Review | Pompey Punk'n'Roll Summer Party on South Parade Pier with The Jim Jones All Stars: 'No better place to be'

They then launch, appropriately enough, into their song Surf Kansas. Like the rest of their set it fizzes with teenage energy, even provoking a mosh pit that makes the grating separating us from the sea suddenly feel flimsier than I am sure it is...

But where else can you watch seven bands before sunset and get to see the local wildlife at play on the water, except at the first of this year’s Pompey Punk’n’Roll’s summer parties on the end of South Parade Pier?

The Mudd Club even slip in a fine cover of The Sonics’ garage-rock classic, The Witch. Some bands you want to mature over the course of their career – I hope The Mudd Club stay just as they are for some time. Excellent fun.

If The Mudd Club typify the exuberance of youth, Black Bombers are grizzled old hands by comparison, with a fine pedigree playing in numerous name acts during their respective careers. Their sound cleaves closer to metal than any of the other acts on the bill today, but there’s a hard-rocking thunder to what they do which is hard to deny.

The headliners are The Jim Jones All Stars. Frontman Jones has been tapping into the primal roots of rock’n’roll with various bands for 30-something years now.

With his current band The Righteous Mind on hold for logistical reasons, he has gathered up the All Stars instead – here today as an eight-piece featuring two sax players, keys and a backing vocalist.

Jones remains an unholy combo of Tom Waits, Screaming Jay Hawkins and Mick Jagger – able to slip from his guttural howl to scatting like a madman on a dime.

And with the addition of a horn section the All Stars take on a sound somewhere between the Detroit ramalama of The MC5 and The Stooges and the Memphis soul of Stax Records.

For the first time Jones is also tackling songs from throughout his career rather than just his current act, so we get blistering full-fat takes on Jim Jones Revue numbers like opener Cement Mixer, Dishonest John and Burning Your House Down, plus Righteous Mind numbers Satan’s Got His Heart Set on You and the climactic Bases Loaded.

There’s also a fine selection of covers revealing the band’s DNA – from The Cramps’ Human Fly, to Velvet Underground’s Run, Run, Run, an ultra-heavy-funk take on Jimmy Castor’s Troglodyte (Cave Man), and the piano-led madness of Mose Allison’s Parchman Farm.

Given the nocturnal nature of much of Jones’ output and demeanour, there’s something distinctly odd about seeing him in the blazing sunlight. That side, with the line-up having only come together last year, one gets the impression this team is really starting to hit its stride now.

There’s an album pending from this outfit, and on this evidence I can’t wait to hear it.

There are two more of these all-dayers pending – with Little Barrie headlining on July 31 and Paul-Ronney Angel & the Bad Mofos taking top honours on August 21.

If, as Jones would have it, you like your rock’n’roll greasy, there’s no better place to be.

Check book.events/pompeypunknroll for tickets.