Where Worlds Collide

This is a bit of a rant, I’m afraid.

Why is the mainstream media so biased against rock? The mainstream press and television seems only seems to acknowledge the existence of two genres of popular music: r’n'b-derived production-line pop masterminded by the likes of Simon Cowell, and largely tuneless ‘indie’ made by people who can’t sing or play, which is presented as the so-called intelligent alternative. This is despite the fact that unfashionable melodic rock acts frequently outsell many of the media darlings of the month.

Look at BBC2’s Later With Jools Holland. This is supposed to showcase the sort of bands who excel at playing live. But I’ve been to 70+ gigs in the last 3 years, while I don’t expect the BBC to cater solely to my taste, not one of the bands I’ve gone to see are bands I could even imagine appearing on the show. Week after week it’s yet more bands with four chords and stupid haircuts all of which sound the same. Put a rock band like The Reasoning or Mostly Autumn or Porcupine Tree on that show and they’d blow that rubbish away. The one band I have seen at a festival who have appeared on the show was Andy Fairweather Low, in the ‘token 60s has-been slot’. And he was the most tediously dull act I’ve seen for years.

And then there’s Metro, the dreadful free newspaper distributed at railway stations in major cities. Every issue has a ‘what’s on’ guide for the city in which they’re distributed. And their featured gigs are always selected by the same person that chooses acts for Later. For example, on Tuesday night, Extreme were playing Manchester Academy 1, Uriah Heep was playing the smaller Academy 2 (the gig I went to), and Fish was playing just up the road at the Albert Hall in Bolton.

So what did Metro list as their featured gigs?

You’ve guessed it - the two obscure indie/’alternative’ bands playing in the smaller Academy 3 and Club Academy. That’s not just a carefully chosen example - they never feature any gigs I go to, whether it’s Porcupine Tree or Marillion playing Academy 1 or even Journey playing the Apollo. I’d love to be wrong, but I bet they won’t mention Mostly Autumn in February either.

Three gigs in five days, in two different cities.

We start in Manchester, with Marillion at their usual Manchester venue, Academy 1. Last year the place was still a building site with a temporary entrance, and festival-style portaloos. Now it’s finished, with a proper bar and cloakroom, so you don’t have to spend entire gigs clutching a wet coat.

The support band were so utterly forgettable that I don’t even remember their name. Marillion seem to be so determined to avoid any opening act with the faintest taint of ‘prog’ that all too often we end to end up with pretty generic alternative rock. As for this lot, I can tell you they were a four-piece, with one guitarist playing some pedal steel. But I don’t remember any of their actual songs.

Marillion, though, were excellent. Their two hour set drew heavily from their new double album “Happiness is the Road”, favouring the atmospheric first disk “Essence” over the rockier “The Hard Shoulder”, and interspersed with a few older favourites. The new material comes over very well live, but with a double album there’s no way they can play all of it in one set. I hope they tour again next year to play the other half of the new album. As for the oldies, it’s nice to hear ‘The Great Escape’ from “Brave” again, and while some people are saying ‘Neverland’ could do with a rest, it still makes a great set closer. As usual, there was nothing whatsoever from the Fish era. Steve Rothery in particular was on superb form - it’s not for nothing that I he’s possibly my all-time favourite guitarist. Nice one.

Then it was down south to London for Marillion’s former frontman, Fish.

Unlike Marillion, Fish always has good opening acts, and the support for the first part of the tour was none other than The Reasoning. With Fish’s own set timed for more than two hours, they had a short slot of just 30 minutes, not long, but just enough to make an impression. With a very good sound for a support band, they went full-tilt, just five songs (Dark Angel, Aching Hunger, Call Me God?, Awakening, A Musing Dream). A pretty storming set, and judging from comments on Fish’s forum, they went down well with the large and enthusiastic crowd.

Fish was on great form. Even though his voice isn’t what it was back in Marillion days he’s still a powerful live act, his sheer presence and charisma, helped by a talented backing band making up for any shortcomings in the vocal department. If this one didn’t quite match that legendary gig at Manchester last year, it still came pretty close. His set consisted almost entirely of his new album “13th Star” and old 1980s Marillion songs. Although he’s playing many of the same songs as last year, he’s made a few changes, notably including more of “13th Star”, and replacing some of “Clutching at Straws” with those two big hits from “Misplaced Childhood”. ‘Openwater’ in particular rocks as powerfully live as I expected it to. He went walkabout in the crowd during the cover of “Faithhealer”, and recognised me from Manchester; I got the “Oh God it’s him” look. Frank Usher, recovered from the health scare at the end of last year was on great form on lead guitar; his playing on his showcase number ‘Cliché’ was as utterly mesmerising as last time. Chris Johnson was great on second guitar; seeing him next to the 6′5″ Scotsman really does make him look Hobbit-sized.

