Your Dad - review by : Phil Leech

Green Roadshow Bandstand, Friday 25th June

Forget youth culture. Forget bright young things, ignore shiny happypeople... you need to see Your Dad.
Middle age rules here like Britannia playing a control freak in a Hammer movie. This is a celebration of unhidden paunches, green and yellow check shirts, string vests and all things beige from Greenwoods.
This talented duo is fronted by Ian ---, a kind of in your face fifty-something Dad who insisits on taking the limelight, and wallows in it.
Imagine how uncool it would be to see your own father strutting his stuff at a well attended karioke evening, multiply that embarassment by one hundred, and writhe. Then laugh (cos it's not really your Dad) then laugh even louder.
We watched, riveted, as Ian cavorted and flirted his way through My Way, some Oasis stuff, and much more, whilst touching young women, being more sensuous with a microphone than Mick Jagger, and self-indulgently breaking off to deal with drunks, hecklers, and spaced out kids, and finally announcing to this young audience, who by now had seen themselves at fifty, "I am your future" . The result...uproar!

This is not some one idea act who has hit a lucky vein. Chas, the keyboard man has a musical pedigree second to none. To follow the antics of his front man, and maintain the musical continuity is no mean feat, but the quality of the accompaniement is brilliant. Ian has a presence which draws on experience and sheer skill, But the key here is that when an audience knows that the act is enjoying itself as much as they are, they can relax and join in the fun.