Flashback ten years – April 27th 2006
Was off at The Tramway last night. Nice venue!
Grant Campbell was surprisingly popular despite sounding more North Dakota than North Drumry. Dunno much about him, considering he’s a fellow Bankie. Best just to say the opening spot was the correct one.
James Blood Ulmer however was everything I expected. A spectacular vocal drone at the start of the show – I later decided was unintentional and an asthmatic side effect of his own making- led into some absolutely wunnerful blues. Waited a long long time to see this guy (The Cat may remember me enthusing, about his “Are You Glad To Be In America?”, endlessly, in Spain – back in ’84) and he didn’t disappoint at all. Singing style not unlike John Lee Hooker and a guitar style that would see him hold his own in any incarnation of The Magic Band (that’s a big plus, in case you were puzzled). My friendly neighbourhood bootlegger advised me at the break that he got all 58mins on minidisc and this will be heading my way pronto.
Odetta was a hectoring ol’ crone who only ventured away from the Bessie Smith/Huddie Ledbetter songbook long enough to do a Mrs Miller style job on a Labi Siffre dirge. Musical Mogadon
Safe bet to say that we shall never share the same roof again.
One of those marvellous evenings where the audience was so rapt, quiet and attentive, I swear I could occasionally hear Jinx, passing wind, mid-song.
For some reason these guys seem to have have aged more than others from the same era. Sinclair resembles some scatter brained chemistry teacher from a Carry On film with a hair style that Gollum would be proud of, Phil Miller pulled faces the likes of which I haven’t seen outside the World Gurning Championships and drummer Pip is quite definitely a ‘geezer’, with the darts player physique, shirt and mullet that we’ve come to expect from perhaps Jim Davidson or Greg Lake. They all actually resembled minicab drivers at the end of a very long shift. However, as they were all reading charts, the absence of the Egg Man wasn’t nearly as pronounced as I’d expected.
My favourite, ‘The Yes/No Interlude’ ,which closed the first set was certainly as good a performance as I’ve heard this year. Short break to allow everyone to visit what must be the best stocked ‘merch’ stand I’ve seen in a long time, I bought the ‘Hatwise Choice’ CD; Jinx a dapper polo shirt with the ‘anticlockwise’ logo.
Friendly neighbourhood bootlegger, Missing Ian, used our table to house his covert minidisc action, during the second half (which started with a jaw dropping 35 minute long medley featuring, among another five or six tunes, the wonderful God Song) so I hope to see/hear what was recorded soon.
My only concern was that they weren’t in any way loud to begin with and kept getting told to turn it down due to noise restrictions involving the venue’s new berth. Quite how the Wishbone Ash chaps will fare later this week, is anyone’s guess. I think the Ferry could have a serious problem on their hands if this is a typical night.
Two and a half hours of a music that was quite unusual in it’s day and is perhaps even more so now.
Labelling this as prog-rock is, and was, probably unfare. It’s jazz, ma’an, hmmm naice!!!
The performance was sublime and level of musicianship took me by surprise (despite the fact that, as I took great delight in telling everyone in earshot, this was not the first time I’d seen them)
Icing on the cake was provided by Matching Mole’s ‘Nan’s True Hole’ (whose title I once knew the significance of but have since forgotten# ) as one of the encores.
Bring on Henry Cow, and then The National Health!!!
Regards
The Thinking Man’s Billy Sloan
# Severe Trivia Note: Peel & Walters office at Radio 1 also bore this name but I don’t know which came first and I can’t be arsed running anagram software on it.
Exiled Bankies returning to my home town will most definitely see substantial changes next time they travel along Dumbarton Road.Over the last couple of weeks, what I presume must be the final phase of the shipyard demolition has really kicked in and it’s resulting vistas are fairly impressive to say the least.Those ugly three to four storey brick edifices, that have, seemingly forever, hidden the waterway are now beginning to drop, faster than The Swearing Jelly and her Sister’s knickers when confronted with a squad of highly testosteroned council electricians. The result is, exactly where you and our parents have up until very recently always had to look at corrugated iron, armoured glass, graffiti and the rusting detritus of a once proud industry in apparent perpetual decline, there is now, gasp!, daylight, the River Clyde, expansive green swathes of Renfrewshire small-holdings that only a Shetland teacher would know by name and ultimately, in the distance, the Glennifer Braes. Same with the cranes, there’s only one left standing, to give visiting off-worlders a clue as to what went on here for the last hundred years or so. Whether this Meccano Monster has already been given the wizard’s eye or is currently being remade/remodelled as The Very Reverend Alexander Currie Memorial Heritage Centre remains to be seen.
Forty six years ago today, in 1971, I went to my first Crystal Palace Garden Party to see the Floyd. Travelled down from Glasgow on the overnight bus (couldn’t afford trains). If you look carefully you might see me. South Sea Bubble jacket, grandad vest and loon pants with flares the same size as my waist!
Wasn’t too popular with my family, as my mother was going in to hospital for surgery that day, while inconsiderate old, or rather should I say young, me buggered off to London to see ‘some pop groups’.
This was the gig where they debuted ‘Echoes’, although on the day it was titled Return of The Son of Nothing, -this being immediately after opening with ‘Atom Heart Mother’. So, I guess, before they started their third song, they must have been onstage for about three quarters of an hour 🙂
As the set progressed, a giant octopus – a portent of their later infatuation with inflatable animals – emerged from the dry-ice covered boating lake, immediately in front of the stage
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Got my photo taken with a gentle spoken Dave Gilmour ,when he came out front to watch Faces but that snap’s sadly vanished into the mists of time
Great stuff!
So great that I went to see them, the Floyd, three nights later in Stirling University. Ron Geesin in support slot.
Lighthouse Beacon Straight Ahead 