Smashing the musical shackles to the ground

HEADLINE ACT: Kiwi musician Andrew London will be special guest at an encore performance of The Retro Club at King Street Live in Masterton tomorrow night. PHOTO/SUPPLIED

The Retro Club will throw a spotlight on Kapiti-based musician Andrew London during an encore evening at King Street Live in Masterton tomorrow night.

Retro Club founder 'Dr Rob' Maunsell said the evening of performance will run for more than four hours from 7.30pm and will feature The Grafia Trio, a solo performance from London before he is joined onstage by a range of guest instrumentalists, The Grafia Jam Band, and Stefan Brown and The Backing Band.

Musicians who will strut their stuff throughout the night include Maunsell, Stephan Schultz, Keith Austin, Kemp Turirirangi, John Jukes, Andy Eldred, Pat Mckenna, Vic Singe and "assorted friends".

Jason Ireland will return as soundman for the repeat performance and AJ Hunter would again provide "another enthralling video display to augment the already amazing lighting set-up used to enhance the musical performances on offer", Maunsell said.

The encore Wairarapa show "will build on the strong showing" at the inaugural outing of The Retro Club in Masterton earlier this month, Maunsell said, which had come on the heels of three similarly successful performances at The Old Mill in Napier.

"The structure of the evening includes sets of songs by the host band, a special guest musician or band and local musicians who play a more creative selection of songs and tunes, than might be heard on occasions when they are hired to play," Maunsell said.

"Essentially we aim to get right away from it all, including the mundane, ordinariness of the everyday, and enter a magical realm where we are transported and enlivened by the power of the music.

"This is an impulse to connect to people in a community, with an invitation to go on a journey together that has a beginning, an undetermined end, and good times along the way," Maunsell said.

Maunsell said special guest London had spent 30 years "carving a niche in the New Zealand music scene" as a writer and performer of "whimsical songs that reflect the national psyche and gently lampoon many of mainstream New Zealand society's obsessions and taboos with genuine affection".

According to London's biography, his lyrics "occasionally pack a satirical barb as if from a curmudgeonly uncle".

His themes run the gamut from rugby fans, television evangelists, politicians and weddings to male insecurities, the biography continued, to technophobia, youth culture, household appliances, pretentious socialites, coffee, and "various other issues of concern to your average middle-aged, middle class, Middle-Earther".

London is a self-taught guitarist who has performed with rock bands, jazz trios, stage shows and as a soloist. He is based in Kapiti and played in his acoustic swing trio, Hot Club Sandwich, a band that had released eight CDs.

He also plays, writes and records with Wellington five-piece country-rock band The Cattlestops, a band that contributed six songs to the Second Hand Wedding movie soundtrack album.

London has also played with many Kiwi music icons including Ray Woolf, Rodger Fox, The Nairobi Trio, Malcolm McNeill, Rob Guest, Marg Layton and John Rowles.