The Australian Pink Floyd Set the Controls Tour

The Australian Pink Floyd Show

Tour: Set The Controls

Date: February 18, 2014

Location: G Live

Support: n/a

Last year, in honour of the 40^th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon, the world’s best tribute band The Australian Pink Floyd Show performed the album in full and it was quite spectacular. Of course, this year they’re not doing any such thing. Although they are playing a significant number of songs from Dark Side, they’re not in order, which is all wrong. Also, since the first time, I’ve seen Roger waters (that’s 20% of the real Pink Floyd) so seeing these guys again could never match up, right?

Well, the big surprise of the night was that they were actually even better than before. Without constraining themselves to one particular album, they were able to play a bigger variety of songs from more period of the band’s career, and there weren’t as many repeats from the first time as I’d worried. And there was an additional element where the audience could vote, a couple of months prior to the show, for songs they wanted played (from a selection) which I thought was a really great idea that more bands should try.

In fact, they opened with one of the songs I’d voted for: ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, the song Pink Floyd used to open their concerts with years ago. The song is basically made for that purpose, beginning so quietly and building to a crescendo as the title line is sung, and assuming that was my only chance to see it played live, it was good enough that I can handle that. Later on, both ‘Welcome To The Machine’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ were played from the same album, the latter being a repeat but a highly enjoyable one, although the video of the members of the real Pink Floyd that was played in the background was recycled exactly. Plus, this time around the opening guitar part didn’t get fumbled.

Other repeats came from Dark Side of the Moon, including my two favourites ‘Time’ and ‘Us & Them’, and the surprising choice of ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, which is very difficult to pull off but I was impressed with the performances of the backing singers. (One of them used to be a backing singer for Floyd when they toured in the 90s, which has to help.)

But the best songs of the night were the more unexpected ones. The undisputed highlight was ‘Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun’, an all time favourite of mine in the studio but one that doesn’t always work live, since it’s harder to get the creepy, atmospheric feel of the song – but here they stayed true to the studio version rather than any of the published live ones, and the overall effect was great. That and the music played over the PA before the concert began (clips of songs from ‘Piper’) were the closest we got to Syd Barrett numbers all night, the one major disappointment and flaw in the concert for the second year running.

I was also lucky enough to hear a song from Animals – it wasn’t ‘Sheep’, as I’d been hoping, but it was the funky, danceable ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’, played in full. Coming at the beginning of the second set, the band’s rocking out came as a nice contrast to the quiet concentration they’d been in for most of the first half. We saw this again in some of the heavier Wall cuts, like ‘Young Lust’, and a version of ‘Happiest Days/Brick 2’ that didn’t live up to Waters’ own venomous voice but was nevertheless enjoyable.

This was less of a surprise as I knew it was coming, but it was also good to hear three songs from ‘The Division Bell’ – the post-Waters era gets a lot of hate, but I really like the bluesy call-and-response ‘Keep Talking’, although I was less convinced by the guitar-solo-heavy ‘Coming Back to Life’. I feel like the group should stick to the full band compositions rather than trying to play songs that specifically relate to one particular member, where the style is harder to imitate.

I’ve already mentioned that the Wall songs had the hardest challenge, and none more so than ‘Comfortably Numb’, which has been performed wonderfully so many times that it can’t possibly be beaten. The band played a note-for-note copy of the original, and the guitar solo felt elegant and natural, although the vocals possibly could have been improved.

I managed to find myself a place to stand right near the front, and so the atmosphere in the audience was great, with other people who were clearly huge fans too. After the band left the stage following ‘Comfortably Numb’, everyone was cheering for ‘Run Like Hell’, except for a select few near me who decided to yell for ‘Brain Damage’. I considered shouting out ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast!’ but then worried they would actually play it, which would be a waste of an encore. Not to worry, though. They finished the night with a rousingly energetic ‘Run Like Hell’ that was so intense I managed to forget that Roger’s emotion wasn’t quite there.

Overall, a tribute band to one of the world’s most famous bands is always going to have a difficult task, but there’s a reason the Australian Pink Floyd have such a great reputation. Their love and respect for the music, the most important feature a tribute band can have, is obvious, and they have genuine talent of their own too, as well as a great sense of humour about the whole thing. With that in mind, I’ll end with an anecdote I heard once that I’m 98% sure is not true.

David Gilmour went to see the Australian Pink Floyd years ago and was so impressed that he said they were the best tribute band he’d ever seen. Flattered and wanting to return the compliment, a member of the Aussie Floyd found some tapes of the original Floyd playing, and told them that they were the best Australian Pink Floyd tribute band he’d ever seen.

Dream Theater: Along for the Ride Tour

‘An Evening With Dream Theater’

Along for the Ride Tour

Date: Friday 14^th February 2014

Location: London Wembley Arena

Support: n/a

When I first saw the announcement of a new Dream Theater tour, I was instantly excited. Their new album wasn't out yet, and although their more recent work hadn't lived up to classics such as 'Scenes from a Memory', I imagined them to be a great live act. As time moved on and the date drew nearer, the band's twelfth, self titled album was released, and it ended up being their best since Train of Thought, I became even more excited.

But then I started to have doubts. A few stories found their way back to me, isolated events of the band having bad sound quality on stage, being seemingly not that interested in performing, not playing any of their well known songs. Now, I knew these were probably very rare events, considering their ongoing popularity as a live act, but it still made me slightly apprehensive as the day drew closer.

I was incredibly pleased to discover that, at the event I attended, such accusations were entirely wrong. The band stuck to a given setlist, I could hear everything perfectly, and the band (or at least frontman James LaBrie) seemed genuinely excited to be there. Furthermore, they played up their best qualities - theatricality, intensity and massive technical skill - and played down their tendency to jam unnecessarily and their cheesiness.

The setlist, instead of being taken from a broad range of albums, was almos entirely taken from four works in their catalogue, three of which were chosen for good reasons. The most obvious of these is Dream Theater, the recent release, which five songs were played from. From here, highlights were set opener and first single The Enemy Inside, which, as predicted, proved to be an excellent live track that plays up the band's metal tendencies but also proves that, when they want to, they can write a good hook (something they forgot for a couple of years) - as well as a condensed version of Illumination Theory. I don't think it's coincidence that they began their set focusing more on the metal aspect of their music, and ended it focusing on the prog aspect, in order to appeal to both of their main sets of fans. Although I'd have liked to hear the full version of this song, it wouldn’t have been plausible to bring a string orchestra in for just that one song, so I’ll take what I can get.

