Radio Gonzo

Dana Gillespie has been a singer, songwriter and actress for over 50 years. She was part of that charmed generation who grew up in the early 60s and was lucky enough to have all the freedoms that that era entailed. Like so many other kids, she discovered that the brave new world of rock music, and more specifically the blues, called out to her and offered her something that she had never dreamed of. Half a century later, she's still singing blues, and doing it remarkably well. However, the thing that interests me, and one of the things that we discussed at length during our conversation the other day, was the fact that she has always sung in her own voice, eschewing the exaggerated vocal mannerisms of so many of her peers. I have always found the way that so many relatively well-off white kids from middle class backgrounds within the area fed by the Thames estuary decided to do their best to sound like middle aged black men from a generation before, both baffling and slightly offensive. The people who took t