Petrol Heads
That Petrol Emotion returned to their home town on Tuesday night. OK, Derry is only the home town of 60 % of the members but it does make it handy for me to see the band for the first time since they embraced the Reformation.
The Petrols, as we trendsetters call
them, also contain an Undertone. Damian O'Neill is the sole
inhabitant of that intersection of our musical Venn diagram.
For someone like me who is only in the set labelled 'Undertones' (don't you wish you paid more attention in maths?) it's odd to stand in the crowd and watch your colleague playing on stage with another band. I tend to think of the rest of The Petrols as my in-laws who I do know, but not that well. As it turns out, I used to know one Petrol quite well. Ciaran McLaughlin, drummer and writer of some of their finest songs, had the nom-de-drum Elvis Wesley when he, Damian and I had a band called The Wesleys in 1981. Apologies to all Methodists, by the way , but I still think it's a cool name for a band. Damian played organ as Lesley Wesley while I played bass and sang as Wesley Hunter (a cousin of the Wesley brothers).
We played twice. The first time it was great - we did 'No Time Like The Right Time' by the Blues Project, 'Liar Liar' by the Castaways and 'Just Like Romeo And Juliet' by Michael And The Messengers. The second time we attemped 'Take Five' and nearly put someone's eye out.
Admittedly, the Wesleys weren't as good as That Petrol Emotion. But not many bands are.
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