Swirly psychedelia (From Western Telegraph)

Swirly psychedelia

The name The Purple Onion Company, conjures up images of swirly psychedelia, Beardsley posters and Biba accessories, and one or two of the band certainly looked as if they'd lived through a few love-in summers.

Formed only two years ago, the Pembrokeshire blues band are untouched by the vagaries of time. And the players? Well there were three (having lost their drummer somewhere out there).

Barry the bass, looking resplendent in white - luxuriant white hair, white beard and billowing white sleeves, Bob, cool in black, who packed the rhythm acoustic punch as well as sharing lead vocals with Will, whose hand-made guitar had a warm, mellow and mellifluous voice of its own.

Their set compr-ised of covers and arrangements from slow and smoochy, to up-tempo and included Peter Green's Need Your Love So Bad - an evocative legend of longing, a couple of (QH regular) Eugene Bridges numbers and the great Robert Johns-on's Rambling, a classic blues standard, which depicts men as misunderstood victims and provides the best out-clause I've ever heard for every meno-pausal man tempted to stray.

The band finished off with an energetic medley of Hit The Road Jack and Stray Cat Blues, which proved irresistible to the SPAN movers and shakers dancing the night away.