Venue:

Royal Albert Hall

Date: 04/06/2024

My biennial trip to see Yes perform in London, this time for the final night of their The Classic Tales of Yes Tour 2024.

The band loves the RAH; Steve Howe calls it ‘the greatest venue in the world’ during the set,) and the RAH loves Yes. The restaurants and bars are buzzing with chatter and laughter pre-show although the band have to cope with several late-arrivals as the start-time of 7.30pm seems to have been usurped by some rogue social media post declaring the start to be at 8. Steve apologises for any confusion, even though it was nothing to do with them, apparently.

Anyhow, they kick off with the rarely-played Machine Messiah from the Drama album, (that’s the one when Geoff Downes and Trevor Horn joined the band, in 1980,) which is appropriate because Geoff is still onstage and Trevor Horn is in the audience, (apparently.) The track sounds fantastic; much chunkier and heavier than I remember, and is greeted with a huge roar as it ends. It is followed by another ‘deep cut’, It Will Be A Good Day (The River) from the 1999 album The Ladder. Singer Jon » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Symphony Hall, B’ham

Date: 03/06/2024

That Richard Thompson, RT, or, as our N’Orn correspondent would have it, Dickie Thompo, shows no sign of ignoring his cult status, yet again racking up more media mileage than many a better known artist might like. With his bon mots scattered across any number of media platforms, you would be unusual not to realise he has a new album out, barely weeks after attaining his three score years and fifteen. The thrill of that album, thrilling as it largely is, was eclipsed by the band he is touring it across the UK. Despite it being his now seemingly established electric trio with whom he made it, his focus of attention drummer, Michael Jerome, was otherwise engaged across the pond. So who better than to recruit old mucker, Dave Mattacks, a constant of his 90’s band, himself to an ex-Fairporter who has recently been propping up the old codgers for a third round of duty. Likewise, with Simon “Turn it up to 11” Tassano now retired, the occasional onstage second guitar slot was taken by his chip off th old block, grandson Zak Hobbs. (On which point, is this a first? By now » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Royal Albert Hall

Date: 03/06/2024

The bloke next to me started twiddling his thumbs as the band struck up the intro to the third song; The Everly’s When Will I Be Loved; he began fidgeting and looking around as if for valediction; for reassurance; for help. By song eight when Chris Farlowe had joined Van for a brilliant medley of Stormy Monday & Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, the poor bloke’s body language was screaming, “When will he sing something I’ve heard of?”

Well I’m sorry my friend, if you’ve come to a Van Morrison show expecting to hear Moondance, Domino or Full Force Gale then you’re going to be sitting there a long, long time. These days, it’s all about what Van wants to sing, and showcasing some of the wonderful songs from the ‘40’s and 50’s that he grew up hearing.

In fact it is song fourteen before Van sings a song wot he wrote as we get a great version of Crazy Jane on God from A Sense of Wonder and to be very picky, he didn’t really write that either, just arranged William Matthieu’S music to a WB Yeats poem. Matey didn’t » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Factory Theatre, Sydney

Date: 25/05/2024

The Clouds (used to be staunchly just ‘Clouds’ back in the day) were part of the early 90s boom in Australian alternative music. The taste-making Sydney radio station 2JJJ went national so young acts’ reach broadened dramatically and the record companies were on board. Clouds, Falling Joys, Ratcat, You Am I were all bands I was seeing at Sydney Uni’s Manning bar one day, then watching them climb up the charts the next, straight into the Metro, the Hordern, then into the RSLs in the suburbs.

This was great show. Led by the harmonies of Jodi Phillis and Trish Young, with angular Pixies-style quiet-loud dynamics and interesting chordal moves and jumps. An intermittent 4 album career but many of the bangers drawn from their Penny Century album.

I’d never been to the Factory Theatre before. A small to mid sized room in Marrickville (our [slightly] left leaning PMs stomping ground and electorate) which has of late been increasing in its gentrification and hipsterfication, so a nice few drinks at the pub beforehand.

The audience:

Given the nature of the band’s line up, a refreshingly female friendly vibe, lots of polite interactions when moving » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Green Note, Camden

Date: 22/05/2024

Apparently I saw Wesley Stace live about 20 years ago, but I have no memory of it, so as far as I was concerned this was my first time – dragged along by my wife, who is a bit of a fan. It was just him and an acoustic guitar, and the only stuff of his that I have heard features the Attractions as his backing band, so I was a bit unsure how good it would be. I shouldn’t have been – he was great. Amusing banter, great songs all sung and played well.

The audience:

The Green Note is tiny and holds about 30-40 people. We had seats right to the side of the stage so could look out at the audience with more or less the same view as Stace. It was odd to see Clare Balding right at the front. The rest of the crowd was about the same age as her, or a bit older.

