1991

The Black Sorrows
Tivoli Hotel, December, 1990.

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

The crowd at the Tiv waited a long time for the Black Sorrows to arrive but not as long as Joe Camilleri has. He’s made a lot of music in his forty two years. From the King Bees to Adderley Smith, from Lipp to the Pelaco Brothers he started on the ground floor of Australian music and has now elevated himself to the top of the heap. After leading the Falcons to the height of success, Camilleri’s current lineup, The Black Sorrows are an even happier idea. Last year’s release, Hold On to Me, was, along with Paul Kelly’s So Much Water So Close to Home, one of the best of the 89 vintage and personal shoppers were inclined to agree.

Touring this year’s model, the equally substantial Harley and Rose, Joe Camilleri and the Sorrows demonstrated to a packed house in the unsalubrious Tivoli that they are keepers of the flame. With the opening chords of Tears for the Bride -from the tender lines of violinist Jen Anderson, Camilieri’s supple vocal and Jeffrey Burstin’s plangent guitar sound to the soaring harmonies of the Bull sisters, the band meant serious business. They still thrive on live audiences and standing in the midnight hour the faithful and the newly converted listened avidly to the Sorrows’ playlist.

t was mostly recent and very upbeat – Fire Down Below from Hold On to Me and Angel Street and Never Let Me Go from Harley and Rose. Joe picked up his tenor sax for one , Jen Anderson a mandolin for the other. Then the band changed tack with Burstin and fellow guitarist Wayne Burt hitting the Delta chords as Camilleri leant at the microphone, harmonica at the ready, for a startling version of Robert Johnson’s Come On In My Kitchen. On Daughters of Glory he sounded like a young Bukka White, on Harley and Rose he was a tuneful Dylan, circa Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.

Camilleri’s songs, co-written with Nick Smith, are riddled with familiar riffs and sentiments but he is the master of every idiom he inhabits- whether reggae or soul, r’n’b or country rock. It is no more weird for these songs to emanate from Melbourne, than for Gloria to come from Belfast or Roll Over Beethoven from Liverpool. The Black Sorrows have already produced their own classics -Chained to the Wheel with Vika Bull producing some of the hottest back-up singing since Helen Terry’s work with Culture Club, and The Crack-Up- Exile on Main Street out of Bob Segar- punctuated by Burstin’s nimble lead work and Camilleri’s yacketty sax. On the title track Hold On to Me, he chose soprano instead, unleashing a sweet sinewy solo that could break your heart if you weren’t careful.

The Sorrows were also not short on rockabilly -whether the recent original House of Light or the sterling Johnny Cash standard, Walk the Line. But it’s with the blues that the band really hit the spot. Driven by bassist Richard Sega and the steady foot of drummer Peter Luscombe, Camilleri sidled into some hallmark John Lee Hooker- complete with the grainy vibrato, the how-how-hows and the leery gutturals. This was no pastiche -well, certainly no more than Al Wilson or Eric Burdon might have done.

Wrapping up the set with some small group work with the Bull Sisters on Dear Children, with the guitarists on Brown Eyed Girl and the whole band for some generic soul/ gospel/ rock, Joe Camilleri took his leave. Every inch the bandleader he presides over a group of musicians who know their time has come. That they were playing a pub gig instead of Memorial Drive was just one of life’s little peculiarities. I’m inclined to think it’s one of its great sorrows.

“Jo Jo Gets Back” The Adelaide Review, No.84, January, 1991, p.26.