If you should pass by, be sure to drop right in

The first, and the best

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, about this piece of film I don't like. Every moment of its five minutes and 20 seconds warms my heart. Laundromat is taken from Rory Gallagher's eponymous  solo album released in May 1971. And this performance from Beat Club (a sort of German Whistle Test) was recorded shortly thereafter. As with most overseas performances by UK bands in the seventies, we never saw them; it's only recently, all these years later, that we've discovered what our idols were getting up to in Europe and America thanks to YouTube and the like.

Rather than frame a 250 words review of it, here are the headlines:

* Curly guitar leads, *so* 1971

* Rory wears double denim, and gets away with it

* His drummer wears his girlfriend's top, and he too, sort of, gets away with it. Just

* Rory's guitar looks like it's just been pulled from a burning building

* Tarot card backdrop

* Stack of orange amplifiers (though not Orange, but Stramp)

* He never looked better than he did in 1971; he would soon *fill out*

* Laundromat sits at the top table of the Side One, Track One Club

Rory Gallagher would have been 70 last Friday. He never even saw his 50th.

I'd like to dedicate this to Frank Johnson. It was he who pointed me in the direction of this album all those years ago. Cheers Frank!