It made me think..

I really should give his numerous albums a listen. He’s a songwriter of talent.

Venue:

Budweiser Stage, Toronto

Date: 20/05/2024

Holy f***ing sh*t!

78 yr old Neil Young returns to the city of his birth, with him 80 yr old Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot who is the same age. They have been playing with him off and on since 1968. Micah Nelson (son of Willy), brings the average down, him being the current incumbent on rhythm guitar which has been the only rotating element in the last 56 years.

The show was at a large semi open amphitheatre right on Lake Ontario. Fortunately we had secured pit tickets and was pretty amazing to witness what unfolded from a distance of about 10 feet.

After a stifling hot day at the end of the Victoria Day long weekend, the show was delayed as an unexpected severe thunderstorm passed by. Fortunately just missing us in the end. Theme of the “Love Earth” tour is climate change and the weather served as an appropriate metaphor for the show.

After a quite bizarre preacher and choir ensemble opened the show, Neil and the Horse shambled on and settled gently into their rhythm with Cortez the Killer. I won’t go through the setlist track » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Co-Op Live, Manchester

Date: 19/05/2024

Whilst perusing Ticketmaster to see what else was coming up at the new arena in Manchester, I saw resale tickets priced at a very reasonable £23 for this show. My partner didn’t really fancy it, but was happy for me to go so I thought why the hell not?! It’s a chance to see a true icon & I have always admired the exquisite, lush orchestration of his music & there is no denying the charm of his string of hits. Due to the need to avoid the footfall from the recently finished City game, I was a bit late & walked into the arena to see the support act Jimmy Tarbuck (yes, really) thanking the crowd – I am non the wiser to what his performance encompassed & wish I had at least seen a few minutes of him so I could report further! After a 40 minute break, the lights went down & to strains of Born Slippy by Underworld & Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim*, on came the main man who launched straight into It’s A Miracle. His voice sounded fantastic & this is before you take into account he » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Northampton Roadmender

Date: 17/05/2024

This was a tremendous gig; some seriously good re-workings of PiL’s “Metal Box”, the theme from “Midnight Cowboy”, and a couple from the first album turned inside out, upside down, and played straight, all at the same time, and mixed by the sound engineer with serious appreciation of the importance of bowel-loosening reverberations (the previous curry didn’t help) and dubwise tricks, often shouted by Mr Wobble as he was going along. The band were excellent with an ex-Banshee from the latter years doing the scratchy bits, and the “gorgeous and handsome” keyboard player (as Jah W insisted on introducing him) being distinctly proggy at points. The youthful drummer was not the PiL drummer of yore, but he was bloody good. At one point JW was playing timbales for a jazzier workout of a post-punk great, another time it was ALMOST heavy metal (but not really). You really didn’t know what was coming next, though we all knew the original album inside out. This is the way to play a classic album, and fair dues to JW for indicating the way forward.

The audience:

A mix of post-punk types now late-middle aged and more sensible » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Hammy Odeon

Date: 15/05/2024

The Black Crowes tore the roof off of the old Hammy Odeon on Wednesday night and I couldn’t be happier; but let’s back the old flat-bed truck up a bit for some context.

The Black Crowes should be my band; they just should. I have always thought of them as the bastard sons of some salacious, illicit communion between The Stones and The Faces, in 1971, in the Riot House Hotel on Sunset, West Hollywood. Both bands were at the peak of their powers and they both had that one thing which so many pretenders to the rock ‘n roll throne don’t have; I call it Swing ‘n Swagger. The best rock ‘n roll bands have swing; Charlie had it and Kenney had it. It’s where the drummer sits in ‘the pocket’, that mysterious area of the beat which no one can explain but every musician knows. Swagger is so rare in a band. The Stones had it and The Faces had it; it’s an attitude, a walk, a confidence; a ‘fuck-you, you may think you’re better than us but wait until we plug-in and kick-off. We’ll blow you away.’ And those bastard sons » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Co-Op Live, Manchester

Date: 14/05/2024

Not by design, we happened to be at the first proper gig at the newly opened Co-Op Live in Manchester, the new arena which is the biggest in Europe (or so I am told). You will likely have read in the press the numerous problems with this place & although it was a bit slow getting in, there were no signs of the many reported issues (Building work still taking place, Aircon units falling from the roof etc.) from where we were in the standing area. I will admit to being against the building of this new venue & I still think it seems unnecessary in Manchester. Location wise it is terrible! It’s a 25 min walk to the city & although parking is available, it is £25 so we parked nearer the centre & walked in. Trams are available but rammed so it is not really worth it. When the football coincides with a gig as it inevitably will, I am sure we will read about the chaos in the press as the infrastructure does not exist yet & it will be bad when it happens.

