Vintage Voltage

Vintage Voltage are a 60s and 70s rock collective from Brighton and London. Four to eight of them depending on the room, three for the acoustic set, playing Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath, Bowie, Hendrix, Free, Humble Pie, Thin Lizzy, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, and the deep cuts either side of them. Technically a tribute band. Actually a rock and roll rave inside a time machine. It started with a frustration. Guitarist Folly den Toom came back from Nashville, where he had watched people of every age pile into the bars on Broadway for live classic rock, and found almost nothing like it at home. Britain had bands playing these records, but mostly older men playing to older rooms, and almost nowhere to go on a Friday to hear this music loud and played properly. Somebody has to keep the flag in the air, and it may as well be people young enough to be doing it for another forty years. The trick is doing it without the cheese: no wigs, no costumes, no winking at the audience, no medley. Play it like you mean it, because they do. That 70s Night is their own event: a wall of working vintage televisions, an oil projector, lamps, rugs, a DJ after the band, and a room full of people who dressed for it. It has sold out Paper Dress Vintage in London three times and De Piek in Vlissingen, and taken 164 tickets at Daltons in Brighton. They also just play. A festival stage, a wedding, a birthday, a corporate night, a pub on a Saturday. Same band, same songs, without the production. Thruxton Race Circuit for the Super Funk retro festival, Slim Jim's Liquor Store three times including its seventeenth anniversary, The Troubadour, Hope and Ruin, The Bootlegger, The Waterhole in Amsterdam, the main square stage at Monument Festival in Zierikzee, and a biker rally at Plumpton Racecourse. And with enough notice, they build something specific. Zeppelin against Deep Purple. A psychedelic night, a glam night, a sixties night, a Christmas or Halloween edition. They learn two of your requests with a month's notice. LINE UPS Three piece acoustic: guitar, mandolin, percussion and voices. Four piece: guitar, bass, drums and a lead singer, with backing vocals. Five piece: adds keys, who sometimes doubles on guitar. Six piece: adds a second lead singer. Seven and eight piece: add one or two dedicated backing vocalists. Weddings often take the acoustic trio for the ceremony and drinks, then the full band after dinner. WHAT THEY BRING PA and monitoring for 150 to 200 guests, all their own backline, and an oil projector and lamp set. On request: the full vintage television wall, a hazer, and a DJ set after the band. £1m public liability insurance and PAT tested equipment. Nobody in the band was alive when these records came out. What there is instead is a young band playing this music the way they fell for it, loud and slightly out of control, with mashups of their own and songs that run into one another with no gap for applause. It is sweaty, loud and a little bit dangerous, and it works as well for the people who saw these bands the first time round as for their kids. Who said only dads can play #dadrock?