Venue:

Maverick Festival, Easton Farm Park, Suffolk

Date: 03/09/2021

Well, this was a delight! Straying out of my more familiar folkie fields, I doffed my stetson and shined my boots and became a cowboy! Maverick describes itself as unashamedly americana, and has been broncing its buck since around 2008, I gather, winning awards and attracting niche audiences all along the way. Small, very small, which maxes out at 2.5k, and in the delightful settings of a children’s farm park, so all the stages are in old barns, suitably decked out in vintage Louis L’Amour chic. Playing to a faithful audience, those playing are a mix of those for whom country isn’t a bad word, so a fairly niche selection, and those who support and provide a seemingly vibrant scene in clubs and bars, hidden in plain sight from most of the rest of us. I guess there would normally be more yanks than this year could find, but it showed even yee-has from Yorkshire could pass muster. The niche names this year included Jon Langford, My Darling Clementine, Los Pistoleros and Hank Wangford, as well as the just about to be huge, Dean Owens. Again, courtesy covid, there were » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, B’ham

Date: 20/08/2021

Second milestone as Covid becomes the normal: first outdoor festival a fortnight ago and this first indoor gig. Long time coming, mind, with at least two earlier postponements over the last year and a half, so much so that I bought my ticket twice, a year apart, forgetting the earlier purchase. Luckily @stevet took up the offer of a freebie, and, given the new regs, we were in the right place as the door opened to grab prime front row seats.

Not a firm of dour Scottish solicitors, Drever, McCusker and Woomble are what might be called an indie-folk supergroup, reprising their sole album, 2008’s ‘Before the Ruin’. Who they? Kris Drever is the guitarist and singer of Lau, John McCusker the fiddle maestro currently earning his main crust with Mark Knopfler and Roddy Woomble the singer with Idlewild, and the writer of gloriously maudlin and morose fare. This was, to all intents and purposes, their first gig since Cov Zero, with any warm-up jinxed by their nine hour drive down from Edinburgh. Kicking straight off with four songs from Before the Ruin, it was apparent immediately » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Oval

Date: 08/08/2021

I love cricket, all forms. Have done for as long as I can remember. So when the new Hundred tournament came along and I’d read all the naysayers and all the spin and all the hype I decided despite some reservations to book some tickets for last nights game. The Oval Invincibles vs The Trent Rockets two franchises that didn’t exist a few months ago but featuring Jason Roy and Alex Hales respectively two of England’s most thrilling batters. Let’s try out this new version of my favourite sport designed to bring in a new crowd, get kids involved and promote the women’s game. All noble concepts. This is not the place to dissect all the noise surrounding The Hundred so on to the day itself…..

It rained, of course it rained. The women’s game was due to start at 3 pm. It didn’t start at all. My son and I decided we would travel into to London for 6pm in the hope that the rain held off long enough for some play in the men’s game. This is also not the place to discuss why the women’s game was cancelled to allow the » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Royal Opera House and Theatre Royal Haymarket

Date: 07/08/2021

When The light decided that she wanted to see Bill Bailey we quickly discovered that the dates for his upcoming tour had been re-arranged due to Covid, and that the ones closest to us in Essex were either sold out (Southend) or had stopped operating (Brentwood). We leapt on Saturday matinee tickets for his residency at the Royal Opera House as soon as it was announced. Not much later we were watching Heathers, the pitch-black Winona Rider and Christian Slater comedy about an American high school nihilist who goes on a murder spree using fake suicides as cover. When I mentioned that Heathers was now a musical being staged in London evening tickets were added to the itinerary.

If that sounds profligate given the recent thread on the cost of tickets these days, these were all bargains. Stalls circle seats for Bill, about 5 rows plus the width of the empty orchestra pit from the stage, were £20 each. They were sold as ‘restricted view’ but that would only matter if you wanted to see an extravagantly staged opera with a huge set, when you don’t need to » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Temperance Cafe,Leamington Spa.

Date: 30/07/2021

I am a big fan of Andy Kershaw. Firstly for his musical taste but also for his love of travel in off the beaten track destinations which I find intriguing. I would love to see North Korea for example but doubt very much I would want to do more than one trip whilst Andy has visited 3 times. His love of Haiti is well documented in his autobiography No off switch as his marriage breakup which caused much opprobrium to be thrown his way mostly by people who had little or any knowledge of the situation he and is familty found themselves in. I find it telling that after the dust settled his children chose to spend more time with him, his son permanently and his daughter with regular visits. Still all of that is in the past and he is now doing the DJ circuit and so it is we found ourselves at the splendid Temperance Cafe in Leamington on a friday night to listen to his splendid playlist of World music the vast majority of which was completely new to me. It started of with a lively African section – » Continue Reading.

