Venue:

Holmfirth Picturedrome and The Grand, Clitheroe

Date: 19/11/2016

A trip to snowy Yorkshire and two Wishbone Ash shows: Holmfirth Picturedrome on Friday, AshCon (the Wishbone annual convention, which is conventionally the last date in their annual UK Oct/Nov tour) at The Grand, Clitheroe on Saturday.

Mrs H and I had crammed in a few socio-cultural events the previous couple of days and had lunched with troubadour sensation Sarah McQuaid and her svengali Martin Sainsbury the afternoon of the Holmfirth show, catching up with news and bonhomie in a terrific country pub.

Would bonhomie be the order of the day when we met AW’s AttackDog that evening in Holmfirth? Well, we found our B&B (eventually – up a hill out of Holmbridge, turn right at the oncoming blizzard, and a few hundred yards to the warmth and comfort of Coddy’s Farm – highly recommended!) and then headed straight out again to Holmfirth, the metropolis four miles up the road. Almost everyone else in our farmhouse B&B was going there. The Picturedrome clearly has a great effect on local hospitality businesses.

Arriving at the venue, I left my spare ticket (Carol From Luton being indisposed) at the door for ‘AttackDog’). » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Thunderbolt, Bristol

Date: 26/11/2016

The Thunderbolt is an engagingly scruffy pub slightly away from the bright lights of town and doesn’t attract the usual cool-cats you see elsewhere (present company excepted). It’s become the established setting for the annual pilgrimage to see The Monochrome Set – always Saturday, always stand in the same spot, always manage to avoid the enthusiastic dancer.

So here we are again. Beloved of all the right people TMS have enjoyed a stop-start 35 years of making wonderfully clever twangy guitar pop music. The latest incarnation is down to 2 original members – main man Bid and impassive man-in-black bassist Andy Warren. JP Moran on keyboards now making his own the spot recently vacated by fondly remembered guitar hero Lester Square. TMS have some shared DNA with the Art School gene pool that produced sundry members of Wire, Ants, Slits, Banshees and Vibrators (check out Pete Frame’s Family Tree). Taking themselves far less seriously than any of their contemporaries has endeared them to loyal fans and probably ensured they can’t give up their day jobs. So here we are again – a spiffing new album “Cosmonaut” recently out and as usual they play » Continue Reading.

Venue:

O2 Institute, Birmingham

Date: 26/11/2016

Here’s the vibe, one of the coldest nights of the year, and there are 5 middle-aged men on stage, singing and strumming their hearts out on the cheeriest sounds this side of the Clyde Riviera. This late blooming, new album “Here” featuring in most of the 2016, best-of lists, is a delight, anything from that album segueing seamlessly with anything from before, interspersing old with new with abandon. Like a comfy winter coat, they instil a feel good whatever in their, um, fan club and tonight, Matthew, I was one of them. Kicking off aptly, Start Again, songs from nearly every stage of their 27 year existence were featured, Norman Blake unmistakably in charge, yet sharing and swapping singing duties with bassist Gerrard Love and guitarist Raymond McGinley. the 3 styles of songwriting impossible to differentiate, all a joyful jangle, a word I try to avoid. But can’t. With keyboard/sometimes more guitar and drums adding to the vocal swell, at times this smacked more of the Beach Boys or, particularly with some of the newer songs, C,S,N & Y, albeit ni a good way, if those bands had been brought up in Northern » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Teatro Forma, Bari, Italy

Date: 26/11/2016

It’s a funny old world, where a young lad of Jacob Collier’s talent has fewer than 10,000 followers on Twitter and is playing small 100-seater venues like this, while One Direction are filling stadiums. Collier has the looks to be in a boy band, but he has way, way more talent. He might even be a genius. Quincy Jones has said of him: “I have never in my life seen a talent like this.” KD Lang describes him as “the most talented kid on Earth today.” David Crosby limits himself to the more prosaic “fucking amazing”.

We’ve all seen live sampling used to good effect before. Collier takes it one step further as he flits effortlessly from keyboards to drums to guitar to electric bass to piano to stand up bass to percussion, sampling as he goes round. And he plays each of them to a very high standard. Singing all the while. I’d found his singing on his Youtube videos a little too mannered. Kind of like a public school choirboy. But live it sounds much more sincere and involved, from gorgeous falsetto to bluesy baritone.

To compliment his » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Granada Studios, Manchester

Date: 26/11/2016

I’ve always been more of a gig goer than a clubber and I’m certainly not one for going out past midnight these days – I prefer to be off the street before public transport shuts down and it goes a bit Pete Tong out there. However, I’m also a long term fan of Rochdale’s version of Kraftwerk, and in spite of the fact that they’re older than me and make fiendishly complicated music that is impossible to dance to they still insist in playing in an after hours ‘Rave’ setting rather than a regular 8-11pm gig. It’s part of their Shtick, and it’s the environment they feel most comfortable in I guess. It gets increasingly incongruous though, as the years pass and we all get older and their music moves further and further away from anything resembling ‘dance music’.

The choice of venue is intriguing though, we’re in Studio 12 at the former Granada TV Studios (future currently uncertain but next year will be the venue for the The Crystal Maze experience – “start the fans please!”) – where The Beatles played their first TV appearance, quite possibly the venue for the » Continue Reading.