2011 In Review–Part 1, The Gigs

Friday 30th December: I still haven’t managed to listen to all the 2011-released CDs that I added to my collection and the year isn’t over yet, so I haven’t finished reading books. That means that the first of my round-ups for 2011 concentrates on the live music I have experienced during the year.

After the turmoil seen by the local venues in 2010, this year was reasonably stable in terms of where to go if you wanted live music in York. The big news was, of course, the opening of the refurbished Barbican Centre, after sitting empty way too long. Inside the money touted as being spent on doing up the building seems to have been mainly allocated to the areas the public see in the light – the bar and restaurant, for example – while the auditorium itself still has the same seating and, as far as I could see, floor. There has been a pretty good mix of live acts appearing there but I only managed one gig, at least partly because of the ticket prices which, like the Grand Opera House (which also showcases some reasonably big names) are much higher than the other venues in the city. Being honest, in most cases I’d rather pay less and see more (and less well-known) bands.

Getting the boring stats out of the way first, I managed to attend thirty-eight gigs in 2011, the highest number (by one) since I started keeping records. Strangely, during those gigs, I saw the same number of individual acts and total performances – eighty-eight and seventy-three respectively. I guess that means that the average number of bands per gig was down this year. Most attended venue, by far, was Fibbers with eighteen, followed by The Duchess with five. The Basement Bar, The Golden Lion and Stereo all came in with two gigs and I attended one each at The Barbican, The Grand Opera House, The Post Office Club, The Red Lion, The Roman Bath, Rowntree Park, The Victoria Vaults, The White Swan and The Yorkshire Hussar. Venues highlighted in bold above are ones that I attended for the first time. I managed to see a wide variety of acts – ranging from heavy metal to a sixteen-year-old ukulele-player. There was a nice mix of local and touring acts, the latter including three international bands. Cover acts were down on previous years, with only four acts whose majority of songs were covers and one tribute band. As usual, most of the acts were good, a handful were superb and a few I won’t be bothering to see again.

While this year saw the three original gig-goers meeting up less often, I did get a new, irregular gig-buddy in the form of my nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. I had planned to take her to her first gig this year (assuming she wanted to go) but she ended up going to three “first” gigs (four by the “two venue” rule above). At the end of the Summer holidays we headed off to Rowntree Park for the York Peace Festival, not as hippies but to see a handful of bands in the open air and this also gave Elizabeth the chance to say “hello” to one of her favourite local acts, G. T. Turbo. We also spent a very pleasant afternoon in the October sunshine in the Red Lion’s beer garden and, later, Fibbers (where I seemed to have got special permission for Elizabeth to attend) for York’s Guitar Festival weekend, where she saw G. T. perform again and also experienced her first heavy metal gig with the mighty Morpheus Rising – earplugs were a must. Towards the end of the year, we both went to the Grand Opera House to see Mostly Autumn – no earplugs this time and Elizabeth actually struggled to stay awake for the entire set, twitching along to the music towards the end and only waking up to applaud along with the rest of us. I don’t think the sudden onset of narcolepsy was anything to do with the standard of music and, afterwards, she did tell me that she enjoyed the experience.

Before I bring forth my highlights of the year, I will take a few lines to bemoan the seemingly dwindling crowds seen in York. Some bands that deserve much bigger attendances seemed to be bringing in fewer people but the worst was the two gigs I saw at Stereo – in both cases I was the only person in the audience not connected to any of the bands performing, which I guess is about as bad as it gets for a band. In these cases kudos goes to Stirling’s Miniature Dinosaurs and their support acts – not only did all the acts stay around to watch each other (and make me feel a little less lonely) but the Dinosaurs themselves had the attitude that it didn’t matter whether the crowd was one person or one thousand, you still give it your best. On the other hand, a big thumbs down goes to Leeds’ Arthur Rigby and The Baskervylles who, in a similar situation stayed in whatever green room there is at Stereo until it was their turn to take to the stage, giving no support to any of their support acts. Personally, I think they got what they deserved as most people left when they took to the stage.

