Where Worlds Collide

I think Chadders is taking the piss

Firstly, I’d like to answer a little bit of criticism about one of my previous posts on top 10s. Basically, my mate Tim Hall decided to have a little pop at me about it being quite sad that I posted my top-10 software apps, which is rich really considering some of his posts have been about his top 30 lyrics from songs that noone (apart from 23 people in Crewe Limelight) have ever heard of!

Chadders, have you ever been to the Limemight and counted the size of the audience there? There will be more that 23 people there on December 19th.

So I will come up with an ever more silly list of amusing gig moments the past 12 months:

Best broken guitar string: That has to be Odin Dragonfly’s set at the Mostly Autumn convention in March. They played a cover of Jethro Tull’s “Witches Promise” as the encore. If you know the song, it starts with a spectacular flute solo as the intro. Immediately after Angie played that intro, Heather broke a guitar string striking the first chord. Gave Angie a chance to play that intro again, though.

Best on stage incident involving alchohol: We have a tie here. First Bryan Josh trying to drink beer and sing at the same time, and discovering that he couldn’t. And the song was a cover of “Fairytale in New York” on the line “It was midnight in the drunk tank”. Second comes from Breathing Space at The Roman Baths in York, where in mid set the band ordered drinks with the order being passed back through the crowd to Livvy’s mum who was standing at the bar. Try doing that at the MEN Arena!

Best spontanious action by the audience: The entire crowd at The Forum breaking out into “Happy Birthday To You” to celebrate the fifty-splodgth birthday of Marillion’s Ian Mosely.

Best Heckler: The guy at Crewe Limelight that asked Bryan Josh when his baby was due.

Spot the difference between this review:

Prog rock is hip again, apparently, although “hip” is not how you would describe the masses of white, middle-aged men gathered here tonight. But who’s to say they aren’t? Balding pates and comfort-fit jeans could have become the very pinnacle of fashion and then fallen from favour in the time it took for this concert to run its course, and we would have been none the wiser. Rush play for a very, very long time. This is due in no small part to the fact that the ageing Canadian trio are essentially their own support act. They play two full concert-length sets, with an intermission, presumably to give you the chance to phone relatives and loved ones worried about your extended absence

And this one:

The progressive rock genre is gradually becoming hip again, although “hip” is not how you would describe the hordes of white, middle-aged men gathered here tonight. But who’s to say they aren’t hip? Balding pates, comfort-fit jeans and beer bellies could become the very pinnacle of fashion in 2008.

Aylesbury’s finest prog-rockers, Marillion play for a very long time. This is due in no small part to the fact that the group are essentially their own support act. They play two sets, with an intermission, presumably to give you the chance to phone relatives and loved ones worried about your extended absence.

Yep, two completely different gigs by two completely different bands, same word-for-word hack clichés. And you still wonder why I hold music journalists in contempt?

It was back to the half-finished Academy One for the second night running, this time to see one of my all-time favourite bands, Marillion.

Unlike previous tours, there was no support, so Marillion played an extended show with two and a half hours of music split by an interval. The sound was an awful lot better than it had been for Within Temptation the night before. It wasn’t anything like as loud, but there was pretty good separation, with none of that muddy bottom end that marred the previous evening. And an enthusiastic crowd made for a great atmosphere.

One thing I love about this band is you never know what they’re going to play, but you still know it’s going to be good. Over the past twenty years or so they’ve steadfastly refused to paint themselves into a corner by trotting out the same ’standards’ tour after tour, so there are no songs that audiences have come to expect, and might go away disappointed if they don’t hear.

This time round, the opened the first set with the first four songs from “Brave”. I wondered if they were going to play the entire album until the outtro of ‘Mad’ lead into ‘Fruit of the Wild Rose’ from “Anoraknophobia”. After that they ran through the many of the highlights of the past 19 years that they didn’t play on the last tour, described by Steve Hogarth as ’songs about death and water’. ‘Out of This World’, the one about Donald Campbell, was fantastic. So was the oldie ‘Seasons End’, partly sung by the crowd. If the first set emphasised the darker, more intense side of the band’s music, the second set focussed on the bouncy rockier numbers, including a great version of ‘Cannibal Surf Babe’ continuing the death-and-water theme, ‘Most Toys’ (which actually works live) and another real oldie, ‘Hooks in You’. They also played a new number ‘Real Tears For Sale’. It’s difficult to judge a Marillion song on listen, but this one made a good first impression.

