80's music has never been as popular as it is right now and these guys are at the top of their game when it comes to the sights and sounds of that glorious decade. With a selection of fantastic tunes in authentic style that you'll be singing along to and a state of the art dazzling light show, this band will have you up and dancing in no time - and that's a promise!

Some time in the early 1980s a group of school pals sat in a coffee bar in Walsall, planning the rhythm and blues band they were going to form. Normally a band is formed by, for instance, a guitarist meeting a piano-player, then they would recruit a bass player and so on. But not in this case. Rather on the lines of the Austin High School gang some sixty years previously and several thousand miles west, they allocated each other their instruments, went out to buy them and then set about learning to play them. Today the band they formed is one of the most popular jazz and swing bands in The World.

There is no denying the KP’s popularity, the polish and the ability to assault, involve and ultimately exhaust an audience, but, some would say, that doesn’t make them a good jazz band ... or even a jazz band. Well, the border between jazz and blues has plenty of traffic crossing it. It’s true that King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys as warm-up band for the Modern Jazz Quartet would not be the most appropriate choice. It is also true that the crazy stage and zany visuals are still there (some purists find it difficult to take seriously a diminutive bass player who somehow plays the instrument wonderfully while taking it to two submissions or a knock-out), but humour, the wilder the better, has an honourable place in the story of jazz.

The point is that the music is the real thing - and good! The City Limits reviewer had it right when he referred to the KPs as “a respected R&B combo whose levity makes a welcome respite to the knit-brows ploughing the furrows of authenticity.” But the involvement in the music of the likes of Louis Jordan is total, though by no means at the loss of originality: the material includes an increasing number of self-penned songs to go with those from Big Joe Turner or Buddy Johnson. But the band are still fans! Steeped in the music way before the West End made Louis Jordan fashionable, they can at least benefit from the current cult ... but imitators? Never!

King Pleasure & The Biscuit Boys are a difficult band to sum up, but Dave Clarke did a pretty fair job in Now Dig This: “Superb, a stunning range of instrumental ability ... classy stuff in the style of Louis Jordan and Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, with nowt taken out! A band I’d recommend ANYBODY to go and see.”