The first impressions were that » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Water Rats – Kings Cross

Date: 05/05/2024

Slight admission, it’s been 16 years since I last saw Kimmie Rhodes live, that was at the now defunct Luminaire with a full band. Last night she was solo in London. The night was billed as singing songs and telling stories and that’s exactly what we got. she’s not doing many of these so grab the opportunity if you get it. Her voice, amazingly, doesn’t seem to have changed a bit. The first half was a run through some old songs with stories to go with them. With lots of the stories are about famous friends and colleagues, it could have felt like heavy duty name dropping but it never once did. The second half was a selection of tracks from the new album, her first for 9 years and the reason I got a ticket. Kimmie was relying on two things for backup, the audience, who excelled especially on the new song, album highlight, ‘No Tom Petty’, and also, for 5 or 6 songs, she was joined on Dobro by Slide royalty, BJ Cole who regularly played with Kimmie in the UK back in the early 90’s.

The audience:

A » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Playhouse – Sydney Opera House

Date: 04/05/2024

This is a special, beautiful film. Directed by Sakamoto’s son, it was made a few months before his death from cancer in November 2023.

Over an hour and a half he plays a selection of his music on piano, a 9′ Yamaha grand in a huge studio that looks like a sound stage. Umpteen microphones, some the size of thermos flasks. It’s beautifully lit, and the camera is intimate but unobtrusive.

Most of the music he plays is slow-medium tempo, the left hand playing chords and the right hand playing melodies, but that’s such a superficial description, and I’m a bloody piano player! Just go and see it. It’s mesmerising, beautiful, and there are so many unexpected turns, harmonically and melodically.

He has a very graceful way of lifting his hands from the piano at the end of a piece.

There are a couple of moments where he stops and starts again, and and at one point he says something like “I’m pushing myself”. Not surprisng. He looks gaunt and fragile, but there are lovely moments when he smiles and is obviously really delighted with what he’s played.

Like I » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Sphere, Las Vegas

Date: 20/04/2024

I’m finally back home from a crazy five-day-trip to see the magnificent Phish on one of their four nights at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Any regrets I had about that evening a couple of months ago – when I foolishly logged on to the online ticket queue – vanished immediately once I was inside the »dome«. And when the »gig« got underway it became clear that this was the event of a lifetime as far as live music goes: the sound was crystal clear, the visuals truly mind-boggling, and the band was as spacey and groovy as never before. And true to form, they played for nearly four hours (and no, they didn’t repeat a song during their four nights…); lots of extended atmospheric or funky improvisations. I’m aware that this kind of music isn’t exactly Afterword-friendly, but if you’re curious to find out why they’re held in such high regard check out the official excerpts from the shows.

The audience:

As usual – yer typical festival crowd from mid-twenties to 50-plus. No chatting, no beery pestering, and hardly any mobiles: probably a result of Phish’s usual policy of the ticket » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Aviva Studios, Manchester

Date: 13/04/2024

And so to the shiny new kid on the cultural block, Factory International, now like some enormodome with naming right secured by Aviva. Final cost I gather a whopping £242 million. Danny Boyle opened the thing with something that was not The Matrix: The Stage version but basically was. Now we’re here to see what that money has bought. The main entrance and bar area are like some well-appointed food hall, all chalk boards and stainless steel worktops. The venue itself is upstairs and it is VAST. So vast there is a one-way system of entrance and exit in operation to safely usher 4500 of us around the lobbies and stairs. So vast and high that with the dry ice the ceiling completely disappears and there is the disconcerting feeling of being outside with the lights appearing to float in a black sky.

Underworld (no support) hit the stage exactly at 8:00pm. Onstage is what I can only describe as the rig from the final scene of Close Encounters with Rick Smith as Francois Truffaut. Behind him all round dad-dancer and drift speechifier Karl. Across the back of the stage stretch three enormous » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Ramblin’ Roots Revue, High Wycombe

Date: 06/04/2024

A hot Saturday afternoon, 6th July 1974. I was seventeen and all ‘blue and white checked cheesecloth shirt, flared Levi’s, stack-heeled platforms and a bottle of cider,’ sitting on the grass with assorted brothers, band-members and girlfriends, waiting for the next band to come on.

We were at the fourth Free Festival at Surrey Uni, hosted by The Global Trucking Company. Previous years had featured Genesis, local heroes Camel, Keith Christmas, Strider and Byzantium, amongst many others. The headliners in ‘74 were String Driven Thing, Narnia and Gryphon but I was waiting for the afternoon act, Starry Eyed & Laughing. I had heard one track of theirs on the Bob Harris Show on Radio One and had been intrigued by the harmonies and the jangling guitars.

At this point my musical world revolved around the band I was in along with Led Zeppelin, Free, Deep Purple, Yes and King Crimson. We were going to gigs every week without having to leave Guildford; the advantages of living in a University town which also had a Civic Hall, a Technical College and a thriving pub circuit.

