Category - Music

NOTE: The write up for the Birmingham gig is here.

NOTE: Gary in Leeds – I would love to send you photos for your son, but please send a valid email address. The last one keeps returning my replies.

Well, that was a turn up for the books! The Sheffield leg of the Time Machine Tour a couple of years ago was by far the worst – not Rush, just the crowd, which was awful. But this episode of the Clockwork Angels Tour was far-and-away the best yet. It was fantastic!

They switched back to the London set list (as far as I can remember it), which was as follows:

Part 1:

• Subdivisions
• The Big Money
• Force Ten
• Grand Designs
• The Body Electric
• Territories
• The Analog Kid
• Bravado
• Where’s My Thing? (with drum solo)
• Far Cry

Part 2:

• Caravan
• Clockwork Angels
• The Anarchist
• Carnies
• The Wreckers
• Headlong Flight (with drum solo)
• Halo Effect
• Seven Cities of Gold
• The Garden
• Manhattan Project
• Drum Solo
• Red Sector A
• YYZ
• The Spirit of Radio

Encore:

• Tom Sawyer
• 2112 Part I: Overture
• 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
• 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

The crowd were lively, and Rush really played up to that. Geddy even commented on the fact at the end. It was a fantastic show as a result – made even better by the seat my agent had got me.

Here’s a selection of photos I took.

Although Birmingham LG still keeps the Gold Star for the best venue overall, kudos to Sheffield for only charging £5 to park – and a curse on the O2 in London for charging £21 (or £28 if you didn’t book it in advance, which I fortunately did when I remembered while I was in the services at Bishops Stortford, trying to sidestep all the old people there). It’s also worth pointing out that a “large” soft drink at Sheffield is about the size of a bucket, and there doesn’t appear to be any nonsense about not taking a bottle into the hall itself. All the others would sell you a bottle of something (for which you had to donate an organ to be able to afford it), then insist you poured it into a plastic cup before letting you get to your seat.

The last show is in Glasgow on Thursday, so I’ll be making an early start to make sure I get there. Anyone who hasn’t been yet really ought to get a ticket – the performances by Rush are the standard by which all others should be measured.

Oh, and one thing I haven’t mentioned in any of my reviews is that Geddy closes with “…we hope to see you again some time…” That always cheers me up, because we have to face the fact that the end is closer than the beginning – but not just yet!

NOTE: The London O2 article is here.

Just back from the Birmingham show, and it was the best yet. They did the same set as in Manchester as far as I remembered it, so The Pass and Middletown Dreams were reinstated. There was a little more improvisation, too, and the band seemed to be really enjoying themselves. Here’s the setlist as I remember it:

Part 1

• Subdivisions
• Big Money
• Force Ten
• Grand Designs
• Middletown Dreams
• Territories
• The Analog Kid
• The Pass
• Where’s My Thing? (with drum solo)
• Far Cry

Part 2

• Caravan
• Clockwork Angels
• The Anarchist
• Carnies
• The Wreckers
• Headlong Flight (with drum solo)
• Halo Effect
• Wish Them Well
• The Garden
• Dreamline
• Drum Solo
• Red Sector A
• YYZ
• The Spirit of Radio

Encore

• Tom Sawyer
• 2112 Part I: Overture
• 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
• 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

The LG Arena also gets the current Gold Star as the best venue. OK, it’s not cheap, but the food is good for the price, and everything runs efficiently. Mind you, the Arena itself is bloody miles from the car park, but the weather today has been fantastic so the walk was enjoyable through the huge complex and past the lake.

Here’s a selection of pictures I took:

Once more, my agent had got me a decent ticket.The only bum note – well, notes, really – were the facts that someone who was about 7 feet tall was right in my line of sight,and he insisted on videoing parts of the show on his Blackberry; the group in front of him spent almost the whole three hours arms raised doing that thing with the index and little finger sticking up (what DOES that mean?); and someone somewhere behind me spent the whole show shouting loudly at his mates (and I mean really shouting). But I suppose they were enjoying themselves, and being quite tall myself I tend to get lucky when it comes to having taller people in front of me.

