Richard Ashcroft – Brixton Academy

Great show from Richard Ashcroft at Brixton Academy tonight. Although supporting his fairly recently released third solo album ‘Keys To The World’ – he wasn’t stingy on mining the back catalogue – so we were treated to no less than five songs from the seminal final Verve album ‘Urban Hymns’.

An interesting back set-up – guitar, bass, drums, two keyboardists, an occasional backing vocalist, and saxophone/flute player!

The title track to ‘Keys To The World’ kicked sings off, but by the second song he was already digging deep for ‘Urban Hymns’ “Sonnet”. “Why Not Nothing”, probably my favourite song on the new album, makes the best use of the full-time sax-player.

With such a rich vein of Verve material, I tend to forget about the many great solo singles Richard has released – so it was a treat to hear “Science Of Silence”, and a long drawn out “New York” (although I could have done without the free-form cacophony it devolved into partway through).

That said – I’m a sucker for The Verve classics and with a sold-out Brixton Academy singing along to “Lucky Man” and “The Drugs Don’t Work” – it’s hard not to get caught up in things. “Lucky Man” in particular had impressive stage lighting – using a low seated giant mirror ball – to cast what appeared like little bubbles of light around the room, giving a kind of underwater effect.

The main set closed with lead-off single from the new album “Break The Night With Colour” – before Ashcroft appeared solo for a couple of acoustic songs to kick off the encore. The Verve’s “Space and Time” was another big crowd sing-along, but I thought the solo acoustic version of his debut solo single “A Song For The Lovers” was one of the highlights of the night in the stripped back arrangement.


A strange-karaoke style version of UNKLEs “Lonely Soul” was next with Ashcroft singing over a pre-recorded backing track. I love this song, and I’m always happy to encourage set list including unusual covers and side-project material – but this one didn’t really work for me. It just seemed kind of empty – given the backing track didn’t seem to include much a band with two keyboardists couldn’t accomplish.

Still – all was forgotten when Ashcroft introduced a show closing “Bittersweet Symphony” with the repeated mantra “where there’s hits there’s writs”. The band played a true to original version – although Ashcroft did manage to slip a few lines from Sly and The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”. As Ashcroft described the some himself “a classic”.

PS - thanks to www.ashcroftunofficial.co.uk for the live pic from Kings College Dec 2005.

The Shins - Koko

In theory – Camden’s Koko seems like a great live music venue. Recently refurbished, great location, and they seem to get many great bands appearing. In practice – it gets bloody hot, it’s easier to win the lottery than get served at the bar, and it seems to be very difficult to get a good spot to watch the band.

That said – I love The Shins so I would have stood for 90 mins on hot coals to watch them play live again. Surprisingly not much has changed since I last saw them perform at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne – I guess 2 years ago.

From opener ‘Kissing The Lipless’ to a show closing ‘So Says I’ - the band still rely heavily on the same two albums. The incredible ‘New Slang’ and ‘Caring Is Creepy’ remain favourite crowd sing-alongs.

Some interesting changes – despite James Mercer being lead vocalist, wisecracking keyboardist/guitarist/bassist Marty Crandall now takes centre-stage, and handles all between song banter – which tonight included a recurring joke about Motorhead’s ‘Ace Of Spades’ – that lead to an impromptu rendition (or more acurately - attempted rendition) of the metal classic in the encore.

Favourites from “Chutes Too Narrow” and “Oh, Inverted World” are present and accounted for – ‘Young Pilgrims’ a highlight for me. Early single ‘When I Goosestep’ also got an airing – together with 4 or so new songs from their long forthcoming third album. They didn’t play ‘Won Too Many Fights’ which I’m familiar with from the solo James live recording – but ‘Circus Walk’ (which is the name the song has been given in MP3 form) sounded great – what a catchy refrain “cause the worse part is over / now get back on that horse and ride” destined to be another Shins classic!

PS - photo is from The Shins appearance on Texas Austin City Limits - not Koko!

Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band - UK tour 2006

Just finished travelling around on Bruce-quest 2006 - Manchester May7th, London May 8th and (unexpectadly) London May 9th!

Saw some fantastic shows - the Manchester one was ok but it was a big basketball stadium so it wasn't well suited. London was much better - it was the Hammersmith Apollo (formerly known as The Hammersmith Odeon - where he did his first concert outside of the US in '75 - just issued on DVD in the Born To Run 30th Anniversary boxset) so he made lots of cracks about "this place
looking familiar" - it was quite touching when he talked about, as a musician you remember all the places you've played - but that this one he's always gonna be a part of and it's always gonna be a part of him. Sounds kinda lame when I type it but it was very touching.

Also the London venue was standing only downstairs - so we managed to get a great spot just in front of the mixing desk. In fact I spotted Jon Landau behind the mixing desk for most of the main set (at one stage he appeared to get very hands on and looked to be working the faders himself - yikes!). I was plotting what I'd say to him if I got the chance to catch him on the way out but he disappeared before the show ended (for the record I narrowed it down to questions about the "electric Nebraska sessions", if Tracks 2 is still on the radar now the Seeger stuff has been released in it's own right, and if he'd consider putting out a tour EP from the current shows - with half a dozen or so of the new covers and rearrangements - also a nice one to repackage the album with in a month or so).

Dunno if you've read much about his new setup - but it's a 17 piece band - and he's using quite a bit of string-action: double-bass, a couple of fiddle players, plus a full horn section and backing vocalists. He mostly does the new album (which I'm a massive fan of) but also a few re-arrangements of older songs (a kinda of do-wop version of Nebraska's 'Open All Night', tex-mex version of 'You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)') but my favourite was a mash-up of 'Cadillac
Ranch' that uses the chorus of 'Mystery Train' ("train I riiiiiiide, sixteen coaches long").

The other thing he's doing is a couple of new blues/folk covers - the best one being a song by Blind Alfred Reed called 'How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?' - which he's written a few new verses for himself, about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. He even dedicated it to "president bystander" so it's good to see his political edge is still sharp!. I think Bruce likes the
song as there's a free soundboard recording of it up at his official site - http://www.brucespringsteen.net/site.html - download it and let me know what you think.

The other cover he's doing - as a show closer at both shows - is a very sombre reading of 'When The Saints Go Marching In' - and he's using a couple of verses I'd not heard before - one of them goes along the lines of "following in the footsteps of those who've gone before" which I guess he sees as an explanation of the whole Seeger sessions/folk tribute album he's undertaken.

Last night I read he was doing a performance to be filmed by the BBC for TV/radio - so I did a bit of detective work and noticed in the TV guide it mentioned St Lukes - a web search on BBC and St Lukes turned up an old theatre that the London Symphony Orchestra refurbished as a small performance venue - and the BBC use for some of their classical recordings and broadcast. Anyway - I looked it up on the map and it's only about 30 mins from my work - so after I knocked off about 5:30 I decided to wander past to see if it was the right place and what was going on.

I quickly worked out it was the right place - a couple of BBC semi-trailers of recording equipment, and a heap of equipment - of which I recognised the double-base road case pretty easily. I spoke to a security guard and he said there were a few other fans waiting around the front - so I go around and there's maybe a dozen other Springsteen fans waiting in a line. They said a security guard had told them earlier to queue up and see if they "get lucky". So I jumped on the end of the queue - at this stage it must be 6:30 - and watch various famous and semi famous folks filter into the venue (I still can't recognise a lot of UK famous people - but they had the celebrity "glow"
around them - those I did recognise were Emmylou Harris, Stephen Merchant (the non Ricky Gervais part of The Office/Extras duo), DJ Chris Evans (the former Mr Billie Piper!) and DJ/former Old Grey Whistle Test presenter Bob Harris.

About 7:30 – a lady from the BBC came over and gave everyone waiting in the line (by this stage there was about 30 of us) tickets to get in – and I wandered into this tiny church – basically just a giant open room – that had about 150 people in it – walked straight to the front (about 5 people back from dead-centre of the stage).

