Tuesday 29 December 2009

2009 In Review - Part 1, The Gigs

Tuesday 29th December: I am going to have to split my review of the past year into at least two (and possibly three) installments this time. Happily, I received quite a few of 2009-released CDs for Christmas, including one that has a very good chance of making it into my top five, but have yet to find time to listen to any of them. So, rather than delay the whole thing, I'll start by covering the gigs I saw over the year.

First, the boring statistics. Apart from the fact that I know I didn't review Stealer at The Terrace on the 18th of December (it should have been Chantel at the Roman Bath, but bad weather caused the venue to suggest she cancel), I'm taking my blog entries as gospel so the following figures have been compiled from them.

Over the year, I...

Attended 37 gigs - I have counted trips to the Roman Bath after other gigs had finished as a full gig.
Saw 72 performances by 65 individual bands/artists - I have counted "lite" versions of Breathing Space and Parade as separate to the full band.
Visited 7 different venues (all in York) - The Duchess was in first place with 16, followed by The Roman Bath (11), Fibbers (4), The Grand Opera House and The Punchbowl (2 each) and The Terrace and The Basement Bar (1 each).

So, who did I see and what did I listen to? As usual, I managed to cover a wide variety of musical genres, from blues to pop, garage to heavy metal, prog to folk. I bands who looked as though they were still at school right through to septuagenarian performers. I even paid to see two tribute bands. This year was a little odd in that I seemed to go to more than the usual number of gigs on my own, without the rest (or any) of the Friday-nighters - there seemed to be a number of bands playing who I definitely wanted to see but didn't fit with the tastes of the others. I think that, if our tastes were to be represented as a Venn Diagram, we would each have large individual circles, with medium crossovers into each other. Fortunately, for me anyway, some of those gigs turned out to be some of the most entertaining of the year. Also fortunate was the fact that I liked the vast majority of the acts I saw. Indeed, there are very few that I wouldn't want to see again (although there are one of two), while there are others, mostly new discoveries, that I would make a point of seeing again.

From the list of gigs I've attended, it's difficult to pick the "best" - some of them were so different to others that it's not fair to compare them. Instead, I'm going to pick five of the most entertaining and explain my reasons. So, in no particular order...

Jan Akkerman and his band - The Duchess: The 62-year-old Dutch ex-Focus member wasn't the oldest person we saw this year but he did treat us to over an hour of superb guitar work. This was pretty much an on-spec attendance for me. I vaguely remembered Focus from back when I was at school but knew very little about them. This was the only concert I went to this year with no vocals but Mr Akkerman certainly knows how do make his guitar do the singing.

Parade and Josh & Co - The Duchess: Although I was looking forward to Bryan Josh's performance of his 2008 debut solo album, this gig was more notable for the support band. Parade are another in the ever-expanding family of groups related to Mostly Autumn, put together by ex-member Chris Johnson and including current members Gavin Griffiths and Anne-Marie Helder (also both from Panic Room), as well as two local musicians that Chris has played alongside for years. Their set (and album - bought without hesitation at the gig and strong contender for album of the year) shows what a talent Chris is and he has put together a band that I hope stay together for a long time.

Nick Harper - The Duchess: Another on-spec gig. I knew nothing of Mr Harper and attended purely on the basis of his write-up on The Duchess's whats-on listing. While not enjoying his first support act as much as I maybe should have done, second on stage was Anne-Marie Helder who showcased some of her own acoustic work. Nick himself was superb, both musically and comically, and managed to wow the audience by changing a broken string without stopping playing (something it is rumoured he does deliberately). A very entertaining gig.

Gun - The Duchess: Again, Gun had somehow bypassed me but their write-up suggested I would like them so off I toddled. This was an almost perfectly put together gig in that the three bands ($lash Vega$ and Morpheus Rising were in support) were just similar enough to fit together on the bill while being just different enough to provide some variety. While the now defunct $lash Vega$ weren't completely my cup of coffee (I don't drink tea), Morpheus Rising's set evoked memories of listening to the likes of Saxon and Iron Maiden during my school days and were, quite frankly, superb. (They only missed being my final gig of the year because I was too tired to go out that evening.) Gun apparently had not bypassed a lot of people as the Duchess was reasonably full of their fans. Overall, a very good gig which did more than a little to remind me of my early concert-going, when heavy metal was pretty much the only music I listened to.

