On Monday night, my missus went out with her female friends to a part of London called Camden Town. Any of you with a vague interest in record collecting are probably aware of the multitude of second-hand record shops and stalls around the area. Anyway, to cut a long story short, on her return from her boozy night out, she brought me gifts. The first was the new Supergrass CD single. The second, and the subject of this review, was a second-hand copy of the Steve Hackett DVD/CD triple pack “Somewhere in South America”. Now you all know why I married her!
The pack contains one DVD and two audio CDs of the show. This is housed in an elegant slipcase, which folds out to reveal all the discs neatly packed. The show is taken from his South America tour (obviously) and was filmed at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The DVD itself is 105 minutes long and contains 22 tracks spanning Hackett’s solo careers as well as his time with Genesis. The footage is not bad, but you won’t get all the whizzy multi angles that you get with other discs (cough – Deja VROOOM). Despite this, the video footage captures the band in fine form as he rattles through songs from his new album “To Watch the Storms” (Serpantine Song & Mechanical Bride – which sounds like Pictures of a City to these ears) as well as classics such as A Tower Struck Down and The Steppes. In fact, there’s a really good mix of old and new material with a healthy sprinkling of Genesis tunes too.
The band itself is remarkably tight and in terms of production values, the show reminded me a little bit of his previous DVD outing “The Tokyo Tapes”. You also get some extra bonus footage of Hackett talking about his career and his current band. Apart from that, there’s nothing else special on the DVD. But this isn’t a criticism, because you get a long 5.1 Dolby encoded show.
I am completely biased when it comes to Hackett so I totally recommend this set and I think the inclusion of the audio on two CDs is a brilliant idea and allows the likes of me and you to enjoy the concert when we are on the move. Of all the Genesis flock, Hackett always continues to develop and grow and this DVD package has whetted my appetite for his UK tour in October.
All in all, well worth a gander if you are a Hackett fan and it could also be seen as a good introduction to live Hackett for those of you who aren’t familiar with his work.
For more information/purchasing details:
http://www.stevehackett.com/somewhere/
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Finally got my copy of Blemish today…
I don’t have the words available to describe just what a complete pile of steaming sh*t this release turned out to be. Thanks Dave. Anyway, here goes…
If you are expecting anything vaguely musical then forget it. While his voice doesn’t disappoint, the music and lyrics are totally unforgiveable. I pinched myself several times, checked that the calendar wasn’t stuck at 1 April, but to no avail. I wasn’t dreaming a nightmare involving a faulty David Sylvian CD.
The guitar playing is laughable. In fact, I have managed to replicate the sound by getting my pets to jump up and down on my acoustic guitar. While the dobro playing on DBOAC was sensitive and well-intentioned, the random pluckings heard on this CD sound desperate and like a rather bad joke.
His lyrics are ponderous and say nothing – they do not to attempt to engage the listener at any level. By the time I had reached “Late Night Shopping”, which was about “Late Night Shopping” the cloud of depression that I had been stuck in for the past week suddently lifted and I felt very, very angry. I immediately decided to write a song about putting the rubbish out for the bin men.
Let us take out the bags
The black bin bags together
We can walk alone
Down the path
To the place where I leave the trash
And they will come
In their big vans
To take away
Our rubbish
<To be sung in the stylee of David Sylvian accompanied by Alex the Wonderdog on guitar and Speckle T Bird on whistles and bells>
Darren’s Three Word Review of Blemish:
Turgid
Uninspired
Rushed
The packaging is nice – it smells of burnt matches. Oh no – that was me, just trying to set it alight.
I last saw Peter Gabriel 10 years ago at Earls Court, London on his Secret World Live tour. That night, I was deeply disappointed by the concert and it still rates as one of my worst concert going experiences ever. With this in mind, I approached the Growing Up 2003 tour with trepidation. I initially wasn’t going to buy any tickets but I gave in.
The concert start promptly at 7.30pm and we were just snacking on a hot dog outside the arena when we heard Gabriel introduce the first support act, Sevara Nazarkhan from Uzbekistan. We rushed into see this beautiful creature (the wife’s words, not mine) with a voice of an angel. Being unfamiliar with her work, I was held spellbound for the duration of her set.
After that, I quickly nipped off for a toilet break, only to return to see Peter Gabriel castigating all of us who has just sneaked off. He was annoyed that the arena wasn’t full enough for The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hey, I didn’t want to miss any of the acts…but when you gotta go, you gotta go!
The Blind Boys were a treat to behold and have a voices that hit you squarely in the chest. Even one of them broke off, accompanied by a sighted member of the band, to be lead into the audience for much hand-shaking and communing with the enthusastic throng. Excellent stuff.
Then PG himself was up. He opened with Here Comes the Flood on the piano before breaking into Darkness, probably the best track from UP. He had me. The hairs on the back of my neck was standing up and I was trapped. The disappointment of ten years ago was wiped away. I was in for a treat.
What can you say? The Growing Up tour is a marvellous blend of the heartfelt (Flood, Father Son) and the pompously theatrical (walking upside down and the Zorb) but you come away thinking “Wow what a show”. OK – so I am sick and tired of hearing Sledgehammer and Solsbury Hill again, but everyone else was getting off on it. The real treat came at the end when we got an extra encore for Come Talk to Me (another personal fave) and the song Father & Son, a song that reduces me to a choked sob everytime I hear it.
