"All The People On The Right, Boogaloo!"

Last night's visit to Ronnie Scott's had to be my favourite gig of this year so far.

I arrived in time to see the house band with guest vocalist Natalie Williams and it made me realise that I'd never been to a jazz performance like this at all during University.

None of this freeform nonsense which could easily be replicated by pulling the ends of a balloon, just straight melodic vocal jazz consisting of Natalie performing swing versions of songs by Aretha and Ray Charles and she looked like a really nice woman too.

This was only the warm up to the main performance by Matt Bianco and they lived up to a lot more than what I expected.

Mark Reilly on vocals was on top form and really does have one of those voices that stands out in the same way as Green Gartside from Scritti Politti
or Donald Fagen from Steely Dan.

In fact Mark's own voice does have a hint of the latter within it.

Mark Fisher on keyboards was on top form even if one of them was quieter than the other, and the backing band were superb including Hazel the female vocalist who did a nice turn on "Half A Minute", the percussion section adding the latin influences, and there was also Tony Remy and his talking guitar who it was really good to see again having seen him live with Incognito and the Sunburst Band respectively.

The set list was superb with a good mixture of tunes from their latest album and old favourites such as "Don't Blame It On That Girl", "Yeh Yeh", "Cha Cha Cuba", and "A Day In Your Life".

I wasn't too impressed when during the break, the MC who appeared to have no idea about the act announced "Matt Bianco and his band are just taking a 15 minute break".

If I ran Ronnie Scotts, that would be worthy of a formal warning.

During the gig itself I was sat in front of the bar next to a rather drunk fan of the band who was really getting into it and knew most of the words to their tunes.

I also didn't realise until yesterday that keyboard player Mark Fisher used to perform with Wham! before joining forces with Mark Reilly after the orginal band went their seperate ways.

You can definitely hear the influence on tracks such as "Club Tropicana".

The highlight of the gig however came near the end, when one of the backing vocalists wanted all of us to get up and start dancing in what was a rather elegant venue with everyone sat on dining tables, and the band performed possibly my favourite, "Wap Bam Boogie".

It sounded so good played with real instruments and just about everyone was moving and joining in. Considering that there's not many words to it, it went down really well.

The band returned for an encore where they performed their debut hit "Get Out Of Your Lazy Bed" where people were still on their feet.

This really was a visit to London well spent as Matt Bianco very rarely perform in their home country, and although it wasn't to a large scale as the Incognito gig, their performance will take some beating as far as live ones go.