With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

Music reviews, gig reviews, fun trivia and extra added random stuff!

Absolute Bowie – The Crescent, York – Friday 28th November 2025 November 29, 2025

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 4:10 pm
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This would be the sixth time that I have seen Absolute Bowie perform since my first experience back in 2017. Regular readers will know that I have never been a huge fan of covers bands, however there are always exceptions and Absolute Bowie are not just the exception they are exceptional. I have seen two other Bowie tributes, David Live, is slightly closer to the Dame vocally and the Bowie Contingent are better than all the competition musically. However John O’Neill’s Absolute Bowie blow everyone away for entertainment value. You get the costumes, the costume changes, the make up, a superb very tight band and the huge talent and charisma of O’Neill himself. Tonight’s set once again began with a Ziggy Fest with the main man making all the right Ziggy moves and rocking through some seventies classics.

The band kicked off with a wonderfully dark take of “The Man Who Sold The World” and delivered some classic audience sing along moments with “Starman”, “All The Young Dudes”, “Changes” and “Rock n Roll Suicide”. The latter was apparently included after many requests from fans online. Did no one request “The Laughing Gnome”? 🙂 The band wigged out and showed just how good a rock band they are as they stormed through an extended instrumental work out on “Moonage Daydream” while O’Neill took time out for a costume change. The band behind O’Neill are Andy Marr on guitar, Telegram Sam on bass, Danny Mattin on keyboards and Alex Face on drums.

For the second set they returned without the 70s wigs and glitter while O’Neill sported a jacket that kind of took us back to the 1974 American tour and he performed “Cracked Actor” and “Fame” back to back with an immense and superb sonic assault. After he dropped that jacket we were transported to the superstar pomp of the Serious Moonlight period. Inevitably “China Girl” and “Let’s Dance” were given an airing, but for me the stand out song of the second set was a hauntingly good “Ashes To Ashes”. The band returned for the now obligatory encore and stepped up another gear and set the scene with a fine take on “Space Oddity” before raising the roof with the double punch of “Heroes” and “Rebel Rebel”. If, like me, you are a Bowie fan with an aversion to Bowie tribute acts just put away you negativity, put on your red shoes and dance the blues to the magnificent Absolute Bowie!

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On This Day Dame David Gets Cursive For Ziggy’s Suicide Song! November 28, 2025

Filed under: On This Day — justwilliam1959 @ 5:38 pm
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David Bowie’s handwritten lyrics fetched £89,000 after they were sold at Omega Auctions in Uxbridge, west London on 28th November 2023. (Incidentally that is where I grew up). The lyrics sheet contained the late singer’s corrections, drafts and notes when creating his tracks “Rock n Roll Suicide” and “Suffragette City”. Both tracks in the sale featured on Bowie’s 1972 classic album ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. That album has always been seen as a full on concept album. I don’t think that it is, how about you?

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The Mayhem Charts – May 2025 June 19, 2025

Filed under: Mayhem Monthly Chart,Mayhem Top 20 Chart — justwilliam1959 @ 7:48 pm
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Here is the Mayhem chart for May 2025, rather late (just like last month) I know, but better late than never right? Regular readers know the chart is based on my streaming listening habits. These are gathered over the last month by obscurify.com. My taste in music remains 99% more obscure than the rest of the UK! The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, last month’s top three “Legacy” artists were David Bowie, the Sweet and the Wombles! What? The Wombles I hear you say. Well yes I interacted with the legendary Mike Batt via his autobiography and an interview. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to for March and they are Ace Hansel Jr, Dead Rat Society and Kindelan. Bowie, Dead Rat Society and Kindelan have retained their positions from last month.

Dead Rat Society are the top artist for May up from number four in April. Dead Rat Society are one of four acts that remain in the artist chart from last month, along with Millie Manders and the Shutup, Lexi Jones and Greentea Peng. Four artists feature in both the artist chart and the song chart; Dead Rat Society (#1 Artist, #1 and #5 Song), Sparks (#2 Artist and #2 Song), Getdown Services (#3 Artist, #3 Song) and Bruce Springsteen #6 Artist, #4 Song). Robbie Williams makes his first ever appearance in the Mayhem Chart at number 7 in the artist chart. Yes I am now finally a fan! So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the Spotify link below to listen to the famous (or infamous) five! Twenty one minutes of great music!

