Beatles All The Day!
The Album Years @ The Adelphi Hotel - 27 August 2000.

The Album years first featured at Beatleweek in 1998, and proved to be so successful that Cavern City Tours decided to repeat it once again this year. All thirteen UK albums, (excluding Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour which was an EP in the UK), played in the order they were originally released, in the Adelphi Ballroom, from Noon until…well until "I hope we passed the audition…"!

Kicking proceedings off with Please Please Me were Texas based band A Hard Night's Day. Experts in the Beatles early years, 'Ask Me Why', 'There's a Place' and 'Twist and Shout' were performed with great ease and style! Next up were Tripper, formerly known as Shoes this five-piece from Scotland are old friends of Liverpool Beatleweek. Steve McDonald 's vocals were spot-on for every With The Beatles track, from the incredibly tight 'It Won't be Long' right through to the rocking standard 'Money'!! One of my favourite tracks 'Hold Me Tight' sounded great too!

Det Betales are Norway's tribute to The Fab Four - these guys know how to have fun and seemed to enjoy every second of 'A Hard Day's Night'!! They aim to play the songs exactly as the original recording and they certainly did that!! I didn't see 'Beatles For Sale', but I know Tunel do Tempo who were originally billed to play it, couldn't make Convention due to illness, but I believe Comitatus took their place. I wish I'd seen 'Bohemian Rhapsody', which they did on Sunday night in one of the Unplugged Festival bars - I've heard it was one of the week's highlights!!

Another Beatleweek regular band, Ringer, played Help! They are one of the most popular bands at Convention and always play brilliant music that really gets you bopping! Once again they delivered; with 'Another Girl', The Night Before' and 'I've Just Seen A Face' - every track sounded brilliant!!

Hocus Pocus are good friends of The Word Is Love, so I suppose I'd better be nice about them…I don't have to lie - they were FAB! Of course, Rubber Soul includes one track which is very special to us. Aggeu dedicated 'The Word' and the whole album to myself and Jo, and I boogied away to every second of it!! The Overtures performed Revolver for the '98 album years so it was only fair they got to show off their talent for this album once again this year! The crowd stood gob smacked as Tony and Den did a fantastic version of 'Love You To' on their acoustic guitars! Just amazing!! They couldn't relax too much after the set though - they had to come back to do Let It Be later!!

The Beats show on the Saturday night had been well below their normal high standard, so I wasn't expecting Sgt Peppers to be too great either, but I was pleasantly surprised. Wearing fantastic Pepper costumes, the young Argentinean band recreated the heavily overdubbed and orchestrated album live, with just 2 guitars, a bass, three keyboards and a Billy Shears! The crowd thoroughly enjoyed it and the band seemed to enjoy it too! 'A Day in the Life' must be one of the hardest songs to perform live and yet they managed it almost effortlessly!

The Parrots had played on Saturday night and on Sunday saw the turn of the Bad Boys - Japan sure has some great Beatle Bands! The White Album was split into sides 1&2 and 3&4 (that's how it is on vinyl, for you CD junkies!) The Bad Boys took on the first half and the beautiful 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun' and 'Julia' stand out as highlights from this band. Clube Big Beatles took on the challenge of sides 3&4 and matching the Fab Faux's version of 'Helter Skelter' too! They did a pretty good job although my favourite songs were 'Cry Baby Cry' and 'Goodnight' - Edu providing us with visual entertainment as he prepared himself for bed; cleaning his teeth, putting on his night cap and cuddling up to his 'Pokeono' toy! Very funny!!

Then came the moment we had been waiting for. The Fab Faux and Abbey Road. They played every song as the original - the sound they create with 5 vocalists and Jack, Jimmy and Will playing bass, guitar, keyboards and percussion as required! The whole thing was brilliant from 'Come Together' ("Shoop-pah!") to 'The End', Frank, Jimmy and Jack expertly playing Paul, John and Georges solos. We waited patiently as Frank counted the bars to 'Her Majesty' and then we joined in with him "Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl…" The crowd cried for more and of course they had to satisfy us with one more song - 'Helter Skelter'! Many of the day visitors, who had come along for the flea market, were probably as shocked as we had been when we first witnessed The Fab Faux last year!!

Finally, as all good things do have to come to an end, The Overtures returned to the stage. Looking amazingly bright-eyed and bushy tailed for 1 o'clock in the morning, they recreated the rooftop performance and the Get Back sessions with their usual style and energy. Pascal played Billy Preston and Steve (Eric!) didn't play chess with the roadies!! The guys always give a rocking show and Let It Be is the perfect album for them to perform. We danced and danced until Brian from the Adelphi (Eileen Downey was sensibly on holiday!) threw us out! It was a great day, which, despite time limitations, went incredibly smoothly. I wonder what Cavern City Tours will think of next…?

Nina Douglas
TWIL Issue Two October 2000