Venue:

DTE Music Center (Pine Knob) – Detroit, Michigan

Date: 29/07/2021

The music rocked. The whole of Shake Your Moneymaker followed by a smattering of hits. Chris Robinson dancing like a chicken, Rich Robinson aloof and seemingly above it all – the Black Crowes we have come to know and love. It was good time music – to remind ourselves of better times – but it was merely a backdrop to something else. 15,000 happy to be in the same space, celebrating familiar loud music and chicken moves. I am sure for a lot of folks this was the first gig in a long time. Large venue – semi covered – considered “outside” – but still intimate enough to feel the connection. Over priced beer, over sized heads and hats in your view, under sized-over priced seats that you cant see more than half the stage from. Pot everywhere. $40 t shirts and $50 posters. Lines so long to get through security that you miss the support band (Dirty Honey – think Guns N Roses lite), car parking in a field that the line to get out that means you get home in the middle of night. Ears ringing » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Hatfield House, Hertfordshire

Date: 18/07/2021

It was no surprise that the 2020 Folk by the Oak was cancelled, but more of a surprise that this years was able to go ahead, albeit with reduced ticket numbers and the usual Acorn Stage for newer acts removed to allow more space for distancing. So I was that on a blazing day in July we headed for a field in the grounds of Hatfield House near Welwyn Garden City for the novel experience of enjoying live music in the company of several thousand like minded people. I think it could catch on.

The 2020 lineup all signed themselves up for a like-for-like bill this year, though in the end Richard Thompson couldn’t manage the date. His spot was filled by The Young ‘Uns who were in turn replaced by festival compere Jim Moray after one Young ‘Un succumbed to Covid. In addition, Sam Sweeney was in a car crash the night before as he was going home from a gig, and although he says he was more shaken than hurt a glance at the state of his car on his FB page will be all you need to confirm that he’ll » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Yes, Manchester

Date: 05/06/2021

A few years ago I went to a Heavenly Records showcase gig in Hebden Bridge and saw a two-piece band from Preston who I was very taken with. Soaring vocals and glimmering guitar over a drum machine with a clear nod to The Cocteau Twins. At the time the band went by the absolutely ridiculous name of ‘Britain’ – thus ensuring no chance of Googling them in any meaningful way. They appeared to vanish for a couple of years – only to reemerge as White Flowers (not much of an improvement but pairing it with the word ‘band’ gets you there) -and it took me a while to realise it was them and they’d already sold out several EPs and a limited edition LP during lockdown. Their excellent debut LP ‘Day By Day’ is out now and I’m delighted to say they’re the first band I’ve seen play since March 2020.

Katie (vocals and keys) and Joey (Guitar and occasional vocals) are joined by a drummer filling in for the reel-to-reel tape machine they would have used if they were really going for the Cocteau Twins thing. There is no great ceremony, they » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Civic Theatre, Auckland

Date: 26/05/2021

Ben Elton now lives in Australia most of the time and when the NZ:AUS bubble became a reality – a tour of NZ venues happened last month.

To give a little bit of context ladies and gentlemen most visiting acts will come to Auckland certainly and might also perform in Wellington and/or Christchurch/Dunedin. Ben did 13 venues and multiple shows. Bill Baliey has also been here for an extended time recently.

Ben Elton’s live act is him, alone on stage, talking non-stop for 90 minutes. Then there’s an interval and he’s on for another hour. Logistically, it must be the easiest show in the world to put together.

The themes are old age and how society has changed so quickly. He talks of an episode of the The Thin Blue Line being shown after the 9pm watershed because the words ‘cock’ and ‘arse’ were used in a joke.

Twenty years later and the opening scene of Fleabag is about anal sex…while the main character is having…anal sex. If you Imagine the pace and volume at which Elton speaks and the pauses, you can hopefully appreciate how funny that is. A great deal of the » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Spark Arena, Auckland

Date: 21/03/2021

The recent thread on stand up comedy made me think of Neil Finn. It is rare for a musician of his quality to also be a very funny storyteller. One of the reasons he’s so likeable is that he’s probably just sung an astonishing song perfectly just moments before. He had me at Weather with You – a show stopper that’s actually their show starter! No? Well it would be funny if great-lafff Neil said it.