Mayhem Artist Chart May 2025

1 Dead Rat Society
2 Sparks
3 Getdown Services
4 Greentea Peng
5 Ace Hansel Jr.
6 Bruce Springsteen
7 Robbie Williams
8 Millie Manders and the Shutup
9 Kindelan
10 Lexi Jones

Mayhem Song Chart May 2025

1 Come With Me On A Spaceship – Dead Rat Society
2 A Little Bit Of Light Banter – Sparks
3 Chrysalis – Getdown Services
4 Land Of Hope And Dreams (Live In Manchester) – Bruce Springsteen
5 The Night – Dead Rat Society

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Holy Holy – O2 Academy, Leeds – Friday 16th May 2025 May 18, 2025

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 7:39 pm
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I first saw Holy Holy back in 2019 when they played the Barbican in York. Sadly that is now just over six years since then. But I was not going to miss this Leeds show. For those of you who are unaware Holy Holy is a band with the backbone of two David Bowie stalwarts; Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey a former Spider From Mars (in fact the last surviving Spider) and Tony Visconti who produced many of the Dame’s albums and contributed bass on ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ The vocalist is Glenn Gregory off of Heaven 17. Are they a Bowie tribute act? Not in the wonderfully theatrical sense that Absolute Bowie are I see Holy Holy more as a band that is keeping the Bowie legacy alive through people who were there and were a part of the whole Bowie phenomenon. The current tour poster sums it up as ‘A Celebration Of Bowie’ and that is just what it is.

While it wasn’t a sell out there was quite a big crowd and unusually I don’t think I was the oldest punter in the room. There was no support and the crowd was most definitely ready for the band. As they took the stage cheers erupted all around me. The set focused on the Ziggy years with just a handful of later songs making an appearance, notably “Heroes” and “Ashes To Ashes”. The latter had Visconti playing in a fine slap bass style, which is not his usual method. Glenn Gregory’s voice suits the material well and he was having a great time. He said plenty of times that he felt so lucky to be doing this. Glenn did not put a foot wrong his voice was perfect on every song but for me it transcended perfection on “Lady Grinning Soul”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” and “Life On Mars”.

Woody’s drumming has not dimmed with age he is like a Duracell Bunny metronomic miracle and for me is still one of the best living drummers. The band were tight and clearly well rehearsed. Apart from Visconti, Woodmansey and Gregory the band has some hugely talented musicians. Guitarist James Stevenson nailed Mick Ronson’s almost untouchable playing from those heady Ziggy years. Janette Mason comes close to matching Mike Garson’s style of playing, particularly on the ‘Aladdin Sane’ songs “Lady Grinning Soul” and “Time”. Meanwhile Jessica Lee Morgan contributed some great 12-string guitar, stunning saxophone and backing vocals.

It was Glenn Gregory’s birthday and he was presented with a cake which was topped with rocket (the leaf vegetable, not a spaceship or the Guardians Of The Galaxy character). After the band and the audience sang Happy Birthday to him he passed it to a lucky fan in the front row. But I heard later that the cake was returned to Glenn. The band closed with a mountainous “Moonage Daydream” before returning for an encore. The first song in the encore was Bowie’s 2013 single “Where Are We Now”. Gregory recounted a story of singing happy birthday via phone from David Bowie from the stage of a Holy Holy show in New York in 2016. From that high he was stunned when he heard just a few hours later that Bowie had passed away. It was a truly heartfelt and soulful rendition of a later years Bowie classic. Tony Visconti then described his first meeting with David in the late 60s and Woody talked about life with the Spiders. He said that Bowie was in the stars but he Mick and Trevor were proper grounded Yorkshiremen. David could also pull off a very good Yorkshire accent. After that rather entertaining interlude Holy Holy smashed it rocking out to “Rebel Rebel”. This was an incredible gig and I hope to see Holy Holy again soon. There are still five dates left on this tour, get yourself to one of them if you can!

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On This Day Claude Had A Lightbulb Moment, His Last! March 11, 2025

Filed under: On This Day — justwilliam1959 @ 10:06 pm
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On March 11th 1978 French pop singer, composer, songwriter, record producer, drummer and dancer Claude Francois, also known as Cloclo, was electrocuted changing a light bulb while standing in his bathtub. He was aged just 39. This was on the eve of a scheduled US tour. He sold more than 20 million records during his career, and further 6 million since his death. He had the 1976 UK hit, “Tears On The Telephone”, which reached number 35 in the UK chart. This was his only UK hit.