'Enigma Machine' featured a drum solo from Mike Mangini, notable since he's by far the newest band member. Mike Portnoy's shoes are difficult ones to fill, being one of the best modern drummers and all (although I may give the prize to Danny Carey) and indeed, the solo wasn't one of the greatest I've ever heard, but it was kept short and was enjoyable enough.

Also from the same album, before the concert started, we got to hear 'False Awakening Suite' played over a short video, notable for incorporating every DT album cover within it, which was a fun game to play. That aside, the band were incredibly prompt onstage and spent almost every second of their time playing, giving us well over two hours of music. Even during the interval, those who didn't leave the room were treated to videos of outtakes and band interviews from the most recent album.

Although James LaBrie was mostly excellent as a host and frontman, he had his moment of trying too hard - his efforts to get the crowd standing and singing along during early songs went mostly unrewarded. This disrupted some of the show slightly, where the pauses during songs stopped me from enjoying them as much as I might otherwise, but once he gave up on this and began focusing on his own singing, I couldn't fault him - he has a fascinating voice. It's not that he puts huge amounts of emotion in his own words; it seems more that he's using his singing as a way of putting emotion into the audience.

The band were also celebrating anniversaries this year - it's been 20 years since Awake, so we got a selection of five songs from there. I'm a massive fan of 'Scarred' with its stunning piano opening, and although it's short, 'Space-Dye Vest' has always been a lot of fun in its likeness to early Porcupine Tree. It’s not one of their albums that I listen to most often, and I’d forgotten quite how much quality material it had.

Lastly - and they really did keep us waiting until the end for this - it's been fifteen years since Scenes from a Memory, and the encore comprised a full four songs from this. We were given the beginning with the bombastic 'Overture 1928' and its polar opposite in mood, 'Strange Deja Vu', before skipping to 'The Dance of Eternity' which was energetic but has never been an album string point, and ending with 'Finally Free', the obvious closer that everyone in the audience sang along to without being asked.

These three albums aside, the song choices weren’t necessarily bad, but I could have thought of songs I’d have much preferred. The exclusion of ‘Metropolis Part 1’ was a complete shock – I’ve never heard of a tour before where it wasn’t played. I’d also have liked ‘A Change of Seasons’, which I don’t hear a lot because it’s from an EP but which is one of their best longer tracks, and missing out the entirety of ‘6 Degrees of Inner Turbulence’ seems like a huge omission.

Something else I liked was the song titles appearing on the screen at the beginning of songs – from my seat the screen was slightly obscured so I wasn’t able to appreciate their videos as much as I’d have liked, though they looked to be good, and I knew all the songs anyway – but it was a nice touch for people who might be less well acquainted with the band.

All in all, I understand that a band with a huge catalogue can never please the entire fanbase, and I appreciate them making the effort to play for as much of their time on stage as was physically possible. I also appreciate the fact that the band didn't try to give their tour a clever name. They've had some successes with these puns in the past (I appreciated 'A Dramatic Tour of Events') but also come up with some quite laughable ones (Where Dream and Tour Unite?) and were probably safer just sticking with the title of a recent song. They lived up to their potential of being an amazing, intense live band and I’d without a doubt go again.

Sigur Ros Tour 2013

Sigur Rós ‘Kveikur’ Tour 2013

Date: 20 November 2013

Location: Brighton Centre, Brighton

Support: i break horses

Special guests: n/a

The Wednesday just gone, I saw what is most likely to be the last concert I see until mid February. This is still very hard for me to write and I’m not entirely sure that I can survive for that long, so wish me luck. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this one in quite a few ways. I know all of Sigur Rós’ albums, but I didn’t entirely know how the music was going to translate to a live setting. Add to that how they’re always right at the top of those ‘best live acts’ list and I was really quite intrigued about the entire evening.

I was kept in suspense for quite a while. Though doors opened at 6.30pm, the band didn’t come on stage until 9. There was a half-hour set by a support act, though, which I checked out. They were called ‘i break horses’ (no uppercase letters on the sign, anyway) and were a Swedish duo who hid themselves behind a translucent white curtain and played computerised, soundscapey music which was both beautiful and futuristic; a good complement to the headliners. I was particularly interested by the breathy, ethereal vocals they put on top of quite a few of their tracks, and I definitely would investigate further.

I’d thought that the white curtain would have been for them, either because they always used it or so that nobody could properly see the stage until Sigur Rós took the stage, but when they did, they kept it hiding them for the first couple of songs. They began with the new ‘Yfirboro’ and the () song ‘Vaka’, which happens to be one of my favourites, two very light and minimalistic songs, and the whole effect was so tantalising, because you could just about see them moving around and you could hear them playing but at the same time you knew that they were just holding themselves back from being so much more intense.

And then they were. As the second song finished they launched straight into ‘Brennisteinn’, a track for which they pulled out all the stops when it came to power, and as they did so, the curtain dropped to the floor in a perfectly timed movement, revealing the stage and band behind it.

The first thing that struck me was how many of them there were – I counted eleven in total, despite there being only three official band members these days, and even more impressive was that a lot of them played a range of instruments as the concert drew on. The stage was literally packed with equipment and it was really quite surprising they were able to move around. But as well as the instruments, there were a good twenty old fashioned lanterns scattered around the stage, looking exactly like giant candles, creating a great atmosphere, more personal, less artificial and more eye-catching than the huge, brightly coloured swirling lights that changed colour every so often and shone down on everyone from above the stage.

The headline act themselves didn’t play for much more than an hour and a half, but they packed everything they possibly could into that time. There was very little talking and the breaks between songs were short, which meant you never really came back down to reality after all the crazy places the music was taking you. I was impressed that they managed to keep the atmosphere, and the audience’s attention, for pretty much the whole time without a break, whether the focus was on the video screens at the back or the lights at the front or the players themselves.

