overlap

Ok, so the clues were there as early as Sixteenth Century Greensleeves on the album 'Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow' over thirty years ago, but while I'm at least a passing fan of the Rainbow material I should be honest and say I've never felt suitably inspired to either chase up the collected works, the life stories or get much of a handle on the current activities. Sure, I've read Ian Gillan's biog, I've got three or four Deep Purple albums, a Rainbow 'Best Of' and a few other bits and pieces but as is usually the case I prefer to let the live experience inform my opinion, and then influence me to go shopping on the back of that. I've seen Deep Purple twice in the last year, Dio eighteen months ago, and whatever I had to say about them at the time should be easy enough to find in my posting archives here, but in the last couple of days I've caught up with one of the more influential figures connected with those groups of people. When you turn up to a venue and there are extra posters on every single door reminding you that no photography, filming and that sort of stuff is allowed, and you've even got bouncers demanding to check your mobile phones are turned off, you know there's a certain potential stroppiness vibe that travels around with the band. Of course those restrictions just make me all the more inclined to see what I can do with my camera, though the results aren't really up to much. I've added the best representation of the stage set below, even if the individuals are blurred it should give the general idea. With a stage set with drapes to look like the walls of a medieval castle, the support band don't have a lot of room among the onstage kit. Nevertheless and despite their limited English, they go down well with a mix of traditional music from England, France, Spain, Macedonia and the Czech Republic, which is where I guess they come from. I didn't rush to buy their album in the interval, but I'm happy enough to have my four skinny indie kids routine challenged by stuff that sounds completely different, and for that alone I can definitely recommend Gothien. Time moves on, and backwards too in this case, so of course it's unrealistic to base expectations on the glorious pop-rock carried by Joe Lynn Turner and Graham Bonnet's vocals, but equally Blackmore's Night have apparently been doing this for ten years themselves now, so there can be no doubt they know what they are doing. In between the medieval flavoured stuff there's a neat stab at Soldier Of Fortune early on, which sounds decent enough in a female lead vocal acoustic version, but we're soon back to the mandola. The two female backing singers are outstanding, Gothien pop up to take part in a song or two, but there's lack of cohesiveness as Ritchie repeatedly switches to the mandola so the bass player switches to an acoustic guitar for the sake of fifteen seconds of music before they switch back or the song ends. Ritchie also plays the hurdy-gurdy, and something that looks more like a lute but could be anything from where I'm sat. And don't even ask what the adult in a bunny suit hopping across the stage is about - it's one of those did I really just see what I thought I saw moments. Candice Night has a bunch of moves, a nice line in well-worn husband-baiting patter, and a decent enough voice without being anything special, but there's no surprise she leaves the screaming to the backing singers for the Ah-ah-ah bits of the second half of Child In Time and to be honest the whole thing's a bit ropey karaoke. It's never nice to knock someone doing stuff they appear to enjoy, and there are one or two bouncy poppy numbers I enjoy too, indeed Home Again is the sort of thing that would make a decent Heart b-side, but what with that and whichever song it is that starts by talking about 'Gemini and Capricorn rising in the east', there's more than a hint of Jeanine St Hubbins that keeps me watching between my fingers rather than turning me into a convert to the cause. And even when a white strat appears for the encore, it's not enough to turn an interesting spectacle into another new thing for me to be a fan of. It was great to see for myself and make up my own mind, and good luck to 'em, but it's not for me, and it is one to file under stuff to see if they happen to be coming very close when I've absolutely nothing else to do.

Labels: Blackmore's Night, Ritchie Blackmore

I spend a lot of time and petrol going to see bands, often because I've never seen them before and want to find out for myself, but every now and then something pops up when I'm going through venue listings that's less a must see, and more a 'that might be interesting' job. Due to a combination of factors of timing and location, that's how I came to see Robert Plant again. Can't say I'm a big fan so much as an admirer of his work, though some way back in the mists of time I saw what was one of his first instances of being on the same stage as Jimmy Page since Led Zep, so the chance to see a gig for its own sake rather than because I'm desperate to hear stuff from the new album or whatever looked a good idea when I didn't have somewhere else I needed to be. Obviously that on its own would be too simple, so the arrival of payday and my current interest in shopping for jewellery and my shiny new blunt ended haircut meant that combining a pair of jeans I've had for many years with a top that's not been worn out yet seemed a really good idea. Being delayed getting home to get ready and struggling to find the venue when I got there meant it was more a case of getting on with it than instead of having time to think too hard about it, so that was no bad thing. And sure I got a couple of looks from people though that's nothing new, but the woman at the bar and the bar staff were lovely. I got the latest Plant album a few weeks ago, so I was more familiar with the newer material than I might have been, and the mix of old and new songs and was about right, and Robert was on great form, and what he had to say about the world we live in was spot on too, so I'd thoroughly recommend it if you get the chance. In a jam-packed venue, it was no surprise that a little sweating was inevitable, but here's the top, my new necklace and bracelet, and how much make up I needed to get out of the house in the first place - most of it was still where it was supposed to be when I got home!