As with last year, I definitely have a favourite gig of the year but first, a few highlights. Panic Room played York twice this year supported firstly by York’s own Marbled and then by touring support David R. Black. Both were excellent gigs and Panic Room are definitely a band which deserves a bigger audience than they get. My worry is that, unless that audience comes forth, York may soon be dropped from future tours. Hope & Social also appeared twice, but the Fibbers gig in October was a definite highlight – not only was I right at the front but the whole atmosphere was brilliant, a fantastic mixture of music and laughs. Swedish band Jeniferever also popped into Fibbers and gave us a “wall of sound” performance of ambient rock that pretty much knocked the socks off both me and a newcomer to our band of gig-goers. I went to see Nils Lofgren at the Barbican simply because I knew his name and that he was a sometime member of the E-Street Band. I didn’t really know what to expect but was enthralled by the gig and surprised that the man himself came out after the the show to sign anything anybody wanted him to. Stolen Earth, the band risen from the ashes of Breathing Space so impressed us during their debut at the Post Office Club that even Andy bought advance tickets for their Christmas gig at Victoria Vaults, and this turned out to be one of the best pub gigs I can remember. Long-time live favourites Chantel McGregor and Morpheus Rising both released debut albums this year – Chantel’s tour to promote hers saw her pitch up at Fibbers for what I think is the best I have seen her play, while Morpheus Rising launched theirs at the same venue and gave one of their best performances as well. That gig also formed part of a mini prog explosion in November and December. I managed to see The Heather Findlay band not only perform tracks from The Phoenix Suite, and Odin Dragonfly’s Offerings but also revitalise some of the Mostly Autumn back catalogue that I doubt anybody realised needed revitalising. With the bar raised, the next night saw Mostly Autumn themselves with the best performance I have seen them give in York and then, in the space of a week, I saw Amplifier, The Pineapple Thief and Also Eden (the latter supporting Morpheus Rising). Fish also appeared that week, but clashed with Pineapple Thief and I opted for the latter. There were many more good performances but I suspect you are already getting bored.

…and so, to my favourite gig of the year…

One of the things I like about local gigs is that you can, occasionally, get something completely unexpected. That was to be the case in the Summer when, devoid of anything to see at our normal venues, if was suggested that we head to The Yorkshire Hussar to see something new. To be honest, I wasn’t going to go, but I gave MySpace a quick visit and, after listening to one track, changed my mind. We arrived at the Hussar, which I think had only started putting on live music recently, to find a small crowd which seemed to be made up of friends and family of the band. That band was Dream Of Apollo and, by the end of the night that had impressed us all. So much so that we saw them twice more in the space of just over five weeks, even paying for the last gig as they headlined Fibbers. More or less unique, they don’t seem to have a specific genre of music but, instead, perform a bit of everything, melding it all into one extremely likeable whole. The lovely dreaminess of Someday, the epic, near-prog of Free, the atmospheric Regrets Of The Devil and the rest of the set, including Sandman (the MySpace song that convinced me to go to the gig) and a handful of covers that included Depeche Mode, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, made for a totally unexpected but entirely stunning performance. I may have seen bigger names, at better venues, but for its sheer originality and surprise, this was the best gig of the year for me.

A Bit Of Christmas Stollen

Saturday 17th December: It was, perhaps, a mark of how much Stolen Earth had impressed our seemingly increasingly disparate group of gig-goers when we saw them at the Post Office Club a few months ago that I was not only joined tonight by Roy, on a rare outing, but that Andy (who generally can’t commit more than a few days in advance) had also splashed out on tickets weeks ago. Add my wife to the mix and we had a reasonable turn-out.

Tonight’s gig had originally been advertised at Fibbers but, for various reasons, had later been moved to The Victoria Vaults, as smallish pub on the outskirts of York’s town centre. It was billed as an “intimate” gig but I wasn’t quite expecting how small the venue actually was. Even with Barry swapping full drum kit for a smaller, electronic version, the band took up about half the available floor space, with bass-player Paul tucked away behind one speaker stack and only John having more then enough room to move about in. (I guess that’s the advantage of playing keyboards – you get to build yourself a little fort in the corner.) The limited number of tickets available meant that the audience, while perhaps not having enough space to swing much more than a small cat, weren’t too squashed together, even if some of them were positioned away in little nooks and crannies around the bar. Having said that I did, once again, seem to get stood next to the one couple who were determined to talk very loudly during the performance, pausing in their chat only to politely applaud each song as it finished. Again, I ask, why buy a ticket???