Gabriel was excellent. Despite his years and portly frame, he appeared more confident, more happy and more “with-it” than he did during the Secret World Tour. Tony Levin was doing his think, but lacked some of the dynamism of his previous performances. There were some parts of the show where he didn’t play, yet bass noises were coming out from somewhere. The rest of the troupe did well. David Rhodes was solid as a rock as usual. The new chaps Ged Lynch (though a bit of a pounder) kept a tight rhythm and Melanie Gabriel aquitted herself with aplomb.
Before going to the concert, I had heard mixed opinions. Some raved about it, some were very negative. Some said the sound was crap, some said that the audience were lethargic and left an hour before the show ended.
I say this: We got an evening of excellent entertainment. The support bands were great. The main act was excellent and there was always a sense of something going. The audience got behind Gabriel and we cheered and sung along the best we could. My only criticism was that there was something wrong with the bass end of things, which was a shame, because I really love hearing/seeing Tony Levin work.
If it comes to town – see it. It is a spectacle…especially when he gets inside that bouncing ball. It really has to be seen to be believed.
This was my second visit to the concrete monstrosity that is the Barbican centre. Tickets were excellent – front row, smack bang in the centre of the stage.
LA took the stage bang on time and proceeded with the act. She started with, quite appropriately, a violin-based soundscape. Being an equipment freak, I noticed that she was used a Line 6 DL4…a good choice.
Anyway, the evening progressed. This was not your normal LA show. This was her “unplugged” tour in so much as that she wasn’t relying on a backup band or a multimedia presentation. It was just her, a keyboard, a violin and mixer/FX.
She proceeded to tell stories based around the concept of happiness, while tinkling on a the keyboard to create a swash of background audio colour. Many of the stories I had heard before…mainly because I’ve listened to all her albums…but some of these stories were expanded or told slightly differently, so it was still an engaging 1 hour 45 minutes.
It’s not like reviewing a concert where you can say, “Oh they played this song or that song”…no songs were involved, it was all storytelling. So all I can say is that she started off with an apochryphal tale of a diver scooped up while diving in the sea by helicopters quenching a Californian forest fire, her time at a Amish farm, her time camping with a bunch of fruit loops, her time working in McDonalds, her time in hospital as a child, etc…etc…
Being in the front row, and directly in the eyeline of LA, it was quite disconcerting to have her staring down at us all evening. In fact, she played exclusively to the front row and even the missus remarked how there was lots of eye contact going on. I’ve never had this happen when seeing a performance before. At the end, after her third round applause, she stared right down at me and winked. All I could do was do the first thing that came to me and that was wink right back at her!
A wonderful evening…and Laurie Anderson will remain one of my favourite performers.
If you are a big fan of the LTIA album and aren’t afraid of some musical theory, then you certainly want to check out this interactive guide produced by Spaceward Graphics, with text and theory by KC musicologist Andrew Keeling.
It’s pretty hard to review something like this, because there aren’t that many musical guides of this nature around. Anyway, to cut to the chase, this electronic guide takes a look at the some of the cultural and musical references behind the LTIA album and dissects the two eponymous pieces.
The guide itself comprises of over 13,000 words of text to read, more than 80 musical diagrams for you to digest and a number of photographs of the band, some of which have not been published before. For those of you who have no interest in musical notation, then some of the reading will be pretty heavy going, even though there is a decent glossary to help you pick your way through the terminology. But if you persevere and approach the guide with an open mind, you will probably never listen to LTIA in the same way again.
This guide strips the album of its mystique and presents the raw musical components for you to play with. Fripp’s musical theories are explained, his influences pointed out and there are even electronic scores to follow, complete with computerised soundtrack so you can see exactly what note goes where.
It is pretty exhausting stuff and it reminded me of the work Eric Tamm had done before in this field. You can’t knock the hard work and effort that has gone into this package and I personally look forward to other releases. Unfortunately, most people, except the die-hard fans, will probably overlook this.
For more details and the chance to download the full version of Andrew Keeling’s analysis of “The Song of the Gulls” head over to http://www.larkstonguesinaspic.ukf.net/.
This album was originally released in 1969, and thanks to Castle Communications (and subsidiary Sanctuary Records) you can now buy a rejiggered version of the album on CD.
Featuring Mel Collins on sax and flute, it is a release that many KC fans should check out. OK – many of the tracks are cover versions, but you can hear why Mr Collins got the chance to be in the band. In fact, there are parts of the recording that sound eerily like KC around the time of ITWOP – the pastoral, gentle KC of Cadence and Cascade rather than Groon or Pictures of a City.
The album opens with a rollicking version of Norwegian Wood and this track sets the tone for the whole album, a sort of late-60s easy listening with plenty of woodwind and sax. The accompanying players acquit themselves quite well, and are suitably loose in their performance.
The sleevenotes are written by the band’s former drummer, but there’s not much in the way in album credits. There’s a big emphasis on Mel Collins (who wrote many of the non-cover material) but the rest of the players are only mentioned in passing.
I’ve seen copies of this being sold to gullible Americans for $20+, but don’t be fooled by the sellers quoting this release to be “rare”. It’s not. You can pick it up for £8.99 from Amazon UK and on import from Amazon US.
Check it out, it is a KC gem.