A Night for Heroes - The Duchess: The tribute night to Howard Sparnenn, who passed away in 2008, a Night For Heroes was put together to raise money for the Andrea's Gift charity and consisted of a number of bands that he had personally been involved in. It might not have been the best gig musically, but emotions certainly ran high that night and once again proved that musicians and fans can, together, do a lot for any cause they choose.

There were, obviously, other highlights - Chantel McGregor trying to ride Andy's bike after one of her gigs springs to mind. There were also some fantastic new discoveries, like The Engineers, 98Pages and Ezio. For me, 2009 was a very good year for gigs and looking at the listings out already for 2010, it looks as though that level is at least going to be maintained.

Monday 7 December 2009

Almost Time To Catch A Breath

Sunday 6th December: ...and as the weekend draws to a close, another three of us head of to the Duchess to attend the final gig of "Mostly-fest". This is one of those rare occasions when I can convince my wife to go to a gig with me as Breathing Space are a band she likes.

At least that's who we were expecting. No support act had been mentioned or otherwise advertised. So, it was a bit of a surprise to find that, very late in the day, Chris Johnson and Anne-Marie Helder had been booked as openers.

Those of you keeping up will recognise those name as two of the members of The Parade, who also opened here on Friday evening. Tonight, the duo performed songs from the band's album The Fabric, acoustically and for the first time (you couldn't tell...).

For this set Chris played guitar and Anne-Marie played, errrm, an egg and a banana. I knew she was talented but, but, a banana??? Yes, and there's untampered photographic proof opposite. Both of them sang and the acoustic versions of the songs were just as good as the full band versions we heard on Friday. It really is a cracking album (I managed to grab a few words with Chris to tell him so and got him to sign my copy) and it must have been hard to pick which tracks to play, but they certainly managed to pick some of my favourites, including Cut, The Dogs, The Diamond and the excellent Start Again.

This was a set of brilliant musicianship, tinged with more than a dab of humour (most of it involving the banana - you can guess). Chris and Anne-Marie obviously enjoy being on stage with each other as there was an over-riding sense of comfort and friendship in their performance. An unexpected and very pleasant start to the evening.

So, to the final act of the weekend. Breathing Space were performing the last date of their Below The Radar tour, promoting their third album of the same name. We've seen the band so many times (although this is only the second time that we have paid for a ticket - not that I'm complaining) that watching them perform is getting to be like slipping into a comfortable, if somewhat loud and increasingly hard-edged, dressing gown. As with my last posting, there is little to add to any past reviews, so I'm going to fill a bit of space up with some photos.

Blasting onto stage with a triumphant version of Forgive Or Surrender, the band performed many favourites from the first two albums, including Wasted All The Time, Coming Up For Air, Searching For My Shadow, the sublime Belief (which can now never be sung without bringing a tear to the eye) and a incredible version of You Still Linger, which ended the first set with a superb instrumental section. Mixed in with these were a number of songs from the new album (obviously). Some of these were already vaguely familiar - I hadn't bought the album until tonight but the band had played some of the songs the last time we saw them in the Roman Bath and the "light" version of the band had also performed some acoustically in the Punchbowl a few weeks back.

Songs from Below The Radar included Paul Teasdale's Clear, and the Sparnenn/Jennings penned The Night Takes You Home and Questioning Eyes. I'm sure there were more but, once again, my memory fails me.

However, every track, no matter what album it came from, sounded brilliant (possibly due to my proximity to the stage and speakers) and the larger stage area and sound system in the Duchess allowed the band a lot more freedom to express themselves than the Roman Bath.

Livvy's voice, while still losing the vocals behind the music at times, seems to get clearer every time we see her perform. The Jennings brothers are near-maestros on the keyboards, while Teasdale's bass-playing is excellent (if a little funky in one place). Cassells' drumming provided the perfect base for the songs (and it was nice to finally see a different drummer during the weekend) and Bryan Josh once again played guitar almost in the background, coming forwards for just a few solos when required rather than dominating the stage as he does with Mostly Autumn.