But I can’t blame my agent for all that. The crowd was loud, and that’s what bands want. I’m sure it loosens them up

Next stop, Sheffield on Tuesday. Let’s hope the Sheffield lot put on a better show than last time, where they were the worst crowd of the tour.

NOTE: The Sheffield write up is here.

NOTE: The Manchester MEN Arena, 2013 review is here.

Just got back from the second instalment of Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour, and it was another stormer.

In the tour programme I picked up at Manchester, Neil made reference to how they’re doing more improvisation this time around (he says that the album itself was less rehearsed than previous ones). Going along with that, I don’t think I have ever been to a series of Rush shows on a single tour and heard them deviate in any way from their tight set – until tonight. They lost The Pass (a personal favourite), but played  Middletown Dreams, The Body Electric, and  Bravado in Part 1 of the set. Wish Them Well (also a personal favourite) and Dreamline were missing from Part 2, but in came Seven Cities of Gold and Manhattan Project. I think it may have had something to do with the delay to the start of the show – the sound check ran over and they didn’t come on stage until nearly 8pm – but it didn’t matter. It was still performed as well as everything else. Here’s the full set list:

Part 1:

• Subdivisions
• The Big Money
• Force Ten
• Grand Designs
• The Body Electric
• Territories
• The Analog Kid
• Bravado
• Where’s My Thing? (with drum solo)
• Far Cry

Part 2:

• Caravan
• Clockwork Angels
• The Anarchist
• Carnies
• The Wreckers
• Headlong Flight (with drum solo)
• Halo Effect
• Seven Cities of Gold
• The Garden
• Manhattan Project
• Drum Solo
• Red Sector A
• YYZ
• The Spirit of Radio

Encore:

• Tom Sawyer
• 2112 Part I: Overture
• 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
• 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

Once again, I couldn’t see an empty seat in the house, even in the top tiers at the back – and when you consider the size of the O2, that’s a damned good achievement. I was well placed on the floor (unlike last time at the O2, where I was in the rafters). I was on Alex’s side so the pictures were skewed towards him and Neil (the Manchester ones tended towards Geddy, as that’s where I was stood at that show).

As always, they put on an accomplished performance. They looked a little more relaxed right from the start this time, though that’s not to take anything away from the Manchester performance. If I was voting, I’d give the Manchester crowd the edge so far in terms of involvement and loudness – but only just.

It was a shitty day for the weather. It was almost constant heavy rain all the way down the A1/M11 (I passed the Borussia Dortmund team coach with big police escort, on its way to Wembley for the Champions League Final at Wembley). It was raining when I went into the venue, and raining when I came out. Damned cold, too. I was amazed to get out of the venue car park in less than 10 minutes – you have to know how and where to park!

The pictures all came out well again. They’re taller than some of the ones I posted for Manchester because I’m experimenting with the 16:9 format, which gives a wider field of view.

Next stop is Birmingham’s LG Arena on Sunday. I can’t wait.

NOTE: The Birmingham article is here.

Wow. I just got back from the first night of the UK leg of Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour, and it was bloody brilliant! A great crowd at Manchester’s MEN Arena, and I couldn’t see an empty seat in the entire place. Here’s my review of the concert (gig).

As well as playing at least half of the songs from Clockwork Angels (I love Wish Them Well, and The Garden), they also covered some of the older stuff that I haven’t heard live before (or not for a long time, anyway), such as The Pass, Dreamtime, and Territories. Spirit Of Radio was in there – they can’t EVER not play that – and they encored with Tom Sawyer and parts of 2112. The full set list was as follows:

Part 1

• Subdivisions
• Big Money
• Force Ten
• Grand Designs
• Middletown Dreams
• Territories
• The Analog Kid
• The Pass
• Where’s My Thing?
• Far Cry

Part 2

• Caravan
• Clockwork Angels
• The Anarchist
• Carnies
• The Wreckers
• Headlong Flight
• Halo Effect
• Wish Them Well
• The Garden
• Dreamline
• Drum Solo
• Red Sector A
• YYZ
• The Spirit of Radio

Encore

• Tom Sawyer
• 2112 Part I: Overture
• 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
• 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

There was a 15 minute break between Part 1 and Part 2, and the strings section joined for virtually all of Part 2. I tried out my new camera – the Panasonic Lumix FZ200 – for the first time at a gig, and the results are unbelievable. Judge for yourselves.

