That whole change of musical direction thing makes you think doesn’t it? I mean Dylan did it by daring to go electric and was duly pilloried. Ten minutes later he was being hailed as the new musical messiah. Don’t worry there is a point to this and that point is Ashley Collins.
There I was in the Oran Mor marvelling at how the simple addition of Russian vodka could make their draught lager drinkable – chemistry is so much more than just a science – whilst awaiting the arrival of the ever adorable Ms Collins on stage when I got to pondering the whys and wherefores of her choice to abandon the dance floor for real musicians. After all, backing tracks, unlike drummers, don’t have personal hygiene problems.
Unable to personally resolve this quandary, Ms Collins then obligingly demonstrated that the proof is actually in the pudding. For one thing, she never missed a note during her performance and, with her relentless enthusiasm, she soon outpaced her band and dragged them in her wake through what was too short a set. It would indeed seem that you cannot hold a good woman back when she knows where she wants to go.
Does all this make Ashley Collins comparable to Dylan? Many would see that as a stretch but there is something that they do have in common and that is actual talent. The irony, of course, is that having actual talent these days is likely to be the very thing that will trip Ms Collins up on the path to fame.