Gig review: Los Lobos / Booker T

Published on Sunday 2 August 2009 22:46

*** PERTH CONCERT HALL

THIS double bill was not only the apparent flagship show of Perth's Southern Fried festival of roots music and Americana, but the line-up should and would have been the envy of every other major concert hall in Scotland. First among equally-billed performers was Booker T Jones, whose work with his multi-racial, Stax-signed Memphis soul band Booker T & the MGs in the 1960s made him possibly the pre-eminent Hammond organ player in the history of contemporary pop and rock.

Although his performing provenance in this country is unclear, it's certainly a rare sight to see Jones in the UK; and rarer still that he actually has an album to promote, with Potato Hole being his first in two decades. The record and the live performance both use Americana outfit Drive-By Truckers (a big enough draw in their own right for a certain audience) as his backing band, and this ad hoc supergroup's sound is authentically rich in analogue period dynamism through classics such as Green Onions, Hip Hug Her and Time is Tight. "That's it," said the pork-pie-hatted Jones at the finale, almost apologetically, "that's my show". Cue standing ovation.

Chicano crossover group Los Lobos, however, had to wait until singer and guitarist David Hidalgo instructed people to get to their feet for I Got Loaded before their gig really kicked off, and that was the penultimate song before the anticipated set-closer La Bamba.

While that last track was a bankable crowd-pleaser, the band made one too many forays into interminable country-rock riffage. Polka and Tex-Mex influenced Spanish languages tracks such as Maricela are sharper in flavour.