Mitchell Froom was tickling the ivories and playing various strange instruments from time to time. He produced the first three CH albums and was briefly married to Suzanne Vega. After Don’t Dream it’s Over, Neil commented that his organ playing makes the song and no one can do it like him. These affectionate touches are peppered throughout the show – not least due to his two boys being in the band. One is playing lead guitar next to Neil and the other is at the back of the stage on drums. He’s the distant son, I guess. All right. Is this thing on?

Nick Seymour is a kilt-wearing Edge lookalike who athletically bounces around as he plays » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Briars, Mt Martha outside Melbourne, Vic, Oz

Date: 20/02/2021

Last March I attended Womad NZ, pretty soon after borders shut, doors slammed and the world has never been the same again. Due to a mix of good luck, good management and geographical isolation Australia has fared better than most , though my town, Melbourne has had it tougher. A 5 day lockdown threw plans into disarray but in the end it went ahead. The music was ok, everyone was enjoying being out, especially the bands. The Teskey Brothers are now slicker, better sound, Josh’s voice is still incredible and they are trying to have more of a stage presence. On this they fail. Josh and his brother Sam on guitar have no stage presence, no sex appeal, no charisma. Live they are still a bit boring. Cat Empire started as a latin, ska, rap fusion. As with all curate’s eggs they were good in parts. They have been touring internationally and a pretty slick now. I particularly liked their latin jazz pieces which sounded a bit like Weather Report/Return To Forever and Caravanserai era Santana. High praise in my book.

There were others too but the » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Jazz Cafe, Camden, London

Date: 09/12/2020

A night out you say? In London? In late 2020? Well, yes. Thanks to cabaret style table seating, table service for drinks and face coverings when not actually seated I was able to go to my first gig since my birthday in March. Even in a normal year when we would go to a gig or two a month this would be have been an excellent show, but in 2020 when audience and performers alike are starved of being in the same (socially distanced) room with a group of like minded people making and listening to music it was just the boost everyone needed.

This was an evening at The Jazz Café in Camden to celebrate the legacy of John Prine, who succumbed to Covid earlier this year. This first half was made up of covers of Prine songs, the second by the artists’ own material, from a line up of (deep breath) Angie Gannon, Beth Rowley, Felix Holt, Joe Harvey-White, Josh Flowers, Laura Tenshert, Louis Brennan, Michele Stodart, Naomi Larsson, Pat Ralla, Ren Harvieu, Robert Chaney, Romeo Stodart and Zak Hobbs.

The Jazz Café has been refurbished and greatly improved » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Nowhere, yet everywhere

Date: 29/05/2020

Nights Out? Are you serious? In the tradition of Russian election results, this is part announcement and part review in that we already know what is going to happen. By now it is accepted that Covid 19 has laid waste to the entire festival season, not to mention gigs at every other live venue, and people are getting nervous about when or even whether the new normal will accommodate such things. But you can’t keep a good festival down. So the lovely people of Chester Folk Festival have pulled together a remarkably full and diverse programme for an online festival. Chester is at the smaller end of the festival spectrum, and so is even more of a genuine community than most. I shall miss tonight’s reacquaintances with those that I meet year after year in the pubs and beer tents. But lo! there is a virtual beer tent; there are singarounds; there are chances to chat to the artists; there are even dance workshops – all Zoomed into your living room, of course. As for the gigs, these have been painstakingly stitched together from lockdown-recorded footage, provided by artists who had been booked » Continue Reading.

Venue:

New Plymouth Botanical Gardens, North Island, New Zealand

Date: 13/03/2020

New Zealand is the first country of size to herald in the new year.This year it may have been the last country to host a music festival before the “great shutdown”.

