Sunday 17th May
We tend to go to Le Pub Gambetta on a Friday night. There is always live music and it is invariably good. For some reason quite a lot of musically talented people have settled around the town. I suspect that many were in some sixties or seventies band, or were singer songwriters who never quite made it; a few do in fact have CDs for sale. Rupert, the English owner and his French wife Mathilde, despite having the business for sale, are always there on a Friday night and classically trained Rupert often joins in as vocalist, while Mathilde cooks. Everyone’s favourite artist is Geoff Barker.
Geoff must be sixty or so but still has a good voice and plays both acoustic and electric guitar really well. His repertoire is sixties, seventies and occasionally later pop and rock and blues numbers, which almost everyone knows. They are our generation’s standards; Waterloo Sunset, Ruby Tuesday, American Pie and many others. Just lately he has been joined for at least a few songs by Rob “Elvis” Fowler. Rob is a big man with a rock’n’roll quiff, but is very quiet and soft-spoken, almost shy you might say. Until he gets on stage and his inner Elvis breaks out. An accomplished guitarist in his own right he sings really well too, not so much imitating Elvis as singing in an Elvis style; parody it ain’t – but very good it is. Geoff has the elusive quality of holding an audience which can very easily descend into talking over the singer if they are boring. And Elvis too captivates and draws you in. Now I have never been a great Elvis fan; he was my Mum and Dad’s generation (mine was the Beatles and it wasn’t till I was older that I realized that they were inspired by Elvis themselves), but as you know all the songs anyway you find yourself, along with the whole pub, singing along to Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoe and the showstopper Suspicious Minds, where the chorus goes on forever and the mike is handed to anyone unembarrassed or drunk enough to sing “We’re Caught in a trap”. Another great night here in Eymet.
