4/7/2014 The Yo-Yo's @ The Barfly

It's becoming virtually a yearly thing now - The Yo-Yo's at The Barfly. It's their only London show, in fact it's usually their only show anywhere all year. This year is slightly different as they have bagged a slot at Sonisphere - and this is their 'warm-up' gig. So here are a load of us at The Barfly. I haven't arranged to meet anyone but there are loads of people I know in the venue - some of whom I haven't seen for ages, and some more recently at the excellent Camden Rocks festival.

This being a Friday it's a Jubilee Club night at The Barfly after the usual bands on earlier. Supporting The Yo-Yo's are The Dowling Poole.

This is a new project formed by Willie Dowling (The Grip, Honeycrack, SugarplumFaeries, Jackdaw4 & ex-Wildhearts keyboard player) and Jon 'Random' Poole (ex-Cardiacs, Wildhearts, and Ginger Wildheart Band). These guys are ridiculous talented musicians individually - multi-instrumentallists (and mentallist in Jon's case) with a wealth of songwriting and session musician expertise between them as well as many years experience in bands. Put them together and you catch a bunch of amazingly catchy pop tunes - often with a darker rock slant.

Joining Willie and the lovable loon onstage to add tonight to the already sweet harmonies is the very talented Givvi Flynn - a belter of a vocalist already well known to fans of Ginger. Together they bang out an entertaining and enjoyable set - with a few schoolboy humour (and worse!) interuptions from Jon Poole!

The headliners hit the stage and hurtle through a cracking set of songs.

Only Danny McCormack and Tom Spencer are here from the original lineup - Rich Jones normally plays the other six string these days but is currently on tour playing in Michael Monroe's band.

The drummer from Tom's other band The Loyalties is the usual Yo-Yo's sticksman these days and does a pretty decent job.

 The Yo-Yo's are on good form and tear through a set of crowd pleasers - almost entirely from their superb debut album 'Uppers And Downers'. This is still one of my favourite albums ever - I have yet to find any record better to put on while getting ready to go out on a Friday night.

The only song played tonight that doesn't come from the first Yo-Yo's album is 'Stockholm Sick Blues' which was a B-side on one of the band's singles and has sometimes been played at Loyalties gigs.

Needless to say, the band's set goes down a storm with the crowd - well we have had to wait around a year since the band's last show - and you never know if each time you see the band it will be the last show.

Danny seems in good shape after his substance and alcohol issues in the past - hopefully things he has all put behind him. He certainly seems on good form and enjoying himself.

The Yo-Yo's play virtually all my favourite songs from their catalogue, and at around forty minutes their set is considerably longer than it was most the times I saw them first time round!

I think everyone goes home happy. See you all next year then?

Oh yes - this being Jubilee Club night things go on until late and there is another band to follow...