Ginger Wildheart
Saturday 20th September 2003, Bedford Esquires.


As you may know, I work at esquires on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes I promote, but most of the time I sit behind the monitor desk twiddling knobs (jokes on a postcard) or carrying anything from microphones, amps, drum kits and pizzas. At the end of the gig I go straight home as normally I’m fucking knackered… However, ginger wildheart was slightly different. On the way out of the esquires car park, I’m fortunate enough to bump in to mr bedfordmetal.tk himself suited and booted. He asks me to write a review for his site… and here it is. So sorry if it is lacking in detail but I didn’t actually plan to do this, and it’s the first time I ever have…

On arrival at esquires, my first task is to go and find Mr Wildheart a Cheese and pickle sandwich. When I return I find 3 men sitting onstage with guitars. After a quick sandwich break, the group of musicians (ginger, Wildhearts bass player Jon Poole and Ginger’s guitar tech Hot Steve) plough through sound check and half a case of red stripe.

2 hours later and the doors open, the venue quickly fills up. When ginger and co take to the stage, they seem in relaxed moods (nothing to do with the aforementioned red stripe?). The group surprise me immediately; I would never have imagined that ginger would play anything by his previous side project Clam Abuse, but the trio played a “Ginger Greatest Hits” set as they delve through his entire back catalogue: Silver Ginger 5, Wildhearts, Clam Abuse, Singles Club, B-Sides the lot. After around half an hour the band leave the stage.

20 minutes later, the trio re-appear, Ginger this time sporting a pint glass of Jack D and Coke (a credit worthy achievement). At this point, my jaw literally dropped as I was amazed by song selection from the Ginger one… The Wildhearts’ penultimate album “Endless Nameless” was for me an album that had beautiful songs ruined by walls of noise and feedback. Songs like Nurse Maximum always had the potential to sound much larger than they did on the record, but acoustic the Endless Nameless songs were stripped down to the bare melodies. For me as a wildhearts fan, finally hearing Nurse Maximum without the wall of noise that went with it on record was a truly great moment, a sentiment shared by other Wildhearts fans I’m sure.

Half way through the second set, it was clear that the band were just having fun. Taking requests and even playing a very rare version of “greetings from Shitsville”, the band slipped into their grove, playing every Wildhearts fan’s favourite B-Side “29 times the pain” before ending their 90 minute set with “I wanna go where the people go” – the sight of 200 people bouncing to the sound of 3 acoustic guitars, quite a rare one indeed.

At the end of the night, Ginger was a true professional and waited around to meet all of the fans, signing things and posing for photos. Unlike other musicians, Ginger took the time to actually talk to fans, to listen to what they have to say. All in all, a fantastic night for everyone involved, a night where you genuinely feel the band had as much fun as the crowd did.


Review by Calvin Roffey (Dot). www.bedfordmetal.tk