Rock N Roll Ruined My Life

Justice Tonight - Scala, London

2011-12-09T15:59:00.002Z

Unbelievable show tonight at Scala, a benefit for the Hillborough Justice Campaign.

I grabbed tickets as soon as I heard Mick Jones would be headlining playing his first set of Clash songs since he was booted from the band in the early Eighties.

Show started with set from The Farm, who I didn't know much of apart from their set-closing 'All Together Now'. They were soon joined by Mick Jones on guitar and singer/songwriter Pete Wylie who led the combo through a brisk set of his songs.

This led to The Clash portion of the show, kicking off with the 'Train in Vain' and the crowd not unexpectedly goes wild. Quickly followed by 'Stay Free' and 'Bankrobber' with Holly Cook helping on vocals. The guests continue with Richard from Hard Fi providing great lead vocals for 'Clampdown'. 'White Man (in Hammersmith Palais)' with Peter Hooton from The Farm delivering a great vocal with help from the whole audience? The only real misstep was 'Should I stay or should I go' where Rex from the Rotten Hill Gang seems to forgot the words so Hooton and Wylie step in.

The Farm/Mick Jones combo then leave the stage to make way for Primal Scream, complete with Paul Simonon on bass (subbing for Mani who's busy with The Stone Roses reformation) who blast through 'Rocks' before being joined by Mick Jones on guitar for a mini-Clash set kicking off with 'Jail Guitar Doors' quickly followed by a cover of Vince Taylor's 'Brand New Cadillac', before Paul puts his bass down for Guns of Brixton. The Primal Scream combo (and sadly Simonon) exit as quickly as they came on. Leaving the stage for Mick Jones to bring things home backed by The Farm as they run through 'Armagideon Time' and end the set with 'London Calling'. The encore is 'Janie Jones' and Reprise of The Farms 'All Together Now' before the whole night comes to a close with BAD’s 'Rush'.

The Primitives - Scala, London

2011-11-01T21:32:00.002Z

Dragged my buddy Vaughan along to see The Primitives at Scala for the Fortuna Pop labels 15th birthday celebrations.

Having never seen The Primitives in their heydey I was excited to hear the bands jangle-pop live. Unfortunately it's a sound that does come across as very dated.

Still it was cracking to hear songs like "Really Stupid", "Through the Flowers" and of course easily their finest song (and not surprisingly tonights show-closer) "Crash".

Wilco - The Roundhouse, London

2011-10-28T21:00:00.005+01:00

Great show from Wilco at what is becoming one of my fave larger London venues. Good to hear a fair batch of new album 'The Whole Love' live, but I'm a real sucker for old-school alt-county Wilco (circa 'A.M.') so it was a fantastic treat to hear "Shouldn't Be Ashamed".

Art Of Almost
I Might
Ashes of American Flags
Bull Black Nova
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
One Wing
Side With The Seeds
One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)
Shouldn't Be Ashamed
Born Alone
Jesus, Etc.
Capitol City
Handshake Drugs
I'm The Man Who Loves You
Standing O
Impossible Germany
Dawned On Me
Encore:
Whole Love
A Shot in the Arm

The Jayhawks - HMV Forum

2011-08-05T23:20:00.002+01:00

Very excited to finally see one of my all time favorite Americana bands play live. Given the Mark Olson left the band in 1995, and remaining founding singer/songwriter put them into hiatus in 2005 - it did seem like something I'd never be able to experience.

Bu here I was with around 1500 of the other roots-rock faithful to finally hear Mark Olson and Gary Louris blast through a set comprised primarily of their landmark early-mid Ninties releases 'Hollywood Town Hall' and 'Tomorrow the Green Grass'.

Understandably the band didn't touch any material from the albums released post-Olson's departure, save for the wonderful 'Tampa to Tulsa' from 'Rainy Day Music' - sung by drummer Tim O'Reagan.

We also got a healthy preview of material from the forthcoming album 'Mockingbird Time' which sees Olson recording with the group again for the first time since 1995.

One minor criticism would be the state of Olson's voice, which was always slightly rugged, tonight was very worn - possibly not helped by the fact that he'd already played a full 45 min opening set accompanied by Ingunn Ringvold.

That quibble aside, a fantastic show, and if this re-union isn't a one-off event and turns into a full-blown reconciliation, then it would be good if they started including more material from the great later-Jayhawks releases like 'Smile' and 'Rainy Day Music'.

Full Setlist:

1. Witchita
2. Two Angels
3. Real Light
4. Red's Song
5. Nothing Left To Borrow
6. Closer To Your Side
7. Two Hearts
8. Settled Down Like Rain
9. Take Me With You When You Go
10. She Walks In So Many Ways
11. Blue
12. Nevada, California
13. Run Away
14. Miss Williams Guitar
15. Black Eyed Susan
16. Bad Time
17. Waiting For The Sun
18. Up Above My Head

19. Over My Shoulder
20. Tampa To Tulsa
21. High Water Blues
22. Clouds

23. Hide Your Colors
24. Sister Cry

Weezer - Brixton Academy

2011-07-06T22:14:00.007+01:00

Justin and I nipped down to Brixton to catch Weezer at their only UK show. Despite being one of my fave bands for the best part of two decades, I've been becoming progressively less interested in each new Weezer album since the "Red" album in 2008. So I wasn't sure what to expect from this one - would they want to promote their latest album 'Hurley' and play mostly that? I know they embrace their old stuff, but they usually bill these as "Memories" shows and play the "Blue Album" or 'Pinkerton' in their entirety.

All fears were quickly forgotten when the band took to the stage and launched into their very first single "Undone", quickly followed by "My Name is Jonas" and "El Scorcho".

It was fantastic to hear all your favorite Weezer songs getting blasted out live. A few things struck me during the show.

Firstly it seems Weezer have a refreshing attitude to live performance, treating it as a "show" with a focus on entertaining the crowd by playing what they want to hear, rather than whatever their latest release might be. As a result the setlist was wall-to-wall Weezer classics, with only "Pork & Beans" and "Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" (both from the "Red Album") as anything post-2001.

Another thing was how front-man Rivers Cuomo is getting stranger and stranger. Odd stuff tonight included smashing a ukulele during the first song, nerdy/weird between-song banter (lots of references to "the gods of rock"), and a sweet impromptu song about London/Brixton as part of the intro to "Islands in the Sun".

Being a connoisseur of cover versions - it was also great to see a couple featured in tonight's show - a fairly straight reading of Wheatus 2000 hit "Teenage Dirtbag" (which they apparently started covering as everyone confused Wheatus and Weezer, so assumed it was their song anyway), and a main-set closing take on Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" which Rivers introduced as their favorite British song by their favorite British band.

Lastly, it seems somewhere in the last 20 years Weezer turned into a pretty serious rock band. They rock very hard.

Full Setlist:
1. Undone - The Sweater Song
2. My Name Is Jonas
3. El Scorcho
4. Holiday
5. Pink Triangle
6. Susanne
7. Island in the Sun
8. Teenage Dirtbag (Wheatus cover)
9. The Good Life
10. The World Has Turned and Left Me Here
11. Say It Ain't So
12. Tired of Sex
13. You Gave Your Love to Me Softly
14. Pork and Beans
15. Across the Sea
16. The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)
17. Only in Dreams
18. Paranoid Android (Radiohead cover)
Encore:
19. Hash Pipe
20. Buddy Holly

John Cougar Mellencamp - Hammersmith Apollo

2011-07-03T23:53:00.004+01:00

Went along with Justin, Nick and Sarah to check out the John Cougar Mellencamp show at the Hammersmith Apollo. The show was billed as "an evening with..." and actually did a pretty good job of melding JCMs contemporary folk troubadour material with his more popular rock/pop stuff from the 80s and 90s.

Kicking off promisingly enough with "Authority Song" from 1982's 'Uh-huh', the first part of the show saw the band playing more acoustic based instruments, which suited the more recent folky material like "Death Letter" and "John Cockers", although it was good to hear "Check It Out" recast in this folky mode as well.

This led into a short solo acoustic set which featured a great version of "Save Some Time To Dream" from latest album 'No Better Than This', and an acapella take on "Cherry Bomb" that featured more crowd singing that JCM.

The band rejoined briefly for a few songs, including a nice-bluegrass reworking of "Jack and Diane" that was an early highlight. Solo versions of "Jackie Brown" and "Small Town" followed, before JCM was joined by a fiddle and accordion player who took over for a lengthy coda.

This gave some time for the rest of the band to switch to electric instruments, and return to the stage to blast through rockin versions of "Rain on the Scarecrow", "Paper on Fire" and "Crumblin Down". Before the show closed on a massive high-note with "Pink Houses" and "R.O.C.K in the USA".

Strangely, despite still having a little time left on the curfew - the band didn't return for an encore, which was disappointing as it was really with the last few electric songs that the band really started to take flight.

Full setlist:
1. Authority Song
2. No One Cares About Me
3. Death Letter
4. John Cockers
5. Walk Tall
6. The West End
7. Check It Out
8. Save Some Time To Dream
9. Cherry Bomb
10. Don't Need This Body
11. Easter Eve
12. Jack & Diane
13. Jackie Brown
14. Longest Days
15. Small Town
16. Rain on the Scarecrow
17. Paper in Fire
18. Crumblin' Down
19. If I Die Sudden
20. Pink Houses
21. R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.

Ryan Adams - Barbican Theatre

2011-06-20T23:55:00.002+01:00

Took my work buddy Vaughan to see Ryan Adams at the Barbican Theatre. It was a solo acoustic show - one of only a handful across Europe as Ryan's "return" to the music industry after a 2 year hiatus.

As even occasional Ryan Adams fans know - he can be very much a hit-and-miss proposition in concert.

Fortunately, this was practically my dream Ryan Adam's show.

He was engaging and fun, really seemed to be enjoying himself. The setlist could have been ripped straight from my ipod playlist "RAdams faves". You'd think it would be hard to top kicking off with 3 in a row from 'Heartbreaker', but he managed it with the encore by dipping back all the way to Whiskeytown (first time he'd played them in 10 or 15 years?) for '16 Days'.

Full Setlist:
To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)
Oh My Sweet Carolina
Damn, Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)
Everybody Knows
If I Am A Stranger
Firecracker
My Winding Wheel
Invisible Riverside
New York, New York
Ashes And Fire
Let It Ride
Desire
The Rescue Blues
English Girls Approximately
Blue Hotel
AMY
Encore:
16 Days
Two
This House Is Not For Sale
Stop

INXS - Clapham Common

2011-06-11T20:09:00.003+01:00

My buddy Nick persuaded me to come along to see INXS play at Clapham Common as part of the Southern Sounds festival.

We managed to snag a 2-for-1 deal from a tout on the way in, and it was easy to see why when we arrived as the crowd was clearly well down, and struggling to fill the large space.

We spent the first hour or so there avoiding the light rain and the multitude of pissed ex-pats giving all the Aussies/Kiwis and Safa living in London a bad reputation!

I wasn't expecting much but INXS, fronted by Rock Star winner JD Fortune, managed to put on a pretty good show. They started with a fairly indulgent stomp-esque drum-off, but once they started pulling out the hits - and you got used to JD Fortune's slightly racier stage mannerisms - things got along well.

The original band-members even gathered, campfire singalong style, around a single mic from a stripped back "Don't Change" which was actually pretty good.

The problem really started mid-set when they started bringing out some guest-vocalists to promote their most recent release 'Original Sin' - which has them doing -covers- sorry re-workings of INXS songs with different vocalists. The problem was none of the big names from the record seemed to be available, so we were left with one of the backing vocalists having a crack, and some strange lady from Paris giving it a try as well. It was like a giant hand-break in the middle of the show and really lost any momentum the band had gathered.

Things picked up again with the return of JD for 'Beautiful Girl' - and from then til curfew it was hits a plenty.

Full setlist:
Drum instrumental
Suicide blonde
Devil inside
Kiss the dirt (falling down the mountain)
Pretty Vegas
Taste it
Don't change - vocal
Mystfie - guest
New sensation - guest
Beautiful girl
The stairs
Mediate
Need you tonight
Not enough time
Disappear
Bittertears
Original sin
What you need
Never tear us apart
By my side - Encore
Mystify

Grant Lee Buffalo - Royal Festival Hall

2011-05-19T02:38:00.002+01:00

Went with Justin to catch one of a handful of Grant Lee Buffalo reformation gigs. Having seen lead-singer Grant Lee Phillips live a number of times (including a fantastic show at Bush Hall last November), I didn’t have massively high expectations for this one. I was excited to see one of my old-favorite bands playing together - but I figured I'd just get to hear a few more oldies in the set, but the show would be pretty much like Grant Lee solo.

I was very wrong and the trio of Grant Lee Phillips, bassist/keyboards Paul Kimble and drummer Joey Peters clearly comprise far more than the sums of their individual parts.

Although things started slowly with 'The Shining Hour' and 'Wish You Well', by the third song - a blistering 'Jupiter and Teardrop' the show really began to take flight.

The sound the trio got was incredible with Phillips using a bank of effects pedals to conjure blistering guitar solos from his acoustic. It was also interesting to see the dynamic between the band members, with bassist Kimble clearly leading the ensemble and calling song changes during a few songs.

As expected the show was very strong on material from their stunning 1993 debut 'Fuzzy' (8 of the albums 11 songs got played), there was also a lot from their second album 'Mighty Joe Moon', with just a couple from '1996's 'Copperopolis'. Disappointingly (although perhaps understandably given it's the only album made after the departure of bassist Paul Kimble) no material from the fantastic final Grant Lee Buffalo album 'Jubilee' was performed.

Full Setlist:
The Shining Hour
Wish You Well
Jupiter and Teardrop
Demon Called Deception
Lady Godiva and Me
Soft Wolf Tread
Stars n' Stripes
Bethlehem Steel
Honey Don't Think
Mockingbirds
Happiness
Sing Along
Drag
America Snoring
Fuzzy
Encore:
The Hook
Homespun
Mighty Joe Moon

Buffalo Tom – Dingwalls, London

2011-03-10T23:57:00.003Z

Something of a time-warp back to the mid-Nineties to see Buffalo Tom live for the first time in at least ten years.
Not a lot seems to have changed. Sure the band are looking a little older, but they are still sitting on a criminally underrated back catalogue of fantastic guitar rock. Show was also helped by the fact that new album ‘Skins’ is also pretty great.
The show offered up a great mix of new material (“Down” and “Guilty Girls” worked best for me) and classic older stuff – with a heavy dose from probably their finest album ‘Let Me Come Over’: “Taillights Fade”, “Velvet Roof”, “Larry” and “Darl”.
Encore included a surprisingly stripped-back cover of New Orders “Age Of Consent” and “The Bus” from their 1988 self-titled debut, before closing with “Sunday Night” from ‘Sleepy-Eyed’.

1. Treehouse
2. Summer
3. Down
4. Rachel
5. Guilty Girls
6. Taillights Fade
7. Sunflower Suit
8. Late At Night
9. Arise Watch
10. Velvet Roof
11. Larry
12. I’m Allowed
13. She’s Not Your Thing
14. Scottish Windows
15. Your Stripes
16. You’ll Never Catch
17. Tangerine

18. Don’t Forget me
19. The Bus
20. CC and Callas
21. Age of Consent
22. Darl
23. Sunday Night

Josh Rouse – Jazz Cafe London

2011-02-19T23:31:00.003Z

Went with Justin to a fine Josh Rouse show on Saturday night. I was actually expecting solo acoustic, so was pleased to see Josh joined by a second guitarist and double-bassist - who both contributed fine, Spanish-inflected, backing vocals.

Opening with new song “My Heart Is Full of Love” delivered unplugged from the stairs as the band made their way from the first floor band room to the ground floor stage The show went on to feature a smattering of new songs, with “Cats and Dogs” the highlight for me.

The material was very heavy on Josh’s last album ‘El Turista’ but managed to squeeze in some older material, including a surprising “Sunshine” to close the main set.

First encore “Sad Eyes” was played solo acoustic as a crowd request. With the band joining for “Streetlights” before the show closed with an audience sing-along for “Love Vibration”.

1. "my heart is full of love" (new song)
2. lazy days with josephine
3. i will live on islands
4. las voces
5. winter in the hamptons
6. lemon tree
7. oh, look what the sun did!
8. carolina
9. julie (new song)
10. summertime
11. quiet town
12. valencia
13. "cats and dogs" (new song)
14. his majesty rides
15. flight attendant
16. my love is gone
17. come back
18. sunshine
encore:
19. sad eyes (solo)
20. street lights
21. love vibration

Jenny & Johnny - The Luminaire

2010-12-10T23:50:00.005Z

Sadly one of my favorite London venue's The Luminaire on Kilburn High road announced recently they'll be closing down in the new year. Still I got to enjoy the place one more time with a much anticiapted Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice show to promote their recently released Jenny & Johnny album.

I'd read online they were a bit funny about delving into their respective back catalogs during these duo shows. True to their word - the main set featured 10 of the 11 songs from the Jenny and Johnny album. I've actually had that record on high rotation for a few weeks so it was actually a blast to hear chunky live versions of the album. They also had a big set-up for a 200 person room so the show was loud!

Not surprisingly, the any subtle quieter songs tended to be a little lost, but the rockier material, particularly opener "Comitted", a blistering "My Pet Snakes", and "Big Wave" all sounded great. New song "Just One of The Guys" was also very good.
For the encore, we did get a small dip into the back catalog with "End of the Affair" from Jonathan Rice's 2007 album 'Further North" but the highlight for me (and most of the crowd) was a few selections from Lewis's 2008 second solo album 'Acid Tongue' including "Next Messiah" and a show closing "Carpetbaggers" with Rice taking on the Elvis Costello vocals. The clear highlight was however was a spine-tingling "Acid Tongue" with the female duo from support act La Sera adding gospel-like backing vocals. Mesmerizing!

Full setlist:
01. Committed
02. Scissor Runner
03. New Yorker Cartoon
04. My Pet Snakes
05. Just Like Zeus
06. Straight Edge of the Blade
07. Slavedriver
08. Switchblade
09. Big Wave
10. Just One of the Guys *new song*
11. Animal
12. The Next Messiah
13. End of the Affair
14. Acid Tongue
15. Carpetbaggers

Darren Hanlon - The Horatio, London

2010-12-09T22:33:00.002Z

Nipped across town with my buddy Justin to see Darren Hanlon do a short-notice solo show in London. I'd not been to the Horatio before, but it seems like an ok room providing most of the crowd is respectful of the performer (as they were with Dazza) but less so with support act Dan of Green Gables.
Kicking off with 'Electric Skeleton', Darren was in great form despite picking up a cold while in the UK. I'm absolutely loving Darren's new record 'I Will Love You At All' - I think it's easily the best record he's made - so it was great to hear "Buy Me Presents", "Scenes from A Seperation" and an excellent version of "Home" in stripped back format.
A friend of Darren's (sorry missed the name but she had an outstanding voice) joined for the duet "All These Things" and stayed to take on lead vocals for "Fire Engine".
Promopting for requests, the mostly Australian crowd got fairly rowdy and pushed for a lot of older songs like "She Cuts Hair" and the main set closing "Falling Aeroplanes".
It was also great to hear a cover of The Go-Between's "Lee Remick" and I really enjoy the banjo-heavy cover of "Pinball Millionaire".
Unfortunately with a lot of chatting between songs, the show was too quickly at an end, leaving only time for a short one-song encore of "Folk Insomnia".
Full setlist:
01 Electric Skeleton
02 Buy Me Presents
03 A-Z
04 Spend Christmas Day With Me
05 Scenes from A Seperation
06 She Cuts Hair
07 Lee Remick
08 Home
09 I Waited for the 17
10 Fire Engine
11 All These Things
12 Pinball Millionaire
13 Elbows
14 Punk's Not Dead
15 Falling Aeroplanes
16 Folk Insomnia

Grant Lee Phillips - Bush Hall, London

2010-11-07T23:46:00.002Z

A great, but long-awaited- show from Grant Lee Phillips at The Bush Hall. I actually purchased these tickets back when his album ‘Little Moon’ was just-released, but thanks to that pesky Icelandic volcano the original show in April was rescheduled to tonight.

On the plus side, it meant I got to take my buddy Justin along to see his first live music show in London, and I reckon it was a pretty good one.

I’d been checking out reviews on the web for other shows on this European tour and they’d all been solo acoustic, so I was surprised tonight to find Grant Lee accompanied by a young drummer and bass player, who he announced early in the show were making his debut performance together.

Although ‘Little Moon’ has been out sometime by now, I still love the record so it was great to see so much material drawn from that release, including the opener “Good Morning Happiness” (one of Milo’s favorites) followed by “Strangest Thing” (one of my favorites).

It was good to see Grant Lee in full-band mode, hopefully a pre-cursor to the Grant Lee Buffalo reunion shows scheduled for Jan 2011.

One minor quibble with the show was the way the set was structured seemed a little schizophrenic – opening with a bunch of material from his solo albums, before switching mid-set into a whole bunch of older Grant Lee Buffalo songs. Still, minor criticism aside, it was fantastic to hear the stripped-back band tackle old favorites like “Honey Don’t Think”, “Mighty Joe Moon” and “Mockingbirds”.

Another clear highlight was the main set closing “Raise the Spirit” from 2007’s ‘Strangelet’ which has now turned into a T-Rex-esque stomper.

Grant-Lee then returned solo to start the encore with a fantastic run-through Grant Lee Buffalo’s “The Hook” and “Fuzzy” before the rhythm section returned to give us “One Morning” from ‘Little Moon’ and “We All Get A Taste” from 2001’s ‘Mobilize’.

The crowd seemed to be enjoying the show, and despite concerns around the curfew managed to tease a second encore out, with a great run through Grant Lee Buffalo’s “Lone Start Song” to close things.