I thought the mix of albums that songs came from was pretty excellent. I can’t pronounce any of the titles and so couldn’t tell anyone what the songs were, but was able to think to myself ‘Ah, that’s the hoppy song from the tacky album…’ and keep a relatively good idea of what was going on (of course, I’m talking about ‘Hoppipolla’ from Takk…’) They played quite a lot of songs from the new album, as well as a good (and fairly similar) amount of older stuff. This was good for two reasons: firstly, I think the new album is definitely one of their best, and secondly, there was a great balance of moods and styles, between the untarnished magical beauty of their early music and the darker intensity of what they’ve been doing recently. 1997’s ‘Von’ was the only album that didn’t get a look in, and although it would have been nice to tick off all of them, there’s nothing I would have wanted taken out in order to include something from there.

I was disappointed when they left the stage after playing the main set that we hadn’t heard anything at all from ‘Agaetis byrjun’, which has so many great songs on it, but when they returned to play the (first) encore, Jonsi Birgisson quietly stated that they were now going to play something that they hadn’t played live in years, and it turned out to be… the title track from that album! Which is only my favourite from the entire thing. So, that was an incredibly welcome surprise, and to finish off we were treated with a stunning extended rendition of ‘Popplagio’, which I’d probably have to pick as the highlight, obvious choice as it may be, because of how they all so masterfully handled the song’s build up, turning it into a spectacular concert finish.

So overall, it probably wasn’t what I expected, because I expected them to have Something, some sort of strange gimmick that made their concerts different to everyone else’s and that got people to remember them. What I actually got was better. They didn’t do anything flashy, they just played their music the best they possibly could and let it speak for themselves. And for those ninety minutes, it was really easy to forget that you were standing in the middle of a large hall in a conference centre in Brighton. You could just as easily have been in Sigur Rós’ home land of Iceland, lying under an unpolluted night sky, or any number of other beautiful places that I’ve never been to and possibly never will. But for one evening, Sigur Rós made that feel possible. That’s the thing that sets them apart.

After the concert, I walked to the hotel next door and got into bed. It was the shortest journey back from a concert ever.

Steven Wilson World Tour 2013

Steven Wilson ‘The Raven That Refused to Sing’ Tour 2013

Date: 20 October 2013

Location: Royal Albert Hall, London

Support: n/a (there’s never support at concerts I go to! not sure why…)

Special guests: n/a

Something always goes wrong when I try to go to a concert. Typically this involves large amounts of traffic and/or an inability to find the venue, and consequently arriving any time between five minutes before the band are due on stage and fifteen minutes after. So you can imagine my concern when I arrived at the Royal Albert Hall with almost an hour to go until Steven Wilson started playing. Surely, surely, the worrying lack of problems so far in the night meant we were pretty much guaranteed to have a power outing or a crucial band member suddenly taken ill? But somehow, amazingly, everything managed to happen according to plan. I even managed to buy a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt with the Raven cover art on.

Essentially, this night was particularly important to me because Steven Wilson is someone who I could never forgive myself if I passed up the opportunity to see. (This has been something I’ve had in mind ever since I passed up the chance to see Ian Anderson play Thick as a Brick a couple of years back, and regretted it ever since.) So I went, even though I was really tired and it was the night before I was due to go away.

And at first, honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d made the right decision. The concert opened with a twenty-minute video that consisted mostly of a camera pointed at a single street in London, monitoring the dull occurrences (staged or otherwise) that took place there in a typical day. Eventually, a busker (maybe played by Wilson himself – I’m not sure because the screen was very small and the man’s head was covered by the lighting rig) turned up, took out his guitar, tuned it, and, after an intolerably long pause, began to play the opening notes to ‘Trains’ by Porcupine Tree. At this very moment, Wilson himself walked on stage, carrying his own acoustic guitar, playing along. When he opened his mouth to sing; that was the moment I knew I’d made the right decision to come.

‘Trains’ was but a brief introduction, however, and immediately following it the band plunged into ‘Luminol’, which was the song from The Raven that worked best live. Its larger than life, 70s throwback feel really made it seem like I was travelling back in time, and I could tell everyone on stage was really throwing themselves into it. That’s not to dismiss the album’s other songs, though: ‘The Holy Drinker’, though it lacked Alan Parsons’ guitar solo, had even more power and confidence than the original. ‘The Watchmaker’ kept the delicate beauty of its studio version, and it and ‘Drive Home’ were both kept absolutely believable with the help of Wilson’s vocals. ‘Drive Home’ was accompanied by a video, which like the opening one I had trouble seeing, but what I did see looked like a great and moving accompaniment. The one song that I thought didn’t quite live up to the original was the title track, ‘The Raven that Refused to Sing’ itself, because it lacked the intimacy and clean feel that I like about it, and tried a little too hard to be an epic concert closer.

Of course, there were also a range of songs from Wilson’s two previous albums. The highlight of these was ‘Index’ for sure: already a highlight on Grace for Drowning, its fast-paced psychopathy was magnified on stage and I was half expecting Wilson to leap out into the audience, brandishing a knife – hearing it played like that was a real rush. Another great moment was the condensed, 15-minute version of ‘Raider II’ which was such a good decision for the band, as it kept all the best parts of the original while cutting out the parts that weren’t quite as strong. ‘Sectarian’ made an appearance too, and is notable for being the point in the concert where I had the ‘I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be here’ moment I have somewhere in every concert, and we were also treated to the melancholy ballad ‘Postcard’, which I wasn’t expecting to work on stage but did, and the single from Insurgentes, ‘Harmony Korine’, which I’ve apparently been pronouncing wrong for years. Oh, yeah, and it was incredibly well played by the entire band, especially the keyboard player.

Just before the interval, Wilson announced that he was premiering a new song, stating ‘Some people are surprised that I’ve written new material already… but I’m old enough to remember a time when it was normal for bands to release an album every year.’ I love the idea; I always love to hear new music and generally do enjoy songs right from the first listen, so it was a great contrast to the other songs that I knew really well. The new song was called ‘Wreckage’ (that night, anyway) and, though unpolished, seems like it’s going to be really, really excellent. It’s very dynamic, combining the high intensity of ‘Luminol’ with the quiet emotion of ‘Drive Home’, as well as something else I can’t quite put my finger on that shows he’s still growing as a songwriter. I have high hopes for his fourth album.

