I'm pleased it was good, I wanted to go but it sold out before I remebered to check for tickets. I love the Shepherds Bush Empire, the best sounding venue in London IMO.Anyone at the Weller gig at Shepherds Bush last night? I was full of trepidation after a poor experience seeing him in Llandudno 18 months ago (his set list and the sound system were not to my liking)
Good news if you are seeing him on his new tour - he was back to excellent. Yes he played a lot of his forthcoming album (called ‘66’ out in May) as you’d expect . But a decent dose of back catalogue and a Jam and Style Council track each thrown in too (Mick Talbot was a guest on the keyboard for the Style Council track)
The Necks in Liverpool last night. First time seeing them for me, and I only know the Travel album, so only had a rough idea of what to expect. A real journey of a performance, ebbing and flowing and dropping into a real groove in each half. I have to admit after a 20 minute break in the middle, sat in the bar watching a bit of champions league of my phone, my head was not in the zone at the start of the second set and it took me about 10 minutes to get into it, and all of sudden it just locked into that groove again and as you say, what felt like 20 minutes was actually 50 and it was all over. Really primal stuff. I could quite easily have gone all Woodstock covering myself in mud and flailing my arms all over the place.The Necks, Nottingham, last night. The first set with a stirring 15-minute see-sawing two chord climax (complete with audience whooping) and the second that felt about twenty minutes long but was in fact fifty. Unforgettable gig, great, quirky venue.
The view from my seat before the gig. That’s (bassist) Lloyd Swanton under the word ‘skylight’, talking to the punters. He was manning the merch stand at half-time and between us we completely failed to manage to persuade the Paypal app on my phone to let me buy a CD by scanning their QR code. During the second half I had a brainwave, went back to see Lloyd post-gig and did the job by typing in the address manually. ‘Well, that one went really smoothly, didn’t it?’ he laughed. How did you get that weird part-piano, part-not effect on Travel, I asked him? ‘You’d need to speak to him’ he replied, nodding towards Chris Abrahams, who was talking to the couple next to me. ‘Only,’ he added, lowering his voice conspiratorially, ‘he probably won’t know either!’
I’ve been to a few free lunchtime concerts at The Tung , and will be going on the 1st and 8th of May, very good venue as you say.I was also at the Necks Liverpool concert last night. Two remarkably different sets; the first lighter in tone, with interplay between percussion (repetitive cymbal with drumstick and snare drum with soft beater) and piano (repeated phrases almost entirely in the middle register, punctuated with a phrase that echoed the beaten snare drum), with this extraordinary bass mediating between them. I felt that I was listening to both sharply defined acoustic notes, and out of focus amplified notes (almost as if they were underwater) at one and the same time. Very unusual. The second set was much darker for the first 15 minutes or so, with eery stroked cymbal and rattle, echoed by piano stuck in the lowest register, with the bass meandering all over the place. Suddenly this lifted, and the piece moved towards an intense climax. Quite an extraordinary concert - I'd like to see this group again, and I think I'm going to have to explore their back catalogue - I know only one of their CDs at present.
I was also impressed with the Tung auditorium, which apparently opened about 2 years ago. Hopefully their programme of concerts will continue to develop.