A Flock Of Siegal

Tuesday 15th March: Regular readers will know that I have a wide taste in music, if not a wide knowledge. If there was one genre I would like to know a lot more about, it’s Blues. From my narrow experience, I know that I like Blues music but I also know that what I have heard barely scratches the surface. Take tonight, for example – I know that I like the headline act and this is the third time I’ve seen him but I couldn’t tell you which particular style of Blues he plays.

I haven’t knowingly seen The Blueflies before tonight. (I think they may have been playing at the York Beer Festival when I was there but can’t be sure.) They play what I would describe as riff-laden, bass heavy Blues and a lot of what they played tonight sounded familiar. I did note down a few lyrics but, despite extensive Googling, I have only managed to come up with the fact that one of the songs was Riot In Cell Block Number Nine (The Blues Brothers), another may have been Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix) and their final song may have been Sugar Sweet (Freddie King). As to the rest, I don’t know – they could have been originals, they may have been covers that I can’t track down. What I do know is that they were certainly played well. Helped by some astoundingly clear vocals and superb guitar solos, the band certainly got more than one person in the better-than-average sized Fibbers crowd tapping their foot, especially during a lengthy third track which was an effortlessly varied instrumental. There was even a nifty little drum solo to fill time during a guitar change. If, like me, you’re a bit of a Blues fan, you could do a lot worse than to see The Blueflies play, especially since you can generally do so for free – keep an eye out for them at the Roman Bath or Victoria Vaults in York, or at a whole host of other venues around the North.

As I have already mentioned, this is the third time I’ve seen Ian Siegal and the second time he’s been the headline act. Either the British Blues scene isn’t very good, or Ian and his band are (I’m putting my money on the latter), as they seem to win a fair few awards, getting best band and best bass player (Andy Graham) at the inaugural British Blues Awards last year as well as Broadside winning Mojo magazine’s Blues Album of the Year in 2009. His style is very different to that of The Blueflies and is described (by Wikipedia) as “rootsy”. He’s a very laid-back performer and doesn’t introduce all of his songs so, again, I have to rely on catching lyrics and t’internet to put together anything like a full set list. Something which, this time, I have singularly failed to do. There was mention of a new album, from which at least The Skinny came from, but there doesn’t seem to be an mention of it on his website. Other songs may have been called Dirty Brown Dog and Hard Pressed to Find Another Man Like Me, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter, though – it’s the performance that counts. With a variety of vocal styles, outstanding guitar work, a great variety of songs, including one that starts out slow and simple but developed into something so complex that I had no idea what was going on and another that I would be hard-pressed to recognise as a Blues song, Ian never fails to impress. There’s the occasional nice line in dry humour between songs – “When I got my first tattoo my mother told me that she didn’t really like tattoos. So I recommended she didn’t get one…” – as well as a few anecdotes (I hesitate to call it “name-dropping”) about who he has played with, making it a more genial and, perhaps, more intimate performance than some artists give. We even get a solo performance as part of the encore, which also includes the one cover that I know of – Hot Legs (Rod Stewart) – and, finally, Take A Walk In The Wilderness, from the already mentioned Broadside.

A Gig, In Miniature

Tuesday 1st March: I’m at Stereo tonight, to see a band from Scotland playing York for the first time and it might be the fact that it is their debut that leads to the elephant in the room. Not, of course, that there was an actual elephant and, as I’m going to talk about it, it’s not really a normal use of the phrase. However, it does provide me with the opportunity to say, “if there was an elephant in the room, it would have had plenty of space to move about…” You see, apart from me, the only other people in the audience were either the two support acts or people associated with one of the support acts. Admittedly, it was a cold Tuesday night and, as we are constantly being told, money is tight these days but I understand that, across town, Fibbers was sold out, so there were people going out to enjoy live music despite the weather (and the current government…) I admit I was only there due to a unique set of circumstances and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for all the acts, especially the headliners who probably hadn’t expected their English tour to end with such a poor turnout.

