Blues and laughs at Pub

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 14, 1 September 1987, Page 6

Blues and laughs at Pub

Gary McCormick had intended to spend this winter concentrating on his job as a frontperson for a TVNZ . travel programme going to air mid-September. That was until he came across Paul Ubana Jones, recently arrived from Great Britain, playing at a charity concert in the Raglan Town Hall. The British-born PartNigerian grew up in Brixton and gained a scholarship to the Chiswick School of Music. He played blues, reggae, bebop and funk in a number of bars around London, before heading for France, the US and then Switzerland. He toured through Europe and Northern Africa. McCormick decided to take time out to put to-

gether some shows with Jones - a mixture of blues with a difference - and comedy. McCormick has after all, made election history by' getting the lowest number of votes ever recorded by a political candidate - three! "I knew I was one of yesterday's men," sighs McCormick, "but I didn't know I was one of last year's! " So its back to the fun and games of touring (he has just spent six weeks in California and Hawaii) enjoying Paul's music - 'the punters just have to see this!' - before returning to the TV studio. As the Waikato Times critic put it: "He has mastered first of all, the tools of his trade - voice and guitar. Secondly his music idioms, blues and reggae, are within him."