Full setlist:
Good Morning Happiness
Strangest thing
Little Moon
See America
Ain't the same old cold war
Killing a dead man
Nightbirds
Honey Don't Think
Mighty joe moon
Mockingbirds
Buried treasure
Seal it with a kiss
Raise the spirit

The Hook (solo)
Fuzzy (solo)
One Morning
We all Get a Taste

Lone Star Song

Joe Henry - Meltdown Festival, London

2010-06-12T23:08:00.003+01:00

Went with my buddy Ross to the SouthBank Centre to see Joe Henry and his 3-piece band perform as part of the Richard Thompson curated Meltdown Festival. What an absolutely fantastic show - amazing sound, top-flight performances, and a fairly good selection of material considering he notoriously doesn't perform any material from his more country-orientated material, thus excluding anything pre-1996's 'Trampoline'.
A big change from the last time I saw Joe Henry play was he released a new album 'Blood From Stars' last year. Tonights show drew very heavily from that record - making up the bulk of the mainset and 8 of the first 10 songs played.
It's clearly material Joe's band know best, so they excelled on opened "Bellwether" and "The Man I Keep Hid" later in the set. Drummer Jay Bellerose was spell-binding to watch perform at such close quarters, but it was the baby-faced tenor saxphone player Levon Henry, who played on about half the set, that seemed to assert the most influence on the songs. Joe Henry mostly played acoustic guitar, although he did switch to grand piano for a few songs - although he warned the audience it wasn't his forte ("you know how they say most people while they're driving shouldn't text? Well for me playing the piano is like scaling a fish while I'm driving. Hard to do..... but I'm just so hungry").
For me, the show really took flight towards the end of the main set - with a mesmerizing run of songs from "The Man I Keep Hid" into "Flag", a great version of his Madonna co-write "Stop" (which she recorded as "Don't Tell Me"), a brilliant "Trampoline", before closing with "Our Song" and "Civilians" both from his second-to-last album 'Civilians'.
Unfortunately the SouthBank Centre has very strict curfews - so after a great main set there was only time left the band time to return for a sole encore, a medley of "Edgar Begen" into the old standard "I've Got You Under My Skin".

Full setlist:

1. Bellwether
2. Channel
3. Progress of Love (Dark Ground)
4. This Is My Favorite Cage
5. Sold
6. All Blues Hail Mary
7. Lighthouse
8. Truce
9. Suit On A Frame
10. The Man I Keep Hid
11. Flag
12. Stop
13. Trampoline
14. Our Song
15. Civilians

16. Edgar Bergen / I've Got You Under My Skin

Powderfinger - Brixton Academy, London

2010-06-05T23:39:00.001+01:00

After a month delay amid volcanic ash flying confusion, we finally got to see Powderfinger for their final show in London. Back when we booked these shows it was part of the ‘Golden Rule’ tour, but once the band announced they will cease touring at the end of this year, the whole European tour became the first-leg of their ‘Sunsets’ final tour.

Considering this would be the last time the band would play in London – it was a little sad to see the balcony section we had tickets for less than half full. Still what the crowd lacked in numbers they made up for in volume – as Bernard Fanning commented a few times during the show – at one point calling it the best audience they had ever had in London.

Among the four of us attending the show tonight: Kim, plus our friends Nick & Rach – there seemed to be a general consensus of mixed feelings. Obviously everyone was disappointed that a great band was calling it a day. However it did mean the show tonight featured many of Powderfingers finest songs – and only 2 from the new album the opening “Burn Your Name” and “A Fight About Money” early in the set. I imagine if the show had remained part of the album tour as originally intended the material performed would have differed dramatically.

Still – it was the last show in London so the band pulled out a lot of their back catalogue – dipping back into ‘Internationalist’ for “Don’t Want to Be Left Out”, “Passenger” and a fantastic version of “Already Gone” with an extended bluesy harmonica intro.

I also really enjoyed the first encore which saw “On My Mind” merged into a cover of The Rolling Stones “Paint It Black”. Before returning for a second and final encore of “These Days”.

Full setlist:

1. Burn your name
2. Lost & running
3. Waiting for the sun
4. Don't wanna be left out
5. A fight about money
6. My kind of scene
7. Love your way
8. Thrilloilogy
9. Already gone
10. Sunsets
11. Passenger
12. Pick you up
13. Bless my soul
14. Nobody sees
Encore
15. Baby I've got you on my mind / Paint it black
16. My happiness
Encore 2
17. These days

Pavement - Brixton Academy

2010-05-12T23:58:00.001+01:00

As a massive fan of Pavement, I was always going to attend one of their 4 Brixton Academy shows - but I was doing some with some trepidation. Given the band have been very open about the fact they are reforming for the money - percussionist Bob Bob Nastanovich needs to pay off serious gambling debts being the main reason frontman Stephen Malkmus finally agreed to the reunion - I was expecting a nostalgia spectacle of old bald fat dudes trashing their own history.

So it was a fantastic pleasure to report Pavement was absolutely on-fire, as good as I remember seeing them in their prime 'Crooked Rain' days at The Price of Wales Hotel in Melbourne.

Kicking off with "Frontwards", things really got cooking with "Summer Babe" that led into a run of songs so fantastic that I literally lost track of time. The setlist doesn't even begin to do justice to how great Pavement sounded: "Gold Soundz", "Trigger Cut", "In The Mouth of A Desert", "Spit on A Stranger", "Perfume V", to a mass crowd sing-along for "Shady Lane".

As with the Pavement of the passed there was some mid-set noodling with slower material like "Loretta's Scars" stretched out longer than was probably necessary. There was also a mid-song breakdown in "In the Mouth A Desert" which reminded me of the old Pavement shows: walking the tight-rope between mesmerising and disaster.

Frontman Steve Malkmus was in amazing form, ambling to the mic as if he just awoke from a nap and suddenly found himself on stage. He also delivered a touching tribute to the late (great) John Peel, explaining how he - and The Wedding Present who covered "Box Elder" on one of their early singles - really gave them the break that got them where they are today. The main set ended with a great version of "Here".

First encore saw the band joined by John Bennet (once of The High Llamas) for second guitar on "Range Life", before a crowd pleased "Stereo". The remaining encores ended on a low-key note with "Father to a Sister of Thought" and "Stop Breathin'" before the show closed with "Conduit For Sale!".

1. Frontwards
2. Summer Babe
3. Date With IKEA
4. Gold Soundz
5. Trigger Cut
6. In The Mouth A Desert
7. Spit on a Stranger
8. Perfume-V
9. Shady Lane
10. Unfair
11. Loretta's Scars
12. Fight This Generation
13. Silence Kit
14. Grounded
15. Debris Slide
16. The Hexx
17. Lions (Linden)
18. Two States
19. Cut Your Hair
20. Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse)
21. Box Elder
22. Kennel District
23. Here
Encore:
24. Range Life
25. Stereo
26. Fin
Encore 2:
27. Father to a Sister of Thought
28. Stop Breathin'
29. Conduit For Sale!

She & Him - Koko, London

2010-05-08T14:27:00.003+01:00

Went along with my buddy Malthe to check out Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward as She & Him.
It was a pretty good show with Zooey bouncing around the stage like a beach-ball while M.Ward plays the role of showy band-leader. They are backed by a tight band of rhythm guitar (who also jumped on occasional keyboards), bass, drums, and support act The Chapin Sisters providing angelic backing vocals.
The show drew heavily from the just-released 'Volume Two' but also managed to include a few of the best tracks from 'Volume One'.
Highlight from me was a mid-set bracket, with Zooey accompanied only by M.Ward on acoustic guitar, that included their excellent cover of "You Really Got a Hold on Me".

With the full band returning for a rousing version of current single"In The Sun". Another surprise inclusion was a rocking rendition of "Magic Trick" from M.Wards 'Post War' album.
After a good 45 min show, the band returned for a two-song encore that concluded with a cover of "Roll Over Beethoven" (which M.Ward also included in his set when I saw him last June)
Less impressive was the second encore cover of "I Put A Spell On You" but a pretty good show regardless.

Gorillaz – The Roundhouse

2010-04-29T23:14:00.003+01:00

Fantastic show from Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz – playing London for the first time since 2001.
Given the group has only played a handful of shows together (a few warm-up rehearsals in rural UK, plus Coachella festival last week) what was most surprising was how tight the core band was.
It probably helps that the group is anchored by Mick Jones on guitar, and Paul Simonon on bass – playing together for the first since Jones left The Clash in 1983. Seeing these two on-stage together was a dream come true – the loping bass style of Simonon unchanged and instantly recognisable from hours of bootleg Clash videos I’ve sat though.The rest of the core band consisted of an all female string section, several keyboard players, four backing singers, two drummers and a second guitarist. Albarn started the evening playing keyboards near the rear of the stage, but occasionally came forward to perform a traditional front-man role – like on ‘Last Living Soles’ played early on it the show.For all the hype around guest appearances – the core band actually led the show through 5 songs before any of the special guests appeared; albeit Snoop Dogg did make a great cameo to open the night via a specially filmed “Welcome to Plastic Beach” video.
Bobby Womack and Most Def provided the first highlight with a blinding version of ‘Stylo’. Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano joined to provide her Bjork-esque vocals for 'Empire Ants', she also returned less successfully in the encore to duet with Albarn on ‘To Binge’. Bootie Brown then made an appearance rapping on 'Dirty Harry'.
Surprisingly one of the best collaborations of the night was the Syrian National Orchestra, joined with UK rappers Kano and Bashy for 'White Flag'. Quite surreal to see such a mix of musical styles on stage: the traditional instruments of the orchestra duelling with the string quartet, while Kano and Bashy rapped around them; all the while Mick Jones and Simonon looked seemingly bewildered.
Best guest appearance of the night had to be De La Soul – who first joined the band, together from Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals – for 'Superfast Jellyfish', but nearly took the roof off The Roundhouse when they returned in the encores for ‘Feel Good Inc.’.
The most unexpected appearance was Shaun Ryder, who joined Roise Wilson for a ramshackle but crowd pleasing ‘Dare’.
After so much up-tempo material, it was surprisingly they chose to end the main set on the somber mood of ‘Cloud of Unknowing’ featuring Bobby Womack.
After briefly leaving the stage, Mos Def kicked of the encore with 'Sweepstakes'. The night ended on a fantastic high – with a thumping version of early single ‘Clint Eastwood’ that appropriately saw Albarn front and center to close the night.

Full setlist:
'Orchestra Intro'
'Welcome To The World Of The Plastic Beach'
'Last Living Souls'
'O Green World'
'On Melancholy Hill'
'Kids With Guns'
'Stylo'
'Rhinestone Eyes'
'Broken'
'Empire Ants'
'Dirty Harry'
'White Flag'
'Superfast Jellyfish'
'Dare'
'Glitter Freeze'
'El Mañana'
'Cloud Of Unknowing'
encore:
'Sweepstakes'
'To Binge'
'Feel Good Inc'
'Clint Eastwood'

Neil Finn - Bush Hall

2010-02-03T19:24:00.003Z

Saw a fantastic low-key Neil Finn show at the Bush Hall with Nick, Rach and Caroline.

I was curious what form the show would take give Finn had no new record to promote. I was a little worried it may feature a lot of 7 Worlds Collide material - which is a fine record, but having seen that show not so long ago at Dingwalls I was hoping for something a bit different.

Well bit different was certainly what was delivered as Finn announced at the start of the show he was focusing on the "high risk strategy" of airing lesser performed material.

Alternating between acoustic guitar and mini-grand piano - it was awesome to hear stripped down versions of such fantastic songs as "Private Universe" (a spell binding show opener), "Only Talking Sense" and "Try Whistling This".

It was also great to hear reasonably obscure stuff like the fantastic Crowded House b-side "Walking On The Spot".

We also got to hear a few previews of new songs (I guess from the next Crowded House album due in a few months) with the stand-outs "Elephants" and "Amsterdam".

There was also a fair bit of crowd participation - surprisingly organized group harmony on a few songs - and a couple of people even joined Neil on-stage, including a nervous young-ish girl (12?) who played "3 black keys" during "Anytime". Perhaps more impressively Finn recognized a chap in the front of the crowd who got up to play piano with him at a previous show some years ago, so asked if he's like to join him for a song. "Steve" obliged and, at his suggestion, the delivered an awesome "Love You Til The Day I Day". Very impressive.

Closing with a long-run of piano-based tunes, including a lovely cover of Paul Kelly's "Leaps and Bounds" (a long running request through-out the show from a very loud punter) which lead into a couple of the highlights for me: fantastic piano versions of "Mean To Me" and "Message To My Girl". Before the over 2 hour show finished with "Throw Your Arms Around Me".

most of the songs played:
Private Universe
Turn and Run
Only Talking Sense
Try Whistling This
Last Day of June
Walking on the Spot
Into the Sunset
Last to Know
Wherever You Are
Anytime (with audience member)
Love You Til The Day I Die (with audience member Steve)
Faster Than Light
Message To My Girl
Four Seasons In One Day
Into Temptation
I Feel Possessed
Sinner
Twice If You're Lucky
Elephants
Amsterdam
Leaps and Bounds
Mean to Me
Don't Dream It's Over
Gentle Hum
Throw Your Arms Around Me

PS thanks to MelbourneFlower on Flickr for the great photo. http://www.flickr.com/photos/59794835@N00/

The Pixies – Brixton Academy

2009-10-09T01:43:00.003+01:00

As seems to be the trend these days, the basis for this my first ever Pixies show was playing their brilliant 1989 album ‘Doolittle’ in its entirety, in order.

As I noted when I saw Teenage Fanclub perform their ‘Bandwagonesque’ album a few years ago – it’s a concept that sounds fantastic in principle, but on the night can be very anti-climactic.

Quite smartly, The Pixies clearly tried to toy with this notion, but still stayed true to the ‘Doolittle’ focus of the night, by book-ending the album with a performance of some b-sides from the same period. Thus the show got off to a slightly wonky start with the likes of “Dancing The Manta Ray”, “Weird At My School” and “Manta Ray” (all included on the original ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven” 12” in 1989) together with the strange (even by The Pixies standards) “Bailey’s Walk” (from the ‘Here Comes Your Man’ 12”.

Then came the main-course – ‘Doolittle’ in order and uninterrupted. It’s fortunate this album contains some of The Pixies best-known songs; kicking off with “Debaser” that had the upstairs of the Brixton Academy shaking along with the rumbling bass-line.

Knowing the precise songs that will be played in exactly what order , also gave the band an opportunity to beef up the onstage production – so we were treated to a fantastically crisp large video screen behind the band playing videos and animations that often synced exactly to the lyrics being sung (especially well done with “Hey”). The videos themselves were extremely impressive, and the imagery and style was very consistent with the original Vaghan Oliver ‘Doolittle’ artwork .

The main set concluded, as with the album, with “Gouge Away”; before the band returned for the first encore, again staying true to the ‘Doolittle’ focus by performing the remainder of the ‘Here Comes Your Man’ b-sides, my preferred version of “Wave Of Mutilation” the slow “UK Surf” mix; and “Into The White”.

After a lengthy wait (presumably to give the ‘Doolittle’ focus time to fade) the band returned for a quick second encore, whipping out a few Pixies hits with “Vamos”, “Gigantic” and my all-time favourite Pixies song “Where Is My Mind?”

Full set-list:
01 Dancing The Manta Ray
02 Weird at My School
03 Baily’s Walk
04 Manta Ray
05 Debaser
06 Tame
07 Wave of Mutilation
08 I Bleed
09 Here Comes Your Man
10 Dead
11 Monkey Gone to Heaven
12 Mr. Grieves
13 Crackity Jones
14 La La Love You
15 No. 13 Baby
16 There Goes My Gun
17 Hey
18 Silver
19 Gouge Away

encore 1
20 Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21 Into The White

encore 2
22 Vamos
23 Gigantic
24 Where Is My Mind?

Wilco - Troxy, East London

2009-08-25T23:07:00.004+01:00

A great show by Wilco at a very cool old theater in East London. The place was fantastic, very well preserved art-deco building with a nice high stage, room for around 1000 folks standing at the front, and great seats high above the standing folks at the back.

Despite a long history of line-up changes - the current line-up of Wilco is actually the longest serving and most consistent in their career, having played together since 2004 when guitarist Nels Cline (who was on fire tonight) and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone joined the group.

I bring this up because I think it really shows that you now have six musicians who have played together for seven years, producing what I can only describe as a group mentality that allows them to move fluidly through any twists and turns that each song takes.

Surprisingly the show tonight wasn't particularly heavily drawn from the just released new Wilco album 'Wilco (The Album)' - although tonight was a fairly impromptu show slotted in amongst European festival appearances - so maybe they're saving the new album-centric set for their proper UK tour in November.

That said, the show did open with the ridiculously catchy "Wilco (The Song)" (surely the best use of a band's own name in their lyrics since Wang Chung). We also had the great first single "You Never Know" later in the main set.

Otherwise it was something of a good cross-section through the bands more recent back catalog - with most songs coming from the 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', 'A Ghost Is Born', 'Sky Blue Sky' or the just released new album.

Surprisingly we actually got to hear three tracks from 1999's 'Summerteeth' with great versions of "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)", "A Shot In The Arm" and "Can't Stand It".

Older material also included a straight-up country reading of 'Being There's "Forget The Flowers" and a lovable but ramshackle "Hoodoo Voodoo" from 'Mermaid Avenue' to close the show.
Highlights from me were a mesmerizing "Handshake Drugs", the somber "Jesus, etc" and the rocking main-set closing trio of "Hate It Here" into "Walken" and "I'm The Man Who Love You".

A clear stand-out in the band was guitarist Nels Cline - who played like a madman, and with an almost Sonic Youth-esque vigor, slashing at his instruments, and I lost count of how many different guitars he played (although the best one had to be the twin-necked beauty with a fur strap that even had Jeff Tweedy joking "you play a solo like that, you get a guitar like that").

The show was a lot of fun, not the least as it was singer Jeff Tweedy's 42nd birthday which led to a crowd rendition of Happy Birthday, some cake and confetti on stage, and a great moment during a drawn-out "Spiders" in the encore where, unhappy with the crowd participation for clapping along, Tweedy demanded the audience behave as if they were Queen and we were Wembley, pleading "it's my birthday, and this is all I ask". We were even rewarded with a mid-song rendition of Queen's "We Are The Champions" before the group dropped straight back into Spiders.

Full Setlist:

1 Wilco (the song)
2 I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
3 Company In My Back
4 Bull Black Nova
5 You Are My Face
6 One Wing
7 A Shot in the Arm
8 Radio Cure
9 Handshake Drugs
10 Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)
11 Deeper Down
12 Impossible Germany
13 You Never Know
14 Jesus, etc.
15 Can't Stand It
16 Hate It Here
17 Walken
18 I'm The Man Who Loves You
-------------------------
19 At Least That's What You Said
20 Forget The Flowers
21 Heavy Metal Drummer
22 Spiders (Kidsmoke)
23 I'm A Wheel
24 Hoodoo Voodoo

Neil Finn & Friends - 7 Worlds Collide 2 – Dingwalls, London

2009-08-11T01:40:00.003+01:00

As a follow-up to the star-studded charity concerts staged in New Zealand 7 or 8 years ago, last Christmas Neil Finn invited a bunch of musical peers (and their families) to celebrate the New Year in New Zealand. Whilst there, they also put his new recording studio Roundhead through its paces by recording a double-album ‘7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out' - due out the end of August with all proceeds going to Oxfam.
The guests on the record seem pretty fantastic: Johnny Marr, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway from Radiohead, most of Wilco, KT Tunstall, plus most of the Finn family, and local New Zealanders Bic Runga and Don McGlashan from the incredibly underated Mutton Birds.
Tonight was a seemingly impromptu album launch – announced and ticketed only the week before – at the tiny Dingwalls with a max capacity of 450 people. Despite lots of rumours swirling about different guest appearances – this was really a one off-show for a cracking core band that combined the rhythm section from Wilco - John Stirratt on bass and drummer Glen Kotche - with Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Phil Selway (who actually played very little percussion – more keywords, guitar and lead vocals on two songs) with Neil Finn covering lead vocals plus some guitar and occasional keyboards. They were also joined on a couple of songs by Mr KT Tunstall, drummer Luke Bullen.
Appropriately enough the show kicked off with Crowded House’s “Distant Son” – which gave the whole project its title. The rest of the set was drawn from the forthcoming 7 Worlds Collide ‘The Sun Came Out’ album – so it was a credit to the audience that a dozen songs that no one had really heard before were treated with hushed reverence.
It’s always tricky to judge things on first hearing, but highlights for me included the poppy “Too Blue” written by Johnny Marr and Jeff Tweedy , Neil Finn’s own “All Comedians Suffer”, and Don McGlashan’s “Girl Make Your Own Mind Up” – which sounded like a classic pop tune in the vein of Paul McCartney’s Eighties solo material.
A surprisingly nervous Phil Selway took lead vocals for quiet acoustic numbers “Ties That Bind Us” and “Witching Hour”. Whilst Wilco bassist John Stirratt took lead vocals on his own composition “Over and Done” – a delightful country tinged number in the vein of his sole Wilco lead vocal performance A.M.s “It's Just That Simple".
As I remarked to my friends Rachel and Caroline: you can really tell a top class band when the non-singing members could be lead vocalists in their own right. Stirratt also provided impressive harmony vocals through-out the night, injecting enthusiasm and relishing bouncing through a set of not-often played songs.
One of the best songs of the night was the Jeff Tweedy written “You Never Know” that sounded like very much the Wilco song it’s become. A strange one this: it resulted from the 7 World’s Collide sessions and is included on ‘The Sun Came Out’, but a slightly different version – the exact same recording but with Neil Finn’s parts removed – is also included and issued as the first single on the new Wilco album ‘Wilco (The Album)’. Regardless – it sounded great tonight with Neil Finn doing a pretty convincing Jeff Tweedy impression on lead vocals.
Main set closed with a great version of Crowded Houses “Private Universe” that made excellent use of the multiple drummers on stage offering intertwining percussion.
Sadly the band returned for just the one encore, but what a cracker it was: kicking off with Split Enz “I Got You” had the whole place singing along. The band was then joined by a friend, the mysterious Garth, on ukulele for a delicate reading of The Beatles “Something”. Neil Finn seemed to relish the crowd sing-along, as he then conducted the audience like an orchestra, encouraging harmonies for the show closing “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Weather With You”.
Again – it would have been great for another encore, but just one small quibble for an otherwise fantastic opportunity to see some of the world’s top musicians in such an intimate setting. Kind of like I imagine backstage jams or late night studio sessions might resemble.

