Last night <3 and I actually went out for a dose of live music. A friend kindly agreed to babysit for the Youngling and having safely deposited her, we got to Newbury with enough time to spare to get the drinks in.
The show was a regular (mostly monthly) one hosted by the Mandolinquents, and is billed as a sort of folk and world music evening. This time, the band, a quartet, was down to 75% of its normal strength and the focus of the music was blues, and through the first half we had a good variety of pleasing acoustic music which really showed their singer, Hilary James, in a great light. <3 tensed up visibly when Hilary announced that she was going to sing Down by the Sally Gardens, but relaxed significantly when she did a really good job of the song — though the additional verse (which I didn't notice, not knowing the song very well) didn't really strike the right chord ("she's not exactly Yeats, is she?").
The second half saw the introduction of the evening's special guest and the reason that I had wanted to come to this show: Brendan Power, a fantastic harmonica player who I have previously bought CDs and customised harmonicas from. Brendan was awesome: he is equally at home playing blues, Irish traditional, ragtime or any number of other styles, and was a great fit for the other musicians on stage. The show was clearly being winged to a great extent (as one of the band commented, "not tired from over-rehearsal") and had a great energy and sense of fun.
All in all, a great evening and we came home with smiles on our faces and a clutch of CDs to listen to at home. We may even go to another of these shows some time. And to put the icing on the cake, when we picked up the Youngling, she was asleep and had, apparently stayed asleep all evening. Excellent.
