ALTHOUGH comic/actor Adrian Edmonson's idea of assembling a band to makeover punk and new wave favourites as folk screamed mid-life crisis, it has proved inspired.

It works so well because his audience loves the songs, the soundtrack of our distant youth, and because his genuine interest in folk music has enabled him to augment his own thrash-mandolin with top musicians - veteran Martin Allcock (Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention) on 12-string guitar, Andy Dinham on fiddle and banjo and Troy Donockly on Uillean pipes and, at the Brewhouse on Friday at least, anti-biotics.

The songs, familiar and yet so different, lend themselves surprisingly well to a reinvention revealing just how good most of them are. Guess-the-Intro classics by the Undertones, Public Image Ltd, the Stranglers, the Ramones, Elvis Costello and Wreckless Eric's 2-chord wonder Whole Wide World, following the stall-setting I Fought the Law by the Clash, were spiced with profane parables and sacrilegious psalms reworked from a Bad Shepherd's perspective, and a table-turning punk version of All around my Hat.

Edmondson, looking uncannily like archetypal punk Vyvyan Barsterd's father, is an enthusiastic and cheeky front-man, striking just the right balance between fun and musicianship; Tom Robinson's Up against the wall, written a mere 18 years before Mrs T was forced out, “.. shows the power of pop!”

The Jam's Down in the Tube Station at Midnight brought out the bleakness of a 17- year old Paul Weller's brilliant lyrics, and Kraaftwerk's sythe-sized Model became a melancholic mandolin and pipes lament.

A brilliant Up the Junction was squeezed in before the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen and an exuberant, energetic and well-deserved encore, Sham 69's Hurry Up Harry, eventually ended suddenly.