Woody Guthrie celebration feat. Billy Bragg - 16 September

Mr and I were again back at Southbank for a show last Sunday. This time, Billy Bragg and his special guests were celebrating Woody Guthrie's legacy. As Billy himself says, he's not sure how he got the job of putting Guthrie's words to music, but if you've ever heard Mermaid Avenue, he did a good job of it, IMHO.
And that album introduced me to Wilco, which is quite an excellent band to drive to. Live, they have too many guitar solos for my taste, but Mr actually likes long guitar solos so we agree to disagree on this point.
So, here were all were at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Prompt, because it struck us as that kind of gig. The first up was Grace Petrie, who BB said was following in his footsteps or something like that. She was very personable and got the audience on-side with her banter.
She played a few protest songs: Maggie Thatcher's Dream is one of the tunes. I keep thinking, after 20-odd years, don't we have any new Conservative bogeymen? Thatcher's pretty much done to death. Surely someone can come up with a decent protest song about the strangely large foreheaded David Cameron.
But never mind, five songs and she was off, with much applause. Then, Joe Henry was up. The liveliest he got was when he was singing Woody Guthrie songs. Which was kind of the point. He had a nice voice but not a load of charisma.
After a decent interval, the man himself arrived on stage. Billy produced an amiable set and kept the audience entertained with Woody songs. My Flying Saucer is a personal favourite. The other two then joined him onstage, which was the highlight of the whole show. They all have very good voices and it ended the show on a high note.

Marks out of 10: 7.5, up and down, but mostly up.

Fascinating Aida, Southbank - 12 September

Left Mr at home for this one because he's not into comedy singing, it seems. Wanda bought the tickets and Martina came along as well. So it was all good fun. We didn't realise it was actually at that summer-only setup on the Southbank. I've never been there before. I thought it was a carnival, and they do have some rides nearby. We did spend a bit of time wandering around looking for the ticket office, and then we found it, Wonderland. Just went the wrong way on the riverside. We had a drink outside at the bar (brrr! autumn is here) and then went into the Spiegeltent, which was kind of a posh one. Had booths and everything.
Fascinating Aida has been going for 30 years. As Wanda said, you know they're good when they've been going that long - they're entertainers. She wasn't wrong. They started off the show with a song about the current bank issues. Part of the fun was the fact that these lovely women with lovely voices were using a very rude word or three. Just a good time.
Their famous song is Cheap Flights, which is a howler. I also quite enjoyed Down with the Kids. I resisted the urge to roll on the floor laughing.
Afterwards, we had another G&T while the ladies signed CDs and so forth for appreciative audience members. A fun night.

Marks out of 10: 8. Not everyone's cup of tea, but perfect if you want to hear a lot of good singing and very clever lyrics. That's entertainment!