Between songs, Wilson was a great showman and had great interactions with the audience. Towards the beginning, he casually revealed that this was his hundredth solo show. ‘Since I was last here with Porcupine Tree, I’ve made two solo records and played a hundred shows, according to my statistician… or maybe it’s a hundred solo records and two shows, I can never remember.’ Later, he and his keyboard player educated us on the Mellotron. ‘How many of you know what a Mellotron is?’ (Cue a large cheer.) ‘So those of you who are over sixty. It was the first sampling instrument and is particularly famous for its flute and string sounds.’ The player demonstrates by playing a few bars of the introductions to ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘The Court of the Crimson King’. ‘No songs have ever made those sounds famous…’

And as if he hasn’t given us enough great material already, Wilson and band come back after the final Raven number to play ‘Radioactive Toy’ from the first ever Porcupine Tree album. It’s probably the first great song he ever wrote, and it’s a real reminder of where he came from. In true arena-pop-concert style, he offers the audience the microphone to sing the final chorus, and it may only be a couple thousand voices, but everyone gets into it, shouting as loudly and tunelessly as they can ‘Give me a reason to destroy; give me… RADIOACTIVE TOY!’ Then, we’re treated to a space rock improvisation to finish the night – ‘because nobody started using the P-word to describe me until the third or fourth album.’

I’d go back tonight if I could. As that’s not possible, I’ll probably be waiting until the next tour, but I would undoubtedly go back.

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Roger Waters The Wall Live

Date: 14 September 2013

Location: Wembley Stadium, London

Support: n/a

Special guests: Nope. David Gilmour did not appear. I’m sure it would have been well publicised by now if he had.

In my experience, how surreal a concert experience is is directly proportional to the length of time between booking it and actually going. Probably something to do with spending such a long time waiting for it to happen that it doesn’t feel like it ever actually will. Anyway, I booked this last November, the day tickets went on sale, so the entire night was pretty surreal.

It was by far the biggest concert I’ve ever been to, with around 70,000 people filling most of the stadium, and although I could have had a better view had I been standing, I probably couldn’t have done much better with the seats – they were a good balance between not being too sideways-on and not being too far away from the action, and although there was a camera tower that obscured a small part of the right side of the wall, I could see almost everything. When I arrived, it was still light outside, and around two thirds of the wall was already built, with just the middle section still to be filled in. This happened throughout the whole first act, and was very cleverly done – I’d rarely notice a stage hand actually putting a brick in place, I’d just see that the gap was slightly smaller than before.

Most of the setlist will probably come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard the Wall album, but there were a couple of extra additions in the first half. Inserted between ‘Brick 2’ and ‘Mother’ was a new song, ‘The Ballad of Jean-Charles de Menezes’ which Roger only wrote a couple of years ago. It was pretty short, and I think it did stand out as being noticeably different from the other songs – someone who didn’t know the music could probably tell it was the odd one out. That said, I liked it, and it was nice to have a personal moment of just Roger on his acoustic guitar rather than the huge production that was everything else. Later on, we had ‘What Shall We Do Now’, an outtake from the original Wall sessions which I think is more than good enough to be on the album, and fits in well with the hard rock style that characterises side two. The other outtake they included was ‘The Last Few Bricks’ which was nothing more than an excuse to complete the wall-building (except for one brick) and which doesn’t add anything, since it mostly reprises other songs.

Musically, everything was played pretty identically to the album – right down to having the exact same guitar tone as David Gilmour uses. So most of what you’re getting by seeing the live show is the multimedia experience – and now the tour’s been going for four years, this has been choreographed to perfection, with everything happening in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment. Things started off with a literal bang as a brightly coloured firework display went off during ‘In the Flesh’, which, if you thought it was a good opener on the album… here it was just unbelievable. The band needed no warming up but launched straight into one of the most passionate, high energy live performances I’ve ever seen.

Some of the most important visuals were all the large scale props. At the beginning of ‘The Thin Ice’, an aeroplane whizzed down a wire over the audience towards the stage, where it promptly explodes. Much later, during ‘In the Flesh’ and ‘Run Like Hell’, the famous Floyd inflatable pig made an appearance, painted black with the crossed hammer logos and some of the relevant slogans, like ‘Trust us’. It later descended onto part of the standing audience, who attacked it, and what wouldn’t I have given for the chance to catch the pig? Gerald Scarfe’s famous puppets also got their time on stage: huge, flashing-eyed versions of the mother, schoolmaster and wife crawled menacingly around the stage during their songs, and at the end of ‘Stop’, the Pink puppet himself, sat ontop of the wall, plummeted to the ground accompanied by a scream. As well as all this, more Scarfe animations got their turn to be projected onto the wall, coming to prominence in ‘Empty Spaces’, ‘Waiting for the Worms’ and ‘The Trial’.

Not everything was focused on the story, though. The giant projection wall allowed for some of the more general themes of the album to be expanded on more, and there was a much stronger focus on the anti-war side of things, as well as references to other things Roger’s spoken out against, including religion, consumerism, the government and the idea of a Big Brother-type society. I thought the way the images relating to these themes were worked in with scenes from the plot and original footage from the 1980 Wall tour was really clever.

As for the songs themselves, highlights for me included all parts of ‘Another Brick’, ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’, still one of the most moving songs ever – although possibly lightened slightly by the fact that when we heard the child’s voice; ‘Look mummy! There’s an aeroplane up in the sky’, someone a few rows behind me called ‘There is!’ and pointed to where, high above the open air stadium, an aeroplane was coincidentally flying overhead. I loved the very end of Act 1 where Roger sang ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ and placed the last brick himself, and even better was ‘Hey You’, possibly my favourite song of the night, where everyone on stage reappeared reinvigorated and ready to give the second half everything they had.

‘Comfortably Numb’ was never going to be as good as it could have been with Gilmour – and I was still holding out a tiny bit of hope for his appearance right up to that point – but it was still excellently performed, and perfectly staged, with just the one light shining on the guitarist on top of the darkened wall until he’d finished his solo, at which point Roger punched one of the bricks and it exploded in a cascade of colours. As expected, ‘Run Like Hell’ was a great one for getting the crowd going, but its followup ‘Waiting For The Worms’ was a more unexpected highlight, since that’s never been a particular favourite of mine. And lastly, the final minutes where the whole band played ‘Outside the Wall’ amongst the ruined bricks was an immensely satisfying denoument.

There are pros and cons to both small and large concerts, but this one I really think could only work with a huge number of people, partly because of the size of the production but also partly because of the connection between everyone who was there: in moments like when everyone was chanting “Tear down the wall!” the audience completely became one, and at times, it really did feel like we were all banging our hearts against some mad bugger’s wall.

