I figured after I wrote yesterday’s post that we were done for the night, but Craig had other plans. Some people he knew were resurrecting their band after a four year hiatus, and so we headed out to The Talking Heads to see them.

The club seemed to specialize in local acts, including bands and sometimes plays. Looking over their schedule I did see that last month they hosted The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash and next month features a performance by The Arrogant Worms.

While I had heard of those groups, I didn’t know Powerbulge. This is a nine-piece funk band made of up white guys, and this was their first gig in years (and apparently after only two rehearsals). There was a core group of four: drums, bass, guitar and organ, a four piece horn section, and a singer.

The band itself was pretty tight, and they started the first set with the “Theme from Peter Gunn”. The rest of the set wandered a bit from funk classics such as “Jungle Boogie” to “Hard to Handle”, made famous by the Black Crowes. Being English, I thought it was funny to hear “boogie” pronounced heavy on the “oooo”, boooooogie, as opposed to how I say it, which is closer to “buggy”.

I enjoyed myself, but the obvious weak link was the singer. Apparently he was new, and, well, he wasn’t very good. The band covered at least four Stevie Wonder hits, and each time I found myself channeling the spirit of Simon Cowell from American Idol. In many cases the band wasn’t even in his key and he had to resort to a really bad falsetto, but I guess you have to give him props for being up there in the first place.

They really did shine on the instrumentals, and the alto sax player was very, very good. Since I hadn’t been in a club like this in ten years, it was also kind of cool, although I did stand toward the back and nurse my pint. Rachel, Ben’s fiancé from Saturday night, showed up, so it was even weirder to be in a foreign country and to start to recognize people.

Tonight is an open mike night called The Candle Club that has been a tradition for almost 10 years. I’ll post on how it goes.