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When football disappoints there’s always music to rejoice in. Musics ALWAYS a win imo. So Thursday it was Tom Jones in Notts, dragged along by Mrs F but I enjoyed it a lot, the hits interspersed with some really thoughtful covers, ‘deep cuts’ and heavily rearranged stuff. Last night a two piece acoustic act in the local pub, a decent jolly up and I even got up for a ‘turn’. Tonight the quality R&B of Nine Below Zero at The Flowerpot. I’ve not done three gigs in three days for a decade
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In a previous post I signalled I was going to the Paul Young gig in Utrecht. That was last night.
Veronica Fuscaro, a Swiss singer/songwriter opened the show. Not my music but she has a very good voice. She had a guitar with her and a 2 microphone set up with 2 electronic wizardry apparatus at her feet. One was the basic pedals etc guitarists use. The other was a mystery. After her opening song she explained what it was. It was a sort of loop/reloop machine reacting to sounds picked up by one of the mic's. She started each song drumming a beat on her guitar followed by a couple of bits of background singing and rhythm guitar. The machine appeared to have about 8 keys/pedals and she did a bit of a dance on them to get the background working the way it's supposed to. She then started the song and the "lead" guitar work. Impressive.
Then we got the main show. In his set, PY played 2 songs from his newest album and they were OK, no more than that. The rest of the set was some of his older stuff and some cover songs such as one based loosely on "Memphis Soul Stew", part of the "Stew" saw him singing "aint gonna bump no more with no big fat woman". At several junctions he appeared to run out of breath and not finish a line of a song. Classics of his such as Common people and Lay my hat, amongst others showed a very limited vocal range and nowhere near the range he once had. Little audience communication and he seemed to be "going through the motions". The band was, musically, tight and the 2 background singers came over well and appeared to be enjoying themselves. The band had no connection with the crowd. By the end of the 70 minutes 20% had already left. PY and the band left the stage and the audience (probably half of what was left) headed for the exit, us included.
Complete and utter waste of an evening apart from the meal we had in the restaurant before the show which was very good. This now has me worrying Gladys Knight in June might be of a similar quality. Also has me doubting whether I'll bother with tickets for "an evening with Betty LaVette".
Ratings:
Victoria 7
Background singers 7
Band 6
PY 2 at a pushComment
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Unbelievably he’s not far off 70, MA…so I guess a bit of breathlessness is to be expected. Seems to be a long tour too, although the UK leg doesn’t appear to have many (any?) very prestigious venues which possibly tells its own story.
Got tickets for Elbow at Nottingham in May. Hoping for better luck than the last time we were due to see them - two summers ago - and I got Covid.
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Regrettably PY has been like that for over a decade, I saw him in the late noughties and he sounded like he was on his last legs then.
On this subject I’m doing three gigs in a week for the first time since lockdown - last night it was TesseracT (correct spelling, shouty metal) at Rock City, Friday Big Boy Bloater (bluesy roots growler) at Derby’s new cool venue The Hound Dog and Saturday The Small Fakers (apparently ****-hot tribute band) at The Flowerpot. If anyone’s looking for some damned good music I recommend Big Boy Bloater, ‘Bloat’ to his fans and friendsComment
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Don't disregard the LiMiTsComment
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Tbh, I don’t think he’s ever bettered his Q Tips days (still got the vinyl)…bit like Rod Stewart’s best days ended when he left the Faces…and the pair of them have gone on to become just another balladeer…the latter rather more lucratively.Originally posted by Andy_Faber View PostComment
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…featuring, if it’s the same vinyl i have, the best soul song ever written by an Englishman IMO ‘A Man Can’t Lose (What He Don’t Have), often credited to Paul Young himself but actually written by his sax player, Iscar BlandamerOriginally posted by ramAnag View PostComment
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Forgot to mention that the sound guys appeared to have set the volumes to maximise the band and background singers and minimise PY to avoid too much embarrassment. They failed.
A friend of ours is going to the PY gig tomorrow in Haarlem. I'll pass on her views when she posts them.Comment
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Quick report on the Big Boy Bloater gig last night - the venue (Hound Dog on Friargate) is a well ppointed club sized venue, can't make its mind up if its a restaurant with music or a gig venue that does food - my bet long term it'll be the former, lots of couples there with meal gubbins on their tables when Isauntered in, just a few lone blokes. Bloat was on good form both with the music - if I could liken the sound to a band you might even know it'd be Dr Feelgood - and between songs banter. 'The Limits', his two piece backing band, featured a drummer who'd only joined two days before with four days notice after an illness to the normal drummer, and a fine job he did behind the kit. Main highlight of the night was Bloat dedicating a song to me (we're on friendly terms), interesting fact is that he probably makes most of his tour profit from selling merchandise including that obselete media, the CD, somewhat frustrated by the fact that his record company recently moved the location of their storage facility and sent all their stock of his albums to landfil...Comment
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PY II in Haarlem. Apparently the 1st half of the concert was flat and iffy and then he moved on to "party time", upping the tempo... according to our friend it almost made up for the first half...Comment
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Meanwhile my threesome this week results in a victory for …The Small Fakers, an excellent tribute band in a packed and sweaty Flowerpot. Special kudos to the lead singer who not only looked just a bit like Steve Marriott from a distance but also managed to avoid sounding like Norman Wisdom when attempting Steve’s voiceOriginally posted by MadAmster View PostComment
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One of the benefits of TTR’s constant YouTube spamming is that from time gems like this come up on my feed. Pure joy as far as I’m concerned, Toby’s 19 now and I think on tour, we’ll worth checking out and you can be sure he’s got even better. No it’s not a sneaky link to GB News
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Superb, brilliant stuff. ‘Pure joy’ indeed…and the best use of YouTube for a long time.Originally posted by Andy_Faber View Post
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