You see what I mean? This time, I even got a bunch of fantastic pictures of Neil Peart. I’ve reduced these in size for the blog, but on the originals you can literally see the threads on the shirts the guys are wearing! I got nearly 550 shots, and 90% of them have no blur whatsoever!

I was six rows back and had an excellent view – my ticket guy had come up trumps again.

There was a fantastic lightshow, and plenty of pyrotechnics. And the band used a strings section to provide extra depth for about half of the show. The films played to accompany each song on the rear screen were easily the best I’ve ever seen. Oh, and Neil did three drum solos this time (even though the set list doesn’t mention this).

The only hiccup in the whole evening was the female Hitler – so that would be a Hitlerette – who told me I wasn’t allowed to use “one of those cameras” about half way through. But I went up to one of the stewards (who’d seen her do it) and explained that it was a fixed-lens camera, and he said to carry on. Which I did.

Next stop, London’s O2 Friday. It seems I’m not the only one doing the Grand Tour of all UK shows again. I met up with someone I’d first met on the Time Machine Tour a couple of years ago, and he’s doing the same thing this time. And it turned out the couple in front of us were also doing it.

NOTE: The O2 review is here.

Well, it’s been a long wait between the first announcement over a year ago and the Big Event itself. But the UK leg of Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour is almost here at long last.

It’s been a nerve-wracking year worrying if my ticket agent would get me decent tickets, but he’s come up trumps once more (including the O2 one this time). I also came within a gnat’s whisker of front row seats and a meet’n’greet, but that’s another story.

I’ll be at all five of the shows once again – in London, Birmingham,Sheffield, Manchester, and Glasgow – and I can’t wait. But it’s less than a week to go now. And I’ve got a shiny new camera to try out, too.

I’ve got a rough idea of the set list, but apparently they’ve been changing it around for each of the different stages of the tour. So it’s a case of wait and see, really (which I have to say that I prefer).

A DVD of the tour is already planned, but a release date isn’t yet known (earlier reports of 21 May have proved to be incorrect).

I went to a good show last night at the Nottingham Arena – Slash, with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators.

It’s becoming a bit of a trend, but the support band – The Treatment – were pretty damned good. I suppose someone like Slash is only going to have decent support, so maybe it shouldn’t come as such a surprise (I just think back to the past, where the bands supporting some pretty big names were not as good as they should have been).

Anyway, they were good enough for me to have ordered their debut album.

They’re a 5-piece British band from Cambridge and I believe that they’re all just 18-years old. As their Facebook page says, they are like early UFO and Def Leppard with a big dose of Aerosmith thrown in. Even before I’d looked them up, the lead singer in particular reminded me of Steven Tyler from Aerosmith in his style and singing abilities – he has a great voice.

OK, the band DID look young, but a year or two will probably fix that! Hopefully they’ll keep at it, because they could definitely go places if they do. In fact, they are playing Rock City at the end of March and I might go if I can arrange lessons around it.

Slash and the band came on to a tumultuous reception, and kicked off with “Halo”, from his latest album “Apocalyptic Love”.

It was one of the loudest gigs I’ve been to in a long time. My ears are still ringing even now. But the sound was excellent and the showmanship excellent. My mate who was with me commented on the backdrop and simple light rig before the show started – no video screens and just basic coloured floods, with a large sheet depicting what could have been a tattoo design. But as I pointed out, no amount of lights can make up for crap music and poor sound – and I was proved right, as the music was what really mattered here.