The gig ended on a somewhat bizarre note. Almost as the final note of encore song Questioning Eyes faded from the speakers and the band moved forward to take their bows, the lights went out and an alarm started sounding. (To be honest, if it was a fire alarm, it was a little ineffective - I could hardly hear it until somebody pointed it out to me and nobody seemed to make a move for the exits...). The end result was the band taking the applause and cheers in almost total darkness. I would love to know what happened when it was resolved but, alas, I left in a rush in a vain attempt to catch the last bus home. Debbie had left earlier to relieve our babysitter who was expecting us home at about the time the gig actually finished and I ended up paying a taxi-fare.

So, to summarise the weekend I would have to say it was totally and completely awesome. Despite the number of crossover artists in the four bands we saw, it was incredible how different the music from each was from the others. From the guitar-led prog rock of Mostly Autumn to the keyboard-led Breathing Space, with a mix of both in The Parade and a bit of a harder edge to Josh & Co, between us we managed to see some pretty impressive performances. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

It may have ended up costing me a small fortune in tickets, CDs, drinks and transport but would I do it again?

Of course I would. In a heartbeat.

A Mostly Pleasant Autumn Evening

Saturday 5th December: ...and, as bands continue to morph into other bands, the Mostly Autumn themed mini-festival continues as three of us (again not the usual three, although the usual three for this particular gig) make our way through the damp evening to York's Grand Opera House for the Mostlies themselves.

In the case of this gig, we more or less knew what to expect. But there was to be a couple of surprises. After getting my lost (probably thrown away) ticket reprinted by the lovely "Rocky K" in the box office, we decided to head directly to our seats as there wasn't long to go until the advertised 8pm start. As we had our tickets (including my nice shiny new one) checked, we could hear the strains of Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall coming from the auditorium. Good choice of music and, if last year was anything to go by, just a recording being played to entertain those who took to their seats early. So, imagine our surprise when we got through the door and found a duet on stage, belting the song out (errm, somewhat incorrectly due to a couple of technical issues, but they admitted to that). There was a man on guitar and a woman on bass and, technical issues aside, they played well. I'm not sure what the second song was - it sounded like a Floyd song but not one I recognised. I've tried to Google the lyrics I can remember but only come up with something by Stephen Stills and I don't think it was that one. At the end of their set, they did announce their name but, being honest, not very clearly and none of us caught it. It was a shame, really, that there was no notification of any sort of support act as we would probably have made a bit of an effort to get their earlier. (Late edit, a combination of posts on the Mostly Autumn forum reveal that the duet was The Secrets, the lady was original MA singer Heidi Widdop and that they would be on stage from 19:15...)

Then, to what I assume is a standard entry, Mostly Autumn took to the stage. Five of the line-up had been seen as part of at least one of the acts we had seen the previous night. (Chris Johnson joined some of them on stage for one song later on, making a total of six crossover artists.) It's a little hard to add anything to the review I posted last year. This is the annual Christmas show for York so is probably a little different to other gigs throughout the year.

With the Mostlies, you pretty much know what you are going to get. The ladies will look stunning, the playing will be superb and Heather's voice will be clear and emotive. With no studio album release in 2009, there was no new material to showcase so, for the most part, the two-part set contained the staples from their back catalogue. In fact, there was quite a crossover between the songs performed last year and the ones performed tonight. There were differences (or my memory is failing me) between the two years but I couldn't accurately document them. The first set almost matched the track listing on Live 2009, part 1, although Shrinking Violet was in the set but not on the CD.

The second set started with the ladies (including Heidi from The Secrets) and Chris Johnson performing Silent Night, a cappella - the first of tonight's seasonal songs. I don't think any of us could remember all the songs performed after this if we tried but it was less like the track listing on Live 2009, part 2 than the first set was to part 1. Nonetheless, it included the staples and missed some favourites out.

It's the encore when the Christmas part of the show takes off properly, with versions of the likes of Faerytale Of New York and Merry Christmas Everybody performed while Heather, in the slinkiest "Santa" dress you are ever likely to see, runs around trying to put Christmas hats on the rest of the band. (Strangely, Iain Jennings' red woolly hat made him look more like Bennie from Crossroads than anything Christmas-linked...) Again, Heidi took to the stage to perform alongside Livvy on backing vocals and I think a heavily disguised Chris was playing guitar during the final song. Being a Christmas show (and, probably, being a Mostly Autumn show), there were humorous moments. There was also one rather large sombre moment. I'll come back to that later.