It may have been a small venue, but it was a big performance. The set contained pretty much the same songs as the last time we saw them – I Live, Bitterness Fades, Mirror Mirror, Tuscany Sun, Unnatural Disaster, Soul In A Jar, My Lips Are Too Dry, Into the Virgin Snow, Silver Skies and Perfect Wave – but the sound was superb. So much so that I took time out to thank the soundman for a job well done. Each instrument was clear in the mix and both Heidi and Adam’s lead and Paul’s backing vocals came across superbly. Add to that a light show which never seemed to overwhelm, despite the amount of equipment on show giving the impression that it could have done, and we got one of the best pub performances that I can remember seeing.

Of course, being a Christmas gig, there were the obligatory Christmas songs and, towards the end of the set, Santa hats were donned as Heidi took as short break and the rest of the band performed I Believe In Father Christmas and Stop The Cavalry (with Barry’s facial expressions and near-comedy drumming during the latter providing no small amount of amusement). Heidi them returned for a brilliant rendition of A Spaceman Came Travelling.

There is a lot of variety in Stolen Earth’s songs, from the ethereal dual-acoustic, low whistle infused Soul In A Jar, through the atmospheric bottle-neck playing of Into The Virgin Snow all the way to the screaming guitar of My Lips Are Too Dry, but my highlight of the night was Perfect Wave which contained a brilliant solo from Adam, during which he could almost have been channelling Dave Gilmour, so Floyd-like was it.

With an album due out next year and a tour to promote it, Stolen Earth could well be a band on the verge of big things.

Dreaming In Paradise

Friday 9th December: There was a bit of a theme running through the gigs I attended this week. Previous headliners, Amplifier and The Pineapple Thief are both bands that, until this week, I hadn’t heard anything by but that I had read about in Prog magazine. The same is true of tonight’s support act – Also Eden.

Many years ago, when I was young(er) and (even more) musically naive, I dismissed Marillion as Genesis wannabes. I suspect that, if Also Eden had been around then, I may have dismissed them as Marillion wannabes. Thankfully, my tastes have matured since then and I can appreciate both bands for what they are. Also Eden play a more eighties orientated style of prog, but with enough modern influence to allow them to to pick a somewhat rocky but still atmospheric set for tonight’s gig, to fit in a bit more with the headliners. Rich Harding, still on crutches off-stage and barely mobile on-stage after what I believe was a near-fatal motorbike accident, has more than a passing vocal resemblance to Fish and the band, as a whole, have a more traditional line-up (guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and vocalist) than the others mentioned above. From what I remember, most of the set came from this year’s superb (I can say that now that I’ve had a chance to listen to it) release – Think Of The Children – with the title track providing an excellent opener with powerful lyrics. Oversight contains some great guitar work and showed that, in some ways, prog can defined as “heavy metal with added keyboards while 1949 used those keyboards to eerie effect. Distortion Field, released as a free download and with vocals recorded by Rich whilst sitting on a bed on in his living room (recovering from the crash, presumably) showed influences from another of my favourite bands, Rush. The set ended with the epic, three-part Reality Cheque, taken from the Differences As Light E.P. The track started out a lot slower, but no less powerfully, than the rest of the set before building to a stunning climax and convincing me (not a fan of the format at all) to add the E.P. to my purchases that night. I have liked all the prog bands I have seen this week, but I have to say that Also Eden, based on this performance are my favourite of the three.

Also Eden were in York in a reverse line-up of their album launch gigs, which saw them supported by Morpheus Rising. I have been a fan of the Morphs (as Also Eden referred to them) since I first saw them two and a half years ago and they have gone from strength to strength since then, even overcoming the departure of original vocalist Graeme Tennick earlier this year. His replacement is, in some opinions (even, apparently, Graeme’s), even better and he seems to be growing in the role with each performance. I have made no secret of the fact that I have been looking forward to tonight’s gig for some time, as it is the launch of the band’s long-awaited debut album – Let The Sleeper Awake. What can I say about tonight’s performance that I haven’t said about previous ones? Not much, being honest, as I’ve gushed about them a lot in the past. The truth is that their brand of heavy metal is what I originally started listening to when I first properly got into music back in my teens. My one Thin Lizzy and handful of Iron Maiden CDs may not be played as much as some from my collection and the likes of Saxon may not be represented at all but Morpheus Rising could well have single-handedly rekindled my interest in that particular style of music. If anything, tonight’s performance was the most relaxed I have seen them play, almost as if a weight had been lifted from them. One fellow member of the audience commented that it was the best he had seen from them. The only complaint I would have is that the songs, as good as they are, are getting a bit familiar now. Time to start work on some new material, maybe? Having said that, I (obviously) bought the album and I have barely stopped playing it since. Familiar, perhaps, but still very, very good.