First to take the stage (and, being a solo artist, having the biggest audience) was Sophie McDonnell, who doesn’t seem to have her own page to provide a link to, but she does play and sing in Hot Fudge, a ska, reggae, funk band. Tonight, however, Sophie provided a variation on the man-and-guitar act by, well being a girl with a guitar. Two Hot Fudge songs, Feeling Torn and Lay Down, Play Dead, featured in the set, complete with vocal renditions of the trumpet solos, as did a covers of VV Brown’s Shark In The Water and Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good (if memory serves). I assume the other three, Iron Man, All These Things I’ve Done and one that I missed the title off, were originals. The variety in the songs was nice and Sophie has a good voice and a winning smile and she plays with confidence and more than a touch of humour, which made for an entertaining opening set.

Tonight is the third time I’ve seen The Blueprints in a relatively short time but tonight, perhaps because they were essentially playing to the other bands and their friends, they decided to have a bit of fun and play around with the set-list a bit, which freshened it up a bit. Starting with their “normal” three songs – one I still haven’t caught the title of, Three Minutes and Staring At The Sun – there followed a short interval, during which Stuart changed his guitar and the band launched into Layla (a song Stuart, apparently, hates). Back to the serious stuff and we got the superb City Skylines, a cover of Ryan Adams’ Two (which may just have inspired me to try some of his material), Spectrum Vs Commodore, No Melancholy and a song I don’t think I’ve heard before which may have been called Walk Away. As usual, The Blueprints gave a very entertaining performance of some striking songs. In fact, each time I see them I find myself liking them more.

Thankfully, both support acts hung around to see Miniature Dinosaurs, a young band from Stirling who were touring to promote their second EP, Off The Radio. After the first song, vocalist Barry Maclean thanked everybody for staying around and said that a wise man had once told him that whether there was one person or a thousand in the audience you put on the same show. And what a show. Occasionally breaking the set up by asking the audience whether they knew answers to a pop quiz, Barry showed an easy camaraderie (and sound-man Andy a nice humourous touch with the lighting when he briefly sent the band to hell…) The music is indie-pop with a touch of 80’s electro-pop both from the keyboards of Craig Ferrie and Barry’s vocals and the performance deserved a much bigger audience than it got tonight. We were treated to songs from both EP’s, including Off The Radio, (I Want To Watch) Top Gear, Alligator (a personal favourite of mine), Cold Shoulder, Light Speed, Fight Or Flight and two others and all were played brilliantly. As a rule, I don’t dance but my feet were certainly tapping tonight.

After the set, I had a chat with Alban Dickson, the Dinosaurs’ bass-player. We covered a variety of topics including football, the Stirling music scene, the band itself and my lack of passion for the EP format. Alban was very pragmatic about the small turnout, telling me that it was something that, being a new band, they had to accept and that the next time they play York, they would hope to play to five more people and ten more the time after, building a following. I can only say that, if they do come back, I will definitely make every effort to see them. Highly recommended.

Satisfying A Craving

Monday 28th February: Way back when, many years ago, when I first started going to gigs, it was rare for me to know anything about the various support bands I was due to see. In fact, I can’t even remember many of them, especially those from your standard two-act gigs. Most of the time, I doubt I even knew who the support were due to be and rarely did I like them. These days, however, I’m as likely to go to a gig based on who (one of) the support bands are than I am for the headliners.

