On The Beat

On The Beat

Most of the good people of Malta, should be weeping and wailing because most of them missed the most uplifting event to take place on the lovely little island of Gozo since the Knights of St. John repelled the Ottoman Turks.

Friday night at the Red Rose on Fortunato Mizzi Street in Victoria , Gozo was a night of magic. Steve Elvis Allen and Georgia Rose are more than musicians – they’re magicians. Last night they raised the dead, made the lame and halt dance and put smiles on the faces of the chronically depressed.

The Red Rose is a long narrow room with walls painted the color of tomato soup and layered with varnished rough stone. When Georgia opened her first set the place was two thirds empty, the other third sparsely inhabited by bored diners chomping on fried chicken, a trio of attractive young students from Spain into their wine, and a sparse handful of music lovers who had got the word.

Georgia, a tall and lovely blond with the energy of a megawatt dynamo and the stone professionalism of a prize fighter up against the heavyweight champ’s left hook, faced the nearly empty room and the disinterested audience and peeled the paint off the walls with ‘Crocodile Rock.’ The diners dropped their chicken legs and stared in shock at Georgia. Who is this singer? Have we been transported to Vegas?
Georgia wore a gold sequined jacket and black tights, an outfit that hit every male in the joint like a George Foreman hook to the head and left them stunned and helpless as baby kittens. Georgia introduced herself as a warm up act. What she did was raise the temperature in the room by a hundred degrees.

A small patio near the entrance had been filled with diners and drinkers. By the time Georgia was on the third song of a set of fifties tunes including, Wake Up Little Suzy and Green Door, the patio folks had been drawn inside by the music and by the shining light that Georgia radiates. She even pulled the Spanish kids out of their hermetic circle with ‘La Bamba’ done like Richie Valens never imagined it. Georgia took a break and told the crowd she had assembled who was next. But she couldn’t really prepare them for what was coming.

When Steve Elvis Allen burst into the room with his version of C.C. Ryder everyone froze like deer in the headlights, stopped talking, stopped drinking with glasses halfway to their mouths. Anyone could read their minds, ‘Now who is this guy?’ Steve’s opening set was Elvis’ music, Don’t Be Cruel, The Wonder Of You, and other primal rock n’ rock such as Blueberry Hill and Always On My Mind. Steve knocked them into the bleachers with his driving, emotional, powerful and personal style. Georgia warmed up the room but Steve was heat from another sun.

A table of four women of a certain age got to their feet in unison, without discussion or agreement between themselves got up and danced like they probably hadn’t danced since they were seventeen. Their smiles were fresh and young and unaffected and they moved with lightfooted joy, transformed and happy. A handsome couple, clearly newlyweds, danced with grace and style, a man who looked like Telly Savalas swung his partner clear of the floor, and a man wearing a red t-shirt imprinted with the famous Che photo stepped and swayed in place, beer bottle in hand. A sad faced fellow with too much to drink, who had been sitting in a corner alone, got to his feet with a smile firmly in place and stumbled through ‘Hound Dog’ happy and convinced he was on the beat. A small neatly made women in jeans left her table, dinner forgotten, and effortlessly danced her husband into sweaty fatigue.

By the time Steve hit ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ with the power of a Chevy Corvette roaring through the night with engine howling, horn blowing and headlights flashing all the former diners were on their feet and dancing. Steve’s music carried into the street and its sheer gravitational pull yanked passersby off the sidewalk and into the now packed room.

Steve wore stark black and white, his ink and iron hair in a high pompadour, a handsome man, clearly a star. Can’t mistake that. The ladies certainly don’t. They tend to flush and catch their breath when he looks at them. But Steve’s an approachable star.

He talks to individuals in the crowd, looks into their eyes and sings to them, jokes with them, makes them feel like they’re part of the entertainment, as they do become when he brings them out of their personal shells and into to the music, the warmth and the life of the moment, of the night. No one is excluded. Transformed by the magic for this small slice of time everyone’s cool, everyone’s a hipster, everyone is loved and everyone can dance.

The people of Malta now beating their breasts and crying tears of regret can overcome their sorrow at missing the most important cultural event of the year by catching Steve and Georgia at The Captain’s Table in Xlendi, Gozo. They perform there most Saturday nights. Be there or be square.