Buddy Holly and the Cricketers/Malvern Theatres

MANY of us will readily recall a song titled American Pie in which the singer referred to the day the music died.

It was indeed a fabulous tune, a sparkling example of post-60s folk narrative set to music.

And yes, you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who, on hearing it for the first time, doesn’t immediately fall in love with the sentiments expressed.

But there’s just one huge problem. For this great early 1970s pop anthem is mainly about Buddy Holly and his tragically early death aged just 22 in a plane crash on February 3, 1959.

And if ever a lyric was way off beam then it was this one with its premature claim that Holly took his unique sound to the grave.

The day the music died… what? Hardly. Nothing could have been further from the truth because the proof that the Holly legend is alive and thriving is provided in abundance by this talented band of musicians who quite obviously worship the man as much as the loyal legions of fans who packed the Forum Theatre on this rainy night in May.

Buddy Holly would be over 80 years old now, the age of quite a few of the people in this packed auditorium. But Buddy, like so many of those rock gods occupying the top table on Mount Olympus, is freeze-framed forever young.

And thanks to the temporary suspension of belief and not a little reality, here he is again, arguably looking pretty much the same as he appeared at that last concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, the night he made the fateful decision to travel by light plane rather than endure another cold, uncomfortable night on the tour bus.

Suffice to say that the long tall Texan from Lubbock would have been proud of these guys. All the songs sounded exactly like the originals… the blues glissandi of That’ll Be the Day, the Latino triplets on Heartbeat, the stabbing staccato of Brown-eyed Handsome Man, and the insistent, chugging shuffle beat of Maybe Baby and Rave On.

Yes, they’re all evergreen songs that will live forever in our hearts. So, the day the music died? Sorry, Don McLean, but no one was ever more mistaken… because as the song so prophetically observes, the music of Buddy Holly will certainly not fade away.

John Phillpott