The Woggles at The 100 Club London with The Len Price 3 & The Galileo 7, Friday August 16th 2024

The Woggles made a very rare trip to the U.K. for two shows, first of all in Bristol on the Thursday and then Friday night at the legendary 100 Club in London, where I finally got to witness what many people claim are one of the best live acts around. I've been a fan for a long time now and watching videos of them over the years and seeing comments from those lucky enough to have seen them play I was wondering if they could live up to my expectations. Well, I wasn't to be disappointed, in fact they exceeded all of those expectations and then some. Another big fan of The Woggles is Graham Day, frontman of one of our favourite bands, The Prisoners. In fact, he is such a fan that he invited The Woggles to play at his wedding and he also borrowed their rhythm section of drummer Dan Eletxro & bassist Buzz Hagstrom for his Graham Day & The Gaolers line-up on their excellent debut album "Soundtrack To The Daily Grind". I've spoken to Graham about The Woggles on a few occasions in previous interviews and chats and he has now been in the band for over five years, the opportunity arising after the sad and untimely passing of guitarist Jeff "Flesh Hammer" Walls in 2019. Graham has expressed how difficult he sometimes finds the pressures of being a frontman and his struggles with singing and lyric writing - although if you take the Gaolers for example, this seems somewhat hard to believe. He told me once in our Retrosonic Podcast interview that he always fancied being the guitarist in a band seen playing at a dance or 'happening' in one of those American sixties teen movies. Either that or in an instrumental band, an ambition he was to make happen when he formed The Senior Service, his side project that was heavily influenced by those classic Spy, Sci-Fi and Spaghetti Western movie and TV theme tunes by composers such as Barry Gray, John Barry and Ennio Morricone. 

So tonight, the London crowd gets their first chance to see Graham playing guitar with The Woggles and he seems to be having as much fun as we are. Busting out all the moves and shapes with his cool looking Nineteen67 Jones guitar and despite the proliferation of Prisoners T-shirts in the crowd, he is relishing the spotlight being on the livewire frontman The Professor Mighty Manfred Jones. Manfred has to be one of the best rabble-rousing all action vocalists I have ever seen - he does not stop moving for a minute, he demands your attention with his cheerful cheerleading antics. One minute he's lifting the mic stand high above his head, then he's on his knees blasting out on his harmonica, before leaping up and pirouetting around with some nifty dance steps. He also likes to get down among the crowd, encouraging us to participate. I'm exhausted just watching him and I wonder how he gets his energy as he never lets up. His energy levels are matched by Go Go dancer Moana Santana who also doesn't stop for the duration of the show and she adds even more glamour to the visual extravaganza. We saw Moana dancing at the 100 Club for the fantastic Lenny Kaye plays Nuggets gig (which you can read about here) and she really adds to the whole swinging sixties vibe. 

Bassist Buzz Hagstrom and guitarist/saxophonist Shane Pringle also seem to be in their element, they have to compete with some strong personalities to their right and yet they acquit themselves perfectly, they are superb on the night. Only super-cool drummer Dan Eletxro in his trademark cap, remains seated throughout and that's because he has to keep the relentless groove going, I'm sure he was dancing inside. The perfectly plotted set unsurprisingly draws heavily on the excellent new album "Time Has Come", which is out now on green vinyl via Little Steven van Zandt's Wicked Cool Records, and is surely going to feature very high in our best albums of 2024 come the end of the year. I would go so far as to say it's up there as one of the best, if not the best Woggles albums and it positively bursts out of the speakers, coming very close to capturing the live energy we witnessed tonight. It's going to be lauded as a future classic in the Garage Soul genre, I'm sure of it. Graham contributes a couple of songs to the record along with guitar and backing vocals and what with The Prisoners stunning reunion album, "Morning Star", he's on a great creative streak at the moment. My personal highlights included "Telling Me Lies", "Paisley In Paradise", "Mr Last Chance", "Her Majesty's Pleasure" and the blistering "Flesh Hammer" which was written by Pat Beers by another of our favourite bands, The Schizophonics. "Karate Monkey" is also superb, with everyone joining in on the "ooh aah" karate kata moves. I sincerely hope that The Woggles don't leave it so long before returning to our shores - in these sometimes dark and depressing times we all need a regular shot of their peerless good-time Garage Rock 'n' Soul. 

The night was made even more special with the added bonus of The Galileo 7 and The Len Price 3, two more of our long-time favourites. In fact what with Graham Day on stage with The Woggles and so many familiar friendly faces in the crowd, it took me back to the good old days of our Retro Man Blog nights at the Half Moon Putney. The LP3 powered through a raucous set including a couple of promising sounding new songs which seemed inspired by their Medway and North Kent roots. You realise just what a great back catalogue the band have built up and they treated us to a pick from most of their albums, culminating in the classic "London Institute". The Galileo 7, who are of course fronted by Graham's colleague in The Prisoners, Allan Crockford, opened up proceedings quite early but thankfully there was a healthy crowd already in the venue to witness another great performance from the band. Their dynamic and memorable Psych Pop songs, with all four members having a go on vocals, went down really well with the crowd. They also debuted two new songs which are due out early next year and they sounded excellent, I'm really looking forward to hearing them recorded. So, all in all it was a perfect night out, proving the importance of the communal spirit and positive vibes of a room full of fans enjoying no-nonsense, uplifting live music. 

The Galileo 7

The Len Price 3

For more information on The Woggles and details on how to order the new album, please check out their official web-site here. Please click on the highlighted links throughout the feature for more information. I'll put more photos of the night at the Retro Man Blog Facebook page so please head on over here, like and subscribe for access. All photos and videos copyright Retro Man Blog.