The one sour note of the gig was that Fish insisted on telling that story about the Fairies. If Fish really wants to be known as the great lyricist and frontman he undoubtedly is rather than a bitter knobhead who can’t stop washing dirty linen and reopening old wounds in public, he really needs to drop that one. Yes I know what and who ‘Dark Star’ is about, and I don’t want to be reminded of it. There will be trouble if he tells it in York on Sunday, I tell you.

Back to Manchester again for the mighty Uriah Heep at Manchester Academy 2

Support was from a female-fronted five-piece Maccara, a pretty impressive mix of blues, metal and even a bit of reggae at one point. The impressed me enough to buy their album from the merch stand. We may be hearing more from this band in the future.

It’s several years since I last saw the Heep, at this very same venue. The last few times I’ve seen them they’ve played what amounted to greatest hits sets. This time, with their first album for nine years, they decided to take the brave step of playing their new record “Wake the Sleeper” in it’s entirely. It’s a ploy that could have backfired badly had the new album not been up to scratch, but with the strength of the new material it turned into a triumph. New drummer Russell Gilbrook has injected another level energy into this band, and they’ve become an unstoppable juggernaut of sound. The more guitar-driven new songs complement the Hammond-drenched older numbers well. Of the new songs, ‘What Kind of God’ was a high spot, as was Trevor Bolder’s “War Child”. The older numbers were without exception real crowd favourites like ‘Gypsy’, ‘Easy Living’ and ‘Sunrise’, dating from the 70s, all of which were rapturously received. This is a band that you can tell really enjoy playing live; Mick Box always has a huge grin on his face. That’s a possible candidate for gig of the year.

Three gigs, from three bands which are now well into the ‘veteran’ category - indeed their careers add up to ninety years in total. What’s significant is that not one of them has taken the easy route and become their own tribute band. Even if Heep and Fish’s sets included a lot of old material from the 70s and 80s, they also played a significant amount from their most recent releases.   I’ve heard people (mostly indie fans) who insist that nobody can make good music after ten years.  To which I say “Bollocks!”.

The second half of November goes gig-mad, with five gigs in fifteen days.

Tomorrow night it’s Marillion at Manchester Academy 1. I’ve had their new double album “Happiness is the Road” on almost continuous play for the past three weeks; it blows away the slightly disappointing “Somewhere Else”, and may even ending up topping “Marbles”. So I can’t wait to hear a big chunk of it live. I can’t think of the last time I’ve looked forward to a gig this much.

Then two days later I travel down to London to see Fish, supported by none other than The Reasoning. He’s announced he’s taking an extended break from touring after this UK leg, so this is the last chance to see him for a while. Last year’s Manchester gig was an absolute barnstormer, and I have high hopes for this one. And as you should know from reading this blog, The Reasoning rock.

And two days after that it’s back to Manchester again for the mighty Uriah Heep, well into their fourth decade on the road. It’s a long time since I’ve seen the Heep. They’ve come up with their first album for almost a decade, and it’s a good one.

Five days later it’s Manchester Academy again for a night of cookie-monster death metal from Sweden’s Opeth.   The latest album “Watershed”, mixing swirling metal guitars with mellotrons is a candidate for album of the year.  I last saw them in 2006, and they can indeed reproduce all that complexity live.

And another five days after than, what better way to end a sequence of gigs that Mostly Autumn at the Grand Opera House in York?

Can someone explain why someone spends thirty squid on a deluxe pre-order edition of an album when he admits he hasn’t liked the last six albums by that band, and then complains loudly on that band’s ex-singers forum how he hates the album?

On The Guardian Music Blog, academic Paul Crowther writes:

Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt responds to the neo-conservative/global consumerist degradation of artistic value. It responds also to postmodern theory’s unwitting tendency (in its affirmation of relativism and anti-elitism in questions of value) to offer indirect support for this degradation. Both standpoints reduce the human subject to a nexus of ever-changing desires driven by economic and social demands. They privilege also the reception of artifacts over the significance of how they are created.