Setlist:
Distant Sun
Too Blue
Little by Little
Ties that Bind Us
Learn to Crawl
Girl make your own mind up
All Comedians Suffer
Witching Hour
Over and Done
You Never Know
Tibetan Blue
Private Universe
Encore:
I Got You
Something
Don't Dream It's Over
Weather With You

Blur - Hyde Park, London

2009-07-02T22:56:00.005+01:00

London has been experiencing something of a heatwave for the last week (UK heatwave = more than 3 days above 30 degrees) but the good news is it meant we got cracking weather for this Thursday night Blur concert in Hyde Park.
When Blur announced they were reuniting for the first time in 10 years - this was actually the first show they put on sale so Kim and I were stoked to get tickets. Subsequently they announced a raft of additional shows, including a headline slot closing Glastonbury festival last Sunday night, so the main thing we've been doing is trying to avoid spoilers so we get a few surprises and enjoy the show without too many preconceptions.
The other big news - on a more personal level - was because of the warmer weather our little boy Milo has been waking a lot during night, so rather than leave him with our kindly volunteer first babysitter (thanks Mich!) we thought we'd take him along to his first proper gig (technically he has seen Tom Waits and Springsteen while in the womb - but this is his first gig "on the outside").
I'm glad we did take him along as the environment was really good for an almost 8 month old. The area of Hyde Park reserved for the concert was enormous, so with a lot of the crowd trying to get as close to the front as possible, it was positively spacious for us old folk at the back. Plus Milo was loving it. Hanging out with Dad in the Baby Bjorn carrier, and decked out in his bright neon green Peltor Kid hearing protectors (believe me, they looked way cooler than the name suggested - so much so we had several random strangers photograph him!). We even brought along our picnic blanket so we could sit and eat some dinner before Blur came along. Very civilized.
I'm pretty sure it's been remarked upon before just how many great singles Blur have released. It's actually almost daunting when you hear them all in the same show. Kicking off, appropriately enough with their very first single "She's So High" before moving into an excellent "Girls & Boys" that seemed to have the whole park bobbing along. And the hits just kept on coming: "There's No Other Way", a fantastic "Beetlebum" played just as the sun was setting. "Out of Time" my favorite song from the much-maligned final Blur Album 'Think Tank'. The Graham Coxon sung "Coffee & TV" is one of Kim's fave's so that was good to hear. The biggest response of the night came with "Parklife", as Damon explained it was written about this very park, and actor Phil Daniels made a guest-appearance to delivery the mockney spoken verses. A trio of great slower numbers gave the crowd a chance to catch their collective breaths towards the end of the main set: "End of a Century", into "To The End" and "This Is A Low".
The first encore kicked off with a blistering "Song 2" and suprisingly included the fan-favorite "Death of A Party". We thought we'd beat the rush by heading off during the final encore, but managed to hear the lovely "For Tomorrow" playing away in the distance as we walked home. Apparantly they closed with "The Universal" although we were probably close to tucked up in bed by this stage.

Full setlist:

01 She's So High
02 Girls & Boys
03 Tracy Jacks
04 There's No Other Way
05 Jubilee
06 Badhead
07 Beetlebum
08 Out Of Time
09 Trimm Trabb
10 Coffee & TV
11 Tender
12 Country House
13 Oily Water
14 Chemical World
15 Sunday Sunday
16 Parklife
17 End Of A Century
18 To The End
19 This Is A Low
20 Popscene
21 Advert
22 Song 2
23 Death Of A Party
24 For Tomorrow
25 The Universal

M. Ward – Shepherds Bush Empire, London

2009-06-30T23:25:00.003+01:00

One of the great things about the summer festival season is the number of international acts who pop-up doing their own headline shows while in town.
Such is the case with M.Ward – who I absolutely love, but have only seen perform once before when he supported Beth Orton on one of her Australian tours.
That show was solo acoustic – so it was great to see Matt with a four-piece band tonight (strangely, all of whom wore stylish hats).
Always a fan of a good cover-version, the early part of the set included his subdued call-and-response take on Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” amongst newer material including the title track to his recently released sixth album ‘Hold Time’.
A mid-set solo acoustic bracket including his much loved cover of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” and a great version of “Fuel For Fire” from his fourth album ‘Transistor Radio’.
Rebecca Stark, lead singer with support act Lavender Diamond joined for harmony vocals on a great version of “Magic Trick”. A rollicking “Never Had Nobody Like You” – one of my favorite tracks from the new album, was good but sadly missing the lovely Zooey Deschanel on harmony. Closing the main set with a blistering cover of “Roll Over Beethoven” that gave Matt the chance to let out some ripping guitar solos.
The short encore started with the John Fahey instrumental “Bean Vine Blues, No. 2” and also included a great bar-room piano heavy reading of “Big Boat”.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Hyde Park, London

2009-06-28T23:09:00.004+01:00

Another summer = another Springsteen tour. How good! This time around limited to just a few major UK dates (a Saturday night headline slot at Glastonbury – which the BBC broadcast a glorious near 2-hour chunk from last night) and a Sunday night in Hyde Park, a short 20 minute stroll from home (so close Kim could hear the encore and named every song when I got back!).
This is the first tour whereby the format hasn’t changed dramatically from the previous tours – so while a number of the set-pieces remained the same (“Badlands”, “She’s The One” and “Out In The Street” early in show; “The Promised Land”, “Radio Nowhere”, and “Born To Run” later).
So the best part for me was where things got mixed up, like a show-opening cover of The Clash’s “London Calling” (I just finished the excellent Joe Strummer biography ‘Redemption Song’ and interestingly much of his latter life played out in nearby Ladbroke Grove – literally a stone’s throw away). The new economic-crisis inspired bracket of “Seeds”, “Johnny 99” and “Youngtown” mid-way during the set. There’s also a great wild-card section where Bruce grabs signs requesting from the crowd, which saw him pluck out their great cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Trapped”, and a two-shoot from Born in the USA with “Bobby Jean” and “No Surrender” the latter a fantastic duet with a very emotive Brian Fallon from The Gaslight Anthem (New Jersey natives who played earlier in the day – and had Bruce join them onstage for one of their own songs “59 Sound”).
The encore kicked off with a cover of the gospel-heavy “Hard Times Come Again No More” (a Stephen Foster song from the 1800s) and featured a fantastic “Jungleland” with a note-perfect sax solo from Clarence Clemons (who is looking decidedly worse for wear these days).

Mick Thomas - The Troubadour London

2009-05-01T22:25:00.007+01:00

Great to see my buddy Mick Thomas play another fine show in London on a lovely Friday night at The Troubadour in Earls Court. One of the last remaining original 50s Coffee Houses in London, the basement venue has allegedly played host to a range of classic folk/rock performers - although I could not find evidence of Jimi Hendrix playing there as they claim, wikipedia does confirm Bob Dylan did play there in Christmas 1962 as Blind Boy Grunt.
Anyway - back to more contemporary times - Mick was touring with Sure Thing/Weddings, Parties, Anything drummer Michael Barclay - and although I initially thought the pairing might produce a bluesy Black Keys / White Stripes-esque combo; in fact the mode was much more relaxed and subtle with Barclay mostly contributing his angelic backing vocals, plus light percussion with an assortment of shakers and a box-like drum he sat on that produced a range of snare sounds when tapped in different locations.
The setlist was drawn pretty heavily from his just-released 'Spin! Spin! Spin' album, the standouts of the new material for me being "Selling The Cool Car For You", "Garage Sale", "Driving Rain" and "At Their Record Launch".
Notable stand-outs from the back-catalogue included the opening "Forgot She Was Beautiful", "Father's Day", "A Tale They Won't Believe", "Rain In My Heart", "Baked a Cake", "Away Away" and "Monday's Experts".
Having last seen Mick play in Melbourne last Christmas it was interesting to see how he succesfully structured a show for European audiences - including locally based material like "Explaining The Offside Rule to You" and a rivetting "Hard Currency" to close the first of two sets.
I went along with my friends Rach and Nick, and during the between set break we debated the two primary models of Mick Thomas songs. I remarked how much I enjoyed the more narrative and slightly serious songs (like the aformentioned "Hard Currency", "Away Away" and show closing " For A Short Time") but Rach, more of a casual fan, was clearly more in tune with the humorous lighter material like "Can I Sleep On Your Floor" and "Tommy Didn't Want You" - which judging by the laughs and strong response from the crowd - a lot of the audience seemed to favor as well.
Still - it's great that there's two sides to the show, and it certainly makes the evening more enjoyable to bounce between the darker and lighter stuff.

You Am I - Electric Ballroom, Camden

2009-03-27T22:46:00.008Z

Got my buddy Malthe along to see You Am I for a very early Friday night gig - band onstage just before 8:30pm and full house lights on and bouncers moving people out at 9:45pm.
By way of preparation I made Malthe my "20 Favorite You Am I songs" playlist - and I think it was only 3 or 4 songs into the show before we hit something he knew with a ramshackle "Jamie's Got A Gal". That said, the mix was very shoddy so he barely recognised it - but I guess "sloppy but right" is something of a You Am I mantra. I should have put "Purple Sneakers" and "If We Can't Get It Together" as they both got played tonight and sounded great.

For me the show really took flight with "Ain't It Funny..." and from there it was great to hear stuff like "Gunslingers" and "Get Up". Classics includes "Mr Milk","Cathy's Clown", "Berlin Chair" and "How Much Is Enough?"

My final thought was why Tim Rogers feels the need to always take his shirt off - he's the skinnest bugger you've ever seen and sports the worst trucker-tattoos this side of Readers Wives. Young Davey Lane on the other hand was respindent in a lovely suit. World turned upside down.

Eskimo Joe - The Electric Ballroom

2008-12-04T23:57:00.002Z

My buddy Rachel and I went along to The Eclectric Ballroom in Camden to see Eskimo Joe on their first UK tour.
They put on a very professional show, clearly well rehearsed (and possibly a little too "rock" in some of the stage moves and patter) but really enjoyable.
Kicking off with "Sarah" the set was strong on material from their most recent album 'Black Fingernails Red Wine' - although they did reach back for a few songs from 2nd album 'A Song Is A City', like "Older Than You" and show-closer "From The Sea".
Unsuprisingly "London Bombs" was very well received - although lead-singer Kav did take time to explain it was written as a view of London from someone in Fremantle, so he found it ironic finally playing the song in London.
They even found time for a brief acoustic set, that included an unplugged-style sing-along of Crowded House's "Weather With You" which was very popular with the largely expat Australian crowd.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Outside Lands Festival, Golden Gate Park San Francisco

2008-08-23T23:08:00.005+01:00

While in sunny California for work I managed to get along to day two of the three-day Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park. I've never been a massive fan of all day events - so I only went along for the last half of the day - but managed to catch little bits of Ben Harper, Primus, and Cake (who were fantastic) before settling in to grab a good spot for Saturday night headliner Tom Petty.
I've been going through something of a Tom Petty resurgence lately - thanks in no small part to the excellent Peter Bogdanovich documentary 'Running Down A Dream', but not unlike Tom Waits - I've never seen Tom Petty live as he isn't a frequent visitor to Australia (I think his last tour was in 1986 with Bob Dylan) and doesn't even visit the UK a lot either.
So on a lovely Sat evening I settled in for two hours of well-loved hits, including a brief interlude where Steve Winwood came out for a couple of songs - including a blistering "Gimme Some Lovin".
Pretty much every great Tom Petty song you could imagine got an airing - the only disappointment being he didn't play "The Waiting" - but he did include a few more obscure songs like "Even The Losers" and The Travelling Wilbury's "End Of The Line", the latter giving the rest of the Heartbreakers a chance to shine as they alternated lead vocals. I also liked hearing some of the more recent stuff, like "Saving Grace" from 'Highway Companion' and "Honey Bee" from 'Wildflowers'.

The encore included a lengthy take on Them classic "Gloria" - including a spoken interlude about Petty trying to woo a lady who looked down on him for being a "dope-smokin' long-haired rock n roller". A great night.

You Wreck Me
Listen To Her Heart
I Won’t Back Down
Even The Losers
Free Fallin
Last Dance Mary Jane
End Of The Line
Can’t Find My Way Home (w/Steve Winwood)
Gimme Some Lovin’ (w/Steve Winwood)
Saving Grace
Breakdown
Honey Bee
Learning To Fly
Don’t Come Around Here No More
Refugee

Runnin’ Down A Dream
Gloria
American Girl

Tom Waits - Teatro degli Arcimboldi, Milan Italy

2008-07-19T22:29:00.013+01:00

A few months back I managed to book tickets to Tom Waits 'Glitter and Doom' tour as the show co-coincided with my birthday. Fairly impressively - given the ticketing site was entirely in Italian so I had to use translation service Babelfish to navigate my way through things - we managed to get front row seats!

So on a beautiful Saturday night in Milan we took a taxi across town to the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, built in the abandoned Pirelli tire factory, in an area known as Bicocca.

To avoid scalping tickets could only be collected on the day with a photo ID, so we got to the theatre a few hours early and collected our tickets without any troubles. At this stage most of the 2000 crowd was also at the theater - lending the night a carnival-like atmosphere with people drinking and eating in the courtyard and street outside the theater - there was also a street market setup where half a dozen different vendors selling bootleg t-shirts displayed their wares and tried to steal each others customers.

When the theatre opened we found our seats and waited for the show to start. The stage set-up was fairly impressive. At centre-stage a slightly raised section shaped like a large bass drum lying on it's side, strewn with Egypitian hiragliphics around the edges, and a boxing ring bell attached to the side. High above the stage, mutil-coloured speakers hung from towers.

I've loved Tom Waits and his music for well over a decade, but in that time he's rarely toured and never toured Australia (his last Australian tour was 1978 and according to reports, he was treated so poorly and had such a miserable time that he vowed never to return).

So at around 9:30 when the houselights went down and the crowd erupted - i was filled with both excitement and trepidation. Would he live up to his showman expectations? Would we only hear songs from the latest albums, or would he delve into his illustrious back catalog? Fortunately the answers were a resounding yes, no, and yes!

In fact, tonight's show was without a doubt one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Waits is such a showman, not only musically but injecting a good dose of the theatrical into things as well - that it's made me reevaluate some of my previous favorite concerts and I came up feeling slightly short-changed.

Tom looks great for his 58 years - sprightly and stylish dressed in dark boots and jeans, a brown shirt, waitscoat, jacket, and bowlers cap. Lit from above - he looks incredibly foreboding as he launches the five-piece band into a mash-up of two songs from his 'Orphans' boxset: the verses from "Lucinda" coupled with the choruses of "Aint' Going Down To The Well No More".It turns out the raised section of the stage has a sprung floor - so as Tom stomps, dust and smoke is thrown into the air; and if he stomps hard enough - the boxing bell chimes!

Next up is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs "Way Down In The Hole" - a clear favorite with the crowd and known to many as the theme-song to seminal TV show 'The Wire'.

Next up was "I'll Shoot The Moon" from 'The Black Rider', which is not an album I listen to a lot but I'll be certainly going back to after tonight as it sounded like just a great love song.

Tom's showmanship was first-rate, including a few between song monlogues when he took to the piano - with one great story about the Lost Baggage Centre outside Milan that Tom had intended to vist... until they lost his luggage. Ironico! At one stage he replaced his regular hat with one covered in reflective tiles - so he performed as a human mirror ball. And in the main-set closing "Make It Rain" Tom was rained on from golden confetti - preumably the "glitter" in the Glitter and Doom tour.

Tom's band was universally excellent : Omar Torrez doing a great job filling some historically big shoes (Marc Ribot) on guitars, Patrick Warren - keyboards, Vincent Henry was incredible on a variety of wind instruments - seemingly playing two saxophones simultaneously at one point, Seth Ford-Young was great on upright bass, while Tom's oldest son Casey did a good job on drums and percussion, we even got a couple of guest appearanes from Tom's youngest son Sullivan assisting on conga drums and carinet on a couple of different songs.

I'm gushing at this point but there are literally too many highlights for me to call out everything - but hearing songs from his most recent original album 'Blood Money' ("All The World Is Green" and "God's Away On Business") live was fantastic.

I also got to hear a great selection of my all time favorites: "Cold Cold Ground" was riveting, "Jesus gonna be here" was reworked into a more melodic arrangement, "Innocent When You Dream" was the big crowd sing-along for the night, and we got a good dose of material from 'Rain Dogs' - the album that first turned me onto Tom Waits: "Raindogs", "Jockey full of bourbon" and a brilliant "Hang down your head" in the encore, before closing with a blistering "Goin' Out West". Simply brilliant!

Full setlist:

Lucinda / Aint' Going Down To The Well No More
Way down in the hole
Fallin Down
All the world is green
I’ll shoot the moon
God’s away on business
Cold Cold Ground
Eyeball Kid
Jesus gonna be here
On the nickel
Tom Traubert’s blues
House where nobody lives
Innocent when you dream
Lie to me
Hoist that rag
Lost in the bottom of the world
Chocolate Jesus
Raindogs / Russian Dance
Dirt in the ground
Make it rain
encore:
Jockey full of bourbon
Hang down your head
Goin out west

PS. On a side note we also got to do a bit of celebrity spotting - seeing actress Tilda Swinton early on (and later at the cab rank) and actor Roberto Benigni (although I didn't see him myself there was photos of him at the show)

Radiohead – Victoria Park, London

2008-06-25T23:35:00.002+01:00

Like seemingly half of London – Kimbo and I headed down to Victoria Park for the second of Radiohead’s two hometown shows for their 2008 World tour.
It was actually a bit of a trek – so we arrived at the park in time to hear Radiohead drifting across to us as we wandered into the gates and found a spot in amongst a nicely civilised crowd of around 32,000.
Drawing mostly from their post-‘Kid A’ material, it was good to hear a few oldies in the mix, including “Lucky” early on in the set, and a crowd-pleasing “No Surprises”.
The stage set-up was very impressive – the sound was excellent from the few different spots we tried. And the video screens on either side of the stage were fantastic – crystal clear separate images of all band members, utilising unusual camera positioning (like birds-eye view directly above front-man Thom York) – and resembled more of a well-produced music video than the standard crappy camera focussed on the lead-singer that you usually get at concerts.
The lighting effects were also astounding, with long beams hanging down to the stage and around the band, that could both light-up different colours and also, seemingly display footage within them (or maybe this was projected onto them?).
The main set came to a close with a great double-header of “Everything in it’s Right Place” leading into “Idioteque” – two of my favourite Radiohead songs from their recent twitchy-pop period.
We started making our way out of the park as the encore’s commenced, but it was great to hear “The Bends” and other classics drifting across as we slowly made our way to the exit.

Full setlist:
01. Reckoner
02. 15 Step
03. There There
04. All I Need
05. Lucky
06. Nude
07. Wierd Fishees / Arpeggi
08. Myxomatosis
09. The National Anthem
10. Faust Arp
11. No Surprises
12. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
13. Optimistic
14. Videotape
15. Everything in its Right Place
16. Idioteque
17. Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
18. House of Cards
19. The Bends
20. Bangers 'n' Mash
21. My Iron Lung
22. Karma Police

Encore 2
23. Go Slowly
24. 2+2=5
25. Paranoid Android

My Bloody Valentine - The Roundhouse

2008-06-20T23:36:00.007+01:00

Loudest-gig-ever.

When we arrived, there was a few signs up offering free ear-plugs from the merch desk. I thought was a bit of a gimmick - but fortunately a friend at work hooked me up with a couple of pairs in advance - and I'm so glad he did. This was without a doubt the loudest gig I have ever been too. Things started well with the more mellow "Only Shallow" into "When You Sleep" - however as the show went on everything got louder and louder. By the last song "You made me realise" stretched into 15+ minutes of guitar noise/feedback which is being dubbed "holocaust" on some fan websites. It's certainly the first time I've seen people with ear-plugs still covering their ears!
Kimbo was a big fan back in the day so we we're both pretty excited about seeing the first show of their reunion after a 15+ year hiatus. Also the Roundhouse is an ace venue. It was a very cool show - absolutely no between song chat, a 90 min set straight-up no encore. Played everything you wanted to hear, plus a few odd EPs tracks. But it was just so loud. As one wag observed as we we're leaving: "it was like Kevin Shields decided 'the last thing I want everyone to hear is my gig'..".

The other thing that's been kinda funny is all the UK music media treating the MBV reunion with religious fervor. My favorite was Xfm with "sonic cathedrals of sound".

Full Set-List:
Only shallow
When you sleep
You never should
(When you wake) you're still in a dream
Lose my breath
I only said
Come in alone
Thorn
Nothing much to lose
To here knows when
Slow
Blown a wish
Soon
Feed me with your kiss
Sueisfine
You made me realise / 15+ mins of noisy feedback

N.E.R.D - Brixton Academy

2008-06-14T23:49:00.002+01:00

We got the new N.E.R.D. album 'Seeing Sounds' a couple of weeks ago and it's been on high rotation ever since. Both Kimbo and I reckon it's a massive return to form, up there with their 2002 debut, after the likable but kinda hollow 'Fly Or Die'.

So we were both pretty excited to be heading down to their only UK headline show (the band we're over for an appearance at the Isle Of Wight festival last night).

The crowd anticipation was high when we arrived about 9pm (the time the band was scheduled to come one) as the audience proceeded to boo the start of every new pre-recorded song - meaning it would be another few minutes before N.E.R.D. hit the stage.

The show itself got off to a bit of a stuttered start, with the 5-piece band coming on (guitar, bass, keywords, and two drummers) coming on to a massive cheer, doing a quick run through of "Anti-Matter" from the new album; before leaving the stage again. A few minutes latter the full crew returned to the stage led by Pharrell Williams and Shay Haley upfront, while Chad Hugo placed himself behind some keyboards at stage center.

This time the launched into a full version of "Anti-Matter" one of my favorites from the new album. Quickly followed by "Brain" from their debut.

The band sounded very tight - particularly impressive with two drummers. The main trio held things together well. They possibly when a little hard on pushing the new album ("I want all of you to come home and tell 10 friends why they should buy our new album"). Also the show production seemed a little hit-and-miss - some songs had impressive lighting and visuals on a large screen behind the stage, while others seemingly had no lighting at all.

Such was the case for "Spaz" from the new album, although the pre-faced this by saying they we're filming tonight for a music video for this song - which explained the presence of a camera crew on stage during most of the most. It's pretty cool to know the show we were at will be the next N.E.R.D. video - but it did kill the momentum of the night slightly, especially when they stopped to film crowd cut-aways and reaction shots.

Still, over all the show was great with other stand-out tracks including"Lap Dance" and "Rock Star" from 'In Search Of' plus "Maybe" and "Fly or Die" from 'Fly Or Die'.

It was the closing few songs when N.E.R.D. really found their form, from a filthy "Backseat Love" to roof-lifting current single "Everyone Nose", straight into 'Fly Or Die's "She Wants to Move" (which included 20+ "girls" from the crowd dancing on stage). The band then closed with a note-perfect rendition of The White Stripes "7 Nation Army" while Pharrell and Shay rapped the refrain of "Everyone Nose" - "all the girls standing in line at the bathroom" over the top. A suitably strange but impressive way to end a good night.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Emirates Stadium

2008-05-31T23:07:00.004+01:00

Two shows back to back for Bruce & the E Street Band - the first concerts at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. The band seem much tighter than the O2 and Paris shows last December - and clearly the ongoing tour has shaken up the setlist a lot more, so they were far less reliant on the newer material from 'Magic'.

Two nights in the same city also means you're in for some surprises and Bruce didn't disappoint - mixing up the show incredibly between Friday and Saturday so only a dozen songs were repeated over both nights. In the end it seemed like rather than 2 separate shows, it was actually one long 6 hour show (with a very long interval).

I had standing tickets for the Friday night, and by getting down early managed to get into the front "pit" section which was unbelievable. At first I pushed forward with a few "bruce buddies" so I was super-close for the first couple of songs. After a while I moved to the back of the pit crowd - but was still only 20 meters from the stage. I also ended up standing next to actor Benecio del Toro who seemed to be really enjoying the show - got particular excited by the 'Darknes' double of "Candy's Room" into "Prove It All Night".