Don’t Stop Thief!

Wednesday 7th December: It seems slightly incredible to me that, in a week when three highly regarded prog acts are playing headline acts in York, two of them are scheduled to clash. Surely such clashes end up taking money away from both venues. Tonight saw Fish playing the Duchess while the slightly less “mainstream” The Pineapple Thief are a matter of yards away at Fibbers. For me, having seen (and enjoyed) Fish last year, the choice was to see a band I hadn’t had the opportunity to see before and while there were people in the audience who were sporting Amplifier T-shirts from the previous night’s gig at The Duchess – Amplifier and Pineapple Thief being closer in sound than Pineapple Thief and Fish – there must surely have been people who chose to see the arguably(?) bigger name.

Tonight’s openers were Playing The Pilot, a young local band with that wonderfully generic label of “alternative/indie/rock”. The high-slung guitars had Roj worried and, being honest, the band seemed a little out of place on tonight’s bill. At least vocalist Kat had a bit of stage presence and an engaging smile whenever their own fans, dancing at the front, cheered and showed their appreciation. Vocally, Kat sounded very like Lily Allen, with that sort of Cockney-accented spoken style of singing and a propensity for extending words by increasing their vowel count (if you see what I m-e-e-e-an…) but, when she did sing, she had a pleasant enough voice. Musically, it was all a bit generic and samey. In fact it was only with the fourth song of the set that I noticed the beginnings of a bit of variation. The mix sounded a little wrong as well – most of the guitar was muffled behind a very loud bass. Having said all that, I’ve certainly seen worse support bands and this one got a better reception than some who don’t quite fit the bill. At the end of their set the band left the stage to generous applause from the whole audience, perhaps showing that prog fans aren’t necessarily as narrow-minded musically as they can sometimes be portrayed.

Of course, calling prog fans “narrow-minded” opens up a minefield in itself. Gone are the days when you could easily point to a band and label them as “progressive rock”. In my day, it was the likes of Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes and most people can see similarities between them. These days prog rock has, ahem, moved on and the sub-labels sometimes read like a secondary school timetable, with Space and Kraut Rocks sitting alongside Math Rock and Art Rock. All we need to invent is Biology Rock, Frog Rock (sorry, couldn’t resist) and Free Period Rock and we’ll have ourselves an A-Level curriculum. These days prog-rock can be all but indistinguishable from its own roots. And that is the case with The Pineapple Thief. While they are similar to what is considered modern prog bands – one that immediately sprang to my mind was Porcupine Tree – you would never get them mixed up with any of the bands mentioned above. Their’s is, for the most part, a heavier, darker sound, sometimes mixed with an occasionally annoying electronic pseudo-dance beat provided by one of Steve Kitch’s laptops (I think I saw two nestled in with his keyboards).

As with Amplifier the night before, I hadn’t heard any of the Thief’s output before tonight. I reasonably certain that the set started with three song from the highly regarded 2010 album Someone Here Is Missing. These consisted of moments of calm interspersed with intense activity Then, vocalist, guitarist and founder Bruce Soord announced that they would be playing new material which was currently being worked on for a new release next year. The first of these, receiving its world debut tonight, was introduced as the heaviest song on the next album, consisted in parts of what I can only describe as “grinding” keyboard playing, with Kitch producing sounds you wouldn’t normally associate with keyboards before changing to a more symphonic style of playing. The next song, also a new one, was a quieter, acoustic number which showed a nice variation and also allowed the keyboards to take more prominence.