I read through the entire piece three times, and I still had trouble working out exactly what this guy’s argument was. In the end I came to the conclusion that what he’s actually saying is a rather banal observation of the bloody obvious. I think. But I’m not actually sure; it’s like a babelfish translation of an article from Hungarian; you think you get the gist of it, but there may some subtlety and nuance I’m not getting.

Why do academics write this sort of indigestible gobbledegook? Have they spent so long in the ivory towers of academia that they’ve lost the ability to make themselves comprehensible to the general public? Or do they use a deliberately obfuscatory style to try and disguise the fact that they don’t really have anything profound to say?

Or is the whole thing just a clever joke? The Guardian’s revenge on the commentariat mercilessly taking the piss out of stupid articles by Alan McGee week after week?

After an extended silence, there’s been an update on The Bad Shepherds website

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. Three days before our tour was due to begin our promoter/manager suddenly stopped answering his phone and sent an email saying he was ‘withdrawing from the project’… Anyway, he’s no longer part of the set up, as you can probably imagine, but it was difficult for us to take
over the tour the way it was set up.

We’re really sorry for the inconvenience we’ve put you through if you’d bought a ticket.
And not a little pissed off at ourselves for the gigs we’ve missed.
Though we did manage to rescue the two Pocklington Arts Centre gigs which went down a storm.

So it sounds as though the reason Mostly Autumn were left completely in the dark was that The Bad Shepherds themselves were left completely in the dark by their cowboy of a promoter, who appears to have unilaterally cancelled the tour without actually consulting the band first.

I have a pretty good idea of the identity of this utterly unprofessional idiot, and I’ll be most reluctant to buy tickets for any concert that he’s got anything to do with in future.

Two days after seeing Panic Room I found myself back at Crewe Limelight to see the new-look Karnataka.

Following the dissolution of the original band back in 2004, bassist and original bandleader Ian Jones put together a completely new incarnation of the band, including Lisa Fury on vocals, Enrico Pinna on guitar, and Gonzalo Carrera on keys. Some people seemed to object to the mere existence of this band, some hack scribblers dismiss them as ‘a glorified tribute band’, which I feel is a bit harsh.

When I first saw them at Crewe last year I thought they put on an impressive show, but I had a nagging doubt that what I was really seeing was Ian and Lisa plus some hired hands. Having seen powerful live performances by The Reasoning and Panic Room earlier this month, I felt they had something to prove this time around.

Typical of Sunday night gigs at Crewe Limelight, things started bloody late, and it wasn’t until ten o’clock before the band came on stage. Unfortunately the start of the set was marred by technical problems which rather spoiled the impact of the opening instrumental ‘State of Grace’, and caused intermittent problems later on as well. After that rather shaky start, though, they recovered momentum, and it was soon apparent that this was a far, far better band than I’d seen back in 2007. Although the set included plenty of old favourites, a good proportion of the set was new material, and the new songs had enough of the same feel and mood to justify keeping the name. They’ve gelled as a band now; confident enough to reinterpret the older songs and make them their own rather than the sort of note-for-note reproductions that you’d expect from a tribute band. Enrico Pinna played some amazing guitar, striking the right balance between fluid virtuosity and restraint where appropriate. Lisa Fury’s vocals were as impressive as last time. It’s probably not easy to take some very personal songs written by another singer and sing them as if they were hers.

Strangest moment came partway through the set when a Dutch fan dragged his girlfriend on stage in order to propose to her. That’s something I’ve never seen happen at a gig before.

A good gig, despite the technical gremlins. It’s a pity the sheer number of gigs by various bands in October meant I didn’t get the chance to see Karnataka more than once on this tour.

Gaul was divided into three parts
– Julius Caesar

All three of the female fronted prog (or gorp) bands that grew out of the ashes of the original incarnation of Karnataka have been touring in October, making it a busy month gig-wise for those of us that actually like all three. I’ve already reviewed The Reasoning, who were on tour at the beginning of the month, the second part of the month was the turn of the other two bands, Panic Room and the new incarnation of Karnataka.

