overlap

Since the rise of the Don’t Look Back series of shows featuring people doing so-called classic albums in their entirety, the idea seems to have expanded a little. Playing all the album’s songs live is one thing but re-recording the album and associated tracks twenty years down the line is quite another, and my initial reaction to the idea was hardly one of embracing the idea. I really wasn’t expecting a new version could add much to the original, which just goes to show how wrong you can be. The Eight Legged Groove Machine is a pivotal album in my life, I remember very well the circumstances in which I came to buy my first copy on its original release, on the day I banked a grant cheque. I’m not sure whether buying it on cassette or with a grant dates it more, but there has been an awful lot of water under a lot of bridges in the meantime. Fast forward to years later, and a couple of gigs to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the album. Following a remarkably cold night, the requirement to move the car revealed that the overnight temperatures have finished off an aged battery, though luckily I found that out a little before I was due to leave. A telephone conversation with my car mechanic produces the remote diagnosis that the battery had had it, and that I shouldn’t go anywhere without getting a new battery put in. So what else was I going to do but stick the battery charger on for an hour, and go to the gig anyway? With a couple of hours driving to top the battery up, I parked on a slight slope to give me an extra chance of getting going again after the gig, and headed off to the venue via an unintentional wander around the city. I think I’ve got it now, but I still find it a horrible city to drive in. Support band Jesus Jones took the stage in uniform white shirts, as per It Bites, and from the opening words of Who? Where? Why? through to the final blast of Info Freako, it was guitar and sample excitement all the way. Talking with someone else about the shared experience of not expecting to know much of their set and then turning out to know seven out of nine songs, it’s a good sign of how much familiar material Jesus Jones have, and even if I don’t listen to them much I have grown to really enjoy them over half a dozen support slots. I listened to the original ELGM in its original order a couple of times before the gig, and the advent of mp3s and random play functions has pretty much brought an end to that as usual practice too. There is little on the album that has never been done live, and yet somehow the running order isn’t so firmly ingrained in my mind as it once was, so among the live favourites of yore it turns out quite refreshing to hear, in particular, Like A Merry Go Round and The Animals And Me again. With an album that doesn’t make forty minutes, there is plenty of room for what could turn out to be padding, but hearing Goodbye Fatman (I think the first time it’s been played since Martin Gilks died), Ooh She Said, Astley In the Noose and Song Without An End makes for a thoroughly worthy endeavour. A further mini set, consisting predominantly of other early tracks as well as Here Comes Everyone, Mission Drive and On The Ropes drags us through to a thunderous Ten Trenches Deep to round off a great show. So much so that I bought the 2008 Legged Groove Machine anyway, and after a few words with people I hadn’t seen for a while I headed for the car. Which happily started first time, and I got home around 2.30. It should surprise nobody that the car battery didn't get replaced till I'd repeated the exercise to get to the London gig the following day!

Labels: gigs, Jesus Jones, The Wonder Stuff