Tubular Bells For Two

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells ‘For Two’

Date: 7 August 2013

Location: Underbelly Cowbarn, Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Support: n/a

Special guests: They were pretty special all by themselves.

I haven’t reviewed ‘Tubular Bells’, and I never will, because how could I choose a best song and a worst song for it? I am a big fan of the album, though, and if I were to write about it I’d probably give it a 6, which gives you some idea of how much I like it. Because of that, when I got to the Fringe festival and saw the posters for this up around the city, I couldn’t pass up the chance to see it. (Shameless plug: I’m performing here! The show’s called ’15 Minutes’ and it’s 45 minutes long. Come see it.)

The basic deal with this show is that there are two Australian guys who play their way through Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. Sound unremarkable? Well, that album has over twenty different instruments playing on it and everything here is created live, no backing track whatsoever. In addition, they’ve never written anything down or had any kind of sheet music, they’re just huge fans of the record who have steadily learned to play it by ear. I reckon the whole idea of it seems a bit more impressive now.

I come to this show right after seeing a comedy show and a theatre show pretty much back to back, barely time to walk between venues in between, so I arrived with only a couple of minutes to spare, but as soon as I got to my seat I felt more relaxed. The atmosphere was calm, the lighting was low and a curious array of keyboards and guitars were placed on a stage, half-hidden in a cloud of smoke. And I’d just barely had time to collect my thoughts and have a drink of water before Aidan Roberts and Daniel Holdsworth were striding out on stage, giving a brief wave and smile to the audience and sitting down somewhere in the middle of the mishmash of instruments.

Then… they played it. No introduction or small talk, just straight into the main theme. At first they sit still, occasionally swapping a guitar strap over their head or swivelling a chair to reach a different keyboard, but it’s very sedate, and then it gradually gets more complicated as percussion is introduced and as several instruments start being played at once – I’d think these guys has five arms each if it wasn’t for their tagline of ‘Tubular Bells played with four hands and four feet’. Which isn’t strictly true anyway, as they also use their mouths to do the vocalisations.

Both of them are concentrating so hard on what they’re doing. They take this music very seriously, clearly love it a lot, and there’s nothing improvised about this show, it’s a note for note recreation of the original with everything timed to perfection. Their instrument switches in particular are so tight and rehearsed, and it takes only a second for Aidan to change from one guitar to an entirely different one or for Daniel to run across the stage from the keyboards to the bells themselves… there’s no way one person could do this show, but two is enough, considering that one can cover for the other during these brief pauses.

It’s not all seriousness, though – halfway through side one I caught the pair of them grinning at each other for a split second. During a pause in his part of the music Daniel picked up a glass of red wine and casually took a sip before poising himself for a big moment. At the end of side one, there’s a brief pause and blackout as someone says ‘Please excuse us, we need to turn the record over.’ And Daniel talks to the crowd while Aidan prepares the stage for them to continue: ‘This is a little something we like to call Side Two.’ And I don’t know if it’s the massive round of applause they got in the break or just the knowledge that it’s more than half over, but they’re a lot more at ease on Side 2.

People always think of Tubular Bells as the quiet, folky piece that it is in the first half, but the second part actually rocks out in a lot of places, and the part with the caveman vocals honestly scares me, at least it does when it’s played at top volume and I’m sitting in the third row. Not complaining, though – it shows that the volume and sound quality were both excellent. The lighting, too, was really well done. Simple colours didn’t distract from the performance but enhanced the mood, with blue for slower sections and reds and oranges for the more intense parts.

The one thing about the performance that I found a little strange was towards the end of the first part, with the announcements of ‘Grand piano… Reed and pipe organ…’ I could see the stage, and see that there quite clearly wasn’t a grand piano or a reed and pipe organ, it just sounded like there was, which was hard to get my head around. It’s a shame because I usually love that part where each instrument in turn plays the same theme. It’s cheesy but totally brilliant. But they really did have a glockenspiel, and of course, a full set of tubular bells. With the cry of ‘Plus… tubular bells!’ a full set of bright white lights came up over the bells. It was a beautiful moment to witness.

(Although, for a piece CALLED Tubular Bells it always strikes me how little they’re used. If you’re going to buy a set, you might as well get your money’s worth?)

Halfway through part two is a very intense drumming section, and after that was over, you could literally see the sweat dripping off Daniel’s face in particular, and for the last few minutes the performance did have less energy. They still didn’t miss a note, though, and they managed to pull off ‘Sailor’s Hornpipe’ excellently, purely on adrenaline I guess, which was an outstanding finale. Then there were a few bows, and another wave, and then they were gone, probably to get some much needed sleep. I imagine being alone on a stage that looks like it’s set up for a full orchestra really takes it out of you.

I would have liked to stay behind and talk to people about it afterwards, but I had a dinner reservation to meet (it’s been a non stop day.) However, on my way out I heard a brief exchange between a husband and a wife, aged around fifty. The husband was raving about the show, saying it was the best thing he’d seen at the Fringe (I’d agree with that) while the wife merely said ‘Yes, it was different.’ Stereotyping at its best/worst… I like to get into conversations with people at these events just to disprove these stereotypes. Hashtag adventures of a female prog fan under twenty.

Classic Plastic / Seattle Yacht Club / Fox In The City / The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Classic Plastic / Seattle Yacht Club / Fox In The City / The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Date: 26 July 2013

Location: Blind Tiger Club, Brighton

Support: technically those last three were the support

Special guests: creepy old guy who tried to convince us to stay afterwards, saying there would be ‘more bands’

I just booked tickets to see Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth next May, which will be a kind of live extravaganza, with a giant stage set made up of mountains and elves and stuff, and about six different orchestras. This show I saw on Friday night was the complete opposite – tiny wooden stage, no set, never more than six people up there at one time. And instead of everyone sitting down and paying attention, there was a lot of jumping and moving about, going to get drinks, talking and shouting. So yeah, not necessarily worse, but very different.

Probably worse, though, let’s not lie.

I’ll talk about these bands one at a time since they can’t really be condensed into one chunk of review.