First was Panic Room at the Little Civic in Wolverhampton. I hadn’t seen this band since their very first gig at Lydney back in April, not counting the ill-fated gig at The Peel where I didn’t actually get to see them play because of a power failure. The Little Civic is one of those slightly tatty but loveable small venues, walls covered in posters. It’s basically just the upstairs room of a pub, with the stage at one end of a long narrow room. As is normal for this sort of gig, the place contained an awful lot of familiar faces, from the infamous HippyDave to Mostly Autumn’s Andy Smith, who was doing the lights.

Support was Quecia, playing with an acoustic lineup consisting of two female vocalists and two acoustic guitarists. I’m afraid they didn’t really do a lot for me; their lead singer has an excellent voice, but none of their songs were strong enough to be memorable, at least for me.

Panic Room have definitely grown as a band since I saw them last. They’ve got a very different sound live than on record; rather than the complex multi-layered approach of their album Visionary Position, on stage their music is harder-edged and more guitar driven; for instance, on ‘Apocalypstick’, Paul Davies’ guitar replaces the absent electric violin. They’re not resting on their laurels when it comes to material; the set included no fewer than five new songs written since the recording of the album. A couple of those, the quite poppy ‘Into the Fire’ and the very spiky ‘Go’ had been in the set in April, but the others were completely new, including the vaguely industrial-sounding ‘Black Noise’ written by Alun Vaughan. The strength of the new stuff is such that they could afford to leave out a couple of songs from the album.

High spot was the first encore, a full band arrangement of ‘Blood Red Skies’, a song from Anne-Marie’s solo album “The Contact”. This was a powerful song when I heard it 18 months ago performed as a solo acoustic number; backed by the whole band it’s an absolute barnstormer. The small but enthusiastic audience wasn’t prepared to let them get away with just one encore, and they were back again for their take of Led Zep’s ‘No Quarter’.

That was definitely a good one. Paul Davies was in fine form on guitar, completely recovered from his hand injury that caused him to miss the end of a gig last month. And Anne-Marie Helder, despite apparently suffering from a really bad lurgy, still gave a fantastic vocal performance, and looked extremely sexy (if I’m allowed to say something like that in these politically-correct times).

I’d been looking forward to seeing Ade Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds with an acoustic lineup of Mostly Autumn as support; I had tickets for the Crewe and Manchester dates at the beginning of November. Sadly this afternoon I received an email from the promoter of the tour saying that the entire tour is cancelled.

There wasn’t an update on the Bad Shepherds website when I last looked, but some googling did turn up a news item on the Daily Telegraph Website stating that the tour was off:

The 27-night tour, which was due to start on Saturday, was pulled on Thursday.

The Bad Shepherds were due to play at the Halfmoon in Putney, south-west London, on Monday and Tuesday.

Told of the news, booking agent Kirk Barclay said: “That would be a major blow. They were booked a good couple of months ago.”

A spokesman for the band said: “Due to personnel changes The Bad Shepherds are not in a position to undertake the tour as advertised.”

This must be a big disappointment both for those members of Mostly Autumn who were taking part in this tour, and the many fans planning to attend.

It’s probably too early to tell, but there has been talk of Mostly Autumn salvaging a couple of gigs as acoustic shows on their own.

Still a bummer, though

Urgent Update: According a posting on the official Mostly Autumn forum, the email that went out is allegedly a spoof, and this weekend’s two gigs at Pocklington in Yorkshire are still going ahead. I think it’s a case of “Watch this space”.

Further Update: The gig at Pocklington on Saturday 25th went ahead - there’s a review by Roger Newport that concentrates on Mostly Autumn, and another one by Chris Berendt which throws some light on what’s been going on. Still very much a case of “watch this space”.

Further Update: I spoke to the staff at Crewe Limelight last night (Sunday), and they told me the gig there on Monday 3rd Nov is still on. Comments left below, and from Twitter suggest that Frome and Liverpool Cavern Club are cancelled, but the one as Southhampton The Brook is still on. It’s looking as though it was the promoter rather than the band who’s pulled the plug, but the band are in negotiation with at least some venues directly.

Final Update:

Announcement on the Mostly Autumn website today

Mostly Autumn regret to tell you that it seems the Bad Shepherds tour has been cancelled.

We have no details at the moment and there has been no official statement but from conversations with the Bad Shepherds, there will be no more gigs after Pocklington.

As it is not MA’s tour and we have no confirmation on this we can only offer advice to get in touch with the Bad Shepherds. At this moment in time MA have no plans to play any more of the gigs.