François co-wrote the lyrics of “Comme d’habitude” with Jacques Revaux. Francois took his version of the song to number three in the French charts in 1967. In 1969 Paul Anka wrote English lyrics for the song and gave it the title “My Way,” which became one of Frank Sinatra’s signature songs. David Bowie said that in 1968, a year before Paul Anka acquired the French song his publisher asked him to write English lyrics for “Comme d’habitude”. His version, titled “Even A Fool Learns To Love”, was rejected. He never forgot that rejection though. This work became the starting point for his 1971 song “Life On Mars”. Chris O’Leary wrote that David Bowie felt “using “Comme d’habitude” wasn’t theft but more a statement of rightful ownership.” The phrase “Inspired by Frankie” was written next to the song in the LP liner notes of Bowie’s ‘Hunky Dory’ album.

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With Just A Hint Of Mayhem Is 16 Years Old Today! February 9, 2025

Filed under: Observation — justwilliam1959 @ 2:01 pm
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started my journey with the With Just A Hint Of Mayhem blog back on February 9th 2009. It started as just a few posts with me rattling on about some odd pieces of music trivia. Then it grew into me reviewing almost all gigs that I go to and then reviewing singles, albums and EPs. More recently I have reviewed a few music related books and films. I would like to thank every single one of you that has stayed with us, especially the real fans (I think there may be nearly ten now!). I owe a debt of gratitude to every one of you who sends me stuff to review, especially the artists themselves and all those rather nice PR people. I have also immensely enjoyed all the interviews with artists and other key music industry people that I have been lucky enough to do.

With Just A Hint Of Mayhem has enabled me to do some things that I never imagined that I would. I am now a regular judge for two great annual Battle Of The Bands contests. I was also able to do a history of music journalism lecture at York’s Access For Music College. Sadly it closed down shortly after, I certainly hope that wasn’t down to me. Back in 2009 I would have been pleased and excited if just a few friends and random people viewed the blog, but now we are up to nearly 1.9 million views across 227 countries (according to the WordPress classification of a country!). There are currently six countries where no one has ever ventured to With Just A Hint Of Mayhem from, that includes North Korea. I can’t see the latter changing soon. Also another huge thank you to all of you who have ever written reviews and articles for With Just A Hint Of Mayhem. Will I still be doing this in another sixteen years? I have no idea, I will be in my 80s by then. But as long as I am able I plan to keep going! Stick with us here at With Just A Hint Of Mayhem for the next part of the journey. To quote David Bowie “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” Well I will at least do everything I can to make sure it’s not boring. Once again thank you and here is a sixteen related song to celebrate with (it is actually one of my favourite songs from the 70s!)

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On This Day The Dame Sacked The Gnome! January 23, 2025

Filed under: On This Day — justwilliam1959 @ 9:11 pm
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On 23rd January 1990, David Bowie announced his Sound And Vision world tour. This tour would run from March 4th until September 29th that year. During the tour, he invited each local audience to decide on a ‘greatest hits’ running order. This was organised through local radio stations. The tour surpassed Bowie’s previous Serious Moonlight (1983) and Glass Spider (1987) tours’ statistics. It visited 27 countries. The tour included a total of 108 performances.

At the time Bowie looked forward to retiring his old hits. He said of the tour “It’s time to put about 30 or 40 songs to bed and it’s my intention that this will be the last time I’ll ever do those songs completely, because if I want to make a break from what I’ve done up until now, I’ve got to make it concise and not have it as a habit to drop back into. It’s so easy to kind of keep going on and saying, well, you can rely on those songs, you can rely on that to have a career or something, and I’m not sure I want that.” Having seen him a few times after the Sound and Vision tour he didn’t entirely retire all of them!

Cheekily and rather amusingly the NME ran a spoof campaign, in response to the telephone poll called ‘Just Say Gnome’. This was a great attempt to have “The Laughing Gnome” included in the set-lists. Apparently Bowie had considered playing “The Laughing Gnome” in the style of The Velvet Underground until he found out the voting had been perpetrated by the NME. Hearing it played that way would have been quite interesting in my opinion. As a footnote, during his A Reality Tour, Bowie performed “The Laughing Gnome” with his band during a November 2003 soundcheck at Wembley Stadium.

I saw him on that tour at the Milton Keynes Bowl on 4th August. The set list that day was:

“Space Oddity”
“Rebel Rebel”
“Ashes to Ashes”
“Fashion”
“Life on Mars?”
“Pretty Pink Rose”
“Sound and Vision”
“Blue Jean”
“Let’s Dance”
“Stay”
“Ziggy Stardust”
“China Girl”
“Station to Station”
“Young Americans”
“Suffragette City”
“Fame”
“Heroes”
The four song encore consisted of:
“Changes”
“The Jean Genie”
“White Light/White Heat”
“Modern Love”

The support acts that day were Two Way Street (whatever happened to them?), The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Gene Loves Jezebel and Kim Wilde.