The Frenzied Anaesthetist

Not to be confused with the Genesis song ‘The Supernatural Anaesthetist’, this group of four guys play a fairly typical garage rock/hard rock sound that’s not offensive but is difficult to get excited about. On most songs the drums were completely overpowering and drowned out the rest of the music, which was a shame because they had an interesting twin lead guitar/twin lead vocal lineup on some of the songs which I would have liked to hear. On the opposite end of the scale was the bass player who might as well have not been there for all the influence he had on the proceedings – I don’t think I saw him do anything for the entire set. But none of them really acknowledged the audience; they played and talked more to each other, like they were rehearsing in a room at home. I’d call them a pretty standard opening act. Some good beats, but you can’t imagine them ever playing to a sold out crowd.

Fox In The City

I’d never heard of this band before the night, and after being uninspired by the first group, I wasn’t expecting a lot. However, I was really pleasantly surprised! They were an entirely instrumental rock band, kind of like Liquid Tension Experiment but slightly less virtuosic. I don’t know if they couldn’t sing or just didn’t want to, but either way it’s a more challenging genre to take on, and I think they succeeded. They actually had three guitarists, which at times brought some really cool and unique combinations of effects to the proceedings – like if one had a really bright tone, one was plugged into a fuzz pedal and the third was creating feedback or doing something else entirely. They could have varied the thickness of the sound a little more and added some solos, as I noticed they were all playing together almost all the time. Their final song (out of just four) stood out to me as particularly strong. It was very diverse, starting off in a soft, dream-pop kind of style and then moving into something almost heavy metal, before a section of what I’m calling melodic goth rock and then back to dreamy and quiet to finish. I don’t know what it was called but I’d like to. Would see again.

Seattle Yacht Club

I was very interested to see whether this band would have four guitars, if they were going up each time, but sadly they didn’t – just a duo with one guitarist, one keyboardist and an electronic drum machine. Small problem with this review: I actually wasn’t paying attention to most of the set because I was ‘being soclal’ and ‘engaging in conversation’ (these are things I don’t often do). I heard enough to brand them as a homegrown lo-fi indie pop band, and to say that they seemed pleasant without being captivating. However, they apparently have songs released on iTunes, so for more in-depth analysis you can download these and then write your own review on the following lines.

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Use a second sheet of paper if necessary.

Classic Plastic

I actually paid attention here, since I already knew some of their songs and so I knew I’d enjoy them. I was not disappointed by their translation to the stage. They were clearly the most technically skilled musicians of the night as well as the most experienced – the actually interacted with the crowd (the room suddenly filled up just before they came on stage) and for the first time, I was really watching them play the music rather than just listening to the music. They all wore awesome paisley shirts and mixed the energy and raw power of a Sixties garage band with the frills and gimmicks and tricky time signatures of classic prog and it’s a wonderful combination, sure to appeal to anybody who likes their music a bit alternative and left of the mainstream while still retaining song structure and melody. Oh, and they have to be OK with hearing it at a volume that’ll leave their ears ringing all night. I like the noise, though, the way the band is in your face and not afraid to demand all of your attention. At the end of the set the busy stage (six of ‘em) descended into anarchy and there was some smashing of instruments reminiscent of a few old rock icons. When picking my favourite band of the night, I think the unexpected twists and turns in Classic Plastic’s songs elevates them to the top for me. They have an EP coming out later this year, I just learned, and I’m definitely going to get it. I’d happily pay to see them live again at some point in the future.

Ardingly College Battle of the Bands: review and interview

Ardingly ArtsFest: Room for Improvement and others

In the last week before the summer holidays began, my school hosted a week dedicated to the arts. As part of this, on the Wednesday morning, there was a ‘Battle of the Bands’ featuring only students. I was pretty tired when I headed down to the main stage, considering I’d just performed a play and was also suffering a minor head injury, but it was warm and everyone was sitting on the grass in groups, really relaxed, and it seemed like a great day to laugh at some of the people I go to school with and maybe actually find some talent in some of them. And, what do you know – that actually happened!

In total we had seven bands perform, which surprised me – I didn’t know my school had that many musical people, especially considering how many of the students had already left for the summer by this point. First up we had ‘The Justin Ho Trio’, who weren’t spectacular, although this might be an unfair assessment because they were disadvantaged by being first up with no idea what to expect, and they lost the element of surprise as the stage technicians kept asking them to play parts of their songs to test the audio system. They played two covers, the first being ‘Crossroads’ by Cream, and the second actually being a cover of a cover, John Mayer’s version of the Hendrix song ‘Bold as Love’, and both came across as mediocre imitations of good songs.

They were followed up by ‘General Buller’, a band who played completely ridiculous original songs – the kind that are so terrible they become really good fun for everyone involved, and it could have been a really great set if it weren’t for the inane between-song commentary of the frontman, who tried to convince us that the songs had Serious Artistic Merit. But that’s a quality that’s meant to show without being pointed out, as proven by the following act, unaccompanied singer-songwriter Charlie Jackson, who really impressed me with his two original songs and who seemed stylistically reminiscent of Coldplay’s Chris Martin in the early 2000s.

The next band to take the stage was ‘Safe Kinda High’ (second Hendrix reference of the day) and although they had it tough coming after Jackson, I thought they were great too. Musically, similar to General Buller, yet they took themselves less seriously and related easily to the audience as they played their mix of covers and originals. Most of the band then left the stage, but their frontman Jojo Macari stayed to perform as an acoustic solo artist. There on his own, you could tell the songs had been written by the same person as the full-band songs, but there were more vocals-based, more understated and more serious. One of these has actually been recorded and released online, while the other remains untitled, although I refer to it in my head as ‘No Recollections’.

Jojo Macari: Blown Away - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-HsnT9kXJI

Macari was also involved in the final band of the day, ‘The Laces’, who opened with a terrible pool table joke, and clearly have talent (specially their guitarist) but whose only song was in more of a hip-hop style and so wasn’t my thing at all. It did, however, make for a good finish to the event, but I’m getting ahead of myself… one other band performed in between, and that was ‘Room for Improvement’.