Womad ,as most will know, is a world music festival started by Peter Gabriel et al to promote musics from around the world. I have attended the festival in Adelaide – Womadelaide, reasonably regularly for many years. The last coule were very hot,crowded and with the foot traffic and heat, very dusty. For an asthmatic like me I had had enough. The Womad caravan continues on to NZ after Adelaide so this year a group of us decided to make the trip “across the ditch” take in the festival and tour the north island as well. Things were getting tight, with the virus hitting the northern hemisphere but down here it was the relative calm before the storm. So off we go! First impressions- what a beautiful lush park and as we turn into the first staging area there is the perfectly formed Mt Taranaki- overlooking proceedings.It is very hilly, unlike the flat grasslands of Adelaide, which » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Auckland Town Hall, New Zealand

Date: 10/03/2020

I’ve never been a fan of Pat Metheny. In fact, I have never been a fan of jazz guitar though there are notable exceptions. Just too noodley and in the case of Pat Metheny that signature tone of his electric guitar sort of reminds me of Kenny G. Everything merges, I can never tell one song from another. There are times I’ve thought “if that was on piano, I’d like it, but not on guitar”. But I have a couple of early ECM records of his, coz that is what you did and I have seen him once before. Sort of. I was given free tickets courtesy of doing a radio show on a station the promoters were advertising on. My brother and I went along and within 20 minutes of said noodling we looked at each other and then repaired to the bar, never to return.

A mate wanted to go in Melbourne ,on this tour, and I said “nah, too fucking boring”.

As it happens, Nick has a spare ticket and having never set eyes on the bloke 2 days ago I’ve had beers at a mingle (see blog), » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The London Palladium

Date: 25/02/2020

I have not been so excited going to a gig for years. Peter Green was my first musical hero but I never saw him in his pomp (I was 12 years old when he quit Fleetwood Mac) and I have never seen the later incarnations of his band, much though I love many of them.

The line-up for this one-off celebration (two years in the making, according to our host, Mick Fleetwood) kept growing. Mick said that Billy Gibbons and Steven Tyler were the first two people to say yes, and everything else grew from there.

The Then Play On House Band for the night were: Rick Peterson – keys Rick Vito – guitars Dave Bronze – bass Jonny Lang – guitars Andy Fairweather Lowe – guitars Zak Starkey – drums and percussion Mick Fleetwood – drums

I’m going to get the order of this wrong – it was bit of a blur as people came and went – but the show started with a run of early Mac songs, with Billy Gibbons, Steven Tyler and Christine McVie joining at various times. Billy G was just perfect for this. You realise what a » Continue Reading.

Venue:

St Paul’s Church, Birmingham

Date: 22/02/2020

Jurado is one of what I think of as the good guys, one of that welter of earnest and efficient acoustic troubadours, beavering away in their cottage industries, issuing disc after disc, possibly omni-touring to make a buck, never filling stadiums but capable of drawing a couple of hundred souls out on a wet and windy, into a cold and crumbling church in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. I know little of his back story, my presence largely on account of 2006’s ‘And Now I’m In Your Shadow’, a bleak showcase of his sad songs; a quiet earthquake of dashed emotions. Since then he has dabbled, I gather, with other formats, a bit of psychedelia, some found sound, bands and electricity. But I read that latest album, The Shape of a Storm, was just him, his voice and an acoustic, and I was in. Support was a young Canadian, Dana Gavanski, strumming on a muted electric to the keyboard and bass of her accompanist, together, with occasional drum machine, channeling Mazzy Star, with keen, pure Sandovalesque vocals and spare melodies, the spaces as important as the sounds. Lovely stuff, the acoustics of the building » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Rescue Rooms, Nottingham

Date: 21/02/2020

I finally, at the third attempt, got to see Field Music live. Despite the best attempts of the weather to close major roads, and the resulting three hour drive, we made it with 15 minutes to spare.

Emma Pollock (ex-Delgados) came on with just a cellist as her third band member was stuck in Dundee. She did a Delgados tune and Paper and Glue from her first album, one from each of her second and third, a new one, and a rather good cover of John Cale’s Paris 1919. She was alright, engaged with the audience, but her guitar style suits having a band behind her.

During the interval I managed to track down @smudger and @bobness (who, it turns out, had been standing directly behind me) and then David Brewis came on stage to warn us we were going to hear the new album in sequence in full, followed by the hits.

What I hadn’t realised is the pulses at the start of the album are actually bombs exploding and it was loud and a bit frightening. The songs were excellent, and the audience (bar one » Continue Reading.

Venue:

St. Georges, Bristol

Date: 19/02/2020

There are many songs out there that are older than I am, songs older than my house, older even than the village in which I live. Some of the oldest songs are lost, gone forever with the loss of those who last sang them, and some are still sung, having reached some form of critical mass, and will last for years to come, and finally there are some that fall between these two extremes.