Myles Kennedy has been working with Slash for some time now, and the result has been pretty impressive from what I’ve heard on Planet Rock. Kennedy has a tenor voice which apparently spans four octaves, and is otherwise known as one of the members of Alter Bridge. I was impressed by how good he sounded live.

Another eye-opener was the band’s bassist. For most of the night I was convinced he was Taylor Hood – the lead singer with Crown Jewel Defense (another support band I was hugely impressed with, and who I’m keeping my eyes on). But I was wrong, even though he is the spitting image. He’s actually Canadian, Todd Kerns.

The eye-opening part was his vocals on the Guns’n’Roses covers that were played at the end of the show. He might look like Taylor Hood, but he sounds just like Axl Rose, and has a superb range.

Frank Sidoris on rhythm guitar and Brent Fitz on drums completed a solid line up.

They played a total of six songs from “Apocalyptic Love”, and a few from Slash’s first album – including my favourite, Starlight, due to Kennedy’s vocals. What I personally liked was the extended guitar solos – I could listen to those all night.

Nottingham Arena is an OK venue, but they overdo it a bit with the queuing system outside. I haven’t figured out yet why it was “women to the left, men to the right” – they actually forced couples to split up and queue separately, which was bloody ridiculous. It may have had something to do with that prat of a doorman who really liked the sound of his own voice.

It was cold outside, and they took bloody ages letting people in. Then there was the exorbitant price of the drinks – £4 for a pint of gnat’s piss lager, most of which was pre-poured to try and speed things up. I can’t figure out why these places can’t have proper beer taps on the counters, but instead choose to install useless, slow-pouring systems in backrooms which necessitates this wasteful “teamwork” (I reckon that at least four people were involved in serving each pint I bought).

Then there were the people – oh, how I love some of the people who attend these events.

There you are, standing in the queue to buy beer, with dozens of pints standing ready on the counter behind the bar. Unfortunately, every prat in front of you wants something else. Why? A pint of Stella was £4, but a bottle of Stella was £3.80. Of course, you aren’t allowed to have an actual bottle in your hand, so they have to pour it into a glass – and that takes time. And then you’ll get the “couple”. The stupid cow of the duo will inevitably not want beer, and will try to order something else. You’ll see her making hand gestures as if to say “just a small one”, and the bar person will be standing there listening, only to shake his head. For Christ’s sake, people, all the damned drinks are listed on the board, so why do you insist on trying to order something that they don’t have. It’s not a bleeding nightclub you’re in, and they don’t do Baileys or anything other than the cheapest wine.

And an annoying trend at these gigs is the growing tendency to try and create a “mosh pit” by people who are only just out of nappies. You get young males who suddenly, and without warning, try to charge through people as if they’re not there (I grabbed one and threatened to smack him if he did it again. He wasn’t so big after that, and slunk away). Trust me, children, grown ups at grown up concerts don’t do mosh pits. And I certainly don’t.

With one or two of them, as they began running into people, you could almost see that they’d got an erection out of it. Bloody juveniles.

But all that aside, it was a great night. And as you can see I got some good photos out of it being close to the front. All followed by a very decent curry (as usual) at the Mogal-e-azam up by Rock City.

At long last, Rush will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.

Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after their initial record release (that would have been around 1999 for Rush). The Hall Of Fame (HoF) started in 1986, but if you read up on it it is riddled with suspicion over the processes it uses to admit people.

Rolling Stone magazine, which is firmly connected to the HoF, has long held a grudge against Rush and overlooked them in favour of such “musical luminaries” as Grandmaster Flash and other (c)rap acts, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Gladys Night, The Bee Gees, and so on. Rap isn’t rock & roll, nor is disco (Donna Summer is also being inducted this time around), nor is Elton bloody John.

The award is totally meaningless – something which Rush are all too aware of, having been overlooked for nearly 15 years, while upstarts like U2 got in the second they became eligible.

