Miles Hunt, The GRV

Published on Thursday 30 July 2009 09:57

Miles Hunt ***, The GRV

YOU probably only know Miles Hunt as the front man of late 80s alt-rock band The Wonder Stuff and even if you don't know that you will almost certainly have heard some of that prolific and tumultuous band's hits – Dizzy and Size of a Cow being the obvious ones.

You may even know that The Wonder Stuff have just re-released a special 20th anniversary version of first album The Eight Legged Groove Machine.

But whichever way you come at it, you can't deny that Miles Hunt is one performer that will simply not go away.

Such is the resilience of a man who has endured two decades playing as The Wonder Stuff, surviving the band's split in 1994, reforming 6 years later and plodding on regardless when original members Martin Gilks and Martin Bell would no longer work with him.

And then going on to enjoy eight solo albums as well as carrying the torch for his former band.

Taking to the stage at The GRV last night, the birthday boy (now 43) was a greatly changed man from the brashy twenty-something who lolloped across our screens on Top of The Pops all those years ago.

Gone are the long hair and the baggy clothes, to be replaced by horn-rimmed specs and a rockabilly buzz cut. Gone also are the other band members that make up the new look Wonder Stuff, apart from new fiddler Katrina Nockalls. But one thing that remained unchanged was Miles Hunt's famously arrogant and self-assured manner.

This was very much the Miles Hunt show as the former singer/songwriter/guitarist/drummer (and undoubtedly talented musician), recounted to the audience various, lengthy, anecdotes from his illustrious career. Although a bit of background to an artist's inspiration for a song is often welcomed, when that background begins to take the foreground the audience begins to wonder stuff: like, had I come here to see a poor stand up show or the former front man of a band I used to like?

But in all fairness, when Miles Hunt and Erica Nockalls got down to business they were really very good, whipping up a mellower folky sort of sound that was impossible not to tip-tap along to. The scaled-down acoustic set, with only Hunt's guitar and Nockall's fiddle, still produced a big sound that, with a large and more energetic audience, would probably have inspired a sizeable jive-down.

With resilience comes prolificity and that meant Miles Hunt had plenty of tunes to choose from, mixing up solo work, collaborations and good old stuff classics like Size of a Cow alongside his (mostly) entertaining monologues. The best of which was probably his recollection of being approached by the producers of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, only to rebuff their advances for fear of 'selling his dignity'.

Brashy, arrogant but always dignified, a talent like Miles Hunt will probably be around forever.