This was a 60th birthday gig and having seen Roy Harper over more than thirty years it seemed right to make the trip to the Royal Festival Hall to see him for this particular gig. The atmosphere was great with everyone including Harper there to celebrate.
The musicians included Andy Roberts, Nick Harper and John Renbourn on guitar and various others including David Bedford.
The set list included a stack of Harper classics. The only tracks that I have some sort of recall for are 'Hallucinating Light' which was always one of my faves and '12 Hours of Sunset' but I see that he played 'Another Day', 'Me and My Woman' and 'Same Old Rock' amongst others.
He was on good musical form and with the band line-up this could not fail to be a good gig and a great event.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Bonnie Prince Billy 2/8/10
I think this is only the second time I have been to a gig in a church - the first one was Roy Harper many years ago. It seemed a bit strange as the English leg of the tour consisted of this church gig in Coventry, Manchester Cathedral and the Shepherd's Bush Empire. The support act was, a folky act from Scotland. The lead singer has a classic pure 'English' folk voice and the drummer sings pretty well too. Their problem was the sound of the four-piece did not work in this lofty stone church. The sound came across fairly distorted and not in a nice way. They actually came across as a good band despite that and the couple of acapello songs sounded brilliant.
Lavinia Blackwall (vocalist) and Alex Nielson (drummer/vocalist) also played in the Bonnie Prince Billy band and were joined by Emmet Kelly on guitar and Sharzhad Ismaily on bass. Mercifully the sound was OK probably a mixture of the sparser band sound and maybe better equipment.
I only know one of Billy's albums so in fact all of the songs played in a relatively short set were new to me. Nonetheless it was brilliant, firstly because his singing was so good. That hadn't really come across to me from the album. Secondly each song clearly had a structure of words and music rather than being words on top of a tune. This gave a real emotional depth to the songs. Thirdly because there were some great lines such as 'She chopped up my bed with an axe' or something similiar. He's obviously a deep and depressive thinker - one song that had audience recognition featured the repeated line of 'then I saw the darkness'. Another song is going round in my head after just one hearing. The guitarist was excellent, Lavinia's and Alex's and Emmet's vocals added to some great harmony singing and the gig was special. Shame it only lasted 75 minutes but it was a quality 75 minutes.
Lavinia Blackwall (vocalist) and Alex Nielson (drummer/vocalist) also played in the Bonnie Prince Billy band and were joined by Emmet Kelly on guitar and Sharzhad Ismaily on bass. Mercifully the sound was OK probably a mixture of the sparser band sound and maybe better equipment.
I only know one of Billy's albums so in fact all of the songs played in a relatively short set were new to me. Nonetheless it was brilliant, firstly because his singing was so good. That hadn't really come across to me from the album. Secondly each song clearly had a structure of words and music rather than being words on top of a tune. This gave a real emotional depth to the songs. Thirdly because there were some great lines such as 'She chopped up my bed with an axe' or something similiar. He's obviously a deep and depressive thinker - one song that had audience recognition featured the repeated line of 'then I saw the darkness'. Another song is going round in my head after just one hearing. The guitarist was excellent, Lavinia's and Alex's and Emmet's vocals added to some great harmony singing and the gig was special. Shame it only lasted 75 minutes but it was a quality 75 minutes.
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