A case of justice eventually being done in order to correct a gross injustice.

I went to a great show on Monday, 5th November, at Nottingham’s Rock City.

I heard Steel Panther on Planet Rock last year, when just about the only song of theirs that can be played in public without upsetting people was aired. So I kept a lookout for them touring. I wasn’t disappointed.

Steel Panther is variously described under such genres as glam rock, comedy rock, heavy metal, and hair metal. If I was going to add my own description I’d class them as a very adult version of The Darkness, and by that I mean you wouldn’t want your granny to see them and – if you were a decent parent – your kids, either.

They come from California and released their debut album Feel The Steel in 2009. From what I’d been picking up myself, they were getting rave reviews and I wanted to see them live. Apparently, tickets sold out almost immediately for the Rock City gig and several of their upcoming UK shows are also sold out.

The band members have suitably glam names – Michael Starr (vocals), Lexxi Foxxx (bass), Satchel (guitar), and Stix Zadinia (drums) – and are huge posers. Lexxi Foxxx reminds me a bit of Marilyn from the 80s pop scene (in looks), and he spent the evening with a sequinned hand-mirror fixing his hair. The others were just really in-your-face.

All four of them are brilliant musicians – Satchel’s guitar solo, which involved him playing drums at the same time, was fantastic to watch, and included classic riffs from the likes of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. But they’re also great comedians and experts at manipulating the crowd.

After the first song they spent about 10 minutes telling jokes. I had to laugh when Starr suddenly pointed and shouted “Hey, boobies out” as some of the girls started lifting their shirts. Apparently this is par for the course at their shows. There were frequent periods of jokes and other talking, but it didn’t ruin the show in any way.

I laughed again when Starr climbed on to the top drum step, made as if to jump off, then stepped down one or two, jumped, and fell over (all choreographed). The others walked over to him, looked down, and said “he’s all right, he’s all right”. Then Satchel shouted “who wants to see him jump off the top f—— step”?” He promptly did it with the splits, and properly this time. The whole show was filled with stuff like this, in between brilliant rock songs and consummate showmanship.

If you don’t mind swearing, suggestive lyrics, and over-the-top showmanship, you’ve just got to get to one of Steel Panther’s shows.

I went to a good gig on Saturday at Nottingham,’s Rescue Rooms.

A while back I saw a band on one of the music channels – I think it was on Kerrang, in one of its brief moments away from promoting rap and hip hop. They were called Evarose. This was the song I saw – it’s called “Best Left Alone”. I was immediately taken by the song and I put them on my “watch” list”.

I was duly (well, eventually) notified that they were coming to Nottingham and so I bought tickets. They were support for another band called “Straight Lines”. Also supporting were Summerlin – who I saw a few months ago at the CJD gig.

Summerlin aren’t really my cup of tea! They could be – there’s no question that they have talent – but every song they play sounds the same, which isn’t helped by the fact that you can’t hear their lyrics. Of course, that might have had something to do with the acoustics – small rooms with a stage about 6 metres by 5 are never going to be acoustically pure – but Rock City (and the attached Rescue Rooms) is like a rabbit warren, with getting on for a dozen such locations.

What was interesting though was that as the sets moved from Summerlin, to Evarose, and then to Straight Lines, there was a noticeable progression from raw to polished. That’s not to say that Evarose weren’t polished – it was just an overall impression I got.

Evarose have a pretty good stage presence (as good as it can be on a tiny stage), and although a couple of their videos make them look very teen-poppy their sound is quite heavy.

I’m not going to go into individual song details, even though I bought Evarose’s existing CD after I’d seen them on the TV. All I will say is that if you get a chance you’ve got to go and see them. If they get the right break, they’re a band that will definitely go places.

The annoying thing is that CJD are also a band in the same position – and yet the gig at the Rescue Rooms (well, two actually, as they said they’d had a bummer there when I saw them last year supporting The Darkness) – was a washout because of the low turnout.

And yet every crap rap act going seems to get air time.