overlap

I'm sure that I said I had certain misgivings about the recreation of a whole album during the first shows of this type last year. While those misgivings were blown away by the freshness of how it sounded, it's not for no reason that there is the odd song from most albums that gets lost along the way. There's a couple of singles I'd happily add to that category too, though possibly not the ones you might immediately imagine. But it's not every day I get to go out in vintage clothing - see above! Support on this tour is The Men They Couldn't Hang, peddling their new album Devil On The Wind to a bunch of people who possibly aren't so familiar with TMTCH as they have been with previous tour supports. No matter, their folk-rock meets traditional songwriting meets agit-pop approach warms up the crowd a treat as they fill the stage with musicians and tunes. A very good start to any evening. Possibly the pivotal album in my life, The Eight Legged Groove Machine comes from a time when singles existed on vinyl and had PO Box numbers or postal addresses on the back, and came with b-sides and bonus tracks that were often as good or better than stuff on the associated album. It seems a very long time ago from a world where an album is now only a notional concept, but the first songs sound like long lost friends coming back from years out of the picture. If I never hear Like A Merry Go Round live again it'll be a shame, but it's great to be reminded I should listen to it perhaps more frequently than I ordinarily do. The real reward (part one) of making the effort to get to the two more convenient gigs on this tour is the tracks that weren't on the original album. Goodbye Fatman, Astley In The Noose and Song Without An End is a trilogy of stone cold classics, despite what anyone say about the Astley lyrics. There follows a short hits set, lamentably including Golden Green which is a song I could happily never hear again, but all the same it's a cracking show even from a band I've seen more times than I'm tempted to admit. The real reward (part two) in paying the extra few quid for the VIP ticket to the London show is a final short set of the other three tracks from the original Wonderful Day ep, which I am pretty certain I have never heard live before, or if I have it's not in the last twenty years. The thrill of witnessing these few songs is jaw-dropping, and worth the trouble and the travel on its own. If we do go through the same routine for the second album Hup!, I'm already excited about hearing It Was Me live again for the first time in a couple of decades, what a great excuse to Get Together! * 'Over and over and over and over' is from Who Wants To Be The Disco King?, another single from the ELGM time, and for a band who it currently turns out have been at one gig in every nine I've seen over the past twenty-odd years, there's a certain resonance there too!

Labels: gigs, The Men They Couldn't Hang, The Wonder Stuff