Syd Barrett

Gigolo Aunts: Bostonian pop-rock in town...

Rock and Roll is for teenagers, I always say. Guitars, drums and voice is the only musical genre that has not changed a yota since my own teenage times. Artic Monkeys sound like Oasis who sound like The Beatles, and so and so on... Why not moving on, then?.. As I poke my children many times: Look, there are new things, with plenty of electronic help, that expand our musical boundaries, why this compulsion to stick to outdated formulae?

And then you go to a small place, 100-people maximum, where you are just there five meters from the guitar solos and the screaming lead singer, kilowatts of sound pounding your ears, a neighbour bissfuly polluting the atmosphere with his porro ... and you understand why rock and roll is still alive...

Last Friday, at the El Sol, a "we'll-give-you-all-we've-got" performance from the "Gigolo Aunts" reconciled me with my delayed adolescent self...

Very few in the audience were actually contemporaries of Syd Barrett, the Moody Blues co-founder, who christened the term "gigolo aunt".

From his solo album "Barrett":

GIGOLO AUNT

Grooving around in a trench coat/ with the satin on trail/Seems to be all around its tin/ and lead pail, we pale// Jiving on down to the beach/to see the blue and the gray/seems to be all and it's rosy/-it's a beautiful day!
Will you please keep on the track'/cause I almost want you back'/cause I know what you are/you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!/Yes I know what you are/you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt! (...)