Sompting’s Barb Jungr celebrates the Marquee Club classics

Barb Jungr is promising a remarkable collection of songs from her new album My Marquee, a celebration of the great Marquee Club, a place where so many bands and performers performed on their way to greatness.
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Barb, who lives in Sompting, brought out the album last summer. She will draw on it when she performs in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre on Saturday, February 3.

“Growing up in Stockport when everything was happening, we used to hear all the songs on the radio and then read about them in the magazines, but we knew that there was this club called the Marquee Club. Manfred Mann was resident band and Paul Simon played there and it was just an extraordinary place. Then I happened to meet people from Marquee Records and thought it would be great if we could just think about some of these songs again and take these iconic songs and do something with them. They put me in a studio with this producer Michael Smith who does lots of stuff with young people and he was great. He was just fantastic, and we made this beautiful album that I called My Marquee. It came out in the summer but it was quite a quiet release. I wasn't doing shedloads of work at the time because my mother was so unwell. But I am able to pick it up now and the Minerva were very keen to take it.

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“There were so many songs that I could have done but it was about what ones I wanted to do and so I did Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin and it's such an interesting song because it's actually so incredibly contemporary. It's about what is happening now.

Barb Jungr (pic by Steve Ullathorne)Barb Jungr (pic by Steve Ullathorne)
Barb Jungr (pic by Steve Ullathorne)

"And I've also done Paul Simon’s Sparrow. And again Paul Simon is so interesting. He is on a par with Dylan and Cohen and Joni Mitchell but because he was a pop artist, because his work was so popular, I do think people have perhaps overlooked how political he was and how religious. Sparrow is a very early song and it is such a great song.”

Barb is also offering what she calls the Drug Medley including Flowers In The Rain and Itchycoo Park, plus Jethro Tull and The Yardbirds. Also included is Substitute by The Who.

“I have done a really explosive version of it. It's quite explosive to start with but then you bring all the bile that you feel for the displacement of the British working class that I grew up in. My parents came here as immigrants and if it had not been for the working class, I would not have had a life. The systematic dismantling of the British working class is very very nicely told in this song, and it is still so relevant.

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“These are all songs that say something and that were part of my growing up. These are songs that have survived and have very much got something to say now. I started doing Long John Baldry. It's a fantastic song and it's got a span like a Burt Bacharach song.

"These are challenging songs. They are not simple songs, but I don't do simple songs!”

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