Encores were the firm favourites ‘Quartz’ and ‘Neverwhere’, with the band and crowd really on fire. The latter was the only number common to the last set I saw them play six months ago. How many other bands that have been going 25 years can you say that of?

If this didn’t quite top the fantastic gig at The Forum back in June, it came pretty close. Definitely one of those where the audience came out on a high.

This is the first time I’ve seen any of the current wave of European ‘Lady Metal’ bands live. I’ve bought my ticket months ago, which was just as well, since the show had completely sold out a considerable time in advance, with a queue stretching back to Academy 2 an hour before the doors opened.. Earlier at Piccadilly Station on the way in I spotted two teenaged girls wearing Within Temptation T-shirts, which made me worried that I’d be the oldest person there. But the long snaking queues outside the venue contained a trememdous mix of ages from teenaged Goths to middle-aged rockers like myself.

Manchester Academy 1, closed for much of the year, still has the builders in. They’ve now got a stage, a roof and a bar, but the place is still lacking things like toilets, cloakrooms and a proper entrance foyer. We had to enter the building through what will eventually become one of the fire exits, and brave the elements to use the festival-style portakabin toilets outside. One inside, it was a little disorientating to find that they’ve turned things through 90 degrees, with the stage on what had been the left-hand wall, and the bar where the stage used to be.

The support band 69 Eyes didn’t impress a lot, I’m afraid to say. They’re one of those bands who seem to put more effort into image than music; a sort of Ramones-meets Alice Cooper glam-punk look, with one of the guitarists sporting a mohican from circa 1978. The music was pretty forgettable generic metal, with irritating programmed keyboards. Get a real keyboard player, guys!

At 9:10pm they rolled the intro tape, the imaginatively-titled “Intro”, and Within Temptation strode on stage, with Sharon den Adel making a dramatic entrance last of all, wearing an elaborate bright red ballgown.

For the uninitiated, Within Temptation sound a but like the missing link between Enya and Rammstein. Instrumentally they’ve got the symphonic keyboards and crunching metal guitars making a huge wall of sound. On top of that is Sharon den Adel’s remarkable voice and she demonstrates the same range and power on stage as she does in the studio. They can certainly cut it live most of the time, although things faltered a little bit during the single “What Have You Done”, which doesn’t really work live without the guest vocalist Keith Caputo who appeared on the record. Showing a video of him (at least I assume it was him) on the back projection screen seemed just a little bit jarring.

Much of the set, not far short of two hours, came from their two most recent albums, “The Silent Force” and “The Heart of Everything”, with a few older songs I didn’t recognise towards the end. Perhaps their biggest weakess is a lack of variety; many of the songs fall into a similar pattern, very strong melodies with big sweeping choruses,no real guitar solos, but requently a middle eight where the guitars drop out leaving Sharon’s vocals accompanied just by keyboards. In many ways she uses her voice as the lead instrument in the band.

The only real complaint was the mediocre sound mix. While not quite bad enough to ruin the gig, I’ve been to this venue many times when the sound has been an awful lot better than this. Sharon den Adel’s vocals came though clearly enough, as did the keyboards, but the bottom end frequently turned into a mush, with little separation between the guitars, bass and drums. I may just have been at the wrong place, two thirds of the way back, with echoes from the back wall muddying things. Or it may just be that they’re still in the learning curve for the acoustics of this venue.

Still a very good gig, which only suffered in comparison with some of the truly great ones I’ve been to this year.

As announced on the Official Mostly Autumn forum

Welcome to the world baby Scarlett

At 08:42 the morning of 29th November, Scarlett Lily Joan Gordon was born weighing 6lbs 15ozs and measuring 49cm short!

Mother and baby are both doing really well and are grateful for all the good wishes.

Considering the number of time she’s been on stage with Mostly Autumn and Odin Dragonfly before even being born, I’d be very suprised if Scarlett doesn’t turn out to be musical when she grows up.