Setlist
I don’t have you
We
Factory Girl
Who Cares
One Season
Anyway
Quittin’ Time
Another World
Mr Sellack
Train
Hallelujah Chorus
The Sound of a Tree Falling
Clothes Line Saga
The long lonely road to nowhere
My Sick Mind
Hammond Song
On the road to Fairfax County (with Paul!)
A prayer
Jesus Shaves
Yakkety Yak
Like a lot of my musical development, my first exposure to the sound of The Roches came via Robert Fripp’s “Exposure” album, but this was largely overshadowed by the band’s guest appearance on the cartoon show “Tiny Toon Adventures” circa 1989 when they appeared as “The Roaches”. Clever, eh? It had been a long time since the Roches had played together, let alone playing in England, so I wasn’t going to miss this concert.
As it was a Sunday and there was no Congestion Charge or parking restrictions, we decided to drive to the venue and I was mightily pleased with myself when I managed to navigate us to the road adjoining Gordon Street where the theatre is located and we were just a hop and a skip away.
We took our seats and the three ladies came on stage promptly and started with “I Don’t Have You”, a song I wasn’t familiar with as it came from Maggie & Suzzy’s new album “Why the Long Face”. After this came the almost obligatory “We” as this song serves as the band’s introduction to the audience. It was funny because all the references to how long the band had been together and performing were changed to “forever” and faces were pulled to illustrate the passage of time.
Material was played throughout the career span of the band, though there was a lot of emphasis placed on the newest album at the “Zero Church” project, which featured people’s prayers set to music. A good healthy selection of songs were performed from their debut album and these were greeted with healthy applause and recognition. I was happy because they played two of my absolute favourites “Quitting Time” and “The Hammond Song”. OK – on the latter we didn’t have Fripp’s heart-melting solo, but it was still powerful anyway and my old eyes became moist.
What I really like about this concert was the atmosphere of good humour and support from the audience. I had never experience such a feeling during my concert-going history. It was a really pleasant feeling and you felt that the audience was 100% behind the audience – though I expect this might be due to the fact that the band hadn’t played in the UK for over 15 years.
After “The Hammond Song”, some wag shouted out for “The Road to Fairfax County” and said that he’d die a happy man if he heard it. The ladies offered him up on stage to help with the lyrics has they weren’t quite prepared for this act of spontaneity. After much cajoling and insistence from the audience, Paul (the guy who asked for the song) sheepishly took to the stage and they played his song with him helping out with the words. Mind you, he needn’t have worried as the audience were doing a great job of singing along. It was a nice human touch to the evening.
They ended with the old song “Yakkity Yak” which was performed as an audience participation moment, but I felt I was the only one shouting out “Don’t come back!”. It was a really great concert and one I’ll remember for a long time and we even got to see Terre Roche’s daughter perform. She came on after the interval to perform a song she had written and it was the first time she had performed publicly. Again, despite a false start, there was much support from the evening.
My only criticism is that some of the latter material, their more “poppy” songs, were forgotten and it would have been nice to hear some of those. But if you like the Roches, you must catch them. They are playing a couple more dates in April, I believe. If you don’t like them, but like a good tune, great voices and good humour – go along anyway. It was a worthwhile 2 hours to spend in London.

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