LEWIS FLOYD HENRY, The Gold Lions
The incomparable Lewis Floyd Henry is just such a dude. In the age when MySpace and the blogosphere have become the conventional means of achieving rock stardom, this remarkable songwriter and performer has gone the ancient route of taking to the streets to broadcast his music.
For the past few years, like a Mississippi bluesman in the early 20th century, Lewis has pitched up on street corners around London, at Brick Lane, Borough Market and the South Bank, every time trousering a pocket full of loose change, but also gradually spreading the knowledge of his extraordinary genius.
Unlike those Delta entertainers, he arrives armed with a trolley carrying a battery-operated amplifier and diddy custom-made drumkit – hence the title of his mind-blowing debut album, ‘One Man & His 30w Pram’. Even less like them, he has accrued 100,000 hits for a YouTube clip, where he blasts out a block-rockin’ take on The Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Protect Ya Neck’ outside Tottenham Court Road tube station. Elsewhere on the site, you can see him busting out a Prokofiev tune with his teeth. As one comment thereabouts imaginatively puts it, “When Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and Ol’ Dirty Bastard died, this guy was born.
