – in fact a very early member of the greatest band of that era “Larry’s Rebels”. When I asked why get involved he just smiled “You see them come and go in this business. But every once in a while you see one. Someone who is not normal, can do things no one can. That’s Danny. So if the Duchamp asks me to play I just thank god I’m still on the planet and I say yes.”