Saturday night I had seats for Kimbo and I in the Club Level - which was great, directly in front of the stage, but a long way back compared to being in the front few rows.

Of the two nights - I think Friday was the slightly better of the two. A much longer show - 28 songs - making it one of the longest shows Bruce has done in a few years. Opener "10th Avenue Freez-out" was a surprise. And I really enjoyed the double-shot from 'Nebraska' of "Atlantic City" straight into a blues-boogie heavy "Reason To Believe". Nils solo in "Because The Night' is still a real highlight. It was also a treat to here "Point Blank" which I don't think I've heard Bruce do live before.

Saturday night was a much different show - Bruce opening with 4 songs not played the night before, then going into "traditional" show opener 'Radio Nowhere'. Early on Bruce made a sweep through the front of the crowd and grabbed a bunch of signs people had made for their favorite songs - "request night" he called it as he flicked through the pile, and called for the band to go into a great (and not often played) "Downbound Train", which lead into a 'Born In The USA' double-shot as it was followed by the tour premiere of "I'm On Fire".

Other stand-outs: "The Rising" which is just a fantastic song and really stands up with the best of Bruce's back catalog. I've never been much of a fan of "Mary's Place" but it does seem to suit the big stadium shows, with Bruce using the chants ("turn it up, turn it up") to work the crowd up into a bit of a frenzy. It also gives Bruce a chance for the famous knee-slide across the stage - which he is surely getting too old for, but is still fun to watch.

So a very different couple of shows from the sole London show last December - and it just seems like the band is going from strength to strength so I eagerly await more shows next year.

Weddings, Parties, Anything - The Astoria 2, London

2008-04-25T23:29:00.004+01:00

What a fantastic Anzac-Day treat with one of my favorite Australian bands, extending their 10 Year Anniversary of their break-up Reunion tour, to one show outside of Australia - and it's in my town of London!

The Astoria 2 (previously known as the Mean Fiddler) holds around 1,000 people - and while the show wasn't a sell-out, there was a good 700 or 800 fans who came to bid the band farewell (as this is theoretically the last show of their reunion tour) .

It's always tough when you see a band you love reform, time and your memory plays tricks and you tend to remember them being a lot tighter, rocking a lot harder, and telling much funnier stories between songs. We'll no such problems happened with WPA - they were without a doubt in as good form as I can ever remember seeing them - in fact I suspect they were much tighter and more rehearsed or "match fit" as frontman Mickey T would put it.

So the playing was tight and the song selection outstanding. Kicking things of with an unexpected but appropriate cover of Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town" - which was less 70s rock anthem and more 30s jig. All the band "classics" are present and accounted for: "Away Away', "Ticket In Tatts", "Sgt Small", "Luckiest Man" , "Roaring Days" and a fitting for Anzac Day "Scorn Of The Women".

The many covers WPA have made their own: "Grey skies over Collingwood", "Rosy and Grey", and a fantastic "Streets Of Forbes". Swill from The Men They Couldn't Hang joined the band to duet on "Industrial Town" (which the Men covered on their ace 'Domino Club' album). Fittingly enough, the show closed with a spine-tingling "For A Short Time".

Jason Isbell - The Borderline, London

2008-04-07T23:34:00.004+01:00

Keen eyed-readers may remember my brother Andy is a hardcore Drive-By-Truckers fan, and we even took a trip to Bilbao in Spain to see them play last time he was in town.
So it's hardly a surprise that when Andy's next visit coincided with a London show for former DBT guitarist now solo artist Jason Isbell - we'd be there with bells on.
It was actually a very packed Borderline for a Monday night, and Jason with his new band The 400 Unit ripped through a set drawn predominantly from his debut solo CD 'Sirens Of The Ditch'.
Opener "Chicago Promenade" set the scene, and not having heard a lot of his solo album I thought the more acoustic "The Magician", played late in the set was a standout.
"Dress Blues" - from his solo album but well known as an anti-war MP3 hosted on Neil Young's website - is a fantastic song, and got as great response. As did a countrified cover of Talking Heads "Psycho Killer". But the real highlight was hearing some of Jason's Drive By Truckers songs: "Danko/Manuel" and "Goddamn Lonely Love" from 2004's 'The Dirty South', together with "Outfit" and "Decoration Day" from 2003's 'Decoration Day'.

The Stems - The Boston Arms, London

2008-03-20T20:59:00.003Z

My brother Andy and I made the trip out to the Boston Arms Music Room in Tufnell Park to see Aussie legends The Stems perform what was surprisingly their first-ever London show.
The gig was part of a regular club night called The Dirty Water Club - covering all things sixties garage and retro. Clearly something of a regular gathering for some punters there was an impressive mix of era appropriate hair-styles and outfits.
There was a bit of confusion with the start times - so kind of double booking meant a battle of the unsigned bands went through to 11:30 so the Dirty Water club didn't start until close to midnight. To their credit, the organizers handed this pretty smartly, so instead of running through all 3 bands so The Stems wouldn't be onstage until around 2 or 3 am - they reversed the ordered with The Stems coming on around 12:30 (sorry Muck & the Mires and Cretinos but we didn't stick around for you).
The reformed Stems are touring in support of their new album 'Heads Up' and from the half a dozen new songs played tonight - it fits in perfectly with the retro-pop of their classic debut 'At First Sight'.
It was great to hear early single "Make You Mine", and other unusual inclusions included "My Beach" and a cover of The Easybeats "Sorry". Fittingly the show closed with a great "At First Sight"

The Hold Steady – Koko

2008-02-27T22:19:00.003Z

Wednesday night Andy and I caught a good show from The Hold Steady at nearby Koko. I’ve complained before about this venue – it just seems so much more crowded than other sold out shows – but tonight we actually headed up to the third level and managed to get a decent view that wasn't super-crowded.

Previously I’ve only seen The Hold Steady perform live at the Carnegie Hall Springsteen tribute last Easter – which only amounted to one song (albeit a sensational version of “Atlantic City”) so I was excited to see them play a full show.

As with the Springsteen tribute – frontman Craig Finn is a bundle of infectious energy: constantly bouncing around the stage, singing and shouting to the crowd off-mic, clapping his hands and grinning like a loon.
It certainly got the crowd dancing and moshing in unison – especially with early performances of better known songs like “Stuck Between Stations” and “Chips Ahoy”.

I’ve actually been listening to their most recent album ‘Boys and Girls in America’ for almost two years now – so having read the band have recently completed recording their new album, it was great to hear a few new songs.

I believe “Stay Positive” will be the title track to the album, and on first listen it sounded like a great crunchy rocker. The other newie was “Constructive Summer” which also sounded pretty good (and I’m pretty sure included a very cool name-check of Joe Strummer, rhymed with summer!).

The main set lasted almost exactly an hour, and the band returned for a three song encore, closing with “Killer Parties”. A great show, and you certainly got the sense from frontman Finn that if they could, the band would have keep playing for another couple of hours.

Full(ish) setlist:
Hot Soft Light
Stuck Between Stations
The Swish
Chips Ahoy!
Stay Positive
Party Pit
Massive Nights
Barfruit Blues
Constructive Summer
Same Kooks
Multitude of Casualties
Stevie Nix
You Can Make Him Like You
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
How A Resurrection Really Feels

Encore:
First Night
Southtown Girls
Killer Parties

The Eels - Royal Festival Hall

2008-02-25T23:59:00.004Z

Andy and I went along to the only London show for the latest Eels tour tonight. Touring on the back of their just released Greatest Hits and companion B-Sides/Rarities set “Useless Trinkets”, tonight’s Meet The Eels show promised to be something different again.

In fact band leader E prides himself on never repeating himself, and constantly trying to reinvent the live performance. A quick look-back over the last few Eels tours confirms he’s managed to succeed: from 2005’s Eels with Strings at The Royal Albert Hall, to 2006’s more rocking No Strings Attached at the Astoria to Mark Everett’s solo book launch in January – every show has tackled the Eels catalog in a new and interesting way.

If anything, tonights show was most reminiscent of the book launch in January, with things starting with a solo E accompanying himself on guitar for “A Magic World” and piano for “It’s A Motherfucker”.

Things quickly changed with the addition of the incredibly versatile Chet, initially on guitar, for rare early B-side “Strawberry Blonde”, but also playing pedal steel, keyboards, drums, and most interestingly a saw (which was played with a violin bow, and sounded similar to a Theremin) on “Climbing To The Moon”.The most enjoyable part of the set was when they settled into the most rocking combination of Chet on drums and E on guitar or piano for “My Beloved Monster”, “Last Stop: This Town”, “I Want to Protect You” and my highlight for the evening “Flyswatter” – which saw E and Chet swap between drums and piano, without missing a beat, so each could take a solo.

The night was also interspersed with some comedy. A recurring routine between E and a godlike disembodied voice; E reading some mixed fan mail and live reviews; and Chet reading some selections from E’s recent autobiography.

The home stretch included a loose cover of Led Zepplin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” with Chet taking lead vocals, before the main set finished with “Somebody Loves You” and “Souljacker Part 2”.

Despite encore shenanigans for all previous tours – the one disappointment was they only played 2 quick, single song encores – firstly “I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart”, before returning again to close with an excellent “PS You Rock My World”.

Full setlist:

A Magic World
It's A Motherfucker
Strawberry Blonde
Dirty Girl
Cheater's Guide
Souljacker Part I
Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor
Climbing To The Moon
My Beloved Monster
I Like Birds
Jeannie's Diary
In The Yard, Behind The Church
Last Stop: This Town
I Want To Protect You
Flyswatter
Bus Stop Boxer
Novocaine For The Soul
Good Times, Bad Times
Somebody Loves You
Souljacker Part II

Encore 1:
I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart

Encore 2:
P.S. You Rock My World

thanks to http://www.team-skinny-racing.com for the photo.

Steve Earle – The Roundhouse, London

2008-02-18T01:39:00.002Z

My brother Andy is staying with us at the moment, and he’s a massive Steve Earle fan (I fell away about 3 or 4 albums back) which inspired me to get us tickets to his show at The Roundhouse.

I’ve mentioned this venue before, but it really is a great way to see a bigger show. Feels very intimate for the 1000+ crowd, sound is great, and it’s very hard to find somewhere you cannot see the stage from.

Steve is running with the full bearded look these days. He’s also starting to go pretty bald on top, and put on a little weight – so he comes across as a dead ringer for poet Allen Ginsberg.

Wasn’t sure what to expect from this Steve Earle show – but things started off incredible well with 30-odd minutes of solo acoustic Steve going through highlights from his extensive back catalogue.

I really enjoyed opener “Steve’s Last Ramble”, “Goodbye”, “The Devil’s Right Hand”, “South Nashville Blues” and “Billy Austin”. It was also great to see him reach back 20 plus years to his debut album ‘Guitar Town’ for “Someday” and “My Old Friend The Blues”.

After warming the crowd up and wining us over with a few old favorites – Steve was then joined by a DJ who provided rhythm tracks (I believe “beats” may be what the kids are calling it these days) and some samples and effects for material from his latest album, the Grammy winning ‘Washington Square Serenade’.

I’m not hugely familiar with the new record, but standouts for me were “Satellite Radio” and “Steve’s Hammer (For Pete)”. “Transcendental Blues” also benefited from the DJ providing sitar-type effects. Steve’s current wife (and tonight’s support act – who we missed most of apart from an ok set-closing cover of “A Change Is Gonna Come”) joined from the duet “Days Aren't Long Enough” and hung around to provided hand-claps and backing vocals for “City Of Immigrants”. The main set closed with a great, effects heavy cover of Tom Waits “Way Down In The Hole”.

Returning quickly for a solo acoustic encore, Steve was more talkative than I’d seen him previously, and spent a long time dedicating “Little Rock & Roller" to his father and other family members. This launched into a crowd pleasing “Copperhead Road”. After a short break, Steve returned for a quick second and final encore of “Christmas in Washington”.

Joe Henry - Arts Theatre, Soho, London

2008-02-11T22:07:00.000Z

My brother Andy and I went along to see Joe Henry last night. I’ve been a massive fan since his ‘Short Man’s Room’ album in 1992. Having never toured Australia it’s the first time I’ve been able to see him play. These days it seems like he’s better known as a producer than as a performer in his own right, as the few hundred capacity Arts Theatre in Soho wasn’t quite a full house.

This is a shame as Joe is a wonderful songwriter and great showman who put on a great performance. Dressed in a stylish dark shirt and loose dark tie, he was accompanied by a versatile duo on double-bass and drums – they managed to conjure a diversity of sounds from the Spanish-tango of “Stop”, a South American lilt on “This Afternoon”, to more straight ahead acoustic rock-pop with a slightly jazzy lilt.

The lions share of the show came from Joe’s last couple of albums – mostly his great 2007 release ‘Civilians’ – with the title track and “Time Is A Lion” highlights for me. We also got a smatter of older songs, including three from 2003’s ‘Tiny Voices’ – “This Afternoon” my favourite of these; “Like She Was a Hammer” and the title-track from 1999s ‘Fuse’. My favourites of the night was the title track to 1996’s ‘Trampoline’ – possibly my favourite Joe Henry song of all time, and Spanish-styled “Stop” from 2001’s ‘Scar’.

One of the more unusual inclusions was Joe’s take on “You Can’t Fail Me Now” which he wrote for Loudon Wainwright III to perform on the ‘Knocked Up’ film soundtrack that Joe produced. Show closer “Edgar Bergen” segued into a brief reading off “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.

Henry is as witty between songs as his lyrics would suggest. Early on he apologies for not touring London for so long with a simple “I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you”. But his funniest was the intro to “Stop”, a song better known to most of the crowd through sister-in-law Madonna’s recording of it as “Don’t Tell Me”. As Joe explained it, “we recorded it as a tango, she recorded it as a hit”.

My only quibble was we didn’t get any material from Joe’s earlier – more Alt-Country albums like ‘Short Man’s Room’ or ‘Kindness of the World’. Although given the distinct stylistic break between his pre and post ‘Trampoline’ material – it’s easy to see why the more straight ahead country stuff is dismissed. I don’t think Joe Henry does a lot of touring these days – so if you do get the opportunity to check him out live, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Full setlist:
Civilians
Scare Me To Death
Civil War
Time Is A Lion
You Can't Fail Me Now
This Afternoon
I Will Write My Book
Sold
Stop
Like She Was A Hammer
Fuse
Trampoline
Flag
encore:
Edgar Bergen / I’ve Got You Under My Skin

Mark Everett - St James Church, Picadilly

2008-01-17T22:59:00.000Z

Solo show / reading from Mark Everett from The Eels - to promote the release of his book 'Things The Grandchildren Should know'.

St James is an operating church in the middle of London which apparently operates as a music venue every now and then (Arcade Fire did a gig there last year).

Tonights show had the air of anticipation, plus a few celebs like Pete Townshend from The Who and Alex James from Blur, that made it feel like a bit of an event.

Coming on around 7:45pm - Mark Everett (or E as he's more commonly known) was dressed in his seemingly standard boiler-suit. Playing solo, E moved from eclectic guitar to piano for the 15-song set.

Starting with the great 'Grace Kelly Blues' (love that line about the kid at the mall working at hot-dog on a stick!), and a couple of new songs, 'Dirty Girl' and a great 'Ugly Love'.

As a book launch - it was expected that E would read from his book as part of the performance, however never one to do the obvious, he announced it would be too pretentious for him to read himself, so instead asked for volunteers from the audience to read. The first guy was a bit shabby - but subsequent readers were great, especially the girl who read a passage about E's sisters funeral and "guest star" Pete Townshend who did the final reading - a funny piece about E being stuck in a hippy retreat with all communication forbidden, and sneaking off to write lyrics for the then new song 'Souljacker Part 2' on a roll of toilet paper.
The format for the show was E would play a few songs, then another reading, then a few more songs and so forth. To his credit, E had clearly spent a bit of time selecting the passages to be read and matching them with related songs from the Eels extensive back catalog. Either literally such as 'Souljacker' following the story of it's writing, or 'Daises Of The Galaxy' following the story of his sisters funeral; to more thematic links like 'A Magic World' following the first reading about E's troubled youth.

Full Setlist:
Grace Kelly Blues
new song ("now I'm full of love")
Millcent Don't Blame Yourself
Dirty Girl
Ugly Love
*book reading
A Magic World
* book reading
3 Speed
Climbing To The Moon
I Like Birds
It's A Motherfucker
Flyswatter
Bus Stop Boxer
* book reading
Daisies Of The Galaxy
Somebody Loves You
* book reading
Souljacker Part II
encore:
Girl From The North Country

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – O2 Arena London / Palais Omnisports De Bercy

2007-12-19T23:49:00.000Z

Caught the Paris and London shows for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street bands 2007 Magic Tour.

I was a bit nervous about seeing the E Street band again – as I was worried all the players were getting older and it may start becoming something of a character of their previous selves.

Well any fears were quickly dismissed as the show is very hard rocking, the band working hard for most of the 2 ½ hours – with only a couple of slower songs for the band (and the crowd) to catch their breath.

The first show I saw was in Paris, and we were seated behind the stage. Our seats were super-close (only 5 rows from the stage) but it was an unusual way to watch a show. It was an interesting perspective to see the hundreds of faces in the pit all staring intently at Bruce and yelling every word to every song – it must be reasonably unnerving. Also we saw a great scene as the band walks on the stage at the start of the show – Bruce stands at the bottom of the ramp leading to the stage and greats everyone as the walk on, wishing them a good show. Seemed pretty cool.

For such large venues – Paris seemed slightly smaller than the O2 Arena which I think holds around 20,000 people – the sound was impressive. Clear and pretty loud, and glorious. The quisessential E Street sound. As my buddy Ross who came to the London show with me put it: “so distinctive, cacophonous and romantic, it sounds like one instrument to me”

While both shows had very similar setlists (the main different being “The River” not played in London, to be replaced with “Working On The Highway” and “Racing In The Street”) I still found them both incredible enjoyable. If anything London was probably the better of the two – as being face on to the stage (we initially had seats up in the rafters, but noticed a bank of empty seats right next to the floor area which we managed to make our way to by the fifth song) it was hard not to get caught up in the action and emotion of the show.

Highlight for me was ‘Because The Night’ each night featuring a blistering solo from Nils Lofgren. In fact I took away from the shows a new found respect for Nils as the quiet foundation of the band working hard, and seemingly constantly changing instruments (sometimes within the same song).

The show featured maybe two too many songs from the new album for my liking – in particular, while I really enjoy “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” on the record, I don’t think it makes a strong opener for the encore. On the other hand – “Radio Nowhere” is the perfect show opener, and the title track was played in a great sparse arrangement featuring Bruce on acoustic guitar and Soozie on fiddle.

The other great thing was how well songs from ‘The Rising’ blended in with the rest of the Springsteen back catalog. Having lived with the album for a few years – it’s clear songs like “Lonesome Day” and “The Rising” are modern-Springsteen classics.

These being December shows – both nights ended with a fun run-through “Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town”. And with new shows announced for May 2008 – as Springsteen said “see you in the summer”.
Full setlists:

The 02 Arena, London – 19 December 2007:
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Night
Lonesome Day
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Working on the Highway
Racing in the Street
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
encore:
Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Jungleland
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
American Land
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

Palais Omnisports De Bercy, Paris – 17 December 2007:
Radio Nowhere
No Surrender
Night
Lonesome Day
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The River
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands
encore:
Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Jungleland
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark (with Elliott Murphy)
American Land
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town

Crowded House - Royal Albert Hall

2007-12-11T16:08:00.000Z

Having seen the first show of the Crowded House show – an intimate affair on a boat in Bristol – I wasn’t particularly tempted to go to the big arena show in London. However when the announced a special last show of the tour gig at the wonderful Royal Albert Hall – that one seemed too good to pass up, so I managed to get 2^nd row seats for Kimbo and I.

It was clear from the opener “Recurring Dream” (a rarely played non album track) that this show was going to be something a bit different, and it certainly seemed like the band had as much fun as the hardcore crowd.

When compared with the very first show back in March - it was remarkable to see how much tighter and more confident the band sounded. To be fair, they didn’t sound sloppy at that first show, it’s just that after playing together for 8 months, and with full production sound behind them: the group sounded amazing tonight.

They managed to play much of the highlights from the new album ‘Time On Earth’: “Don’t Stop Now”, “Pour Le Monde”, and an excellent “Transit Lounge” in the encore (complete with Beth Rowley on guest vocals). Although sadly no “She Called Up” or “Silent House”.

In between the band mixed in a bunch of rarer material: from the opening “Recurring Dream”, a touching “Message To My Girl” (which included Neil using a mobile phone to call and dedicate the song to what everyone presumes was his wife Sharon in New Zealand), the Paul Hester penned “Italian Plastic”, and “In The Lowlands” both from the criminally underrated ‘Temple Of Low Men’ album.

Highlights from me was Neil thanking all the road-crew then, seemingly spontaneously deciding to ask the “crew band” to come out and play a song, so the members of Crowded House would have a chance to go into the audience to watch them. The crew members obliged and did an incredible version of “It’s Only Natural” – while the band yucked it up in a box half-way down the arena – before they returned to stage to take-over and finish the song.

Neil also made mention that when they’d previously played The Royal Albert Hall – they’d found the large open room very conducive to paper aeroplanes – so they provided paper on people seats, and at some stages during the show you could look up and see a dozen or so planes flying around. Impressive, though it did wear slightly thin when cheers for a particularly long flight erupted mid-song.

As I remarked about the show in March – you simple forget how many fantastic songs Neil Finn has written. Standouts for me tonight was the main-set closing “Distant Sun”. “Four Seasons In One Day” – which Neil started sans-microphone, singing from the edge of the stage only a few feet from Kimbo and I.

All in all a great night from great, great band.

Recurring Dream

Say That Again

4 Seasons In One Day

Pour Le Monde

In The Lowlands

You Are The One

Hole In The River

Nails In My Feet

A Sigh

Pineapple Head

Italian Plastic

Don’t Dream It’s Over

It’s Only Natural (first half played by Roadie band)

Don’t Stop Now

Distant Sun

encore:

Chocolate Cake

Message To My Girl

Private Universe

2nd encore:

Mean To Me

Transit Lounge (with Beth Rowley)

Something So Strong

Into Temptation

Better Be Home Soon

Powderfinger - Hammersmith Apollo

2007-12-06T23:09:00.000Z

Great show from Aussie favorites Powderfinger at the Hammersmith Apollo. Show opened with new album opener "Head Up In The Clouds" but included a stack of old favorites like "My Kind of Scene" and "Love Your Way".

