Northeast Music Guide

Nine Below Zero Back in the Northeast With Original Drummer Coming to Gateshead Old Town Hall on the 7th November London blues-influenced band Nine Below Zero, are celebrating 35 years in the business, with their biggest UK tour in decades and have reformed their classic line-up. And for fans of the band, it will be a chance to hear tracks from their two critically-acclaimed A&M studio albums from the 1980s, Don’t Point Your Finger and The Third Degree, both with extra discs, which have been re-released through Universal. The band’s original drummer Mickey ‘Stix’ Burkey has re-joined NBZ for the tour. Apart from a one-off appearance at their 30 th anniversary show, he had not played with the band since they broke up in 1982. He also wrote many of the songs with frontman Dennis Greaves. Nine Below Zero built an almost obsessive following in the early 1980 with their take on American blues, while maintaining the energy of punk in their live performanc...

Blues Rockers Return to The Toon I last saw Nine Below Zero last May at the Cluny and their onstage performance blew me away. So the opportunity to see them again was not to be passed up. This gig was a little different, with a selection of songs the lads recorded with tonight's guest Ben Water's as well as a few Nine Below Zero standards. Another change, as well as the addition of a boogie woogie piano from Ben was some sax from Ben's son Tom. At only 13 Tom is an accomplished blues saxophonist and impressed the crowd no end. This was an outstanding performance which had me smiling all the way though, while trying to handle my camera, a beer and dance at the same time. Nine Below Zero are blues-rock experts with every one of them an exemplary musician. After 4 decades in the game Nine Below Zero still show their love for the genre and clearly enjoy their live work. This is what makes every gig a corker. This crowd left very happy. If you missed th...

Nine Below Zero Return to The Cluny with Ben Waters London blues-influenced band Nine Below Zero will be joined on stage by world-renowned boogie woogie piano player Ben Waters, who has played with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis at The Cluny in Newcastle on Saturday February 22. Travelling the world for more than 20 years, Ben’s reputation as an internationally acclaimed musician was learned the hard way – playing in every imaginable type of venue from the bottom of whisky vats to the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall where he and his band were selected by Ray Davies as one of his 12 favourite bands to perform at his Meltdown Festival. In 2013 he recorded the album  Boogie4Stu , and was joined by all the Rolling Stones, PJ Harvey and Jools Holland - who loaned his studio - in aid of the British Heart Foundation in memory of The Stones' pianist Ian Stewart. Nine Below Zero's frontman Dennis Greaves said, " We ar...

Keeping British Blues Alive For a band, after 4 decades to be able to comfortably fill the Cluny with fans, you have to have a quality live product. Nine Below Zero have been delivering this quality since they reformed for their 10 th anniversary in 1990. The crowd clearly loved the band and Dennis Greaves (lead vocals, guitar) provided much cockney banter to fill the gaps between the perfectly-performed blues numbers. It’s amazing (to a novice like me) that a band can manage to have such a diverse repertoire while still working within the Anglo-American blues style. No plodding blues, everything coloured with the individual talents of the band members. They stormed through such numbers as “Can I Get A Witness”, “Homework” and “Got my Mojo Working” with such enthusiasm, you wonder how they keep it going after so many years, and miles of touring. Mark Feltham, a very much in-demand master of the harmonica played a blinder of a gig tonight. How he made the sounds he ...

London blues-influenced band Nine Below Zero fresh from another successful tour of Europe and a string of dates along the south coast of England head north to play the Arc in Stockton-On-Tees on Friday May 17 and the Cluny in Newcastle on Saturday May 18. Nine Below Zero built an almost obsessive following in the early 1980 with their take on American blues, while maintaining the energy of punk in their live performances. It was captured in their first album, Live At The Marquee, which was re-released towards the end of 2012. Frontman and founding member Dennis Greaves said: “We decided to put it out again after Universal found some film from the night that we didn’t know still existed. They also found the encores we did, which were not on the original album. In those days, you couldn’t get much more than about 50 minutes on a album. So this will be of great interest to our fans.” Nine Below’s success continued to build during the 1980s. They performed their single 11+1...