Green Note, London
As debut performances go, this was a remarkably easygoing, adventurous and good-natured affair – but then Ben Mandelson and the music journalist Ian Anderson are not exactly newcomers. Both have played in an extraordinary number of different bands, with Mandelson's CV alone featuring Billy Bragg's Blokes, the new Yiddish Twist Orchestra, the bravely experimental Les Triaboliques and Blue Blokes 3. Now, with Lu Edmonds off working with John Lydon in PiL, BB3 has shrunk into a new acoustic duo, The False Beards.
Mandelson compared what they were doing to the New York coffee-shop scene back in the 60s ("Paul Simon will be along in a minute"), and also to the era when a new generation of musical enthusiasts reworked early blues and country songs. Thus, they opened the set with a burst of American ragtime and country, with Black Dog Blues and The Spring of 65, taken from the repertoires of Spider John Koerner and that great old-time music veteran Tom Paley. Anderson provided solid guitar work and vocals, always sounding distinctively English rather than American, while Mandelson added dazzling accompaniment on baritone bouzouki – his own invention, a modified 30s guitar – and mandolin.
Then they started branching out with reminders of Anderson's early career in the psych-folk movement, including a cheerfully jaunty treatment of the Stones's Paint It, Black (which he first recorded in 1969, in the days when he sported a large moustache and unfortunate shirts). Then came a twanging reminder of the original 50s version of A Fool Such as I, a few traditional English songs, a west African melody, then a return to good-time country blues. Edmonds's presence is missed, of course, but this is a classy and entertaining new duo.