Two guys. Two guitars. A load of songs. Bath and Plain. 1

Honest John Plain and Darrell Bath live at the Monty in Brighton, 13 April 2017!

Two guys, guitars a fistful of songs with one hell of a rock n roll profile and history between them! Honest John Plain and Darrell Bath at The Monty. Two guys. Two Musicians. Two guitars and a load of songs – rock n roll history right there!

Darrell Bath

Darrell Bath

Punk-rock-blues guitarist and songwriter. Vibrators / Crybabys. (ex-UK Subs/Ian Hunter/Nikki Sudden/Dogs D’Amour).

Honest John Plain

Honest John Plain

The Boys were born in September 1975 when singer/guitarist Matt Dangerfield left Mick Jones and Tony James’s fledgling punk band London SS to form a new band with ex-Hollywood Brats songwriter/keyboard player Casino Steel. Dangerfield’s art college friend, guitarist Honest John Plain, was soon recruited. The following year they held auditions for the bass and drum roles with Kid Reid and Jack Black completing the line-up. After a brief spell in The Lurkers Plain joined the Dirty Strangers and recorded an album with Keith Richards and Ronnie Woods before replacing Brady (Hollywood Brats) as lead guitarist in The Mannish Boys. He went on to play with Brady in Brat Boy. The Boys quickly built up a reputation as a white-hot live band and in January 1977 became the first punk band to sign an album deal when they signed away their recording lives to NEMS. Widely tipped to make it big The Boys had a set of killer songs and were highly respected by both the music press and their peers. They quickly became known as ‘The Beatles of Punk’

The Set

And what a set. We were treated to material from past bands and history – The Crybabys and The Boys and some individually released material. Two guys with two guitars with Darrell on his electric and John on a mic’d up acoustic. I had not seen Darrell on his own before. The last time we met up he was playing some serious guitar riffs with The Vibrators and on backing vocals. Darrells voice was on point, as was his fabulous guitar work, with that smooth, raspy blues feel. Perfect delivery of his songs and each song interspersed with some chat with the crowd and with John.

John sat at the back of the performing area, his sunglasses bouncing reflections back into the crowd. He shared vocals with Darrell, and also did some vocal work on his own. John gave us a stunning rendition of The Boys classic “The First Time”, this was stripped back and almost unplugged but the gathered crowd joined in with a magnificent and rousing “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh – Oh”. It was brilliant to be actually involved and a part of that great song.

Some of the songs covered, with the occasional part rendition of “Hold Me Close”, covered a full and varied musical history from the above mentioned bands:

Scars, Hell and Back, Good Girls, First Time, Tell Me, Out of Time, Cowboy boots and the set concluded with Lil Ole Wine Drinker Me.

A video:

A small montage of three songs included on the night. Sit back and enjoy Darrell and John:

This really was a tremendous night of live, stunning music from these two guys enjoying themselves doing what they love to do, perform for a crowd. If you get a chance to see these guys play together, or indeed in any of their other guises – you really should just go and get entertained!

There were no down sides to this evening of live music and chat. It’s was an absolute pleasure to get an invite to this evening and enjoyed every chord from all the songs right up to the multi ending crescendo of encores. Well played you guys. Again the sound was top notch, vocals were clear and the guitars sounded crisp and bright. Well done Wee Jock.

The Monty

The Montpelier Inn, a good old fashioned local pub where the heritage and the beers come first! Recently taken over and under new management you will find a great selection of beers, ales and ciders as well as hand selected wines and bubbly, and a cracking mini bottle of Prosecco! They have a range of musical events from piano playing and singing to DJs and bands.

Darrell Bath is on Facebook

Honest John Plain is on Facebook

The Monty is on Facebook

Please note all images / video are copyright, please do not copy. If any of the featured artists/venues want copies of the images – or more if available – please get in touch.

All original pictures – copyright to IANB/MEDIA WORKS/ SCENE SUSSEX – Ian “The Lens” Bourn 2017.