I tell you, if this competition had been judged on audience reaction, these five guys would have won by a landslide – the cheer when they took the stage was enormous. First, they played the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under the Bridge’, a great song off an otherwise uninspiring album, and this band’s classically trained lead singer, Dom Morgan, clearly has more talent than the original’s Anthony Kiedis. The only problem with this is that he seriously overshadowed the other members of the band. The lead guitarist, I am sure, would have shone in any other setting with his solo, and yet here didn’t feel quite as important. Some harmonies were also added by rhythm guitarist Thomas O’Dell, and I thought the different approaches of the two singers (his quiet and gentle compared to Morgan’s extreme and emotive) could have been made use of more – of course, I discovered after that this would have happened if it wasn’t for microphone problems!

Following this, the band played a rendition of Weezer’s ‘Island in the Sun’, which was less polished, but this of course suits the song. It was more of a full band workout and it seemed as though they were more laid back and enjoying the moment by this point.

The night before had been comedy night, featuring several famous comedians, but opening for them had been a local professional band called ‘Reachback’. I’m happy to say most people I spoke to agreed with me that there was very little to enjoy about them – no talent, grating mic personality and an obvious pastiche of Paramore. At least half of the student bands would have been much more deserving of that slot than they were.

After the show, I spoke to the rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of ‘Room for Improvement’, Thomas, about his band and the show as a whole. First I asked him about the band’s name (this has always interested me – a name is usually the first thing somebody knows about a band, so it must be a pretty huge decision to make) and was told that during the band’s early sessions, which may have been lacking in productivity, the lead guitarist suggested that the name would hint to the audience to not expect much… and that it would hopefully be a nice surprise when they turned out to be alright.

Moving onto song selections, Tom told me that ‘Under the Bridge’ was the first song they figured out how to play and therefore was the best rehearsed. It’s also one of the only songs that all five members liked, considering how conflicting their music tastes are – “psychedelic rock, punk, metal, hipster and weird pony dubstep”. ‘Island in the Sun’ was chosen when they realised they needed a second song with half an hour of rehearsal time to go, because its four basic chords made it a quick one to learn. In Tom’s words, “we didn’t have an ending so did the musical equivalent of sticking a band aid on it and hoping for the best!” Currently the band have just returned from a difficult tour of Ghana, on which they spent their spare time writing original songs, on which Tom writes the lyrics and all members collaborate for the music.

I then asked if, considering their cover versions stayed fairly faithful to the originals, they thought this was the best way to play a cover or if they thought it was better to rearrange it and make part of it your own (I had recently persuaded him, a huge Beatles fan, to listen to 801’s reworking of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’). He replied that both can work, but if you change the song, it’s important to ‘make it your own properly’. Staying faithful can, according to him, be best for tribute bands, but these should still add their own little touches, such as the guitar solo and harmonies on ‘Under the Bridge’.

I was shocked to hear that Tom as a guitarist is completely self taught and has only been playing for six or seven months! The guitar he uses isn’t a real Fender Stratocaster, but could be mistaken for one from a distance. He told me that it was his dad’s in the 80s (obtained under ‘pretty suspicious circumstances’… intriguing) and that its bright red colour worked well with the band’s uniform of white T-shirts and different trousers.

The ArtsFest crowd was the biggest the band have played to so far in their career, although they nearly played a car park show to several hundred people, and would have if it wasn’t for the weather. Apparently, playing to a massive crowd would be ‘amazing’ but also nervewracking, given the fact that any major mistakes would be witnessed by so many people. However, considering how much the band have enjoyed playing to smaller crowds, they aim to keep working their way up to see just how fun it can get.

When I asked him his honest opinions on the other student bands, his reactions were mixed… one band which I’ll leave unnamed was completely trashed, and in his words, had “No real stage presence: good instrument playing, but the singing was just not good. The tone was off, no real expression and it just didn’t sound nice!” However, he praised ‘General Buller’ were praised for writing songs that suited the vocalist’s limited range, and also singled out ‘The Laces’ for being one of the better bands and having good showmanship. He believes his band shared that trait and their lead singer managed to get the crowd excited before their playing started, and I’d definitely concur with this.

To finish with, we talked about the future of both Tom and the band. He hopes they can keep working together for now and cryptically hinted that there might be ‘more opportunities for them, come September’. He likes working in a group setting (despite the arguments) because the sound they produce is a lot more full than what he can do on his own with his guitar. However, he’s not completely sure what route he plans to take into the music business. He just knows that he wants to get there, hopefully playing stadiums, and hopefully playing a fusion of psychedelia and modern mainstream pop. I can imagine this and will be following his career, however, I happen to know that he also enjoys and is a natural at stand up comedy, so who knows…

Van Der Graaf Generator concert

Van Der Graaf Generator 2013 North European Tour

Date: 30 June 2013

Location: Barbican Arts Centre, London

Support: n/a

Special guests: n/a

If anyone’s keeping track of my posts and is wondering why nothing appeared last night, here’s the reason: I was out at this concert! And as much as I enjoy writing these reviews, given the choice of what I was doing tonight, I’d probably pick the concert again… but it’s not to be. I’m here typing stuff.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how I found out about this concert, but I know it was an accident and I know it wasn’t that long ago – a few weeks maybe; it was a fairly spontaneous decision (relative to Yes, who I already have tickets for even though that’s over 10 months away.) But I’m definitely glad I found it. I managed to be on time for once, but only just: as I was arriving, an announcement came out of a loudspeaker saying ‘The Van der Graaf Generator concert will begin in five minutes, please take your seats’… and I didn’t have time to grab food or drinks or anything.

I certainly didn’t feel as knowledgeable about the whole event as the guy two seats along from me, who was telling me how this was his seventh time seeing them on this tour alone (I haven’t even seen seven bands this year yet! Let alone one band seven times) but I did have some idea of what to expect, as I knew the show was going to be based around two specific songs – ‘Flight’, originally a Peter Hammill solo song but now performed with the other original VdGG members (Hugh Banton on organ and Guy Evans on drums) and ‘A Plague of Lighthouse-Keepers’. ‘Flight’ was placed second in the set and ‘Plague’ was the final song before the encore, and both of them were absolutely brilliant in a live setting.

Rather than being note-for-note copies of what you hear on the studio albums, both of these songs had obviously been edited and changed for this tour – which is not all that surprising, given their release dates. Because of this, I didn’t realise until I was told afterwards that ‘Plague’ was extended significantly beyond its studio running time, because I was enjoying every moment and the minutes just flashed by. Compelling is the word I’d use, and given how everyone in front of me in the audience was sitting still and giving the band their full attention for the duration, I think most of them would agree.