…and it was there that I stopped taking notes and allowed myself to become immersed in the superb music - a set containing a mixture of old and new songs all thoroughly entertaining and ending with an epic, nearly fifteen minute encore. Soord is an energetic frontman and both his guitar-playing and vocals were superb. In what seems to be the way of keyboard players, Kitch is the quiet, almost studious, man of the band and was often seen studying laptop screens while playing (I’m fairly certain I saw him reading the music for some of the songs – maybe they are so new that he hasn’t learned it yet…). The rhythm section of Keith Harrison (drums) and Jon Sykes provided a solid backdrop for the set, with the latter also providing backing vocals. Overall, it was a very tight performance and I really hope that the band returns to York in the future. Maybe Sykes being a local lad will help. Inevitably, I visited the merchandise table after the gig and treated myself to a couple of CDs. 

Furious And Loud

Tuesday 6th December: “Uh-oh, here we go again,” was pretty much my first thought tonight. I had arrived at The Duchess ten minutes after the doors would normally open to find a “crowd” of just half a dozen people still standing outside in the cold, damp evening. To make matters even more worrying, one of them seemed to only be there to hand out flyers for a music shop. To be honest, I never know what sort of turnout to expect these days. Music rarely seems to attract anything like sell-outs in York and, given that I had only heard of tonight’s headliners through a couple of articles in Prog magazine, maybe a small crowd was to be expected. By the time the doors opened numbers had swelled into double figures but, like the weather, it was still looking a bit bleak on the crowd front.

Support tonight came from Belfast’s Mojo Fury and they started promisingly with an instrumental track that immediately brought to mind Lost From Atlas, only louder. And it was that loudness that was the problem as the rest of the set contained songs in which the vocals were pretty much drowned out by the music. What vocals did make it through during the second song reminded me a little of David Byrne from Talking Heads. Other than that, though, they barely raised above indistinct. Having said that, the music was OK, mixing an indie sound with a touch of progressiveness thanks to time changes and variations of sound within the songs. A good example would be All In All, which featured quieter sections interspersed with crashing drums. Sadly, one song was backed by an electronic rhythm which, annoyingly, gave it a sort of 80’s, Howard Jones type vibe. The rest were intriguing, atmospheric rock. I just wish the mix had done them a few more favours. One other thing, for some reason, the bass-player spent most of the gig playing with his back to the audience. I’m not sure why – if he was aiming for moody and mysterious, it came across more as rude. (If it was a nerves thing, I apologise…)

By the time Amplifier had started setting up the crowd had increased into triple figures, many of whom were sporting various T-shirts or ties featuring the front cover picture from the band’s latest release, The Octopus, which had been lauded as one of the albums of the year by Prog magazine. Indeed, the merchandise table – probably the best stocked I had seen in nearly thirty years of gig-going - seemed to be doing brisk business. It took a while for the set-up to be completed as, for the first time that I can remember, the monitors were removed from the front of the stage and trays of effects pedals were put in place. Each of the two guitarists (Sel Balamir being joined by Steve Durose, ex of Oceansize, for touring duties) and the bass player seemingly had access to more pedals than your average band put together. So impressive were they that some of the audience were taking photographs of them. The band finally took to the stage dressed uniformly in black with the aforementioned Octopus ties and unleashed a wall of sound that immediately reminded me of The Engineers with a generous dollop of Muse mixed in. I couldn’t tell you what songs were contained in the ninety-minute set but the music was an effects laden mix of teasing harmonies and crashing chords. The vocals were clearer but, even so, none of the songs could be said to be catchy enough to lodge themselves in my brain (except, perhaps, for one which may have been called Faster Than Light and which contained more than a hint of a Rush influence). But that’s not the point of bands like Amplifier. They’re not trying to produce radio-friendly music but music which pushes the boundaries, music that’s different and, in some ways, music that makes you think and that has to be listened to properly to be appreciated properly. I enjoyed the set, but maybe I’ll have a better appreciation of Amplifier when I get a chance to listen to The Octopus, the special edition of which I bought tonight from bass-player Neil Mahoney who, when the band left the stage, pushed the merchandise guy out of the way and proceeded to shake the hand of everybody buying anything and thanking them profusely for turning up, while Sel chatted with fans and calling out goodbyes to everybody who walked past him. Nice touches.