In the three years since scuppering Robbie Williams to win Best Male at the Brit Awards, in between all the endless Met-Bar ligging and tabloid-press hounding, Finley Quaye has developed some bizarre interests. Because tonight the man is free-associating about the virtues of BBC 1's Big Break and erm... beans. Either that or he's gone certifiably mad.
"John Virgo. David Vine... I love green bean, butter bean and broad bean. Black-eye beans and kidney beans. Mung beans and runner bean," he announces, meandering down dubious-syntax alley.
Shorn of the scruff-meister hair that accompanied the release of 'Vanguard', tonight Quaye is a picture of studied nonchalance as he mumbles his way coolly through exhilarating recent single 'Spiritualised'.
With the set heavily proportioned in favour of debut 'Maverick A Strike', Quaye dazzles the audience with a scintillating performance that beggars belief in its ability to solder genres together. He gives us rasta-monologues (the word 'Babylon' was mentioned at least, ooh, 700 times tonight), gutter-ska blues ('Feeling Blue') and wonky Balinese xylophone sounds ('Chad Valley'). Would that other eclectican Beck manage to pull off a performance so fiendishly inventive? It's doubtful.
But it is on the sunshine reggae of 'Sweet And Lovely Man', 'Great When We're Together' and 'Sunday Shining', that Quaye whips the crowd into ecstatic euphoria. It matters not that the feelgood guitar chops and laid-back bass owe a huge debt to Bob Marley - the soulful warmth of Quaye's voice reaches everybody like a snug Calor Gas fire in an OAP's front room.
Respect is also due to the maniacally tight rhythm section. Leading us through Teardrop Explodes-style, brass-soaked euphoria one minute and slick blaxpoitation funk workouts the next, they are the adhesive element holding Quaye's eccentric delivery together. And the percussionist leaps around behind his conga drums like a sailor dancing the cat-of-nine-tails with lobsters gnawing away at his genitals.
As he draws the evening to a close with a tumultuous cover of 'Voodoo Chile', it dawns on you that Quaye has achieved an historic feat. This is probably the first occasion in the history of live music that an audience has actually danced to a Jimi Hendrix song (Hmmm, doubt it, Reviews Ed).
Yes, Quaye may be schizoid but through this playful disrespect for convention, Quaye has off-loaded an utterly amazing and joyous concert. It's just a sad indictment of our times that the charts no longer give idiosyncratic geniuses like Quaye the respect they deserve. He probably cooks a mean vegetable stir-fry as well. And who says that snooker is dull?
IMAGES: DEBBIE SMYTH