We'd been to see Ryan Adams and The Cardinals at this same venue only a few weeks ago, so it made an interesting comparison. The production for the Powderfinger show was excellent. Great sound, good lighting, and the stage set-up of four large Turkish rugs across the stage - one each for guitarist Ian Haug, singer Bernard Fanning, guitarist Darren Middleton and bassist John Collins- worked great.

Bulk of the show was material from their most recent album 'Dream Days at the Hotel Existence' (only out the week before in the UK) and highlights for me were first single "Lost and Running" and a solo acoustic "Black Tears".

Joined by an additional keyboardist, which led to a slightly corny organ/drum solo, the show was pretty slick. Saving some clear crowd favorites til the end of the set - so the main set finished with a mass sing-along to "My Happiness" and the rockin' "Bless My Soul" (first time played in the UK according to the band).

Encore started with an acoustic "Sunsets" just Bernard, Ian and John on acoustic guitars. Before closing on a high with "On My Mind" which segued into a reading of The Stones "Midnight Rambler".

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Hammersmith Apollo

2007-11-16T23:39:00.000Z

Fantastic show from Ryan Adams and The Cardinals tonight at the Hammersmith Apollo. With the exception of the first time I saw him play in Melbourne (supporting ‘Gold’ with the LAX his original backing band) this was easily the best show I’ve seen from him.

The band was in great form. Incredibly tight and they seem to have found a good groove, that can lean to the somber (especially when Ryan plays piano), the more countrified (with the pedal steel coming to the fore) or the rocking (with the dual electric guitar attack). Guitarist Neal Casal even took on lead vocals for a couple of his own tunes: "Freeway To The Canyon" and "You Don't See Me Crying".

It probably helps that I think Ryan’s latest album ‘Easy Tiger’ is the best thing he’s done in 3 or 4 years (which is an absolute eon in Ryan Adams world where he can put out three albums in 2005 alone). It marks a great return to more pop orientated songs like ‘Gold’ and ‘Heartbreaker’.

Tonight the new material sounded fantastic – especially the double-header of “Off Broadway” into “Goodnight Rose”. Standout for me was “Everybody Knows” and “Two”.

As if to highlight the stylistic connection with ‘Gold’ – we also got a bunch of material from that record: a piano heavy “Rescue Blues” straight into “When The Stars Go Blue”, plus “Wild Flowers” and “Goodnight Hollywood Boulevard”

Like most people I found Ryan’s 2005 triple-treat of ‘Jacksonville City Nights’, ‘Cold Roses’ and ‘29’ a lot to take in. So it was great tonight to hear those records paired back to just their essential moments: opener “Peaceful Valley”, “A Kiss Before I Go” and “Dead John” from ‘Jacksonville City Nights’. From ‘Cold Roses’: “Beautiful Sorta”, “Let It Ride”, “Easy Plateau”, “Cold Roses” and “Mockingbird”. While ‘29’ gave us the outstanding “Nightbirds”.

The crowd tonight veered a little on the painful side, with a sprinkling of hecklers who kept yelling random shit through the quiet moments. I guess they were trying to provoke some sort of outburst or incident (Ryan does have a reputation for storming or occasionally falling off the stage).

To their credit, the band simply put their heads down and got on with a cracking show. On the couple of occasions he did address the crowd between songs, Ryan seemed to have developed a pantomime showman approach “welcome friends and neighbors”.

Anyway – despite the minor quibble on the crowd. The show was amazing. The band played a lengthy two-hour set – before returning for a quick encore, including Ryan’s own take of “Blue Hotel” that he wrote for ‘Songbird’ the album he produced for Willie Nelson. I got the feeling they would have kept on playing had the 11pm curfew not arrived four songs into the encore.

Setlist:
Peaceful Valley
Beautiful Sorta
Rescue Blues
Stars Go Blue
Off Broadway
Goodnight Rose
Nightbirds
Sun Also Sets
Let It Ride
Freeway To The Canyon (Neal Casal)
Please Do Not Let Me Go
Bartering Lines
Mockingbird
Wild Flowers
Cold Roses
Halloweenhead
Why Do They Leave
Everybody Knows
Goodnight Hollywood Blvd.
Two
You Don't See Me Crying (Neal Casal)
"Graboff Joke/Happy Birthday Spacewolf"
Rip Off
A Kiss Before I Go
Shakedown on 9th St
I See Monsters

Encore:
Dear John
Blue Hotel
I Taught Myself How To Grow Old
Easy Plateau

The Verve – The Roundhouse, London

2007-11-09T23:27:00.000Z

Kimbo and I were lucky enough to score tickets to The Verve’s warm-up show in London. We’ve been to the Roundhouse to see The Good, The Bad and The Queen (ironically one-time Verve guitarist Simon Tong is not participating in this reformation because of his ongoing work with that band).

The band came on around 9pm – and played a very long set that stretched through to after 11pm. Strangely Richard Ashcroft somehow seems younger fronting the band than when we saw him last May at The Brixton Academy.

The setlist is a great mix of all periods of Verve material. As more of a late-coming to the band, I’m mostly familiar with their last album ‘Urban Hymns’ so I was glad to hear that get a decent airing. In particular “Sonnet” sounded great. One of the highlights for me was a mostly acoustic reading of “On Your Own” (I’d forgotten how great that song is).

They also played a new song “Sit and Wonder” and dug out the heavy-riffing b-side “Let The Damage Begin”. Early single “A Man Called Sun” was also a bit of a treat.

The main set finished on a high with “The Rolling People” leading into “The Drugs Don’t Work” before closing with a rousing “Bittersweet Symphony” – which used a loop of sampled strings to drive the song along. Ashcroft even let the enthusiastic crowd sing the “I’m a million different people from one day to the next” line which was a nice touch.

After a short break, the band returned for a quick four-song encore, kicking off with “A Northern Soul” straight into “History” before closing on the double-shot of “Lucky Man’ and “Come On”.

A New Decade
This Is Music
Gravity Grave
Weeping Willow
Life's An Ocean
Sonnet
Sit and Wonder
Man Called Sun
Already There
Stormy Clouds w/reprise
Let the Damage Begin
On Your Own
Rolling People
Drugs Don't Work
Bittersweet Symphony

A Northern Soul
History
Lucky Man
Come On

Son Volt – The Luminaire

2007-10-05T23:42:00.001+01:00

I’ve seen Jay Farrar play solo a couple of times – so I was fairly excited to be seeing him tonight with a full band. As many alt-country fans are aware the current incarnation of Son Volt is merely Jay Farrar and newer members of the band (most of whom played on the latest Son Volt album ‘The Search’) so there is a small element of controversy in billing the group"Son Volt" when Jay is the only original member (and the only one who played on their seminal first 3 albums).

As much as I love The Luminaire as a venue – it doesn’t hold up as well to a sold out crowd – particularly the very low stage, so it was standing room only for the 250 odd who squeezed in for the second of two Son Volt shows.

Opening the show solo with just acoustic guitar and harmonic, Jay Farrar delivered a great stripped down take of “Methamphetamine” from the new record, before being joined by his four-piece band to run through much of the album.

Highlights for me were “Underground Dream” and “Bandages and Scars”, plus a Delta-blues rave-up run-through “Damn Shame” from 2001’s ‘Sebastopol’.

After half a dozen songs – Jay announced that their regular drummer had broken his collar bone coming back from a Magnolia Electric Company show, and the band were using a stand-in drummer. It seemed like the replacement drummer had only learned half the set, as he then proceeded to leave the stage every few songs (generally returning a few songs later).

While giving a more interesting sound – the drummer-less combo of guitar, bass and keywords did seem to miss a drummer driving the songs along. It certainly made for a strange interlude, and the band themselves seemed sometimes a little confused about how things would go.

The stand-in drummer did return to help finish out the main set, which included “Afterglow 61” and the crowd-pleasing “Tear Stained Eye”. “Voodoo Candle” was reworked to great effect as searing rocker.

After a long 90 minute set, the band returned for a short encore, kicked off with “Windfall” another favorite that had most of the crowd singing along. Before the show closed with a barely recognizable reggae rock recasting of Uncle Tupelo’s “Life Worth Living”.

Dandy Warhols – Electric Ballroom, Camden

2007-10-02T23:22:00.000+01:00

I’d previously been to the Electric Ballroom in Camden when it was a clothes and music market – so I wasn’t expecting much as a venue, but it actually works quite well.
There’s 3 different bars so it’s reasonably easy to get a drink. You enter on the side of the main floor – so there isn’t a constant crowd moving in and out while you’re trying to watch. And aside from the open floor section, you can head upstairs to watch from a smaller bar at the far end of the room – which is where Kimbo and I managed to snag a good spot.
The Dandy’s haven’t been super-busy since I saw them last August at the Bar Academy and it was a fairly similar show, although the band did play a few news songs from a forthcoming album that front-man Courtney promised would be coming out in 2008.
“All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey” sounded great – starting off fairly sparsely before the whole band kicked in. Other highlights: “We Used To Be Friends”, “You Were The Last High”, and “Not If You Were The Last Junkie on Earth”.
“Bohemian Like You” caused a full-on minor riot in the mosh-pit and, as keyboardist Zia pointed our “the first crowd surfer I’ve seen in, like, seven years”.
The band was still playing in almost complete darkness, using a screen behind the stage to project different footage for each song. Again closing with “Country Leaver” the band sounded great – and while it was a good show, it’s pretty frightening how similar it was to their last London show a year ago.

PJ Harvey - Royal Festival Hall

2007-09-29T23:27:00.000+01:00

An amazing PJ Harvey show at Royal Festival Hall to support her new release ‘White Chalk’.
Playing solo, PJ moved from electric guitar for raw readings of older material like “Mansize” and “Rid Of Me” to open the encore; keyboards; acoustic guitar, harp and piano.
The just released ‘White Chalk’ is very piano-centric, and of the new album material “When Under Ether” and “The Devil” stood out performed solo at the piano.
It was also great to hear “Down by The Water” driven by drum machine and a bed of simple keyboards. And “Angelene” featured an incredible mix of keywords and strummed harp.
It was also great to see PJs dour image slip a little as she made a few jokes, especially around a misbehaving drum machine which she eventually placed “in the naughty corner” of the stage.
All in all a mesmerizing ninety minutes – with older songs like “Big Exit” jostling alongside newer material like “Shame” reminding you how a great a talent PJ Harvey is.

main set:
to bring you my love
send his love to me
when under ether
the devil
white chalk
man-size
angelene
my beautiful leah
nina in ecstasy
electric light
shame
snake
big exit
down by the water
grow grow grow
the mountain
silence

encore:
rid of me
water
the piano
the desperate kingdom of love

The Jesus & Mary Chain, Evan Dando – Brixton Academy

2007-09-07T23:51:00.000+01:00

Being a Friday night, it took awhile to get out of post-work drinks and get downtown to The Brixton Academy so we missed first act The Horrors, and the start of Evan Dando’s support.
To be honest I didn’t get the feeling we missed much, as a shaggy but darker haired Dando on guitar, accompanied by Chris Brokaw on second guitarist, noodled his way through a few old favorites. It was great to hear “It’s A Shame About Ray”, “Confetti”, “My Drug Buddy” and in particular “Ride With Me” and Dando was certainly in good voice. But he didn’t seem that interested, and to be honest it almost seemed like he was teaching Brokaw the songs as they played. With no between song banter, and rarely lifting his head from below his shaggy hair, the crowd quickly lost interest so by the end of his short 30 minute set, the audience chatter was almost louder than the music.
I had mixed feeling about seeing The Jesus & Mary Chain. Never a massive die-hard fan of the band – I did like the odd single, and controversially my favorite album is the b-sides/hits collection ‘Barbed Wire Kisses’. Like most indie rock fans I’d also heard numerous stories of the Reid brothers antagonistic relationship. Musically the band also seem to run the gamut from tiny lo-fi to feedback drenched guitar epics.
So it was a pleasant surprise to find the band in fantastic sound. Both Reid brothers looked good for their age, and they were accompanied by a trio of youngsters on guitar, bass and drums. They were also very generous with their “hits”, playing the fantastic “Head On’ second song into the main set, which also included great versions of classics like “Sidewalking”, “Some Candy Talking” and “Just Like Honey”.
Overall the biggest surprise was how great the band sounded – walking the tightrope of melody and feedback much better than I’d heard on any of the previous live recordings and bootlegs.

Evan Dando:
Let's Just Laugh
Pittsburgh
My Drug Buddy
Ride With Me
It’s A Shame About Ray
Confetti
Hospital

JAMC:
Never Understand
Head On
Far Gone And Out
Catchfire
Sidewalking
Snakedriver
Dead End Kids
Happy When It Rains
Some Candy Talking
Between Planets
Blues From A Gun
Cracking Up
All Things Must Pass
Teenage Lust
Vegetable Man
Just Like Honey
You Trip Me Up
Darklands
Nine Million Rainy Days
Reverence

Grant Lee Phillips – Dingwalls / Lock 17, Camden, London

2007-08-07T23:14:00.000+01:00

I’ve been a long-time fan of Grant Lee Phillips – right back to the first Grant Lee Buffalo album ‘Fuzzy’ – so I was pretty excited to see him play at the smallish (500?) Dingwalls in Camden.

The intimate crowd seemed very much into the show, particularly later in the set when a few “hits” like “Mockingbirds” and “Honey, Don’t Think” got an airing.

Playing with a drummer and bass guitarist, Phillips switched between acoustic guitar (mostly for the older material) and electric guitar – including some fairly fierce and lengthy solos. In particular a long solo on a surprise full-band take on the title track to the Grant Lee Buffalo’s debut “Fuzzy”, which was quickly followed by “Jupiter and Teardrop” from the same record.

One of the suprises of the night was how engaging and funny Grant Lee is as on stage. He was making some great cracks from the get-go, remarking that London was looking great – which was a relief cause he’d just seen ‘Children of Men’ and thought it had really gone downhill.

He’s also an impressive mimic – launching into an impromptu burst of Prince’s “Purple Rain” when some joker called out for it, and doing a great impression of Willie Nelson tackling The Pixies “Wave Of Mutilation” (which actually sounded fantastic – so someone pull a bit of a Rick Rubin-Johnny Cash with Willie, and get him tackling the likes of Black Francis already!)

I’ve been really enjoying his just released fifth solo album ‘Stranglet’ so it was great to hear some of that played live. In particular “Runaway”, “Fountain of Youth” and a crunchy guitar heavy take on “Raise The Spirit” to close the main set.

First encore was a run through “Lone Star Song”, and after much coaxing from the crowd – the trio returned for a quick second encore of a busky acoustic take on “The Hook” and The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”.

Darren Hanlon – Juuksur, Tallinn Estonia

2007-08-04T05:56:00.000+01:00

I’ve been coming to Estonia semi-regularly for work over the last year – so it was an unexpected treat when one of my work trips coincided with my friend Dazzas third (?) show in Estonia.
Juuksur is a great little bar – but very tough to find. A single door off a tiny side street gets you into this reasonably sized basement that seems more like Batman’s secret HQ than the cool lil indie bar it turns out to be.
For this tour, Darren has been playing with drummer Evelyn Morris from the Melbourne punk/eastern hybrid band Baseball. Evelyn also does a solo support set as Piklet, mixing percussions with various vocal effects and live samples.
It’s probably been over a year and a half since I’ve seen Darren play live – and he’s still as much fun as I remember.
Kicking off with a few solo songs – highlight for me is one of my old favourites “Kickstand”. Eve then joins on drums for a few more songs – standout for me was the “Title Fight: Heart Versus Mind” that saw Daz responding to Eve’s backing vocals Jonathan Richman-style.
A few more solo songs – including the great banjo-led “Fight The Future” with Darren joined by a local Estonian drummer who spontaneously played a few songs with him at his last show here. “Punks Not Dead”, “Elbows” – stacks more great songs. Finished the night very early in the morning after visiting some unmarked late opener bar. Great night.

Frank Black - Shepherds Bush Empire, London

2007-07-15T11:17:00.000+01:00

It's always tough to know what to expect from Frank Black live - sometimes he's incredibly respectful of his history with The Pixies and early solo success, other times he ignores it like the various name changes really are different people. Fortunately tonights Sunday night show was more of the former than the later.

Kicking off with a short 7-song solo acoustic set, Frank looked great kitted out in a black suit and shades. First song was early-ish single "Headache", quickly followed by a pair of Pixies favorites "Velouria" and "Cactus". After stopping "Velouria" part-way through because he forgot the words, and a fair bit of out-of-tune strumming - it was pretty clear Frank Black hadn't passed the day unrefreshed, and was reasonably "loose" (which I believe is the polite way of saying half-pissed). To his credit, he acknowledged his predicament, advising the crowd he should have stopped at his second drink instead of going for the third, and warning tonight would be a very unprofessional show.

Well with a few false starts, bum notes, and a dropped microphone here and there - unprofessional it may have been, but highly entertaining it most certainly was.

With a very tight, and seemingly pretty young, three piece band keeping things on track. Surprisingly Black didn't play guitar with the band at all, instead launching himself around the stage as they ripped through a tight 50 minute set featuring songs from all through his solo career.
Not surprisingly - the freshly recorded and soon-to-be-released 'BlueFinger' got a decent airing - highlights for me were the blistering first single "Threshold Apprehension" and "Tight Black Rubber" (with Frank seeming to relish shouting th refrain "I'm all killer, no filler!"). Balanced with this, a few songs from his 1993 self titled debut were also played, including "I Heard Ramona Sing" in the acoustic set, "Ten Percenter" to kick off the main band set, as well as "Old Black Dawning" and "Los Angeles".

In between was a mix of solo material ranging from his 13 album (closer to 20 if you include live releases!) solo carrer. Highlights for me were the Roxy Music cover "Remake Remodel" (recorded on the 'Men in Black' CDsingle back in 1995) and a solo "Horrible Day" in the acoustic set.

'BlueFinger's "You Can't Break a Heart and Have It" segued into a manic cover of Fat Boy Slims "Rockafella Skank" with Frank Black literally mounting the bass drum and singing directly into the drummers face. This led to a bit of drama as the crew frantically reassembled the partially demolished kit as the band closed the show with 'Dog In The Sand's "Robert Onion".

Full Setlist:

solo acoustic:
01 Headache
02 Velouria
03 Cactus
04 The Water
05 Sir Rockabye
06 Horrible Day
07 I Heard Ramona Sing

with the band:
08 Ten Pecenter
09 Thalassocracy
10 Freedom Rock
11 Massif Central
12 Remake Remodel {Roxy Music cover}
13 Lolita
14 Deadmans Curve
15 Los Angeles
16 Six Sixty Six (a-capella)
17 Tight Black Rubber
18 Threshold Apprehension
19 Old Black Dawning
20 Captain Pasty
21 Manitoba
22 California Bound
23 You Can't Break a Heart and Have It
24 Rockafella Skank {FatBoy Slim cover}
25 Robert Onion

Smashing Pumpkins - Shepherds Bush Empire

2007-06-19T00:02:00.000+01:00

A very entertaining show from the recently reformed Smashing Pumpkins at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

Firstly a bizarrely small choice of venue for their only UK show considering their popularity and they’ve been headlining at festivals in sports arena’s all across town.

The latest version of the band, which Billy Corgan described as Mk 4, is down to just singer/songwriter/freak Billy Corgan, original drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, plus new additions of bassist Ginger Reyes and guitarist Jeff Schroeder. In fact, with a female bass-player and an Asian looking guitarist – if you squint it almost looks like the traditional Pumpkins line-up circa 1995.

Anyway the show was a very early start, so Kimbo and I missed the first couple of new songs they opened with – but we did find a spot just as the band launched into “Today”, the first of many hits and memories they dug out for the almost 3 hour show.

At a lot of shows I go to it looks like the band just came on wearing whatever they happened to have had on that day – so it was good to see the Pumpkins make an effort with the band clad entirely in white, with the odd black slashes. Corgan looking like some kind of sci-fi priest with a long cape and robes, and even new guitarist Schroeder went with a little white cape.

As the night progressed, and I’m sure the robes got pretty steamy, layers were slowly removed until Corgan looked almost normal in white leather pants, a white T-shirt, with black & white longsleeve underneath.

Musically the band had a lot harder edge than I remember, bordering on an almost industrial metal sound that reminded me of Nine Inch Nails, especially on the newer material from forthcoming album ‘Zeitgeist’.

The production for the show was fantastic. Particularly the lighting effecting using large banks of horizontal strips that looked like long florescent tubes – but where in fact monitors so they could also be used to display video and other effects.

The set-list was a great mix of oldies and newer material. If anything a little heavy on the new songs considering the album isn’t released yet – but first single “Tarantula” sounded great mixing with favourites like “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, “Zero”, “Disarm” and “1979”. Highlight was most certainly “Cherub Rock” in the second encore.

Full setlist:
United States
Bleeding The Orchid
Today
Stand Inside Your Love
Shame
Hummer
Bullet With Butterfly Wings
Glass And The Ghost Children
Lucky 13
Doomsday Clock
Silverfuck
For God And Country
Thirty Three
Rocket
Winterlong
To Sheila
Tonight Tonight
Tarantula
Starz
Zero
Disarm
Neverlost
That's The Way (My Love Is)
1979
Untitled
Gossamer
Cherub Rock
Muzzle

Billy Bragg – South Bank

2007-06-12T12:05:00.001+01:00

Spent a great sunny Saturday afternoon down at South Bank with my buddy Ross. It was the grand opening of the Royal Festival Hall (which has been completely refurbished) and featured many activities and performers in and around the Hall all weekend.
Billy Bragg had organised something called The Big Busk-Off for the evening (with buskers encouraged to bring their guitars for a mass play along that had disaster written all over it). To get everyone in the mood – he also performed a 45 minute set of “buskers standards” which was incredibly enjoyable.
Playing mostly acoustic guitar, and accompanied by a second guitarist and banjo – they played some nice low-key versions of “Long Black Veil”, “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright” “The Weight”, “I Can’t Help Falling In Love”, “Irene Goodnight”, and Bragg’s own “The Myth Of Trust”. He even got his mum up (much to her chagrin) for an impromptu dance during “Underneath The Arches”.
Highlight for me was the incredibly appropriate “Waterloo Sunset” – lying in the sun right next to the “dirty old river” and by the shadow of the “millions of people swarming like flies round waterloo underground”.

thanks to the dude from Flickr for the photo!

Fountains Of Wayne - The Astoria

2007-05-21T23:43:00.000+01:00

I’m a massive fan of the Fountains of Wayne. I think they’re incredibly under-rated and one of the finest guitar-pop acts this side of Weezer and the Beach Boys.

Unfortunately they only toured Australia once - in support of ‘Eutopia Parkway’ in 1999. I still remember it as a fantastic show, so rich in sweet pop melodies that my teeth hurt the next day. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited to be seeing them for the second time a mere 8 years later!