It's more or less impossible to comment on the band's performance. Anybody who knows them will know that they play and sing brilliantly, those that have never experienced them may well wonder how a ten-year-old band that they have never heard of could be that good. I've now seen them twice and thoroughly enjoyed both times. I'll almost certainly see them again and I'll almost certainly enjoy them as much next time. For me, at least, their music is that good. As an aside, I was missing one studio album, which I was planning to pick up that evening. Checking the web-site earlier in the day, I was a little dismayed to find that it was listed as "Temporarily out of stock". I still visited the merchandise table as there was other things I intended buying. There, on the table, was the CD I was looking for. In surprise and despite it having the title on the cover, I asked the guy behind the table, "Is that The Last Bright Light?" "Yes," he replied, "it's the last The Last Bright Light." I snapped it up before anybody else did. How lucky???

Now, about sombre bit. And I apologise in advance if I offend anybody here but it's my blog and these are my opinions....

Quite early on, Bryan had announced that the band had a very special guest coming on later and towards the end of the second set and just before what turned out to be a rendition of Heroes Never Die, the band melted off the stage and were replaced, without any introduction by a man who started talking about Afghanistan and our forces out there. He introduced the special guest - 25 year old Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, recently announced Yorkshire Man of the Year for 2009. Ben suffered horrific injuries in Afghanistan and was joined on stage by his mother and commanding officer in a few minutes which couldn't help but tug at the heartstrings. There was talk of the conditions facing the forces in Afghanistan and details of the charity Help For Heroes, before Mrs Parkinson was presented with a large bouquet of flowers and Ben was presented with a framed Heroes Never Die t-shirt. We were informed that there would be collecting buckets for the charity as we left the gig and Bryan was asked to dedicate Heroes Never Die to a number of soldiers from Ben's regiment who had lost their lives in service to their country.

Now, I have no issues with most of that. I have supported the charity in a number of ways over the last few months. I'm not political and, despite knowing two people (one army, one RAF) who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq recently, my opinions are basically formed by BBC news reports. I support the fact that our troops are over there while thinking, with my limited knowledge, that there are probably ways that things that could be made better for them. I sympathise with the injured and the families of those who have not returned. I had absolutely no problem showing my support for Ben and his colleagues with the rest of the audience and would almost certainly have dropped some cash into a bucket if I had simply seen it on the way out. I also understand that music is a powerful tool for raising awareness of charitable issues.

However, I also believe that there's a way of doing these things. If you went to Live Aid, you had no right not to expect to be preached at by Bob Geldof. Unfortunately, this felt a bit like hijacking a Christmas show by one of my favourite bands to get a message across, especially since there seemed to be no link between the band and the introduction-less man, except that he had sent his brother two MA CDs while was posted over there. I still put cash in the bucket and I still have all the same feelings I listed above, I'm just a little disappointed in the way it was done.

Anyway, enough soapbox ranting (and apologies again for any offence caused). Overall, this was an excellent gig and continued what is turning out to be a very good weekend.

Saturday 5 December 2009

Bryan's Company and Chris's Parade

Friday 4th December: The Countdown to the festive season has started and tonight is the beginning of a weekend of three gigs in three days for me. All of them are related in some way to York's most famous prog-rock giants Mostly Autumn, so this weekend can only be described in one way - Mostly Awesome!!

Tonight there's three of us (just not quite the usual three) attending the Duchess for one of a very limited series of shows for which Mostly's Bryan Josh has put a band together to perform his 2008 solo(ish) album Through These Eyes. More of that later.

First up, however, were Parade. Chris Johnson has been a busy boy since the last time I saw him perform. Not only has he put together this band, featuring Anne-Marie Helder, Gavin Griffiths, Simon Snaize, Patrick Berry and Chris himself (basically the band seems to be one possible outcome of a crash involving the tour buses of Panic Room and Hazzard County) but he has also managed to write, produce and release the band's debut CD, The Fabric. This is the band's second live show together (the first was also supporting Josh and Co) and I'm going to set my stall out straight away and say that they were superb.

