CONCERT REVIEW: Buddy Holly and the Cricketers - at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, on Sunday, March 4, 2018.

THE music definitely lives on. It didn’t really die that day back in 1959 when Buddy Holly and two fellow rock and roll stars were killed in a plane crash.

It’s still there now and as great as ever.

We may have lost Holly and the music that he would have gone on to create, but there is a lasting legacy of that magical era when the world of music began to rapidly change and evolve.

Many of his songs are still hugely popular today and there is still a considerable fan base to ensure he and his music lives on - emphasised by last night’s full house and the range of ages, although the majority were of the older generation.

Don Maclean may have written about Holly’s demise in his major hit, American Pie, and described it as the day the music died with the words…

‘But February made me shiver

With every paper I'd deliver

Bad news on the doorstep

I couldn't take one more step

I can't remember if I cried

When I read about his widowed bride

Something touched me deep inside

The day the music died’

The words refer to February 3, 1959 the date of Holly’s death, along with that of Ritchie Valens and P.J. (The Big Bopper) Richardson), a tragedy that had a profound impact on the then 13 year old Maclean who used to carry out a newspaper round.

The year before his death Holly and his backing band, The Crickets, played 25 venues across England back-to-back throughout March - including in Worcester.

Sunday night’s concert was one of several on a special tour to celebrate the 60th anniversary of this one and only ever visit by him to our shores.

It features the UK’s first and best-loved Buddy Holly act, Buddy Holly & The Cricketers. The show has been around for a quarter a century now and what a very special show it is with backing by the brilliant English Rock and Roll Orchestra - and they even managed to make a slightly slower True Love Ways sound so special with their haunting strings.

Overall it's dynamic and with authentic arrangements, especially the driving rhythms that were Holly’s trademark, and this latest incarnation of Holly - Gordon Taggart - is authentic in sound and style, and there’s a considerable resemblance too.

Put it all together and it surely did make that Heartbeat go a little faster.

It’a a perfect night of nostalgia with several songs from other stars of yesteryear thrown in for good measure.

Many of the audience were on their feet long before the end through the infectious Buddy beat and in spite of several encores they were still calling for more!