The Mo Pleasure Band lived up to their name. They sent home a packed Hideaway audience home with smiles on their faces.
The band started with two instrumentals, one of which was ‘Chicken’, they were lengthy and allowed each member of the band to demonstrate their skills playing their instruments. Mo Pleasure on bass, Luke Smith keyboard, Mike Brown guitar, Jamie Michael Harris sax, Tuca Milan percussion and an excellent drummer whose name I did not catch. Their funky groove set the tone for the first set.
Ivy Chanel and backing singers Nathan Lewis and Lois Graham then joined the band bringing their vocal skills to the stage. Ivy’s voice is clear and beautiful. She sang ‘Free’ Deniece Williams’ hit before moving on to her self-penned ‘Carried Away’. The set closed with two Luke Smith songs ‘Think Before You Leave’ and ‘True Love’ sung by Ivy.
The second set opener continued the funky groove with the Mo Pleasure instrumental ‘Talking’. The vocalists returned to the stage, Mo and Luke swapped roles and the tempo was slowed down. There was a grand keyboard intro to ‘Now That I’ve Found You’, a song Mo wrote about finding his birth mother. It was a gorgeous song reminiscent of the closing song of a Disney cartoon with Prince Mo rescuing his Princess Ivy, only the strings were missing. The male backing vocalist, Otty Warmann joined Ivy to sing Roberta Flack’ Donny Hathaway’s.’The Closer I Get to You’ before the tempo was upped again. The set ended with Mo’s ‘Cruising’ and ‘Rain on My Window Pane’ and Luke Smith’s ‘Going Home’.
The band returned to perform an encore of Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock With You’ and left with a rousing ovation from the audience.
A pleasurable night with so much talent performing on one small stage.
Johns London Music Reviews 
Sounds really good John. And I know Luke Smith. He’s playing Keys for me in my Amazing Grace Xmas special 👍👍👍👍
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I’ve seen Luke many times playing for many artistes. He is very good, however I did not realise that he wrote songs as well.
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