These songs that still hang on by their refrains, resisting the silence, are perhaps known and sung by only a very few people or are maybe even partially lost with only a few verses still known, and these songs are a rich seam that repays investigation, reveals much of interest, plumbs deep emotions and gritty historical experience, provides reflections upon our modern world that often reveal profound takes on humanity that we’d easily have missed without the added perspective of history. They deserve to be preserved, these songs that crystallise the wisdom of elders as sung art. Excitingly, it is often these diminished, shattered and incomplete works that can be manoeuvred or cajoled into revealing things their authors and » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Hammersmith Apollo

Date: 17/02/2020

Firstly, this was a Clapton-curated event so was based exclusively around Ginger’s output between ‘66 and ‘69. For fans of the Graham Bond / Airforce / Baker Gurvitz Army / Fela Kuti versions of the man should move on because there’s nothing for them to see here.

There was quite a ‘special event vibe’ percolating around the crowd outside, then inside the venue. I’ve not been to many standing gigs at Hammersmith (Stray Cats last year, Portishead in 2008), so the chance to join a chilly queue underneath the A4 flyover was a welcome one. An unscientific and probably wholly unrepresentative survey of the accents and Storm-Dennis-travel-horror stories amongst those who had arrived the obligatory three-or-four hours in advance of doors indicates that a lot of transatlantic and European fans had made the pilgrimage and smelled something epic and historic in the air.

The whole event was geared towards raising money for the Leonard Cheshire charity, so some videos about the work it does were run while we waited. We then got a five minute rough cut of Ginger banging on his toms and banging on about his attitude towards drumming, seemingly culled from » Continue Reading.

Venue:

St. Albans Arena

Date: 29/01/2020

The Musical Box are billed as more than as tribute band, given that they have acquired the actual stage sets, costumes and some instruments from Genesis and have had the thumbs up from the original members. The first half opens with “The Eleventh Earl of Marr” and it becomes apparent that we are in Phil Collins era for the most part with impeccable reproductions of tracks from “Wind and Wuthering”, “A Trick of the Tail” and even “…and then there were three” which I really like though more serious Genesis heads think is a bit thin.

It is immediately apparent that the band are top players, perfectly reproducing the parts pretty much note for note, with “Phil” grinning and clattering around the kit just like the real thing. “Tony” even reproduces Mr. Banks’ slightly prim expression as he trills out signature keyboard lines. Tribute bands stand or fall on the vocals and here they are right on the money. A minor frustration is that the vocals are slightly too low in the mix – as Feedback File remarks to me, recreating crap 70s live sound is possibly a tip to authenticity too far. » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Band on the Wall, Manchester

Date: 28/01/2020

I’ve reviewed Wire on here before. They’re always worth seeing, of all the Post-Punk bands of their era they’re probably the most vital and fresh sounding. They’ve made a virtue of not relying on past glories. They could have easily made a tidy living doing the ‘classic albums’ circuit playing their first eighventies 3 LPs for EMI/Harvest (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154) in full and doing the punk festivals playing ‘I Am The Fly’ and ’12XU’. Instead, since their most recent reformation in 2000 they’ve stayed doggedly in the present releasing new LPs which have garnered critical plaudits, gained new fans and and playing live shows which largely see them playing new music with only the occasional dip into the back catalogue – as frontman Colin Newman admits Wire are ” their own worst tribute band”. Seasoned Wire fans therefore have pretty much grown accustomed to a live show that will consist of new album tracks, maybe a few select oldies but rarely the obvious ones. More often than not they will be trying out new tracks from a yet to be recorded new album.I’ve seen a lot of these, » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Rochford Winery , Coldstream, Victoria, Australia.

Date: 10/01/2020

Cold Chisel are a legendary band down here. Massive catalogue. Hard rockin, singalong anthems, radio friendly – they are the band that should have had massive global success but left it too late or lacked the stamina – whatever, it didn’t happen. Jimmy Barnes solo , an inferior version, has had some success They have reformed a few times for, no doubt, highly lucrative tours and this time they were playing wineries. Sign of the times I guess as, back in the day, their vodka fuelled performances would have been better located in a distillery.

But I had never seen them in all my gig-going days. So it being summer down here, an outdoor gig seemed a good idea. Started to get a bit anxious with all the bushfires and their first gig at another winery in central Victoria was cancelled due to smoke. Our gig was second and Mrs Wells and I had secured gen admission tickets via an insurance company we used. Parking close to the gig, express lane to the bar all going well. Until we sat down. I kid you not, the moment of arse touching » Continue Reading.