Opening with “I’ve Got A Flair” from their self titled debut, it was good to see a few songs from this decade-old record getting a decent airing. Other early classics included “Sink To The Bottom”, and a set-closing double-shot of “Radiation Vibe” and “Survival Car”.

I also really liked the choppy “Denise”, a calypso-flavoured “Hey Julie” (complete with two crowd members on shakers) and the slower “Mexican Wine”. While the set-closing trip•tych of “Stacey’s Mom” into “Radiation Vibe” and “Survival Car” sent the crowd into a bit of a frenzy to close the main set.

Songs from the new album ‘Traffic and Weather’ sounded fantastic live, particularly the pulsing title track which opened the first encore, the country-ish “Fire In The Canyon”, the slower “I-95” (complete with disco-ball lighting), and rocking “Somebody to Love”.

Despite the pre-recorded music coming on after the first encore, the crowd managed to coax a second one, and we were treated to the ‘Welcome Interstate Managers’ double-shot of “Bright Future in Sales” and “Bought for a Song".

Full setlist went something like this:
I’ve Got A Flair
No Better Place
It Must Be Summer
Denise
Hey Julie
Yolanda Hayes
Hackensack
I-95
Mexican Wine
Fire In the Canyon
Sink to the Bottom
Strapped For Cash
Somebody To Love
Stacey’s Mom
Radiation Vibe
Survival Car

Encore 1:
Traffic & Weather
Red Dragon Tattoo

Encore 2:
Bright Future in Sales
Bought For a Song

Wilco – Shepherds Bush Empire

2007-05-20T23:49:00.000+01:00

It was almost like an old school album launch seeing Wilco the week they release their new album ‘Sky Blue Sky’.

The show started bang on 9pm, which is good news with the 11pm curfew on a Sunday night.

As expected, a lot of the new album was played kicking off with the two-fer of “Side With The Seeds” and “You Are My Face”.

I’ve still only listened to ‘Sky Blue Sky’ a few times right through, and my initial reaction was it was a bit same-same, with only a few songs really jumping out at me – so I was interested to see how the material came up live.

For the most part it was much better - particularly songs they’ve been playing for a while like “What Light” and especially the rockier tracks like “Walken” and “Shake It Off”.

My feeling is the latest incarnation of Wilco really need to chew a song up and spit it back out before they reach the truly definitive version of it. At least this was the case for a lot of the older material played tonight – especially the pulsing “Handshake Drugs”, an mesmerising “Hummingbirds”, and a truly schizophrenic “Via Chicago”.

The final encore closed with a true highlight, as a visibly awed Jeff Tweedy shared vocals with the aging Bill Fay (making his first stage appearance in almost 30 years) for a version of Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful” – a cover that’s been popping up in both Wilco and Tweedy solo sets for the last few years.

Full setlist:

1. Side with Seeds
2. You Are My Face
3. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
4. Handshake Drugs
5. Shot in the Arm
6. Impossible Germany
7. Sky Blue Sky
8. At Least That’s What You Think
9. Shake it Off
10. Muzzle of Bees
11. Hummingbird
12. Via Chicago
13. Jesus, etc.
14. Walken
15. I'm the Man Who Loves You
Encore 1:
16. Late Greats
17. War on War
18. Poor Places
19. Spiders
Encore 2:
20. What Light
21. Airline to Heaven
22. Be Not So Fearful (w/ Bill Fay)

The Freewheelin Nick & Kimbo

2007-04-14T14:15:00.000+01:00

During our trip to New York I dragged Kimbo down to Greenwich Village to hunt down Bob Dylan's early Sixties apartment on West 4th street, so we could recreate the 'Freewheelin Bob Dylan' cover photo of Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking arm in arm.
Unfortunately, no snow (or a conventiently parked VW van) but kudos to Gerry for risking life and limb by lying on the road to get the photo angle.

Tribute to the Music of Bruce Springsteen - Carnegie Hall, New York

2007-04-05T23:29:00.000+01:00

During an extended Easter break in New York - I managed to score a couple of tickets to the Springsteen tribute at Carnegie Hall. As a reasonably famous venue, I was pretty excited to finally see somethine at Carnegie Hall. It did have amazing acoustics and viewing sightlines - even from our fairly high-up seats.

The line-up was a bit fluid for this charity concert - raising funds for Music for Youth an organisation dedicated to funding music programmes for disadvanted and undeprivalidges kids.

Overall the show was fantastic - I've included the full set details below - but my highlights were:

Steve Earle - looking very much like Allen Ginsburg, kicking things off with "Nebraska". The Surprise appearance of Patti Smith with "Because The Night". Marah, including a guest on bagpipes, with a rollicking "The Rising" - good to see some contemporary Bruce material represented. Juliana Hatfield performing "Cover Me" solo on electric guitar, which really emphasised the vulnrability in the lyrics. Pete Yorn's solo acoustic "Dancing In The Dark" which emphasised the dark over the dancing. Odetta delivering a dryly comic "57 Channels" from her wheelchair. Highlight for me was The Hold Steady's main set closing "Altantic City" where they managed to walk the line of staying true to the original, but also stamping their own style on it - in particular turning the "last night I met a guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him" line into a mantra.

The encore featured a surprise appearance from Springsteen himself - in great form, joking "The good news is, I'm still alive," explaining that the evening felt like the kind of dream where you watch people talk about you, then discover you're at your own funeral. After a great acoustic version of "The Promised Land" and an abbreviated acoustic "Rosalita" where Springsteen abandoned the verses to bring the story up-to-date. Amongst the other highlights: the hero got the girl, broke up his band to sing happy songs which no one liked, put the band back together to sing sad songs which made everyone happy.

All the nights performers, including house band Elysian Fields then came back from a reprise of "Rosalita" which saw Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Badly Drawn Boy, and Jesse Malin all trading verese with Bruce. A fitting, if ramshackle end, to a fantastic night.

The full line-up was as follows:
Nebraska - Steve Earle
Streets of Philadelphia - The Bacon Brothers
Streets of Fire - Elysian Fields
The River - Josh Ritter
Because the Night - Patti Smith
The Rising - Marah
My City of Ruins - Holmes Brothers with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City
Brilliant Disguise - Robin Holcomb
Jersey Girl - Jersey Guys with Bobby Valli
Spirit in the Night - North Mississippi All-Stars
New York City Serenade - Uri Caine
Cover Me - Juliana Hatfield
One Step Up - Low Stars
Thunder Road - Badly Drawn Boy
Born in the U.S.A. - Joseph Arthur
Dancing in the Dark - Pete Yorn
Hungry Heart - Jesse Malin with Ronnie Spector
I’m Goin’ Down - M. Ward
57 Channels - Odetta
Atlantic City - The Hold Steady
The Promised Land (acoustic) - Bruce Springsteen
Rosalita (acoustic) - Bruce Springsteen
Rosalita (full-band) - Bruce Springsteen with all performers

Kaiser Chiefs - Royal Festival Hall

2007-04-01T21:33:00.001+01:00

Caught a great Friday night show with The Kaiser Chiefs at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall as part of a week-long Teenage Cancer Trust series of concerts. I’ve really been digging their recently released second album ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ so it was great to hear some of the new songs live.

The show kicked off with a few employments tracks “Saturday Night” (with one of my favorite Kaiser Chief’s lines: “we are Birds of a Feather / and you can be the fat one”) and “Everyday I Love You Less and Less”.

Before they jumped into the new material. The seemingly ubiquitous first single “Ruby” went down a treat, but I really enjoyed “Heat Dies Down” and “Highroyds”. Also great to hear the not often played b-side “Take My Temperature”.

I was a bit surprised having a new album to draw from didn’t change the set dramatically from the earlier ‘Employment’ show we saw at Brixton Academy last year – but I guess having only two albums to draw from still limits the song selection somewhat.

My only criticism of the night was how poorly the venue seemed to suit the majority of the crowd. We might have been unlucky, but seemed to be flanked in boxes on either side of our own by drunk bankers/accountants. It may have more to do with this being a Friday night show – so many people simply kicked-on from after work drinks, however I do suspect having a top 10 hit (the aforementioned “Ruby”) does lead to a band drawing a less selective audience (case in point, one of the “bankers” to our right, who at one stage decided to go topless, continued to call out for “ruby, ruby, ruby” despite the band having already played the song).
Anyway – this minor criticism aside, the show was great and much of the new material – in particular the title track “Angry Mob” which opened the only encore – sounded just fantastic in live performance.

Crowded House – Thekla Social, Bristol

2007-03-19T23:10:00.000Z

So this was pretty amazing – the fantastic Crowded House have decided to reform and, while recording at Peter Garbriel’s Real World Studios just outside Bath, decide to play a warm-up show in Bristol before hitting the global festival circuit (Cochella in the US and Hyde Park Calling in the UK).

Kimbo and I were lucky enough to get tickets to the show – one of possible the greatest band on the planet (certainly one of the world’s most gifted songwriters) playing to a crowd of 250 on a boat in Bristol!

To put this in context – the band hadn’t played a show together in over a decade – that final show being “Farewell to The World” on 24 November 1996 on the steps of the Sydney Opera House –one of the biggest concerts in Australian history with a crowd somewhere between 120,000and 250,000.

As you can imagine – we were pretty excited to get tickets, and the show itself was incredible. A great mix of old favorites, with a healthy smattering of new songs (from the forthcoming ‘Time On Earth’).

The band itself was in fine form – Neil Finn as charming as ever, in excellent voice and good humor. Nick Seymour was as cheeky as ever, while Mark Hart quietly swapped between guitars and keywords – although he did step-up for lead vocals on an impromptu rendition of Creedence’s “Born on The Bayou”.

New drummer - Matt Sherrod (who we’ve previously seen drumming for Beck on his last couple of shows) was excellent. He’s still getting to grips with many of the songs – but his natural style gives the material a loose and slightly modern feel – which seems to work well.

The venue itself was amazing – a permanently moored boat on the Bristol river – which has a long history as a cabaret venue called ‘The Old Profanity Showboat’ run by Vivian Stanshall of The Bonzo Dog Band.

But the real highlight was Neil Finn’s songs. I’d forgotten how incredible some of his stuff is – so it was overwhelming to hear so many great songs again, performed by world class musicians, in a tiny environment.

The new album should be a cracker – highlights for me where the Beatlesly “She Called Up”, a somber “English Trees” (which namechecks Regents Park – just across the road from us), and “Don’t Stop Now” (I agree with the heckler who commented “there’s your first single”.

Truly amazing – and despite a 2 hour drive back to London – it flew by in a hungover haze.

full setlist:
Locked out
World Where You Live
Something So Strong
Silent House
English Trees
Pineapple Head
Fingers of Love
Even A Child
Pour Le Monde
Transit Lounge
She Called Up
Love You Till the Day I Die
When You Come
Heaven That I'm Making
Better Be Home Soon
Nobody Wants To Talk About It
Don't Stop Now
Distant Sun
encore:
Fall At Your Feet
Mean To Me
Thanks to the FOTE site for the setlist and photos.

The Shins - Bush Hall

2007-02-26T23:42:00.000Z

Kim and I managed to score a couple of rare-as-hen’s-teeth tickets to The Shins semi-secret show at The Bush Hall in Shepherds Bush.
The Bush Hall could well be my new favorite venue in London – basically one long room, with a nice and high stage at one end, they also enforce a strict non-smoking policy in the band room, which makes such a difference from the smoke-pits most London gigs are held in.
The Shins have added a fifth member since I saw them last. Eric Johnson (of fellow Sub Pop band Fruit Bats) who played a mix of guitar and keyboards – and the additional instrumentation also gave the band a chance to mix up the sound.
Rather than the faithful reproduction of album recordings, “New Slang” was fleshed out with prominent acoustic guitar, while “Gone For Good” and “So Says I” become thick and heavy with extra electric guitar.
Also the material from the just released ‘Wincing The Night Away’ varies somewhat in live performance. A drawn out “Sleeping Lessons” started the show, while “Girl Sailor” included some mid-song backing vocals that aren’t immediately discernable on record.
An encore cover of The Modern Lovers “Someone I Care About” was a power-punk surprise, and the show closing “So Says I” left everyone happy.
So quite a different show to The Killers stadium filling bombardment last night – but a small intimate joy.

The Killers – Wembley Arena

2007-02-25T21:43:00.000Z

We only caught the last few songs of support act Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – but they sounded pretty good in a shoe-gazey Jesus and Mary Chain kinda way. Closer “Whatever Happened To My Rock N Roll” - which I remembered a from a few years ago - was a highlight.

The opening of The Killers set was some of the most exhilarating stadium rock I’ve ever seen. Starting with a projection of b&w footage of Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, with some pre-recorded orchestral and choir music that lead into the ‘Sam’s Town’ album opening trilogy of the title track, the short "enterlude", and “When You Were Young”. The latter complete with glistening confetti launched through the area. In fact - the crowd's wild enthusiam , stomping and clapping to orchestral music accompanied by tv static and grainy b&w visuals - is as close as I can imagine to attending a Nazi rally in the 1930s. All extreme passion and power of the many group dynamics.

But - onto the music: the start of the show was heavily front-loaded with singles, first single “When You Were Young” followed by second single “Bones”. Leaving the band to focus on album tracks, and the plethora of singles from their debut ‘Hot Fuss’. “Somebody Told Me”, “Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll” and “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” all featured. With the main set closing with “Mr Brightside”.

A surprising inclusion in the encore was a cover of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay”, although it seemed to leave most of the crowd pretty cold. The anthemic “All These Things That I've Done” closed the first encore. Before the band snuck back on for the short, album-closer, “exitlude”.

Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band – UK Tour Nov 2006

2006-11-12T10:09:00.000Z

It seems like not so long ago I was writing about the Bruce Springsteen onslaught around as I followed the Seeger Sessions band around London and Manchester. Well this time around I limited myself to only a couple of shows – taking the train up to Birmingham to see the group at their first UK stop at the NEC Arena, and also taking in the London show at Wembley Arena a couple of nights later.

I had great VIP standing tickets for the Birmingham show on November 9^th so I was really close to the action. The first thing that struck me was how great the band are now playing together – they’ve really grown in stature since the initial UK shows back in May. To be fair, at the time I saw those initial shows the band had performed together less than 10 times so it was natural they were still finding their way a little. Still I was unprepared for how much better and together they’d sound as a group and they’ve certainly surpassed simply playing the album live and trying to recreate the spontaneity of the ‘We Shall Overcome’ record.

You knew you were in for a treat with all shows kicking off with a barely recognizable reworking of Springsteen’s debut single “Blinded By The Light’. Re-cast a zydeco jig – the song was unrecognizable until Springsteen started spitted out those busy rhyming couplets.

The spiritual arrangement of “Further On (Up the Road)” from ‘The Rising’ was unexpected – and made great use of the backing vocalists and guitarist Frank Bruno all trading lead vocals for part of the verse (in a similar way to the E Street band arrangement of “If I Should Fall Behind” on the re-union tour). “Bobby Jean” was great to hear – but again not easy to recognize as a violin-led up-tempo arrangement that was possibly a little too reminiscent of “I Want You” by Bob Dylan.

“The Ghost of Tom Joad” was similar in tempo to the recorded version – however completely recast as a duet with guitarist Frank Bruno, who’s sweet country lilt (which in a non-ironic totally good way) reminds me of John Denver’s country/pop voice.

“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” remains the center-piece of the show – and now it’s officially released on the ‘American Land’ re-issue of ‘We Shall Overcome’ the crowd really get behind it as well.

It was great to hear Bruce tackling some of his most recent material in Seeger Sessions big-band arrangements and while “Jesus Was an Only Son” probably lost some of it’s emotional punch, “Long Time Comin'” was revelatory with the fuller instrumentation behind it.

E-Street band guitarist Nils Lofgrin – currently touring solo around the UK – made a guest appearance on guitar and vocals in Birmingham for a set closing “Pay Me My Money Down” – and it was great to see the pair return to the stage as a duo with acoustic guitars to offer a small reprise of the song after the full band had been led offstage.

“This Little Light of Mine” - a new spiritual cover in the vein of “Jacob’s Ladder” was well received in the encore, before the traditional show closer “American Land” was played – however clearly enjoying being back on tour after a week long break (Springsteen joked earlier that he has teenage kids now so when he returns home he goes from band leader to chauffer and short-order cook very quickly) and led the band into an impromptu “Froggy Went A Courtin’” to close a brilliant show.

Saturday night’s Wembley show quickly mixed things up with a great version of “Atlantic City”. “Growin’ Up” was dedicated as “an old song for the young fans” and the arrangement was incredible different to any previous version. One of my highlights of the night was a great version of “Devils and Dust” that starts acoustically with the band slowly coming in with subtle organ and backing vocals.

The start of the encore was a clear highlight for me. Springsteen explained he’d seen Lucinda Williams play last night (see my entry on this show) and was impressed that she played a lot of new material so he thought he’d try out “a work in progress”. He joked that between his ''boozing and whoring'' he's been writing a bit in his hotel room and this is a song written about what's been happening in the USA and while there's some hope after last Tuesday's elections, there’s still a lot of work to do. “Gonna Be A Long Walk Home” is a ballad in the style of “If I Should Fall Behind” with a lot of references to his hometown of Freehold, plus there was a couple of lines “borrowed” from the old country gospel tune “Rank Strangers (To Me)” – “When I looked in their faces / I found they were all Rank strangers to me”.

Sunday’s Wembley included a few treats with the ‘Greetings From Asbury Park’ double-shot of opener “Blinded By The Light” followed by a tour debut of “Does This Bus Stop at 82^nd Street?”. It was also great to hear the Seeger Sessions Band version’s of “The River”. An almost solo-acoustic “Land Of Hope and Dreams” opened the encore – and the show-closer was an unusual cover of "Man on the Flying Trapeze”.

One observation as Bruce closed the show and thanked the crowd and the band for coming on “this journey” was there seemed to be a touch of finality to it – so I’d suggest after the remaining four shows, the Seeger Sessions may be coming to an end. Still – after six shows and a guest spot in less than 12 months – I’ve seen plenty of it. I was also pleased to see so many new arrangements of older songs. For me some of the re-arrangments of older songs have been a little novelty - but I think the versions of "Devils & Dust", "Long Time Comin" and "My City of Ruins" could well be considered the definitive versions of those songs.

Lucinda Williams - Shepherd's Bush Empire

2006-11-10T23:18:00.000Z

Just came back from a great Lucinda Williams show at The Shepherds Bush Empire and I'm ecstatic to report Bruce made a guest appearance for a couple of songs.

Shortly after arriving at the show I noticed Frank Bruno the guitarist, Charles Giordano accordion/keyboards and backing vocalist Curtis King from Springsteen's current Seeger Sessions band in the bar. I’d just returned from the Birmingham show on the train in the morning - so I congratulated the guys on last night's show and told them how much I thought the Seeger Sessions band had gained in stature since the initial UK shows earlier in the year. They were very gracious about me approaching them, and Frank quickly asked what I thought of the new arrangement of "Blinded By The Light". I told him I liked it, and it took me a few lines to register what song they were actually playing. I mentioned how I thought they were playing a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Want You" when they started the new arrangement of "Bobby Jean" - and Charles said that's what he bases his performance on. I also congratulated Frank on the duet arrangement of "Ghost Of Tom Joad", explaining I thought his sweet country lilt brought a new musical color to the song, and he seemed genuinely flattered. Although I might have over done it when I compared his voice to John Denver – in a really good way - but they were still polite.

As you can imagine I was going home pretty happy at this point – meeting some of the Seeger sessions band, and finally seeing Lucinda Williams in concert. To put things in context - this was the third attempt at this Lucinda Williams London show (the tickets were originally for a July 2005 show, later re-scheduled to Dec 2005, and then re-scheduled again to 11 Nov 2006) so there was already an air of anticipation in the crowd.

Kicking off with “Ventura”, Lucinda and her three-piece band played a great set of material that was very heavy on her more recent albums ‘Car Wheels on A Gravel Road’, ‘Essence’ and ‘World Without Tears’. Highlights included “Right In Time”, “Essense” and “2 Kool 2 B 4-gotten”; together with new material “Where is My Love?”, “Rescue” and the show-closing title track from her Feb 2007 due ‘West’ album.

Towards the end of the main set Lucinda nervously announced a special guest, and that performing with him would be one of the highlights of her career. She then welcomed to the stage "Mr Bruce Springsteen", to which the capacity 2,000 person crowd erupted. Bruce was pretty low key – wearing a dark shirt and jeans, he didn't talk to the crowd or take to the mic at all, but strapped on one of guitarist Doug Pettibone’s extra guitars, an orange/red Gibson, and took a spot in the far stage-left corner behind bass player Paul Bryan.

He played some rhythm guitar and a couple of solos on their bluesy cover of Lil' Son Jackson's “Disgusted” - covered by Lucinda on her 1979 'Ramblin' debut album. It didn’t seem as though he knew the song because Lucinda appeared to demonstrate the basic chords as he took the guitar. It was great to hear Bruce playing the electric guitar again and he seemed to really enjoy letting rip some blues riffing.

Surprisingly, after the song was finished Bruce stayed onstage and Lucinda announced they'd close the set with "Joy" (from her awesome 'Car Wheels On A Gravel Road' album). In her introduction to the song Lucinda talked about making sure you don’t let the government or anyone take your joy. This prompted her to announce how they were celebrating a victory in the recent US election - which got a great cheer from the crowd and Bruce pumped his fist in encouragement.

Bruce clearly knew ‘Joy’ well and really let rip with a face-melter of a solo and even played some very distinctive subtle strumming during the songs quieter breakdown sections. Lucinda introduced all the members of her band - Doug Pettibone on guitar, Paul Bryan on bass, and Don Heffington on drums - and they each took a short solo, before she introduced "Bruce 'the boss' Springsteen" again and he took another great solo. They stretched the song out into something like 10 minutes, before finishing the song, and the main set.

Lucinda and the band returned for a single encore, "West" the title track of her new album which she announced is due for release in Feb 2007 - but despite it being a fantastic song, it was kind of an anti-climax after a guest appearance from Bruce.

Sparklehorse - Queen Elizabeth Hall

2006-10-27T21:51:00.000+01:00

This was the first time I’d been to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, part of the Royal Festival Hall complex in South Bank – so I was more than impressed with the theatre, in particular it’s acoustics (the sound for the show was first class) and the great view we had from even our fairly poor seats (I go tickets late so we were in LL).

The night kicked off with Sol Seppy – an interesting combo led by the very Australian sounding Sophie Michalitsianos. The short set was reasonably diverse, from the solo piano opener – to a full sample driven closer. Still the most dominant impact for me was how much Sophie’s vocals sound like Angie Hart, of long-defunct Melbourne pop-combo Frente.

