Reviews

The Nelkons are a very unique thing on Guernsey's music scene, that of a totally unpretentious set of musicians totally free of the image consciousness that seems to affect many of the younger bands taking to local stages.

Mark and Lisa.

Tearing through a set that spanned styles from Buzzcocks style proto-pop-punk to near Stray Cats style nu-rockabilly with a good dose of simple balls out blues rock thrown in too, the female fronted band did there best to get the less than enthusiastic crowd going.

The band themselves displayed an excellent level of musicianship with dual lead vocalists/guitarists Mark Guppy and Lisa Vidamour really complementing each others voices well and displaying great lead vocal ability in the solo parts, Lisa especially with her near Chrissie Hynde style in some tracks.

The nearest band I can compare The Nelkons too in the international arena would be Ginger and the Sonic Circus as they display the same regard that any music can be good music as long as its basis is in the blues and rock 'n' roll and they play it in a totally unpretentious way where they're clearly just having fun. So the genre spanning nature of the music did not matter as it was all held together by a similar theme.

Throughout the set the band displayed they could play fast with a few tracks of speedy rock that bordered on the lightest of punk sound, especially in Lisa’s Johnny Ramone-lite 'buzzsaw' guitar style that came out on a few tunes.

They also displayed their ability with the slower numbers on a few more ballad like tracks where Lisa's voice again came into its own.

Lisa.

Where the band really shone though was when they got into the blues-rock swagger with Mark wailing through the solos and the rhythm section of Chris and Geoff Denton holding things down at the back.

Sadly much of the bands energy seemed to get lost in the gap between the stage and the back of the dance floor where the majority of their audience were standing and being ever so polite but distinctly un-rock 'n' roll.

The only down side of the bands performance came after they took a short break mid set where they seemed to loose the momentum they had built up in the first half and had to start again from scratch, something I've found often happens when a set is broken up in this manner and I think they would have done better to simply carry on.

But aside from a few slip ups during the second half of the evening The Nelkons put on a great fun show of varied yet down to earth rock 'n' roll tunes including a few new ones that had never been played publicly before. It's just a shame the audience weren't more into the music that they were, in my opinion, very lucky to be hearing.