There weren’t that many people sitting in front of me, though. I didn’t realise it until I got there, but I’d managed to get really awesome seats. It felt like I was so near to the band; Peter Hammill was the furthest away and he was around 3 metres from me. If I’d said hi to him in a quiet moment, he probably would have heard. Which reminds me of a moment during ‘Flight’. It’s a great song that plays with anticipation by having a lot of pauses, and during one particularly long pause, a random audience member began to clap, before being silenced when the music started back up again. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or shake my head in disdain.

As for the rest of the setlist, there were quite a few picks from newer albums that I was less familiar with, but VdGG are a band that can still write songs (I struggle to think of a truly bad song they’ve done) and I actually enjoyed the fact that some of what I was hearing was fairly new to me, and I didn’t know what was coming. I particularly enjoyed ‘All That Before’ but maybe that’s because I identify a little bit with the lyrics. I would have been disappointed if there were no classic songs played, but I did get a couple towards the end. Sadly, I didn’t get to hear anything from ‘Godbluff’ – I would have given anything to hear a live version of ‘The Sleepwalkers’ – but I was given ‘Man-Erg’ (which according to setlist.fm is their most played live song, interestingly) and the encore was ‘Childlike Faith in Childhood’s End’ which I love as a song anyway, and definitely made for an appropriate finale.

The night was so good that I managed to forget all about the fact that I hadn’t had time for dinner and was in fact very hungry, and I like food so I can’t think of many bigger compliments to the band. However, I did later enjoy a Chicken McNugget meal at 10.30pm followed by a berry flapjack for pudding.

My motivations for going to this concert were partly the fangirl in me getting excited at the prospect of hearing the two extended pieces performed live, and partly the thought that, since the band have been around since 1969, I might not have a great many more opportunities to see them. And on the second point, I have to confess that as they came out onto the stage originally, I was struck by how old they looked, the hair, the faces, and especially the clothes. But you certainly wouldn’t have known it from the way they played, which had so much power behind it that I really can’t imagine them slowing down any time soon… maybe I’ll get to see them again someday. Maybe if they take the entire Godbluff album out on tour.

Steve Hackett: Genesis Revisited concert

Steve Hackett’s Genesis Revisited

Date: 9 May 2013

Location: Aylesbury Waterside Theatre, UK

Support: n/a

Special guests: Nik Kershaw, Steve Rothery, Amanda Lehmann, John Wetton, Jakko Jakszyck

I like many things about 2013. I like the fact that I can access and listen to both modern and older music, and I like the fact that I can access information about said music at the click of a button, and I like the fact that CSI is always on TV. But I don’t like the fact that there are many, many great bands that I will never get to see live, and Genesis are for sure one of these bands. So when I was told that Steve Hackett, guitarist from the band’s best years, would be out there playing a selection of their best songs, I jumped at the chance to go, even though Thursday nights are technically not a good time for me to go out. So I went, and I’m really glad I did.

I was slightly late in arriving to the venue, and I could already hear the music when I was heading in. I found out that the song I’d missed was ‘Watcher of the Skies’ – I love that song! I understand its positioning, it’s a brilliant opener, but if only I’d been ten minutes faster… as it happened, when I got there Hackett and his accompanying musicians were halfway through ‘The Chamber of 32 Doors’, complete with brightly coloured lights and projections on the back wall, and it was clear that the audience were enjoying it but weren’t completely engrossed yet. Many of them were at the bar or conducting whispered conversations, giving me a chance to find a space near the front of the standing section with a good view of the stage.

But a huge cheer erupted after the a cappella beginning of the next song, ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’, and I am so glad I didn’t miss that one; it has to be one of the greatest songs ever written. I knew in advance that that would be a highlight, but the unexpected surprise of the night was ‘Shadow of the Heirophant’, the only song I didn’t know prior to the concert, as it’s from one of his solo albums. (Although as Hackett himself pointed out, it counts as Genesis Revisited because it was co-written with Mike Rutherford. Considering it was a first listen, it made a pretty big impression on me.

I wasn’t 100% sure the songs would all be familiar to me, as I didn’t know how much they were like the originals and how much they were reworkings. It was definitely closer to the first; most of what he played was similar to the original Genesis versions, although understandably there was a bigger focus on guitar in quite a few of them. The biggest change in several places was the addition of the guest musicians. Amanda Lehmann provided vocals on ‘Entangled’ and the change to a female singer was surprising at first, and surprisingly good by the end. Ditto to Nik Kershaw’s vocal style on ‘The Lamia’.

I didn’t know about this in advance, so it was an awesome moment for me when, just before ‘Afterglow’, a new special guest was announced: John Wetton! John freaking Wetton, bassist for Family and some of the best King Crimson albums, there right in front of me! Unbelievable! Oh, and Steven Wilson’s mum was also there, apparently (though she didn’t play anything, she just watched.)

I’m not sure at what point this happened, and it was probably gradual, but somewhere around the ‘Unquiet Slumber / In That Quiet Earth / Afterglow’ trilogy, I noticed that the audience has stopped moving around and were fully paying attention, and by ‘I Know What I Like’ everyone was singing along. Then when ‘Dance on a Volcano’ was announced with Steve’s words ‘This one’s in 7/8 time… it’s progtastic!’ and everybody cheered before they even knew which song it was, I knew I was in a room full of likeminded people. And the same again when over half of the people standing around me knew every single word to the set’s closer, ‘Supper’s Ready’ – singing that song along with a thousand other people was a real feeling of community.

And then, after an impossibly long break where part of me thought he wasn’t going to come back, Hackett returned to the stage to play – what else – ‘Firth of Fifth’, along with ‘Los Endos’. I could quibble slightly and say that I would have preferred them the other way around, but the atmosphere was so perfect by this point that I was enjoying everything.

Overall, I thought the setlist was really well chosen. Hackett has a songwriting credit on everything he played, and he didn’t play anything that would really suffer from the loss of one of the other Genesis members (eg. ‘Get Em Out By Friday). I’d never heard Hackett’s reworkings of any of these before I went to the show, and I’d never heard any of his solo work, but I’m definitely interested in picking up some of his albums now.

For the next few nights after I went, I wished I was going again. It was a great experience with its mixture of classic moments and new, interesting twists to the songs, and I would recommend it to any fan of Peter Gabriel’s Genesis.