Wednesday 18 February 2015

John Shuttleworth: A Wee Ken To Remember

John Shuttleworth: A Wee Ken To RememberTime stands still for John Shuttleworth, I was surprised to find that it had been more than four years since I’d last seen this mild-mannered singer-songwriter from the South Yorkshire village hall circuit, yet everything in his set remains reassuringly familiar. Even down to not quite knowing all his own songs seamlessly.
In that vein, this tour’s title A Wee Ken To Remember, is based on yet another poster misprint that his hapless manager and next-door-neighbour Ken Worthington apparently failed to notice, and which Shuttleworth tortuously tries to justify. The diminutive Ken once came last on New Faces, but otherwise there’s very little memorable about him. Inconsequential tales of him walking on their shared garden wall in Cuban heels is the best Shuttleworth can come up with.
Of course the limited horizons of Graham Fellows’s alter-ego is the joke. When he reverts to the weekends the show was meant to be about, it’s trips to the Keswick Pencil Museum or the local reservoir ‘to check the level’ that are the highlights. Recognition of the simple suburban pleasures score high on Shuttleworth’s appeal, and now the 55-year-old Fellows is about the age his alter-ego always seemed to be, the image sits well.
Funniest are Shuttleworth’s brushes with modern life – which is pretty much anything in the last 30 years. To him CDs are still too modern, while his musical references are Aswad, the Lighthouse Family and the Belle Stars. He’s distrustful of hummus and any coffee that isn’t instant. Still, he got himself on eBay, which proves an adventure in itself.
The character’s shambolic amateurishness as parochial raconteur and Yahama-playing ‘turn’, sometimes seems a cover for Fellows’ own hesitant performance, but certainly endears him to the audience. Counterintuitively for a character act, it’s as if there’s no pretence here; this is the lightest of entertainment reflecting the minutiae of life; and Fellows is thoroughly immersed in that small world.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FROM GONZO
Lounge Music
2CD - £11.99

Brian Appleton - My Turn To Be Poorly
CD - £9.99

The Shuttleworths 5
2CD - £11.99

Shuttleworths Series 1
DCD - £11.99

Open Mind
DCD - £11.99

Radio Shuttleworth 1
DCD - £11.99

Blue John
CD - £9.99

The Shuttleworths 3
2CD - £11.99

The Dolby Years
CD - £9.99

Shuttleworths 2
DCD - £11.99

It's Nice Up North 
DVD - £12.99

500 Bus Stops 
DVD - £11.99

The Shuttleworths 4
DCD - £11.99

The Yamaha Years
CD - £9.99

Radio Shuttleworth 2 
DCD - £11.99

The Shuttleworths Specials
CD - £9.99

No comments:

Post a Comment

...BECAUSE SOME OF US THINK THAT THIS STUFF IS IMPORTANT
What happens when you mix what is - arguably - the world's most interesting record company, with an anarchist manic-depressive rock music historian polymath, and a method of dissemination which means that a daily rock-music magazine can be almost instantaneous?

Most of this blog is related in some way to the music, books and films produced by Gonzo Multimedia, but the editor has a grasshopper mind and so also writes about all sorts of cultural issues which interest him, and which he hopes will interest you as well.