Last night I had the priviledge of watching one of the most successful black recording artists Britain has ever produced perform live in Hull, it was none other than Leslie Sebastian Charles.... otherwise know as the legend that is Billy Ocean!

Billy was born in Fyzabad, Trinidad and Tobago to Grenadian parents, and moved to England with his family at the age of eight. In his teenage years, he began singing at various London clubs whilst working as a tailor in London's Savile Row, luckily he stuck to the singing and released his first single in 1972 on Spark Records under the name Les Charles.

The name Billy Ocean came about when he took the surname from a the local football team in Trinidad called 'Ocean's Eleven', who in turn got the name from the famous film. In 1976, he recorded his debut album and released his first single, the UK number 2 hit, "Love Really Hurts Without You" - a track I was looking forward to seeing him play, but more about thatin a moment.

So, after a few swift ones in the City Hall bar, the bell rang and we were summond to our seats by some rather stern looking usher types. Within a few seconds of us sitting down, the band started to play an introduction which slowly merged into 'Love Really Hurts Without You' and on came the man himself, this time around he was posessing grey dreadlocked hair and a beard, a bit different from the 70's disco gear I remember him wearing on Top of the Pops!

Now if you know me, heard me on the radio or DJing you'll know how much I like the song 'Love Really Hurts Without You', it's just such an upbeat, uplifting track and is surely worthy of being the last song of the night, but as this is the one that launched his career back in 1976 it seemed apt that he should start with it.

Once we'd all had boogie and a sing to that, he introduced himself and explained where he'd been since his last hit in the late eighties. He said that he'd been doing the family thing and now that his children have grown up he has the bug again! Obviously, Billy is touring again to sell a few copies of his recently released album and who could blame him? The new album is called 'Because I Love You' and 90% of it was recorded in Grenada, which might explain the Caribbean style of alot of the songs.

I was disappointed the concert hadn't sold out as to me the guy is a legend, I don't think Billy was that bothered though as he still gave it everything he had belting out all the classics and some from the new album, and even those that you may have forgotten about like 'Love On Delivery' and 'Loverboy'. It was the old favourites that got the crowd up dancing and who could blame them for giving in to the groove of 'Red Light Spells Danger' and the catchy pop classics like 'When The Going Gets Tough' and 'Get Out Of My Dreams'. Of course the ballads were included in the mix too, with Billy Ocean giving a crowd pleasing performance of 'Suddenly' and 'There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)'

Bill (as I call him) went off stage for obligatory encore and came back on to raptorous applause and gave the audience his rendition of 'Up Where We Belong' the old Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes hit. I was a bit miffed as to why he was performing this, but as time went on I realised that it was to give his excellent set of backing singers a chance to belt out a tune, one of which was his daughter! Anyway, with that out of the way it was time for his final song of the night, and the only one missing was 'Caribbean Queen!'

As you'd expect he had the audience (especially the ladies!) eating out of the palm of his hand as he encouraged everyone to sing-a-long to his biggest well known hit.

(A quick note of smugness to whoever typed up the ad for the gig in the Hull Daily Mail, it's 'caribbean queen' not carribean queen', that's two Bs, not two Rs!!! I've got a dictionary you can borrow if you like?)

All in all it was a good gig and it was great to hear his back catalog sung live with a real band, unfortunatly this tour is just about over and Billy Ocean rarely performs, so you'll just have to dig out a copy of his Greatest Hits Collection, I'm certain everyone has one, if not you should get one!

Related Links:

• Billy Ocean's official website.
• Billy Ocean 'Love Really Hurts Without You' on Youtube.
• Billy Ocean 'Red Light Spells danger' on Youtube.