The music was guitar-and-keyboard rock and the influences were probably many but while certain things were vaguely tugging at the dark recesses of my memory, very little results were forthcoming. Roj described the ending of one song (The Diamond, I think) as "like the dark chocolate version of Fleetwood Mac, while the lyric style of Cut reminded me a little of something by The Beautiful South. What was impressive was the diversity of material - no two songs sounded the same and they all sounded brilliant. With Anne-Marie and Chris switching around between lead vocals, guitar and keyboards (for one song both played keyboards, for another they both played guitar) and with Bryan Josh himself replacing Simon for one song, there was enough variety to keep even the most jaded music fan happy.

There's no doubt that the band is made up of some very talented musicians and the songs showcased that those talents - Simon produced some excellent guitar work, Gavin was brilliant on drums, it goes without saying that Anne-Marie's voice was stunning and, it has to be said, Paddy's bass-playing was leagues above what he ever did with Hazzard County. I have implied in a previous posting that Chris Johnson might have thought himself too good or too big for some of the acts he has previously worked with. I suspect he may have found his place as frontman for Parade. Not only does it allow a release for his undoubted creativity but, if they can perform this well so early in the band's career, there is a good possibility that the band can go on to bigger things. The only problem is, possibly, the commitments some of the members already have. While Paddy had dropped off my radar since the last time I saw the Hazzards, I believe that Simon is working on an album of his own. Gavin is drummer with Panic Room, Fish and played on the first Josh & Co album (of which there are supposed to be more to come) and Anne-Marie already performs with Panic Room, Mostly Autumn and solo (and there really should be a solo album sometime soon).

Personally, on the strength of tonight's performance, I hope they manage to find time to work together again. This was a very entertaining opening act and one that I would have been more than happy with if they had been the headline. I even bought the CD. On first impression, although I've only managed to listen it through once, at varying volumes and in the car, the live act seems to do what it should do with the recorded material. That is expand it and give the musicians a chance to cut loose. Hopefully, a fuller review will follow if and when I get time. In the meantime, however, it is my fervent hope that this Parade managed to avoid the rain for quite some time.

Strangely, when Josh & Co took to the stage, there was very little change in line-up. Ian Jennings had replaced Anne-Marie on keyboards, Bryan Josh had replaced Simon Snaize on guitar and Livvy Sparnenn was there to provide backing vocals. On the album, Bryan plays everything but the drums (and flute on one track).

The album itself, which came very close to being my favourite release of last year, deals with the idea that you can push your dreams back out through your eyes and step into the resulting dimension to meet the inhabitants of your dreams. Verging on a concept album, the songs relate Bryan's adventures in that dimension until he finds the one person who can bring him home (Livvy, I assume...)

That being the case, it's hard to perform the album without doing it all the way through and in the order the tracks were released on the album. So, as an introduction and as the band took to the stage we got what I assume was a recording of Merry She Goes. Then Bryan introduced the ideas and launched directly into Land Of The Gods and The Appian Way. What followed was an almost word for work performance of the album from beginning to end.

I say "almost". There were some small differences like different words during Through These Eyes (the original doesn't have a reference to Lee Van Cleef sticking his pistol up Hitler's backside...) and the "super-band" introduced at the end of that track was missing John Entwhistle and Freddie Mercury. However, Jimi Hendrix and John Bonham were introduced, which led to cover versions of All Along The Watchtower and Rock and Roll (the latter with Livvy on vocals, harking back to her guest appearances with Freeway). There was an extra song, which I didn't recognise from the album and, in hindsight, I think one or two tracks may have been left out of the performance. We did, however, get a second (sing-along) rendition of The Appian Way by way of a sort of encore (the band didn't actually leave the stage).

The songs themselves showcase Bryan's unquestioned poetic heart and, while there is undoubtedly a resemblance to the output of Mostly Autumn, his solo work shows what can happen when his creativity isn't tempered a bit by Heather Findlay, producing in places a harder edge to the songs.

This was, as expected, an excellent performance that was well received by the audience. Overall, a brilliant start to the weekend