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Bowie By Candlelight – Ripon Cathedral – Friday 17th January 2025 January 19, 2025

Filed under: Review — justwilliam1959 @ 9:07 pm
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When I saw this show advertised some while ago I had know idea what it would be like. But as a lifelong Bowie fan I was intrigued. Bowie’s music in a cathedral? I’ll have some of that please! This is one of a series of concerts promoted by Concerts By Candlelight across the UK’s cathedrals and similar venues. This show was presented at the magnificent Ripon Cathedral in Yorkshire. Mostly it is with some great tribute acts, including this one. The music for this show was provided by David Live, arguably the best Bowie tribute act on the circuit. I would put them at the top, closely followed by Absolute Bowie and the Bowie Contingent. Charlie Fowler is a great front man and while he has a slight resemblance to Bowie, his mannerisms, movement and voice are close to spot on. His between song conversational banter sounds like Bowie too. The band, who I believe have played together for more than ten years are supremely talented. Spencer James on keys plays with the style of Mike Garson when he needs to. The rest of the band are brothers JM Sutcliffe (guitar), JP Sutcliffe (Drums) and Raphael Sutcliffe (bass). They were all on top form, but for me Raphael shone just a little more brightly, especially when his rumbling 5 string bass guitar kicked in

The evening was split into two halves. The first set saw what might have been a show from the 1976 Thin White Duke Isolar 1 tour. Charlie wore the monochrome combo from that tour and he was on splendid form. After a brief rest where those of us in need to empty bladders had to leave the building to use a toilet (who knew Ripon Cathedral has no toilets) the band came back to another rapturous reception. This time Charlie was decked out in the striking blue suit like that worn on the ‘Reality’ tour in 2003/ 2004. The band coped with problems smoothly and easily with Charlie breaking his guitar strap and a backing track failure. There were so many highlights from the performance. The best for me were probably “Changes”, “Starman”, “Oh You Pretty Things”, “Fame”, “Space Oddity”, “All The Young Dudes”, “Ashes To Ashes”, “Little Wonder”, “Absolute Beginners” and a towering take on “Stay” from the ‘Station To Station album. the latter opened the whole show in spectacular style. But just pipping all of those were a gorgeous and emotional version of “Wild Is The Wind” and a powerful show closer with a magnificent “Heroes”. We all sang along and so many of the crowd danced throughout the whole show. Even if you don’t like tribute bands, I am not a huge fan of them, but when they are as good as David Live they deserve to be seen!

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On This Day The Dame Did A Musical! December 7, 2024

Filed under: On This Day — justwilliam1959 @ 10:10 pm
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On December 7th 2015, just a few weeks before his death, David Bowie made his last public appearance when he attended the opening night of the Lazarus musical production at the New York Theatre Workshop in Manhattan. Tickets to the entire run of the musical (which ran until 20th Jan 2016), sold out within hours of being made available. I was lucky enough to see the musical, starring Michael C Hall when it was performed for a few weeks in a pop up theatre in Kings Cross in London in 2016.

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The Mayhem Charts – November 2024 December 5, 2024

Filed under: Mayhem Monthly Chart,Mayhem Top 20 Chart — justwilliam1959 @ 11:11 pm
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Here is the Mayhem chart for November 2024. Regular and constant readers know that the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits over the last month gathered by obscurify.com. Apparently, my tastes have fallen one point to 96% more obscure than the rest of the UK! The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, last month’s top three “Legacy” artists were David Bowie, U2 and the Four Tops. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to for November: Liz Davinci, Vaquelin, and Sleuth Gang. There is a top ten artists chart and a top 5 songs chart. There is the usual eclectic mix of artists, including two that were in the top ten last month; Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Up from number 10 to number 2), and Delilah Bon (falling from number 8 to number 9). Delilah has been in the artist charts now for a whole year! Three artists appear in both lists for November: ALT BLK ERA, Joshua Idehan and the artist chart toppers Sleuth Gang. The number one song is “Age Of Stupid” by the Jellybricks. So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the Spotify link below to listen to the famous (or infamous) five!

Mayhem Artist Chart November 2024

1 Sleuth Gang
2 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
3 Joshua Idehen
4 Stress Dolls
5 Blue Violet
6 ALT BLK ERA
7 HerOrangeCoat
8 tiLLie
9 Delilah Bon
10 Not Now Norman

Mayhem Song Chart November 2024

1 Age Of Stupid – Jellybricks
2 Falling – Apollo Junction
3 Pity Party – Sleuth Gang
4 My Drummer’s Girlfriend – ALT BLK ERA (featuring Wheatus)
5 Mum Does The Washing – Joshua Idehan

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