The ragged piece of hand-stitching holding together this odd-couple double bill seemed to be that Joan Armatrading and Bryan Ferry both had their heydays in the 1970s and ’80s. Yet there was a fair chance the fans of one loathed the other, given she was more about substance than style, and he was more style - albeit of the dry-martini variety - than substance.So it was Armatrading and her three-piece band took the attenuated stage that is the support act’s lot. She was dressed in basic black, a Stratocaster her accessory of choice, which she used to play stinging lead lines with a sound as round and snarly as an overfed bulldog. Her voice was wide and warm, honest and insistent.Standing out were the tunes from her new album, Into the Blues (perhaps the year’s best blues release), and such hits as Drop the Pilot and (I Love it When You) Call Me Names (with its brilliant bass line, realised by John Giblin) came to the boil. However, the performance cried out for a more intimate venue than this. There is nothing wrong with the sound in Ent Cent’s Harbour mode, but it seems to have been designed to maximise the feeling of remoteness.Ferry’s likeable set was peculiarly programmed. The rockers from the original Roxy Music repertoire - Re-Make/Re-Model, Virginia Plain, Editions of You - were strewn randomly amid his Bob Dylan covers, limp ’80s dance music and the rest. If Love is the Drug and Both Ends Burning lifted the energy, the highlight remained Jealous Guy, a timeless song that Ferry can make real.It also provided scope for perhaps the greatest rock drummer of them all, Andy Newmark, the man whose playing with Sly and the Family Stone turned Miles Davis on to funk, and who added spine to songs by John Lennon, David Bowie, John Martyn, Roxy and countless others. The eight-piece band also featured the entertaining twin-guitar attack of Oliver Thompson and Leo Abrahams.