overlap

"Mersey lights shine, bright in the distance Same as they did for us then" 'Spirit Of 76', The Alarm Having missed two reunion shows in the early summer when I was out of the UK, a final opportunity to make the third and final ever (so they say) reunion show of a band I loved was not to be missed. And especially when it came with the sort of crazy return to a past life aspect that was unavoidable. I used to live somewhere that the Mersey lights were visible from my window on a clear night, as it happens. After a number of happy hours on the M6 in the rain, around half past six found me in the monster T*sco that I used to frequent but haven’t been inside in the better part of twenty years. Getting into its car park took me past a hockey pitch I’d played on twenty-one years previously, and my route into the city centre was interrupted by the aftermath of a rear end shunt: with the police brushing broken glass out of the road and the ambulance still on the scene, I did a u-turn and followed a distant auto-pilot on my improvised diversion. A series of "So this should bring me out at... yes, then this right should take me to..." and so on left me parking up on the edge of the city centre, and perfectly placed for a minor detour past a building I first visited twenty-two years ago, the square where I used to sit on the bench reading letters and so on. You get the idea. Retracing long-forgotten steps into the heart of the city, past one of my favourite old venues which seems now to have shifted purely into drama theatre mode, and a quick loop around pedestrian shopping streets where I once saw Little Angels open a computer game shop followed before heading to the venue itself. "A sign stands over the door It says 'four lads who shook the world'" 'Spirit Of 76', The Alarm Living in a proper northern city back in the day was a remarkable change to my childhood in a provincial southern town, and changed my life in many ways. Stood once again on Mathew Street and going to a gig in the modern Cavern (a venue I haven’t blah blah etc) in the midst of the sort of saturday night on the town finery that I don’t usually see much of these days, the previous hour or two was in parts breath-takingly bizarre, in parts a sort of homecoming, in parts a totally mindblowing experience. And by the time I’d had a quick look around the corner to see the Eleanor Rigby statue was till there, I’d soaked up enough of that familiar local accent to start to settle in, it was time to get down those steps. And find the non-venue bar part of the venue full of what I think was largely a Spanish party having a whale of a time to the Beatles song singer on the stage. This sort of tourist trap honeypot has rather more in common with my seaside provenance than the rest of the locality, just to add further spice to my already frazzled state of mind. In short, if you’d asked me a few years ago whether I expected to see not just one but two of my favourite yet long defunct bands in the space of a week when I was in my forties, I’d have said you were out of your mind. Nevertheless, it happened. Playing to someone else’s crowd isn’t easy, playing to a third of that and having another third come in while you are playing is something else. Richard O’Flynn does a great job of keeping his delicate Ken Stringfellow gone folk lilt going throughout without being distracted. That sort of higher register, plenty of capo thing was a great start to the evening. I must hear more! Colin Clarke’s illustrious past in Rain passed me by entirely, and this set comes across as either a little nervy or perhaps a tiny bit ill-prepared, but listening to his few tracks on myspace sounds more promising. And so to the big event, Pele. I saw Pele half a dozen times in the early to mid 90s, stalkers might have found me as one of singer/songwriter Ian Prowse’s many friends on facebook for some time now, and his subsequent band Amsterdam have played an awful lot of Pele songs along the way, so it’s not like they completely disappeared. All the same, to get a specifically Pele gig at the start of the second decade (depending to mathematical taste!) of the new millennium was a special treat. The non-appearance of Nico on fiddle meant Amsterdam fiddle-player Anna Jenkins stepped in at a late stage, so it wasn’t the authentic classic line-up, but to be honest it was just great to hear those songs being battered through one after another in a sweaty underground bunker with too many people too close to my personal space. With Ian forgetting the words halfway through Oh Lord, this was not the sort of polished nonsense with split second timing you’d find at a big name stadium gig, but it was exactly the sort of raucous party that Pele gigs always used to be, and all the better for that. I could have hung around to say hello to the band afterwards, but with hours of driving in front of me it just wasn’t necessary. But if anyone wonders where the AFCB RED ARMY graffito on the backdrop comes from, that’s a question I can answer! So that was Pele, that was Liverpool, that was me and that was finding out I can do a 200 mile drive home in one hit, getting in not long after 3am. Setlist --- Don’t Worship Me Monkey Scream Hey America Fireworks Swinging From A Tree Megalomania A King’s Ransom Oh Lord Policemen Land Of The Free Understanding Sadness It’s A War Of Nerve Name And Number Fair Blows the Wind For France Raid The Palace --- Fat Black Heart Hot Housed Pain Of A Drinking Song

Labels: gigs, Pele