It’s been many years since I saw Sparklehorse perform a few shows in Australia – and I think at the time budget restrictions meant it was a scaled-down version of the band that was presented down-under.

I was pleased when we returned from interval to see the stage set-up for a full combo of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, pedal steel, a sampler, and even a glockenspiel.

That said – despite the diverse instrumentation – my one criticism of the show was it was something of a one-note performance – with leader Mark Linkus concentrating on the slow and mid tempo material. Although when this includes such cracker songs as “Good Morning Spider”s ‘Painbirds’ and “It’s A Wonderful Life”s ‘Eyepennies’ – their really isn’t a lot to complain about. Still it was good to hear a change of pace with the ‘Hammering The Cramps’ towards the end of the main set, and “Pig” to close the first encore.

As anticipated, their was a focus on material from the just released “Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain”, of which ‘Don’t Take My Sunshine Away’ was the stand-out for me.

Although somewhat surprisingly, the show still features mostly material from the Sparklehorse debut “Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot”: ‘Gasoline Horseys’, Sad & Beautiful World”, and Sophie from Sol Seppy joining for harmony vocals on “Tears on Fresh Fruit”. ‘Spirit Ditch’ opened the first encore, and ‘Homecoming Queen’ as the soul second encore. A great show – with the intricate sound extremely well matched to a venue.

The Good, The Bad and The Queen - The Roundhouse

2006-10-26T23:08:00.000+01:00

This was a great night. Part of the BBC's Electric Proms - a contemporary version of the classical proms with the broad goal of featuring new or reinterpreted work.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen was the world premiere of a new album from Blur/Gorillaz main-man Damon Albarn. It’s all a bit strange, but seemingly the band is nameless, so the night was named after the album – which the played in its entirety, in order – but the album won’t actually be released until January 2007.

The pre-show publicity has also talked The Good, The Bad & The Queen up as a kind of cross-generational supergroup featuring Albarn, Paul Simonon of The Clash on bass, guitarist Simon Tong of The Verve and Gorillaz, and Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen.

That said – it was fairly apparent from the way Albarn called the shots on the stage (including getting the band to re-start ‘Kingdom Of Doom’ and ‘Three Changes’ because he wasn’t happy with how they were being performed) and the flavor of the new material – that this was very much his project, with the others invited along as special guests.

The material is all themed around London – again in some of the pre-show interviews Albarn has gone so far as to describe it as a sequel to Blur’s seminal “Parklife” album.

Musically it falls somewhere between The Gorillaz and Blur – following the mash-up composition style of the former, but utilizing more tradition rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums and piano/keyboard of the latter.

Highlights for me where the menacing ‘Kingdom of Doom’ (Albarn seemed particularly fiery after having to re-start the song again), and the ballads ‘Behind The Sun’ (dedicated to the late, great John Peel) and ‘Greenfields’.

After spending much of The Gorillaz live shows silhouetted on keyboards in the back, Albarn also seemed to be relishing the opportunity to be out-front of a band again – “it’s good to be back” he commented at one point. Hopefully a good sign for anyone who, like me, is anxiously awaiting a new Blur record and tour.

You Am I - Bar Academy Islington

2006-10-14T23:09:00.000+01:00

I’m loving the new You Am I album ‘Convicts’ so I was pretty excited to be hearing it live at this Saturday night show at the reasonably intimate Bar Academy.
Things kick off with a “Thuggury” that sounds much harder than on record. Followed by “The Sweet Life” and double-header of “If We Can’t Get It Together” and “Baby Clothes” from the awesome ‘Hourly Daily’. “Friends Like You” – one of the highlights from the new album – is also given a harder edge than on record.
I’m not sure if it’s because they’re a long way from home, or just a sign of getting older and playing so many shows – but these days it seems You Am I don’t worry about subtly in live performance. It’s either rammed down your throat or strummed quietly so you can barely hear above the mostly-drunk Australians getting reacquainted. There is no middle ground.
“Mr Milk”, the greatest slice of faux-retro-British-pop this side of XTC, gets the best reaction from the crowd so far – with most of the 600-strong audience joining in the “ba, ba, ba” in the chorus. “Cathy’s Clown” another crowd favourite.
A solo electic guitar version of ‘Hi Fi Way’s “Handwasher” from Tim Rogers changes the pace a bit, before the band re-join him for one of my favourite You Am I songs ‘Sound As Ever’s “Jaimme’s Got A Gal”.
The band clearly enjoy themselves on a cover of Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers “Born To Lose” – before it’s back to the new album with “It Ain't Funny That We Don't Talk Anymore” – for me, the best song on ‘Convicts’ – and “Constance George”.
“Billy” from the often overlooked ‘Number 4 Record’ is good to hear because it sounds great and reminds me what a great song that one is (this album will be getting dug out over the weekend). ‘The Applecross Wing Commander’ is good as always. ‘Berlin Chair’ brings the house-down, and leads into main set-closer “Thank God I've Hit Bottom” with a guitar-less Tim Rogers shouting the ‘Convicts’ album opener from the lip of the stage.
The band return for a quick encore of ‘Hi Fi Way’s “How Much Is Enough?” and “Jewels & Bullets” before closing the show with a mid-tempo run-through “Heavy Heart” ending the night with a drunken crowd singalong.
With most of the new record played (although disappointingly not ‘By My Own Hand’ – one of my favourites) together with a mix of interesting and obvious selections from You Am I’s “illustrious back-catalog” (as Tim Rogers conceitedly referred to it at one point) plus a rock n’ roll cover – I don’t think you could ask for much more from a You Am I show.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals– Shepherds Bush Empire

2006-09-30T23:53:00.000+01:00

Considering his history for unpredictable behavior, Ryan Adams Saturday night show in London was reasonably predictable, if not a little self-indulgent.

Touring in support of his three 2005 releases: ‘29’, ‘Jacksonville City Lights’ and ‘Cold Roses’ – it was the latter two band-orientated records that got the lions-share of the set-list tonight, with a couple of older songs, snatches of wacky covers, and some new songs included as well.

Cardinals guitarist Neal Casal opened things up with a 45 minute acoustic set that reminded me he was a bonda fide solo artist (with over a dozen albums to his credit) before hooking up with Ryan Adams. The first half of his set was enjoyable solo acoustic stuff – but things really picked up for the second half when he was joined on drums and harmony vocals by Dj Reggie (a poorly disguised Ryan Adams –playing in almost complete darkness with a hoodie pulled up over his head – yet still clearly recognizable the second he sang harmonies).

About 20 minutes later the 5 piece Cardinals took the stage to the strains of AC-DCs “Highway To Hell”. Kicking off with the mid-tempo country lilt of “A Kiss Before I Go” seemed to surprise the crowd a little – because with the prominent peddle steel it is a very country sounding song – but it wasn’t long before the band were jamming their way through more rock orientated songs like “Magnolia Mountain” and a bluesy-shuffle take on “To Be Young” from Ryan’s still unparalleled debut ‘Heartbreaker’.

One odd moment occurred mid-set when, just as they launched into “Games”, the band all donned Ninja masks (actually peddle steel player Jon Graboff had on a wrestling mask and bass-player Chris Feinstein looked like he was wearing a bee-keepers helmet) which were slowly dis-guarded, with no explanation, over the course of the next few songs.

My one criticism of the night is The Cardinals seem to have morphed themselves into a modern day version of The Grateful Dead – with every song seeming to evolving into an 8 minute plus jam opus. This was fine for The Dead who (with the possibly exception of ‘American Beauty’) weren’t really know for tight well crafted songs – but Ryan Adams is known as a songwriter so stretching “What Sin” into a nearly 10 minute epic didn’t really add any value for me – and in fact became kinda boring after a while.

While I’m in nag mode - over the last few tours Ryan has also developed this tendency to blend songs into one another, which can be quite effective when he wants to acknowledge a linage between two songs or include a snatch of an appropriate cover mid-song – but now it seems to be done out of boredom with many unrelated songs colliding into each other like a musical freeway pile-up. Like the fanastic “Battering Lines” which tonight was sandwiched in between versus of a new jam-orientated song which I think might be called “Egyptology”. That said – the same trick did work quite effectively towards the end of the show with a segment of Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” included in a closing jam that also included Sonic Youth’s “Express Way to Yr. Skull”.

Other highlights tonight included the ‘Cold Roses’ trilogy of “Beautiful Sorta”, title track, and “Easy Plateau”. A full band take of “Dear Chicago” which reminded me of the original ‘Gold’ out-take version, more so than the pale ‘Demolition’ released take. A short and catchy, almost power-pop, new song “Party Clown”, and a show closing “I See Monsters” from ‘Love Is Hell’ – that started slow but built into a rocking climax.

Bernard Fanning – The Arts Theatre, London

2006-09-03T23:05:00.000+01:00

The Arts Theatre only holds 350 people – so tonight’s show was a chance to see a world-class performer, who really should be playing larger theatres if not small stadiums, perform up-close.

Fanning is touring backed by a four-piece band, of which multi-instrumentalist John "Frodo" Bedggood was a stand-out: moving from keyboards to mandolin to violin to help furnish the night with a variety of different sounds.

Clearly making a firm distinction between his solo work and that of his better known band – the night featured no Powderfinger songs. This was news that might have disappointed me had I known in advance – however by the end of the night it didn’t matter a lick as the show was outstanding.

With practically every track from his debut solo album ‘Tea & Sympathy’ featured – the songs really came into their own live. I think the album sounds great – but live, there was another dimension that gave the songs an added anthemic quality that's in some of Powderfingers best work. Particular highlights were a drawn-out “Down To The River”, “Song Bird” and a roof raising “Wish You Well”.

Adding some diversity to the setlist was the piano soaked b-side/i-tunes release “Weekend of Mystery”, which led into an astounding cover of Sam Cooke’s “Lost and Lookin” performed solo on the piano. Another non-album highlight was “What A Fool I’ve Been” an acoustic shuffle that’s something of a duet between Bernard and guitarist Moz, apparantly recorded for the album but left off at the last minute.

The encore started with a solo acoustic take on “Watch Over Me” before the band re-joined for “Yesterday’s Gone” and a closing cover of The Rolling Stones “Dead Flowers” that really emphasized the country lilt to the song.

Beck – Shepherds Bush Empire

2006-09-02T21:24:00.000+01:00

I’m a big Beck fan, so even though I saw him 2 weeks ago at the V Festival – I still grabbed tickets when I heard he was doing one night at The Shepherds Bush Empire.

The show opened in the same way as his festival slot – puppets miming to “Loser” before the real band come on and finish the song. The also kicked off with the same trifecta of hits, with “Loser” quickly followed by “Devils Haircut” and “Girl”.

Although the set was much the same – it was a far more enjoyable experience seeing Beck up-close. The sound and musicianship was awesome (quite a bit got lost in the wind at the outdoor festival) and you also got to see some of the more subtle touches in the show production – like the puppeteers not only mimicking the stage outfits for each performer but also all their stage moves and mannerisms. Also because the crowd in the smaller venue could see the show without the aid of jumbo video screens – the footage on the screen concentrated almost exclusively on the puppets – and was far more enjoyable as a result.

The main changes from the V set was the inclusion of far more new material – with 7 or 8 new songs featured in a mid-set bracket that the band clearly enjoyed playing. Standouts of the new material were “Nasaeu”, “The Information”, “1000BPM” and particularly “Cell Phone’s Dead” which recalls the ‘Mellow Gold’-era Beck of old.

A full band “Paper Tiger” was great, as was a drawn out “Sunday Sun”, and an acoustic slower reading of "Tropicalia".

The acoustic bracket features Beck in cover mode, tackling “Everyone’s Got To Learn” originally by The Korgis (although possibly better known for Beck’s recording on the soundtrack to ‘Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind’), and a snatch of Hank William’s “(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle” that led into “The Golden Age” that, as at V, had the band drumming along on a table and glasses – leading into “Clap Hands” and “One Foot In The Grave”.

The encores also ran similar to V, with a crowd pleasing “Where It’s At” quickly followed by “Epro”. Beck is clearly an accomplished performer, so he really excelled at the smaller venue and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better way to spend a Saturday night in London.

The Lucksmiths – Fortuna Pop! Festival – The Luminaire, Kilburn

2006-08-30T22:06:00.000+01:00

Had another great night at The Luminaire in Kilburn – which is fast becoming one of my favourite music venues in London. It was the second night of a three-day Fortuna Pop! Festival – but I mostly went to catch up with my old friends from Melbourne The Lucksmiths.

Unfortunately we missed first band Fanfarlo – but did arrive in time to catch some low-key indie-guitar pop from Airport Girl. Apparently they hadn’t played a show in almost 3 years – but they still sounded pretty tight.

Host for the night was Darren Hayman (formerly of the band Hefner) who proved to be very entertaining – introducing bands, running an impromptu quiz on the history of Fortuna Pop!, but best of all was his one-song serenade on ukulele.

I wasn’t familiar with the Would Be Goods sounded pretty good – but I found singer Jessica Griffin’s voice a bit same-same. Still the crowd seemed to love it so they must be doing something right.

The Lucksmiths bounded onstage and burst straight into “Young and Dumb” from ‘Warmer Corners’, quickly followed by ‘Sucesslessness’ a great song from the ‘A Little Distraction’ EP. I’ve only seen The Lucksmiths a few times since the addition of second guitarist Louis Richter – and gee it fills their sound out nicely and gives them a lot more grunt.

It was also fantastic seeing them play to a clearly adoring audience – many of whom have waited over 3 years since their last UK tour to see the band live.

Viva la indie-pop!

The Dandy Warhols – Bar Academy Islington

2006-08-23T23:26:00.000+01:00

Slow-building opener “Godless” was quickly followed by a rough “We Used to Be Friends” and either by design (it was a stripped back 4-piece line-up sans bass and any horns on this tour) or through inspiration – the band seemed to move away from the psychedelic noodling of their last couple of albums, and were more touch with their retro-pop heritage. As a result, more recent songs like “All The Money Or The Simple Life Honey” were stripped back to their pop-roots, so it nestled in comfortably with a set laden with slacker pop anthems like “Bohemian Like You”, “Cool as Kim Deal” , “Get Off” and “Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth”.
For a small show – the band certainly spared no expense on the production with impressive sound, and great lighting that included projections behind the band from old cartoons, psychedelic patterns, and movie clips – some even loosely related to the song being played suggesting some thought had gone into the production.
“The Last High” worked well stripped of the synth-pop over production that I felt marred the recorded version (particularly the vocal effects) and a busking-style run-through “Everyday Should Be a Holiday” was played as a crowd request. Also interesting was a version of the barely over a minute long “Welcome to The Monkey House” which Courtney described as one of his favourite songs.

The spanking new “Have A Kick Ass Summer (Me and My Friends)” – i-tunes only single and preview of the new album the group are currently recording - is a pop gem. Figers crossed this means The Dandy’s are embracing their pop heritage on record as well as on stage.
Courtney still insists on not leaving the stage for a break between the main set and encore – which I think is admirable, however the crowd still gets confused. So when he announced “Country Leaver” as their closer, I suspect most people didn’t believe him, so would have been surprised when the band didn’t return. Although I'm guessing they still left happy cause it was a great show.

V Festival - Hylands Park, Chelmsford

2006-08-19T22:59:00.000+01:00

We were a bit late getting started for our Saturday at V so unfortunately all we heard of The Magic Numbers was the sounds of "Forever Lost" drifting across the car-park and camp site as we made our way in.

Fortunately we got positioned at the Channel 4 Stage (the second largest) in time to catch most of The Cardigans set. Mostly familair with this Swedish combo from their pop-orientated material - I was suprised at how diverse their sound was, from pretty hard rocking to an almost country lilt at times. Highlights were the 'Gran Turismo' double of "Erase/rewind" and "My Favorite Game".

Next up on the same stage was American indie trio We Are Scientists, whose major-label debut 'With Love And Squalor' has been on high-rotation on Kim's ipod. Their stage entrance was one of the highlights of the day: the speakers blasting the sound of a Harley revvving louding - only to have the band members, in full racing driver helmets, peddle themselves on stage on childrens tricycles. Their set drew heavily from 'With Love and Squalor' from opener "Lousy Reputation" to highlights "Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt", "It's A Hit" and set-closer "The Great Escape". Their set was also the first time I noted the strange British custom I dubbed "toasting the chorus". As the name implies - the crowd raise their drinks in toast (in the same way Americans punch the air) to particularly anthemic choruses. I ended up encountering this a lot through-out the day.

We then slipped across to the main stage to catch the last half of Keane. I've been enjoying their new album 'Under the Iron Sea' quite a bit - so it was good to hear live versions of the U2-esque single "Is It Any Wonder?" (more toasting the chorus for that one) and "Cystal Ball", plus the closing ballad "Bedshaped".

The change-over between bands on the main stage is around three-quarters of an hour, so we used the break betweek Keane and Beck to slip back to the Channel 4 stage to check-out ska-ish rockers The Ordinary Boys. Only saw a few songs from them but the bouncy "Nine to Five" sounded pretty good.

Beck's set on the main stage kicked off with marionette puppets, styled to look like every member of the band (right down to matching stage costumes and instruments), miming to the album version of "Loser" - with the band entering mid-song and finishing it live. Quickly followed by "Devil's Haircut" it was actually a hits heavy set that was very well received by the festival crowd. From last year's 'Guero' we got "Black Tambourine", "ePro" and "Girl". A few new songs from his forthcoming album 'The Information': "Cell Phone's Dead", "The Information", "1000BPM" and "Motorcade" sounded closer to older 'Mellow Gold'-style than more recent dance-orientated material. "Sex Laws", a crowd request, was played at half-pace which worked really well. A midway acoustic set had Beck playing solo versions of "Lost Cause" and "The Golden Age" while the band enjoyed some food on an onstage table - which they slowly started tapping and drumming out a rhythm on, leading Beck into "Clap Hands" and "One Foot In The Grave" to close the main set. After a pretty funny onscreen display of the puppet bands festival behaviour - including peeing in the outdoor urinals - the band returned for an uptempo encore: "1000BPM", "Where It's At" - which got the best response of his set - and closer "E-pro".
Again, with an almost hour changeover between Beck and headliners Radiohead - we nipped back to The Channel 4 stage to see some agnsty rock from The Editors with "Blood" and "Bullets". They had the members of We Are Scientists guest on backing vocals for a rivetting take on REMs "Orange Crush" that was one of the highlights of the day. Set-closer "Fingers In The Factory" was pretty tasty too.
We came back to the main stage - together with around 70,000 of my closest friends - for a squishy but impressive closing set from Radiohead. Playing a suprising number of their better known songs - including an opening "Airbag", and a wealth of songs from my favorite Radiohead album 'The Bends': "My Iron Lung", "Just", "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and "The Bends". Three new songs were also included: "Bodysnatchers", "Nude" and "All I Need". More recent material included "The National Anthem", "2+2=5", "Pyramid Song", and "Everything In Its Right Place". A set closing "Creep" brought the first day of V, and our festival experience - to a fitting singalong finale.

Tim Rogers & Tex Perkins – Bar Academy Islington

2006-08-12T21:09:00.000+01:00

A packed Australian-centric crowd greeted Tim Rogers and Tex Perkins at the Bar Academy for their early Saturday night show. And although the two stools and two acoustic guitars set-up on stage might have had you thinking this would be a night of two Australian music icons strumming through their hits – you would have been pretty disappointed as the set kicked off with, and for the most part was comprised of, material from the pairs recently recorded ‘My Better Half’ album.

It’s an interesting collaboration that they still seem to be coming to terms with – from the sketchy harmonising on opener “Someone Above” to trading competing verses on “Semi-Auto-Duo-Bio”.

They even poked fun at the work-in-progress nature of their collaboration, with “Half Of Nothing” trialling closing harmonies in the style of The Eagles (MOR west-coast rock), The Bee Gees (campy high disco) and finally Kiss (an impromptu run-through “Beth”). Their new material is clearly established in a roots/blues vein and, on initial hearing, “Everybody Hates You When You’re Popular” stuck me as one of the stand outs.

Considering Tim Rogers is often cited as one of Australia’s finest contemporary songwriters (something I subscribe to) – it’s surprising the Tex and Tim album features 3 covers – all of which were given an airing tonight. Their flamenco style reading of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose” was pretty catchy – although I’m not sure it would stand up well to repeat listening.

After featuring close to two-thirds of their new album – the pair did delve into their respective back-catalogues for some unexpected, and a couple of fairly obvious, selections.

The sombre “Whenever It Snows” and “Paycheque” came from ‘All Is Forgiven”, the second Tex, Don & Charlie album. While from last years Tim Rogers & The Temperance Union double-header ‘Dirty Ron/Ghost Songs’, we got “Ghost Songs” with Tex more than capably taking on the Missy Higgins harmonies from the record.

One of the highlights of the night was You Am I’s “Damage”, quickly followed by “Can’t Say No” from The Beasts Of Bourbon’s ‘The Low Road’ – both of which worked well in the acoustic format.

The main set closed with the two other covers from ‘Half Of Me’; Kiss’s “Come On and Love Me” with Tex doing an impressive Gene Simmons impression (his tongue reaches the end of his chin!) and Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night”. The latter a little too cabaret for my liking with Tex exaggerating the lyrics for comic effect.

Tim Rogers returned solo for the first encore, playing a touching ‘Dinosaurs’, which sounded like one of the highlights from the Tex & Tim album, dedicated to his 5 ½ year old daughter Ruby. Tex re-joined him and took lead-vocals for a great run-through The Cruel Sea’s “This Is Not The Way Home”, before finishing the encore with a fantastic verse-trading version of “Heavy Heart”.

Tex and Tim returned, perhaps ill-advisedly, for a second encore with “Cunnalingus” a mock tudor-style ballad (and unlisted final track on their new album) in the style of the Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Sir Robin minstrels (“it’s a mystery where the ancient art comes from / you use you lips and your mouth and your tongue”) and although it seemed to be well received by the crowd - personally I would have preferred things to end on the musical high of ‘Heavy Heart’, rather than end on a low-brow comedy note.... although it was Saturday night.

Teenage Fanclub - The Forum, London

2006-07-24T21:26:00.000+01:00

Part of the 'Don't Look Back festival' with bands playing "classic" albums in their entirety - Teenage Fanclub tackled Bandwagonesque. Aside from playing as note-perfect renditions of songs as possible, the band went all out with the line-up, getting original drummer Brendan O'Hare to take the stool again, but more exciting for me was the inclusion of Joe McAlinden (Superstar etc) reprising his work on violin, and US-based producer Don Fleming performing additional guitar and quasi MC duties.Even though quite a few of these songs turn up in their current live set, massive kudos to the band for really going for it with regard to recreating the sounds of the original album: the full backing vocals on 'The Concept', sax and strings where it should be, added handclaps, extra guitar, even dusting off the drum-machine for "Is This Music?". The album was as expected - highlights remain 'The Concept', 'Star Sign' and 'Alchoholiday' - but I did find playing the album in order an oddly anticlimactic experience because you always knew what was coming next.