That pretty much looks like it’s all over, as far as I’m concerned.  I’m not interested in going to any gigs that might take place just to see The Bad Shepherds if Mostly Autumn will not be supporting, and will be asking for refunds.

I managed to catch Cardiff’s The Reasoning three times on their short “Dark Angel” tour.  Their mix of melodic rock and metal with progressive seasoning always works well live, and with an excellent second album under their belt, this was a tour to look forward to.

First up was the Classic Rock Society’s gig at Wath-upon-Dearne. I’ve not been to a CRS gig or this venue before; the venue reminded me of the Drill Hall at Lincoln; raised seating at the back with a level standing area at the front. This was an all-age gig, with loads of kids in the audience; it makes for a very different atmosphere. There seemed to be a good crowd; I estimated two hundred or so.

Support was Combination Head, a band I’d never heard before. Hearing then described as ‘a bit like ELP’ made me fear the worst. I’m not a big fan of ELP, the band that wrote the rule books for Bombastic and Self-Indulgent. But Combination Head, while they had plenty of Hammond organ pyrotechnics reigned in the self-indulgent widdling and threw in some decent tunes instead. Not bad at all.

Introduced as “An Evening of Gorp-Metal”, The Reasoning’s set was powerful and impassioned, much improved from their slightly hesitant set at the Cambridge Rock Festival. With their new album out they’ve revamped the setlist completely, playing almost all of more metal-orientated “Dark Angel” plus the best half of their debut “Awakening”, a superb 90 minutes of great music with no let up at all. They’re a band that really mean business now. The new material came over well live; ‘Dark Angel’ and ‘Sharp Sea’, already familiar from January’s gigs have already established themselves as live favourites. ‘Call Me God?’, premièred at Cambridge, is an absolute monster live, and Rachel dropped some unsubtle hints as to who it’s about. The epic ‘A Musing Dream’ also comes over well on stage. They encored with a cover of Alanis Morrissette’s ‘Uninvited’ and the old Karnataka favourite ‘Talk to Me’.

Sunday’s acoustic gig at Kimberworth was a quite different affair; a relaxed and laid-back performance before a select audience of fifty or so dedicated fans. So laid back that the some of the band took to the stage and were ready to start while one member of the band was still in the loo; he got a huge cheer when he turned up. They played an hour’s worth of acoustic reworkings of material from both albums.

The third and final gig I went to was Crewe Limelight. Recent gigs there had been very hit-and-miss sound-wise, but I still love this venue. It’s one of those slightly seedy but atmospheric small clubs, walls completely covered in posters and album sleeves. Pure rock’n'roll.  And they attracted a good crowd; significantly more people than the last time they played this venue in January.

Support this time was Mermaid Kiss, with their new keyboard player Colin Henney. I’ve seen a lot of them this year, with their earlier support slots for Panic Room and Breathing Space. While they’re definitely not to everyone’s taste, I love what they do.  Their semi-acoustic lineup emphasises Evelyn Downing’s distinctive voice and Wendy Marks’ assorted woodwinds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another band use a cor anglais on stage.  While I’d like to see them do some gigs at some time with a full electric lineup reproducing the atmospheric progressive rock of their albums, the stripped-down acoustic arrangements of many of the songs from “Etarlis” work well live.  Tonight’s set was slightly shorter, with some material from their forthcoming “American Images” omitted, but still pretty good.

The Reasoning played an absolute blinder this time around. They’d been good at Wath, this took their performance to another level entirely, helped by the best sound I’ve heard at The Limelight for ages. Three dates into their tour, the lineup had fully gelled, with that incredible mix of high energy, tightness and emotional intensity they’ve established a reputation for. The setlist was much the same as we’d heard at Wath, but with a rearranged running order for slightly better pacing, opening with ‘Sharp Sea’ rather than ‘Dark Angel’, and swapping ‘Talk to Me’ and ‘Awakening’.  New guitarist Owain Roberts has really fitted in now, reeling off some amazing solos that always stop well short of anything remotely self-indulgent; restrained virtuosity indeed.  He absolutely nailed the guitar parts of earlier “Awakening” material, and shone on his own work on “Dark Angel”.

Reports I’ve read of later dates in Cardiff, London and Bilston suggest the final dates were better still.  They’re on the road again supporting Fish next month; I hope to catch at least one of the dates - on this form they’re going to give the headliner a serious run for his money.