concert reviews

^ Nice balance of old stuff in that setlist

Haven't been to any gigs for a while, been a bit of a theatre hound for the last few weeks - Stockard Channing in Apologia last night.

post mortem this time. waking up after Tom Petty & the Lumineers last night. a disappointing show. start with the Lumineers. whilst most of the country got Joe Walsh opening for Petty, we were stuck with these yay hoos. 1 word: boring in the Mumford & Sons school of excruciating. definitely in that earnest young mens with beards genre. yawn.
now on to Mr. Petty. this was the 40th anniversary tour & supposedly the last big tour. probably a good idea to quit as it was pretty obvious that Tom is tired of the grind. lots of stage induced sing-a-longs, never a good sign. the set list for the tour has been stagnant which is a shame because the Heartbreakers are a great band. they easily could've played like the Cure & changed it up every night. there certainly is a wealth of material. a lot of it really plodded & was just too mellow for an arena/stadium show. the show picked up whenever Mike Campbell was allowed to unleash on guitar but that wasn't often enough. to top it off during a mini "Wildflowers" set (great album, not so great stuff for this type of show) the PA blew & the band continued to play when nobody but those in range of the stage monitors could hear. people actually started booing as most of the 35,000 on hand couldn't hear any of the song. someone came onstage & told Tom & the show was stopped for 10 minutes whilst they fixed the problem. the band came back on & continued the set as it was. there was no do over for the song & it continued in the same order as every other shows. so instead of 19 songs, we got 18 songs. i've been pretty lucky on shows this year, so i guess was due a mediocre one. i'd go see tom in a small setting again but not a big arena show. it ended with a big fireworks display that really had nothing to do with the music. in fact most of them went off after the music was done. not what i was there for. metallica had better fireworks & they were integrated into the material in a logical way. here's hoping that Matthew Sweet in a club on Monday will be a better musical experience. i have a feeling that it will.

Requests only, they dropped all the tour staples and got out the B sides and deep cuts. Didn't play anything from the last 10 years. Restored my faith in them to some degree (I bet its business as usual as soon as their next proper gig though...).

Anyway, was a barnstormer!

Assassin
Dead Star
Muscle Museum
Easily
Glorious
Butterflies & Hurricanes
Citizen Erased
Munich Jam
Showbiz
Fury
Hysteria
New Born
Yes Please
Sing for Absolution
Plug In Baby
Futurism
Knights of Cydonia


I was tempted with Petty in London last month, only for Stevie Nicks who was supporting. Bailed in the end - combination of setlist, venue (Hyde Park, awful!) and price all made a difference...

It was insane!

The Sisters Of Mercy. 2017-09-20 A38 Ship Budapest

I’ve employed my “Game Of Thrones” approach to the tour this year & deliberately avoided any audio & video spoilers as I wanted to make my own mind up on the experience.
I’ve read good & bad things this year regarding the sound, but I’ve seen all The Sisters’ shows on the A38 & the sound has always been superb.
On they came & it was a huge heart-sink moment as they started More & the volume was akin to a DAB radio playing behind the bar….on the other deck.
By all accounts, it seemed to be only coming from the fold back & not the PA. The band realised this pretty quickly but continued in the hope that the tech guys would press the right button eventually. At one point almost the entire audience was facing the soundboard screaming abuse & whistling.
After the restart it took about a minute until everything was blasting from where it should have been, but the whole thing seemed to throw them off a bit & it wasn’t really until C&B that they really got back into their groove (IMHO).
The oldies were a delight to hear after so long &, from where I was, Walk Away produced a sea of goth arm waving & sky grabbing & afterwards Von uttered a congratulatory, “Well done people”.
Ben & Chris are doing a grand job on supporting vocals. I use that word instead of backing as the years have taken their toll on our Andrew, but he did manage some real power for Flood II & Alice.
Rumble was awesome & Chris absolutely shredded that guitar solo like a proper rock god.
Revolver sounds almost as if it was written for the band & the arrangement really suits the current format I think.
Stand out of the night though (as Chaotican I think mentioned) was Temple Of Love. I think everybody on the A38 was singing along & it absolutely blew the top deck off. Although, a goose-bump inducing moment was the sharp intake of breath between the FALAA intro & it exploding into the song. The stage went to white-out for a split second & the band were perfect silhouettes that almost stood still in time.
Stage-wise, the A38 has a very low ceiling, so the mirrors weren't used. The smoke was more sparse than previous shows I've seen, but it was lit very very well.
The Sisters like playing on the ship & It’s certainly one of my favourite venues &, as a parting shot, Von declared, “We love the boat”.
Was nice to see Back In Time & Scardy. Was hoping to bump into (not literally) Chaotican too, but sorry Sarah, despite my reliance on your twitter profile pic I couldn’t track you down to say hello 
I did record it & will get to work chopping it up later after I have had several large buckets of very strong black coffee
Right now I need to tend to Iggy & Polly as they are demanding attention.

.. and while I'm here.. I saw Greg Davies last night - a very funny, very rude man.