After a 15 minute break the band returned - this time with current drummer Francis MacDonald - for more of a traditional set (minus any of the already played Bandwagonesque stuff) - most likely to spite the nostalgia of the evening - kicking off with a double-shot from latest album 'Man-Made' with "It's All In My Mind" and "Fallen Leaves".'Grand Prix' also got a nice airing with versions of "Verisimilitude" and "Mellow Doubt", “About You”, “Don't Look Back” and “Sparky’s Dream”. From 'Songs From Northern Britain' we got the awesome "Ain't That Enough" and "I Don't Want Control of You", and “Your Love Is The Place Where I Come From”, while"I Need Direction" was the sole contribution from 2000's 'Howdy'. Finally, original drummer Brendan O'Hare returned for "Everything Flows" as a drawn-out closer.

PS thanks to Heather from TeenageFanclub.com forum for the gig photos.

The Eels – Astoria London

2006-06-23T20:15:00.000+01:00

It seems only a few months ago that I saw The Eels at The Royal Albert Hall on their Eels with Strings tour – in fact it was October last year. That said – I’m not sure even a nine month absence was enough to prepare fans for the dramatic difference between this new show and the previous Eels visit.
Kicking off at 8:15pm with squalling feedback that led into ‘The Other Shoe’ and ‘Old Shit/New Shit’ – the current incarnation of The Eels is a lean three-piece (well-technically a four-piece with onstage bouncer “Crazy Al” assisting with occasional back-up vocals and instrumentation - but more on that later) of two guitars and drums focusing on the more rock material from their extensive back-catalog.
If calling the tour “No Strings Attached” wasn’t enough to highlight the difference between this and previous shows – the band issue a musical statement of intent with a cover of Peaches (featuring Iggy Pop) single ‘Rock Show’ – sample lyrics: “You came to see a rockshow/A big gigantic cock show” and “You came to see a rock show/This isn't a fuckin' talk show”.
Singer/songwriter E – took this last verse seriously, not saying a thing to the crowd all night. Instead all onstage introductions and between song quips where issued by the looming figure of bearded and bald security guy Crazy Al (AKA Alan Hunter – who keen eyed fans, and Kimbo, recognized as the double-bassist for the previous tours With Strings line-up). Al’s introductions ranged from the sincere (“This is dedicated to our favorite band in the universe…. Smoosh” – who supported earlier and rejoined the band for encores) to the ridiculous (“I know the deal when I see it….. this is the deal!”).
In fact – apart from the band dressing in a confusing mix of military uniforms: drummer Derek “Knuckles” Brown was in full American Civil War outfit, guitarist Chet “The Chet” Lyster went with standard baggy greens and a Che Grevara style hat, E on the other hand went with a Fifties-style aviator hat and glasses - most of the onstage showmanship came from Crazy Al. This included some Elvis style karate-dancing, employing props like a phone for ‘The Other Shoe’ and lifting weights during another. He still found time to ensure E’s personal security – at one stage during a particularly rawkus solo – shooing guitarist The Chet back to his side of the stage so he didn’t get too close to E.
Musically the show most reminded me of the 2003 Tour Of Duty for the guitar-heavy “Shootenanny” record. Employing the twin-guitar approach for the first half-dozen or so songs – including a cover of Willie Dixon’s ‘Crazy Love’ (Crazy Al’s theme tune?), and a few non-LP rarities like ‘Eyes Down’ from the “Holes” film soundtrack, and b-side ‘After The Operation’.
It was when E switched to keyboards that things really came together for me – highlight was a slower-tempo reading of ‘Last Stop: This Town’, a great cover of Tom Wait’s ‘Jesus Gonna Be Here’ with The Chet on lead vocals, and ‘Dirty Girl’. A few songs from their 1996 debut album “Beautiful Freak” also got an airing – ‘Rags To Rags’, a countrified ‘My Beloved Monster’ and a lengthy ‘Not Ready Yet’ that seemed to run for 10-15 mins – including a mid-song break where E went off-stage and Crazy Al continued his guitar-playing for him.
Not surprisingly, it was the material from the guitar-heavy “Souljacker” album - ‘Souljacker Pt1’ and ‘Dog Faced Boy’ - that worked best when E returned to second guitar.
The main set closed on an odd-note with show-tune style covers of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins ‘I Put A Spell On You’ and Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’.
The band quickly returned for a two song encore of ‘Cancer For The Cure’ and a hyper-paced ‘I Like Birds’. The two girls in Smoosh ran on-stage mid-song like hysterical Beatles fans complete with Crazy Al chasing (but strangely never catching) them. The Smoosh girls assisted on backing vocals, and it was a great sight to see Crazy Al having to lift them to the microphone so they could call out “birds” for the ‘I Like Birds’ one word chorus.
With that the band went offstage and the houselights went up – however word of The Eels encore trickery has clearly spread, and only about a third of the crowd left. A fairly good clue that the band would return was that the PA was playing a muzak version of The Eels ‘Saturday Morning’ – which they then returned to play with the houselights on.
Unfortunately this has become something of a boy-who-cried-wolf situation, because when the band did leave the stage and the PA music came on – most of the crowd refused to go until 10-15 minutes later when the venue security started clearing people away.
As always a fantastic – andt very different - show from a fantastic and unpredictable band. You have to give E some kudos – he can write great songs and produce great records, but he loves to buck conventions and always tries to come out with something a little different – unexpected encore, an all-strings tour, onstage bouncer, rearrangements of his best-known songs, crazy cover versions – to push the boundaries of what is expected from a live concert. Good on him.
Thanks to www.eels.nl for the photos.

Eugene Kelly & Francis McKee - London Luminaire

2006-06-17T21:15:00.000+01:00

First up – how good is the Luminaire? A Retro looking venue with a great stage set-up that has easy viewing from most of the room – even the couches in the corner! Good sounding PA. The staff seems friendly and it’s easy to get a drink. Best of all – they have signs pinned up around the place advising noisy punters that people didn’t pay to hear them yabber so shut up! No wonder Time Out gave it Live Venue of the Year in 2005/2006. Good choice.

Anyway – after navigating our way to deepest darkest Kilburn – arrived at The Luminaire about 10 minutes before Eugene Kelly came on for a half hour solo set.

Francis later advised that they’d gotten Eugene off his deathbed to play tonight – but he certainly sounded in good voice. Playing mostly material from his highly underrated 2005 ‘Man Alive’ album – kicking off with “You’re Having My Sex” (which he said was written about Robbie Williams but could now be applied to The Artic Monkeys) and including a fantastic harmonica-rich version of “Older Faster”. I was pretty happy he delved back into some Eugenenius material with “River Clyde Song” from their second album ‘Mary Queen of Scots’.

Francis Kelly came on about 15 mins later accompanied by cello, acoustic guitar/accordion, and her sister Marie on harmony/backing vocals. Playing mostly material from her just released solo album ‘Sunny Moon’ (all but one song – which was from her previous, post-Vaselines band Suckle) I still find Francis something of an acquired taste. At the right time – it can be exactly what you want to hear, but other times it can be a little one-dimensional. For those not familiar with her – the closest comparison I can come up with is Nico on the early Velvet Underground stuff.

Anyway – after a reasonably short set – Francis called Eugene back to the stage “for the reason you’ve all come tonight” a Vaselines reunion.

In the spirit of The Vaselines they confessed to being incredibly under-rehearsed – although “Molly’s Lips” (done in the original, much slower tempo) sounded great. The Divine cover “You Think You’re a Man” also sounded great, but “The Day I Was A Horse” was suitably shambolic. Highlight for me was a cello-rich “Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam” and the show-closing “Son Of A Gun”.

Guns N Roses - Hammersmith Apollo

2006-06-07T16:01:00.000+01:00

In a typically chaotic fashion – Guns N Roses finally hit the stage 90 minutes after their shitty metal support band had finished. During what seemed like the longest hours and a half on earth rumours starting circulating through the crowd that the band was a no-show, that the venue curfew was midnight so the band would only have an hour to play. The crowd was getting pretty hostile and booing every new song that started on the backing tape.

Around 10:45pm the band hit the stage and all was forgiven as the opening riff to ‘Weclome to The Jungle’ is blasted out.

Despite rumours to the contrary (one UK paper describing him as a cross between Mick Hucknell from Simply Red and Chucky from Child Play) Axl is looking surprisingly fit and certainly in good form – doing the old shuffle dance of old, and a new twirling move I dubbed “swinging the lasso”. He’s certainly in fine voice – giving note perfect renditions of classic hits like ‘Sweet Child O Mine’, ‘You Could Be Mine’ and ‘Mr Brownstone’.

The latest version of Guns N Roses that Axl has assemble around himself played great – but the looked more like a group of cartoon superheroes than a hard rock act!

Guitarist Robin Finck (who joined the band in 1997 from Nine Inch Nails) is probably the worst offender – dressing like some kind of magical wizard in a black tunic and tights, with knee high red shoes. He even drew attention to himself with continual strange high-kicking action during each solo.

Newest guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal was wearing what looked like a purple Fez. He did redeem himself during his guitar solo however, revealing the roots of his nickname by playing a guitar shaped like a giant foot, that flapped bumblebee wings as he solo’d.

Richard Fortus on rhythm guitar was also a bit of a shocker. Dressed like a cartoon punk rocker – all leather jacket and converse high-tops – although I give him some leeway due to cred developed from his time in The Psychadelic Furs and Love Spit Love.

On a similar note Tommy Stinson was great on bass. He didn’t seem to overplay and, unlike the other members of this cartoon army, he an Axl seem to have a genuine rapport– engaging in some synchronised jumping at one point, and he seemed to get the most heartfelt of the band introductions (and most formal “Thomas Eugene Stinson”). Of course as a life-long Replacements fan the dude could have played in a nappy and I’d still forgive him.

The crowd was pretty cool – I spotted Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen sitting a few rows ahead of us (in fact they conspicuously took their seats a few mere moments before the band came on, suggesting they were somehow complicit in the 90 minute delay – backstage jam or dinner with Queen I suspect?). Kimbo also spotted Elle McPherson walking in – well truthfully she spotted a supermodel walking in, and we later read it was Elle.

The special effects we’re fantastic – not only big big bursts of smoke and flame – but bloody loud as well. They also had some pretty cool video footage projected on giant screens behind the stage.

Apart from a slew of classics – the band did play a few news songs from the decade in the making “Chinese Democracy” – ‘Madagascar’ I was familiar with from the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards performance (highlight being the after gig interview with Axl where he claims the new album will be out “in a few months”) and I’d heard the MP3s of ‘The Blues’ and ‘IRS’.

Surprisingly the band also embraced their covers with great versions of Bob Dylan’s ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ (including a great Axl impression from a crowd member when Axl held the mic out to the audience) and Wing’s ‘Live and Let Die’.

Because of the massive delay in starting we had to leave during the lengthy ‘November Rain’ in order to catch the last tube home. But apparently Sebastian Bach from Skid Row (who I’ve been enjoying emmensly in the VH1 realty show “Supergroup”) came on to duet on ‘My Michelle’ and we missed the traditional show-closer ‘Paradise City’.

Full setlist:
'Welcome To The Jungle'
'It's So Easy'
'Mr Brownstone'
'Live And Let Die'
'Sweet Child O' Mine'
'Madagascar'
'Better'
'You Could Be Mine'
'Knockin' On Heaven's Door'
'The Blues'
'IRS'
'Outta Get Me'
'November Rain'
'My Michelle' (with Sebastian Bach)
'Patience'
'Night Train'
'Paradise City'

Richard Ashcroft – Brixton Academy

2006-05-19T19:48:00.000+01:00

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

2006-05-18T15:23:00.000+01:00

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

2006-05-10T17:28:00.000+01:00

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

2006-05-03T14:24:00.000+01:00

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!)

Kaiser Chiefs – Brixton Academy, London

2006-04-28T15:01:00.000+01:00

When we first arrived in the UK it was a bit of a baptism of fire music-wise. Sure there was quite a bit of stuff I know and love – but there was also a whole suite of bands with crazy sounding names that I’d never heard of suddenly clogging up the record store racks, popping up on the radio, and turning up on the music video shows.

Pretty quickly you start to hear a few things you like, and before you know it there’s a stack of CDs on the bookshelf by bands I’d never even heard of this time last year! Kaiser Chiefs album “Employment” was one of the first of the big UK bands to really grab me. I’ll admit I got sucked in by the singles (how good is ‘I Predict A Riot’?) and a three song appearance on Later with Jools Holland really sealed it for me. So after giving their debut album a thrashing – I was pretty happy to be able to get tickets to see them at Brixton Academy.

The show was part of some beer-sponsored festival “Carling Live 24” - that has a bunch of bands playing all around London for 24 hours. That said – Kaiser Chiefs came on a little after 9pm which is I believe is the standard start time for headliners – so I think it was part of a festival in name alone.

Kicking off with ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’ the show has a pretty high intensity and the band played with surprising fire (given this was one of the last shows for an over year-long tour to promote their sole album – you’d forgive them for getting a little bored playing the same set). They did thrown in a few odd ones – the feisty b-side ‘Take My Temperature’, and a few new songs ‘Heat Dies Down’, ‘Learnt My Lesson Well’ and ‘Highroyds’ that bode well for that difficult second album.

Highlights for me where ‘I Predict A Riot’ (with the crowd jumping so much I did, for a sadly not too brief moment, wonder if the upstairs balcony could take it), the slower ‘You Can Have It All’ where Ricky plucking a fan out from the front of the crowd to waltz with, and the show-closing ‘Oh My God’.

All in all – a pretty great show, as I remarked to Kimbo – it’s rare to see a band like at the first peak of their powers.

Iron & Wine/Calexico - The Forum, London

2006-04-23T16:30:00.000+01:00

Confessions upfront – I didn’t catch most of this musical extravaganza – that had Iron & Wine opening, followed by Iron & Wine with Calexico, then an internal, Savador Duran, and Calexico to close it out.

What I did see was the Iron & Wine end of the bill – and it was fantastic. Despite the running order being clearly labelled as a 45 minute set by Iron & Wine, followed by 30 minutes of Iron & Wine with Calexico – there was a lot of inter-band mingling going on – with Calexico’s Paul Niehaus playing some brilliant pedal steel on opener ‘Sodom, South Georgia’. After a couple of sparser songs – including ‘Woman King’ with light backing vocals – the full band gave a much tougher feel to ‘Free Until They Cut Me Down’ and ‘Teeth In The Grass’.

I’m probably a bigger fan of the Iron & Wine and Calexico collaboration “In The Reins” than I am of most of the Iron & Wine catalogue – so it was an incredible treat to hear the band recreate their combination live. Highlight for me was a sprawling ‘Red Dust’. Unfortunately I missed hearing the title track ‘He Lays In Reins’ - performed together with a cover of The Velvet Undergrounds ‘All Tomorrows Parties’ at a show-closing all-in finale several hours later, because I nipped home early so I’d be able to face Monday morning work first thing in the morning.

Flaming Lips - Royal Albert Hall

2006-04-22T15:43:00.000+01:00

What a fantastic way to spend a Saturday night in London. Despite the show being advertised as sold out – a fairly impromptu enquiry to the Royal Albert Hall box office the day before the show, turned up two great seats in the upper-circle boxes to see The Flaming Lips at The Royal Albert Hall.

Kim hadn’t seen the Lips before and I had distant memories of a blinder of a show at The Palace in Melbourne to live down – but they didn’t fail to disappoint.

Wayne Coyne comes onstage and inflates his giant clear bubble – then rolls out onto the crowd while giant helium balloons are released, the band start playing an intro, and a group of 20-odd martians take stage right, while 20-odd santas take stage left.

It’s great to hear a few of the classic Lips still sound fantastic – opener ‘Race For The Prize’ is a giddy rush with everything else happening at once, it’s good to see ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ still makes great use of a fish-eye camera and nun puppet. ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ gets a good crowd singalone, while a set closing ‘Do You Realise’ is heart-breaking beautifully – prompting me to ponder my own mortality, and those of loved ones – in the midst of a crazy swirl of streamers, martians, and santas.

This being one of the early shows for their new album “At War With The Mystics” – it was good to hear the new songs live – and the up-tempo songs like “Free Radicals” (complete with Wayne tackling a twin-necked guitar - see pic below) and first (UK) single “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” come across best to me. I think the band still have some work to better integrate the new material into their well worn setlist (they toured “Yoshimi” for what – 3 years?) but ‘Vein of Stars’ – complete with mirror-ball accompaniment – is great.

The encore featured a blistering cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ that had a few of the newspaper reviewers raving – but didn’t really work for me. My only (very) minor gripe – was the amount of non-musical activity going on, and the large number of non-musical performers on stage, was at times in danger of over-powering the music. However the Lips clearly love to make every show an event, and break down the traditional concert performance boundaries, and the succeed on that level hands down!

Nick Hornby with Marah - Dingwalls / Lock 17 Camden

2006-04-06T15:36:00.000+01:00

This was an interesting one – billed as “A Night of Words and Music with Nick Hornby and Marah”.

The show featured British author Nick Hornby (best known to me for ‘High Fidelity’ a book about an obsessive music fan and record store owner who puts his music ahead of most everything else in his life – interestingly the year this book was released, 3 different people gave it to me independently as a birthday gift!).

Marah on the other hand are a US rock band from Philadelphia – rock in the true Springsteen meets the Replacements sense of the word. While their “Kids In Philly” album may have been nestled out of my top ten albums of all time – “Roundeye Blues” would easily make a CDr of my favourite songs of all time.

So as you can imagine – I was pretty excited about this show. Things started very well with Phil Jupitus welcoming everyone and introducing things – we then settled into the format for the night: Nick would read a music related essay, and Marah would follow it with a well chosen cover (or in the case of Hornby’s final essay – A Love Letter to Marah, a monstrous version of one of their own songs ‘It's Only Money, Tyrone)

Kicking things off with a tribute to his first concert – Rory Gallagher – and the joys of ear-splittingly loud rock and roll – highlights for me included the tribute to Rod Stewart and The Small Faces, coupled with a great cover of Ronnie Lane’s ‘Debris’.

[In fact – the whole night was recording by Penguin Books for their Penguin podcast series – so you can actually download this portion of the show as a free MP3 here: http://thepenguinpodcast.blogs.com/podcast/files/penguinpodcast11b.mp3]

The crowd was an odd mix of Marah fans, music fans, literature fans – and celebrity spotters who seemed to have come along because the night had the whiff of an “event” about it. To this last lot I offer this piece of advise: if you’re going to see live music, you should generally try and keep chat to a minimum so people can enjoy the show, if you’re going to see a spoken word show SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Ok - glad I got that outta my system, Other subjects included going to a Bob Marley concert, and how The Clash saved Rock and Roll (followed by a brilliant ‘Lost In The Supernarket’).

After Nick finished with his “love letter to Marah” – which I did find strangely unsettling given they were on stage with him at the time – the band played an hour or so set. Highlights for me where ‘Point Breeze’, ‘Dishwasher’ and ‘Float Away’.

Drive By Truckers –Kafe Antzokia, Bilbao Spain

2006-03-23T16:12:00.000Z

A visit from my crazy brother Andy prompted a week long trip to Spain (Bilba and San Sebastian) planned around the kick-off show for the Drive By Truckers European tour in Bilbao on 23 March – before Andy flew home to Australia the next day.

Non-musical highlights out of the way first – how good is Spain? Buying meat over the bar…. mmmmmmm Jamon Iberico (“the rolls Royce of meat!”) mmmmmm. Ok so onto the show –

The venue itself was fantastic. One large room – that appears to be a restaurant during the day – with a very high raised stage, that has steps leading up to it (handy for sitting on before and after the show).

Andy is the Drive By Truckers afficianado – I only know a few songs – but they played a bunch from the brand new album “A Blessing And A Curse” – plus a few “classics” – of which I really liked ‘Carl Perkins Cadillac’. I was surprised how hard rocking the show was – I was thinking it might be a bit more country – but the boys (and girl) rock hard. The ended with an encore cover of Jim Carrol’s ‘People Who Died’. After the show fans (including my brother!) mingled pretty freely with the band, and they were extremely happy to pose for photos.

Berwick st, Soho UK

2006-03-16T13:33:00.000Z

I've been extremely slack in updating the blog for a while - so I thought I'd return with probably the most embarassing entry thus far - a re-creation by my brother Andy and I of the Oasis (What's The Story) Morning Glory? album cover.
The photo itself is taken in Berwick street Soho - just outside the old Select-A-Disc (now Sister Ray) record store. This is just one of about half a dozen record stores in Berwick street (mostly secondhand or discount) so I make a regular trip down there most Sunday afternoons. It was only after I'd been going there for a few months that someone pointed out to me it was used for the Oasis cover.

All credit for this one should really go to Kim who took the picture - after a quick check of a thumbnail in Sister Ray, she nailed the framing almost perfectly. Nice work. I imagine most people will want to compare with the original so I've included that for reference.

The Album Chart Show

2006-03-13T15:13:00.000Z

Special guest post from Kimbo's far more eliqouent 500 Reasons Why blog:

Nick found a site online where you basically enter your details and preferences, and every so often, they will send you tickets to the taping of a TV show. On Monday night we went to the taping of Channel 4's The Album Chart Show at Koko in Camden where they were pre-recording appearances for the show. We saw Kila Kela, The Kooks and Placebo - all ok - and were looking to make an early exit to avoid Craig David, however were pleasantly suprised when they announced the final act would actually be Franz Ferdinand. Awesome.

After taking the piss out of the host all night (Nick & Andy, that is), we ended up in the very spot where he (Joe Mace) was going to make his final link to Franz Ferdinand. Never shy of missing an opportunity (Nick & Andy, that is), they insisted on a photo, and he played them like a pro. What a sport.

Beth Orton - Shepherds Bush Empire

2006-02-28T14:38:00.000Z

Kim and I saw Beth Orton at The Shepherds Bush Empire last night. She was a her goofy charming self as usual (sample between song banter: “What’s ET short for?...... because he’s got lil legs”.

A Much bigger band that I’d seen her playing with before (I guess due to air fare costs – most Australian tours were either solo or very stripped back). Interestingly she had Leroy Bach from Wilco playing in her touring band – but I didn’t recognise many of the other players.

The show was good – the band seemed like they had only learnt the new album – so they played pretty much all of that – and she did a few acoustic sections where she took requests and played hits like ‘Stolen Car’ and ‘Sweetest Decline’. The best thing was Ted Barnes (guitarist / co-songwriter for some of the early records) had his new band Cahill play support – but then he did a couple of songs with her during the main set as a duo. They did ‘Feel To Believe’ which was probably the highlight for me.