Tonight is one of those occasions as I make a solo trip to Fibbers to see Inspades.inc, a band I’ve seen once before and really enjoyed. Seeming to write their songs around lovely guitar solos (or, perhaps, duets as, once I took proper notice, I did spot one “solo” actually slide smoothly across from Stewart King’s guitar to that of Adam Brady) and with some nice changes of pace, the band came across as a lot more confident tonight than the last time I saw them (which was, to be fair, only their second gig). There was still a hint of nervousness, most especially during Cannibals a song written and sung by Brady and hampered by the fact that tonight’s sound man didn’t seem to have realised that the vocals were coming through a different microphone – vocals are hard enough to hear through the more dance-music orientated sound system at Fibbers without inattentive sound engineers… There’s little doubt (in my mind, at least) that King is the “main man” of the band. The rest of the songs featured his vocals, he did all the talking and, as far as I could tell, the majority of solo’s were his as well. His understated (i.e. not too showy) posturing was counterpointed by the more relaxed performances of the rest of the band (P.G. Branton on drums and Jim Quinn on bass) and he’s another of those frontmen who, if he can’t tempt the audience closer to the stage will just shrug and get on with the performance. And it was a very good performance. Along with Cannibals, the six song set was made up of Seanachai, Twenty Minutes From Now, Lost Track Of Time, Of It’s Own Accord and Sucker Punch, some of which I recognised from the previous gig and some of which were new (I’m ruling out “less memorable”). If you like your rock slightly less heavy than metal, you will probably enjoy this band. A debut EP is available now and there is the possibility of a longer release towards the end of this year.

In contrast Leon Sanford, vocalist with Tiger Please, seemed more insistent that the audience moved closer to the stage, calling us forward after completing their first song. Hailing from South Wales and being around since at least 2009 (when they released their debut EP), this is a slightly more established band who had supported tonight’s headliners all through their tour and who are about to be supporting Funeral For A Friend. With twelve guitars and a spare drum visible on stage, I was expecting big things. Sanford has powerful vocals, even if they were helped by a fair bit of echo/reverb, which somehow reminded me a little of The Manic Street Preachers, while the music varied from pseudo-Killers in the quieter moments to something bordering on heavy at other times. I didn’t catch any song titles and none of the songs immediately took up residence in my head, but it was a reasonably enjoyable set. There was a great deal more showmanship in evidence, with band members (including a stand-in for the usual guitarist) moving around the stage on a whim. The band are about to write an album of songs based on the real-life stories of their fans and the last song of their set was, apparently, the story of one woman whose father committed suicide early in her life. Opened by the stand-in guitarist basically beating seven shades out of the extra drum and containing slightly more than a hint of Runrig, this epic song turned out to be my highlight of the set. The band were joined on stage by the members of the headliners - all togged out in Tiger Please T-shirts - and yet another drum halfway through the song, ensuring a rousing end to the set. I may not be beating any doors down in order to see Tiger Please again, but I enjoyed what I saw tonight.

The Crave, on the other hand, I would definitely see again. Apparently they last played York a couple of years ago, to a slightly smaller crowd at the Duchess. (Tonight’s crowd was somewhere in the region of fifty people, many of whom seemed to be friends or family of Tiger Please…)

Looking like a mix of any number of rock or metal bands, The Crave play fast and loud, but still melodic, rock and mix the accessibility of the likes of Bon Jovi with something that has a bit more edge. Songs like Crash and Burn, with it’s heavy metal vocals and almost finger-plucking guitar work, mixed easily with the more commercial, audience sing-along of High, while a more ballad-like song whose title I couldn’t hear once again suffered from a poor vocal mix in the sound, but not as badly as the cover of Limp Bizkit’s Mission Impossible theme, when the vocals from drummer C.J. Evans were, once again, ignored by the sound-man until some frantic gesturing from the stage woke him up. This song also featured the reverse of the end-of-tour hi-jinks,as The Crave were joined on stage by the members of Tiger Please, all sporting Scream masks and some just their underwear and some strategically placed sticky tape… Most of the songs played seemed to come from the recently released album, Breaking The Silence (which I bought on the night) but there was also one brand new song – Star Tripping – which at least shows that the band aren’t resting on their laurels. There was a great deal to like in this performance and, like Inspades.inc, I would highly recommend The Crave if you like guitar-driven rock. (As an aside, this is the first gig I’ve been to this year where none of the band used a keyboard.) I couldn’t put it any better than the tour poster – “Back in a simpler time there was no indie, no emo, no nu-rave. No post-this, post-that, just riff-laden, ballsy rock ‘n’ roll; huge songs, life-changing gigs and a whole world of noisy, gutsy fun.”