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Fatback Band: Keepin' it Rootsy

Tony Cummings, Black Music, January 1976

"Through that door". A grinning Charlie Mullen is standing in the dressing room of the Burlesque club, Farnborough, and gesticulating towards the end of a short corridor. Charlie is the promoter of the Burlesque's regular Wednesday soul nights and meeting him at the entrance is the first break our party has had. We'd been told by Polydor that the Fatback Band will do their set at 10 o'clock. But when we arrive at 9.30, we perceive with sinking hearts, that the club is situated in a sterile abomination of concrete, glass and Marley tiles called a Recreation Centre (used for everything from Rotary Club Dances to Keep Fit Classes), we hear the distant rumble of revelry and realise that the group is already on stage. But we're about to have our spirits lifted, lifted to fly in a heart straining, lung pumping high of sweating euphoria. Fatback euphoria.

Total word count of piece: 4308

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