Labels: make up, Robert Plant

Five months since the last time, it's a little overdue but it's also booked and may even have already taken place by the time you read this. And my hair isn't really as horribly shiny and partially vinyl-looking as this pic makes it look, honest!

Labels: hair haircut

Possibly not entirely unexpected, but all the same I'm rather
surprised to find Jeff Scott Soto has been fired from Journey.

I wasn't impressed by him or the Soul SirkUS show at all, but over two
nights fronting Journey I was more than convinced of what a great job
he was doing, and how his arrival looked like a shot in the arm for
the band.

I was absolutely thrilled when I got to see Neal Schon playing with
Hardline in the early 90s, and double thrilled to see the Augeri
version of Journey on British soil at last, but JSS had me convinced
that he was the man to take the job on properly. I love Schon's guitar
playing, but I've a feeling this is a step too far even for my loving
the band faithfully.

One of the joys of the modern internet age is the scope for
speculation and rumour to spread like wildfire, and other than the
remarkably limp official announcement I have no stone cold facts to go
on, but it seems to me that to whatever degree each has been
individually involved in the decision and communication of that
decision, it looks from here like JSS has been treated rather badly by
Schon, Cain, Valory and Castronovo and their representatives and
advisers.

Possibly the most telling moment for me that JSS is one of the good
guys is when he came out to join Danny Vaughn and Tony Marshall for a
quick charge through Boston's "Rock N Roll Band" the night after Brad
Delp died, and for no other reason than because he could, and thought
it was worth doing. And I agree it was.

Cheers Jeff, and good luck!

Labels: Jeff Scott Soto, Journey

I seem to have been running at a couple of weeks behind for a while now, but I like to think it's a good sign to be too busy doing stuff to be posting rather than the other way round. I have however been keeping up to date on flickr at least. This weekend I shall be buying some technology for completely different purposes, but the last few days have seen my television replaced by a slightly bigger one, and the arrival of my first ever DVD machine - hooray for earlyish adopters with an ongoing need to find new homes (like me) for gear that's perfectly decent and usable. And on that same technological note, guess how I spent my afternoon? I damaged my camera a couple of months ago, and while it was possible to live with it, when I suddenly stumbled across how to take apart the relevant bits this afternoon, it was an inevitability that my desk would immediately become more of a workbench...

Having mentioned it elsewhere, I'm just going to put a little flesh on
the bones of the story. It's no big deal in itself, but at the same
time it does shed a certain amount of light and explanation. It should
be obvious that a little vagueness is necessary to protect a certain
degree of privacy in what is a very personal story. If you're here as
a complete random stranger, then best of luck with it, but the chances
are you are here because you e-know me to some degree, and if you
really want something spelled out in full I'm happy to do so in a less
100% public environment – after all, in some ways the moral of the
story is that email works!

To get to the root of a whole bunch of stuff, it's fair to say that
single sex education bears a certain responsibility, in a variety of
ways. But to get to the point of the story, which relates to one of
the early social networking, or in this case re-networking websites,
you start off with a couple of seventeen year olds who had a year long
relationship, which for a variety of reasons reached its own, perhaps
inevitable, messy conclusion.

For one of these, it was the start of a long road of turmoil of
various kinds, of degree level under-achievement characterised by low
level depression and a number of years of unemployment with sporadic
periods of short term and temporary working, which probably wasn't
what was being predicted in the earlier days of academic high
achievement and expectations of Great Things.

For the other, academic achievement continued largely as expected and
leading straight to professional accomplishment, passing Go and
collecting a marriage somewhere along the way. It's also the case that
depression reared its head here too, with vastly differing
manifestations, and long years passed.

Fast forward a decade or so, to find one had dealt with the separation
by becoming to some degree the archivist of the story, the other
having disposed of vast amounts of personal history via the cleansing
medium of fire. Different people deal with things in different ways,
and there's no right or wrong, just right for the person.

As it turns out, one had taken most of that decade to get over it and
eventually carve out a life and career, and one had pressed on
regardless, but both had in their own ways never given up thinking of
the relationship in equally warm ways, and indeed both had learned to
live with the unresolved questions but were still prepared to take an
opportunity to answer them, should one appear.

Fast forward another few years to someone having a friend mention this
new website where it was possible to track down or at least contact
people they'd known years before, and within a couple of days an email
had been sent that would start to bridge the gap of all those years,
and bring their paths back together for a while.

< long posts take up a lot of screen, this is plenty for the first
half of the story >