Bruce and the band came on a bit after 8 – did a storming set 10 songs plus they had to do a couple twice (“because you clapped along and fucked us up!” was his explanation). And that was it. I think I’m still in a daze about it – like it was some kind of dream. In fact better than a dream cause I’d never come up with something as wild as seeing Springsteen play a free show in a
less than 200 person venue. The show will be broadcast on BBC radio and TV - so if even half the magic of the show is captured in the recordings - I recommend catching it because it was an incredible show!

PS - thanks to maikanosurrender on the Backstreets.com forum for the photos of the London show.

Billy Bragg - Shepherds Bush Empire

I wasn’t sure what to expect from a solo Billy Bragg show these days – so I travelled to the Shepherds Bush Empire with my friend Ross with some trepidation.

With the recent release of the ‘Volume 1’ box-set featuring re-masters and out-takes of his earliest releases – I thought there would be a chance of some early favourites getting an airing. On the other hand, as the show was part of his national Hope Not Hate tour - a dedicated push against the BNP in local elections, there was some concern it might be, as my friend Ross put it, “a bit preachy”.

Unfortunately we missed the support act Seth Lakeman so I can’t give any feedback on him – but we did time things pretty well so we took our seats half-way through Billy’s first number ‘The World Turned Upside Down’.

He seemed in pretty good form – a little bit out-of-tune (but then he was never that in-tune to begin with) – kicking off with solo electric versions of half a dozen or so “classic Bragg” tracks. Favourites for me where ‘Levi Stubbs Tears’ (including a very funny story about Paul Weller), ‘England Half English’ (a song I’ve probably under-rated because I seldom play much later day Braggy – in particular his most recent one “England Half English”), and ‘Greetings To The New Brunetter’ (which included a very funny self referential gag about having to look the chords up on billybraggtabs.com – and wondering what he was thinking when he originally wrote some of the lyrics).

Ian Mclagan (Faces/Small Faces – still sporting the same mullet-esque hairdo he’s had since the Seventies) then joined on organ (or “horgan” and Braggy describes the Hammond Organ sound his reputation has been founded on). I could probably have done without the cover of instrumental ‘Green Onions’ – but I found the sparcer arrangement of ‘The Price I Pay’ incredibly moving. A cover of The Faces ‘Debris’ was excellent, especially when Ronnie Lane’s tribute to his Dad was couple with Billy’s own ‘Tank Park Salute’. A new song ‘I Keep Faith’ was played – but didn’t do much for me to be honest.

As I’d been concerned – there was some preachy elements – but it was constrained to three or four longer bursts. I think he’s better to let the songs do the talking – and a well chosen set closer of Mermaid Avenue IIs ‘All You Fascists – Bound To Lose’ seemed to be specifically crafted for the cause Billy was touring to promote.

The first encore started with Braggs talking about starting to loose his voice in Austin, so he had to sign in a slightly lower register, which led to the invention of the Johnny Clash pseudonym. This was at first treated as a kind of open in-joke, doing a version of ‘Pinball Wizard’ in the style of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. But then Billy played a new song he’d written in this style – tentatively titled ‘Old Clash Fan Fight Song’ – that was easily the highlight of the night for me, and I’d go so far as to describe it as one of the best new Billy Bragg songs in the last decade. Hopefully this beauty will see release pretty soon – but if adopting the Johnny Clash persona leads to him writing stuff this good – keep it up!

The second and final encore ran a close second in the highlight stakes – a seven-song set featuring the entire “Life’s A Riot with Spy Vs Spy’ EP. Interestingly it wasn’t played in strict order (he saved ‘A New England’ for the end, and ‘Richard was played third-last) but it was fantastic. Kind of like a mini- Don’t Look Back festival.

So despite his efforts not really being reflected in the local council elections the next day – the BNP doubled its number of councillors – it was a fantastic show.

Viva la Johnny Clash!

(PS - thanks to http://moblog.co.uk for the camera phone photo of the show!)