Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

This is “The First Five Minutes” by The Sadies:

A couple of weeks ago, because somebody I know couldn’t use his ticket, I went with a couple of strangers to see Canadian  band The Sadies. I’d never heard them, or of them, but Roger’s enthusiasm for them, and my trust in his taste in music, made me think it was worth coordinating a pre-show beer and a trip to the Borderline with a couple friends-of-a-friend to see what the deal is.

The deal is, the Sadies is a band I’ll go see whenever they show up in London, and if I found myself visiting another town and saw they were playing, I would get a ticket and go. Two guitars, double bass, drums. Country-surf-rock ‘n’ roll-with-hint-of-psychedelia. Groovy suits.  The Sadies are, to a man, excellent musicians. But so what? I’ve written it in this space before: being an excellent musician is one thing, and knowing what to do with your musicianship is another.  This is what the Sadies do with it, song after song after song after song: they pick up the sounds and history of their particular stream of rock ‘n’ roll music, they play around with it, they invigorate it, they have a hell of a lot of fun with it, and then they set it back down in the same place it was.  Does that sound simple to you? It ain’t. If you can soak up your influences and turn them back out in a way that always reminds your audience what your influences are, but without ever sounding derivative of them (and even mixing covers of Elvis, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Love into your set), then you, my friend, are tapped into the oxygen-richest blood of rock ‘n’ roll music, and you’re playing in a band from Ontario called The Sadies. That guy over there is your brother, and you’re about to play his guitar while you’re still playing your own guitar, while he plays your guitar while still playing his own guitar.  What? I guess everybody will have to go see and find out for themselves. The Sadies! Thanks, Roger; thanks, Hank; thanks, Piers.