The Les Clochards Assembly Checkpoint

I don’t care how good a time you’re having at the Fringe this year, if you haven’t been to see these guys you are missing out. If you play along with the legend – and you really should – then you are being entertained by 5 busking hobos from Corsica, who have been on the road since 1949. Don’t let the fact that they’re obviously too young for that get in the way, otherwise you might start to think that maybe Thin Lizzy weren’t a legendary Corsican folk group, and maybe Motorhead aren’t the greatest reggae band ever. (Tell you what, Lemmy, Ace of Spades works really well as a reggae number).

Having said all that, the band is so tight they might well have been playing together as long as they claim. It’s that discipline that allows them to pull off their highly original arrangements of classic songs (all, they claim, originally written by them) while they clown around both physically and verbally: “Summer – do you have that word in this country?”

I’m not about to give away too much of their repertoire, suffice to say Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Like A Virgin will never sound the same again. And the world’s a better place for that.

Jim Welsh