overlap

A couple of years ago I was on about the delights of seeing Wolfsbane again after all these years and what's more Christmas-like than getting that same gift you wanted all over again? It certainly felt like a seasonal gift when the tour was announced back in the summer. The first show of the tour supporting the Quireboys was the one most conveniently close, and it was fantastic to be stood close to the stage in a t-shirt that's closing on 22 years old, watching the four of them rip through some of the stupidest metal songs ever written, with a tongue in both cheeks. Where the shows with the Wildhearts had had slightly truncated sets of barely 45 minutes, the Quireboys graciously gave them a full hour so we got a few treats that weren't aired last time around. Nobody ever gets exactly the set they want, but what I'd have picked for myself would have been pretty close to this little lot. Steel/You Load Me Down/Loco/Totally Nude/Money To Burn/Ezy/Kathy Wilson/I Like It Hot/Temple Of Rock/Manhunt/Paint The Town Red The pop-metal hit single that never was, I Like It Hot, is preceded by a rant about the Copenhagen climate summit being entirely Wolfsbane's doing due to their liking it hot and responsibility for global warming, which gives you something of a feel for the spectacle of fantastic nonsense that Blaze dishes out. I had a brief chat with Nico from the Blaze Bayley band while waiting for a chance to chat with the guys and buy 'the new Wolfsbane album made out of bits of old Wolfsbane albums', and just for a few minutes it was like 1989 all over again. "I saw Wolfsbane all over again, and I liked it." Two days later it was up the M5 for more of the same, and rather closer to their Midlands origins. This was a splendid show, and one of the highlights was Jase ushering his daughter to the side of the stage to watch the Quireboys and seeing the delights of rock n roll clearly passed on to the next generation. With the added bonus of Shakin' sneaking into the set, I think this was the best gig I caught out of this particular return of Wolfsbane's shows.

Labels: Blaze Bayley, gigs, Jase Edwards, Jase the Ace, Jeff Hateley, Steve Danger, Wolfsbane

Now, I need to type this now before my typing gets all wine-enhanced and unreliable. It would be unrealistic to say I missed out on everything people tend to take for granted in adolescence and early adulthood, and especially from my position of comfortable middle age, but I imagine there are things like a first pint or a first bra and stuff like that that some people see as landmarks. Everyone has different standards and expectations, I'm sure, but I expect it's not so hard to relate to the idea of doing something for the first time and it meaning something. In the modern world where everything is under CCTV surveillance, I'm absolutely paranoid about leaving the house or indeed being out in public anywhere in a dress. But there are ways of dealing with this, by picking the timing carefully, and of course dependent on the season and the conditions. So a rainy early evening rush hour, a late shop opening thursday evening and somehow as if by magic, I found myself on a main city centre street I've walked thousands of times. But I'd never have dreamed I'd walk it in heels, though being able to hide my face under an umbrella works wonders for a nervous girl's confidence. And rather than turn back and go home, it was that much easier to keep on going to where I'd planned to head. So now I can legitimately say that in seasonally sensible knee high boots, a borderline smart skirt and a weather appropriate short mac, I bought myself another pair of very pretty shoes in the same model I bought before xmas just in a different colour. And then, and for the first time in decades of never imagining I'd ever be in the right place and have the right attitude at the same time, I sat down in front of a very well lit mirror and had someone work on my make up, to match a shade against my skin tone and offer me the benefit of her wisdom. So yeah, I've spent a few quid today on make up and shoes, but you couldn't buy how good it feels to have bought them as my marginally more glamorous self. And getting flattering compliments on my choice of lipstick, and of another brand to the shop I was in no less, was an unexpected bonus. Ninety minutes after starting typing and only four glasses in, this appears to still be vaguely literate. Don't believe it!

Labels: make up

"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

When is a free gig not a free gig? When it’s a free gig that costs the better part of twenty quid in transport costs, perhaps. I’m always a tiny bit on edge when I need to find my way to a new venue I’ve never been to before, and the free gig bit meant nobody was rushing to go overboard on the publicity end. Nevertheless I was in a back street pub in time to listen to The School (yep, them again) running through a couple of tunes in their soundcheck, and relax a little. I say relax, but with four bands for no ticket price, there was plenty to keep watching. The first band said they were losing half their line-up after this gig, and if they gave their name I didn’t catch it, but I’m not sure I’m missing much anyway. Next up were Little My. Yep, terrible name for a band, but kinda suitable. Suitable in the sense there’s nothing little about a band with eight people in, suitable that it appears to be a symptom of a collective hallucination based on one bear-man’s vision of pop idiocy. Whatever, the quirky novelty pop of Little My will definitely leave an impression on you if you happen to see them. And you really should make the effort to see them given the chance, comedy headgear and costumery notwithstanding. The third band was The Welcome Committee, a drums and acoustic guitar/vocals combo which suffered from technical difficulties throughout but seemed to have the right idea. Maybe the front guy could get away without the drummer, maybe there are more players in the band that were absent that night, I’ve no idea, but there was more than a hint of Jim Bob (a good thing) about the guitarist-vocalist. Thumbs up here too. Having considered whether I would leave this gig early for another one across town which I might have made had The School been on earlier, I’m happy to have stayed throughout. No, it’s no secret that I love The School and have posted on here to that effect before. The set was more or less the same as the one a few weeks prior, but this was the expanded seven piece line-up with the extra ooh-ooh backing vocals and the slightly warmer instrumentation with the addition of the fiddle, keyboards, brass etc. Harri didn’t show much sign of his bear-suit antics in Little My having dehydrated him, and the inevitable late start meant the set got cut a little short, but I got a ton of pictures and this time some video too. For handheld above my head, it’s relatively steady and it sounds ok too. This is but one reason why you should love The School or get your pop tastebuds booked in for a service pronto: The debut album by The School, Loveless Unbeliever, is out on Elefant records in a few weeks time. Yippee!

Labels: gigs, Little My, The School, The Welcome Committee

So, it's the anniversary of Phil Lynott's death, a mere twenty four years ago, and the title link is the suitably topical song of that name. I know this has been a bit sparse in the updating of late, and I'm half a dozen gigs behind but you can't do it all. I'm also aware that it's an observable phenomenon that when there's not so much good news to share, it becomes easier not to bother, but it's also the case that I've been concentrating on doing the good stuff. With the new year starting, I've started on a 365 project on flickr - one picture taken every day, even if I won't be able to upload them all on the day - and I have many reasons to be cheerful. I plan to catch up on a few of those gigs in the next day or two, and in the meantime there's plenty of Thin Lizzy to listen to, today of all days!