The next band shuffled onto the stage » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Palais, St Kilda Melbourne

Date: 03/04/2024

Why is the Tedeschi Trucks Band so boring?

In this, my third attendance at one of their shows, I spent a fair bit of time pondering this question. This 12 piece band from Jacksonville released an album described by All Music Guide as “roots music that cuts across and entwines blues, rock, jazz, soul, gospel, funk country, various African musics and Indian raga”. So pretty much a continuance of the Derek Trucks Band. But, in this concert at least, apart from the occasional dash of Indian style sounds in some of Derek’s soloing and the In A Silent Way intro to Midnight In Harlem they were pretty much a white southern blues soul outfit. And they’re a covers band. In this 2-set show of 19 songs with 9 covers, the only memorable song of theirs was Midnight In Harlem – and what a song it is, granted, but the point remains. So, what did my pondering come up with? So, with a 12-piece band I think the keyboard player got 2 solos, the trombone one, the sax maybe 2 and this is over a 19 song set. Why so sparing? You’ve » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Accor Stadium, Olympic Park, Sydney

Date: 16/03/2024

Not exactly a featured artist on this forum, and not someone I particularly listen to. “I’d rather see P!nk” was my comment when my daughter, who doesn’t really listen to Taylor Swift, said she was tagging along to see her with a Swifty friend of hers. A few weeks later, my wife and I are driving near the venue where she’s playing that night, she gets on the phone and finds there’s tickets available. Half an our later we’d booked a couple of the cheapest tickets, and although they said ‘restricted view’, anywhere past half way in an 80,000 seat stadium where the performers are largely moving dots on a stage is restricted, so a small portion of the stage not being visible wasn’t really a problem.

I knew two of her songs pretty well, and the rest I either didn’t know or only had heard in passing. She started the show with Get the Party Started (I knew that one) and finished with So What (and that one!). In between I heard a bunch of well written songs, none of which I disliked, and sung by someone who had clearly » Continue Reading.

Venue:

St Leonard’s Church, Sheepstor, Dartmoor

Date: 07/03/2024

For the second time in a year I made the pilgrimage to St. Leonard’s Church in the little village of Sheepstor, perched up on the south-west corner of Dartmoor.

The point of the expedition was to catch a live performance from the folk duo called Ninebarrow. They are only touring a few more gigs this year before they embark upon a project that will keep them from our stages for the next year or so. So, a brief window in which to hear for myself their pristine harmonies and their gorgeously crafted songs.

It’s a small fortune for a return ticket on the train from home, and the trip was rendered affordable only by the fact that my younger vulpine brother lives only a few miles away from the venue and put me up for the night. Happily, he was entranced and delighted by the gig too, so it was a successful adventure all round.

The church was packed – a sell-out – but its small size means that even when full the atmosphere is intimate and cosy. Minimal amplification is needed here, which means that the guy’s voices carry » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Twickenham Stadium

Date: 09/03/2024

I can’t have been the only south-west Londoner who was excited to hear that Rag ‘N’ Bone Man was going to be playing Twickenham Stadium. That’s practically on my doorstep. I was vaguely aware that there was also to be some rugby the same day but I got there bright and early to make sure I didn’t miss any of the excitement. To my surprise, none of the people sitting around me had even heard of R ‘N’ B M and they didn’t appear at all excited to be at his concert. Anyway, the place was chock full at least 40 minutes before the gig. The warm-up was a game of rugby which, to be fair, seemed pretty exciting. Anyway, when the players left the field, R ‘N’ B M came on and played to a half-empty stadium. Everyone had taken the break in the rugby as the signal to go to the toilet and the gig started before they could get back. They must have been gutted. Anyway, R ‘N’ B M only played three songs and then they dismantled his stage and let the rugby players back on. Poor old R ‘N’ » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne

Date: 05/03/2024

Ordinarily, I am your classic Afterworder attending a gig: I’ve got at least a few of the artists albums, I know the band members and their biography and have had a good listen to their recent album in advance of the show. Not tonight. My daughter had a spare ticket so I went along as company as much as anything. It was a beautiful early autumn day – 32 Celsius in the day and 24ish in the evening. This was fortunate as we were on the lawn at Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Fleet Foxes. Like many people I have the first album and the EP Helplessness Blues (I think it was an EP). I saw them at their peak at a pub venue with those soaring vocals – Mykonos, White Winter Hymnal etc still in memory. Then I sorta lost interest. It seems they did too with band changes and a hiatus while Robin Pecknold went to Uni for a degree. On they came as support for The National. Pecknold effusive in saying thank you, thanks for having us, but that is all he seemed to say apart from saying » Continue Reading.