Day 40 – Sharply Dressed Men: Today has been spent almost entirely editing photos from the ZZ Top/Steel Panther show in Wolverhampton last night.  I was one of only five photographers allowed to cover the show, so feel really, really honoured to have done so.  My review will go up on The Daily Dust soon.

Day 39 – Feel the Steel: This handsome chap is called Satchel, and he plays guitar in the amazing band Steel Panther.  I interviewed him this evening for The Daily Dust before his band opened up for classic rock legends ZZ Top at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.  Death to all but metal!

Day 19 – Busy, Busy, Busy: Forgive me for living in the past somewhat, but today has all been about yesterday for me.  I’ve spent the whole day editing a mountain of pics from last night’s Papa Roach gig in Wolverhampton, which is why today’s pic is another from then.  The guy in today’s shot is Matthew Leone, a very nice chap who plays bass with Madina Lake.  I interviewed him for The Daily Dust and grabbed a few shots of him afterwards.  He was very welcoming and genuine, as were the rest of his bandmates, and it was a pleasure to get to meet him!

Day 18 – Are You Ready to Rock?: So, I’ve just got back from one of the gigs of the year at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, and I was lucky enough to meet all of the bands involved and get some cool portraits of them.  The show was headlined by the stars of today’s picture – Papa Roach – who were really friendly and welcoming people and a pleasure to do a portrait session with as they are one of my all-time favourites.  Then there was support from Madina Lake who were possible the nicest and most genuine guys I’ve ever met in a band, and also British lot Heaven’s Basement.  I was covering the gig for my new live music section on the Daily Dust, so keep checking there for the review and interviews from tonight’s show.

Another one of my fave gigs of last year…

Intimate warm-up shows for big festival events can only go one of two ways; Either the band lacklusterly conserve energy, using their audience as guinea pigs for a predictable list of their popular hits, peppered with plugs for the upcoming album.

Or, in Kasabian’s case on Thursday, August 21^st at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, they are a chance for the ultimate raucous dress rehearsal – hugely energetic and designed to please, complete with a laser show and backdrop fit for 20,000 fans, let alone the venue’s 5,000 capacity.

No one really should have doubted whether the five-piece from Leicester would muster up the effort to put on a show just three nights prior to their Creamfields debut. After all, the band had a score to settle after whispered criticisms of the new look indie/psychedelic retro genre-bending headliners the organisers had picked for 2008.

‘Shoot The Runner’ teed off the set and was obviously designed to induce a frenzied start to seamlessly introduce the band onto the big dance stage with its psychedelic electro sound. The indie rockers have often been scoffed at for sticking to a ‘Kasabian By Numbers’ template for each of their selected ‘barnstormers’ and indeed, they are not a band to miss the chance to bring out their best bits. But the Wolverhampton gig was deliciously self-indulgent, leaving the crowd in no doubt of their class and intentions for their inaugural dance-fest appearance.

Tom Meighan’s charm offensive wooed the hoards of converted Kasabianites on the back of their self-titled debut and follow-up, ‘Empire’, whose stand out tracks blew through the hardcore indie naysayers like a tank through a feeble front line.

Two new album tracks, ‘Fast Fuse’, with its big beat middle section and the bluesy ‘Fire’ were instant hits at the Civic. By the time the Leicester troupe unleashed the spine tingling ‘Doberman’, complete with faultless trumpet solo and ‘Reason Is Treason’, the crowd were theirs. The swaggering Tom sufficiently warmed and kneaded his congregation until they were putty in his hands and genuinely applauded their efforts after most of the tracks. Nice touch Tom.

Perhaps the laser and animated graphics show, which by the way would have impressed in a venue ten times the size, was the icing on the Kasabian-cake. But no one would underestimate the juggernaut of sound the band produced at the gig, nor what was, under any circumstances, an amazing, charismatic performance.

The band ended fittingly with the sing-along ‘LSF’ – another track to win over the dance masses at Creamfields and leave them singing along into the night, chewing on their gums.

One thing’s for sure, although Tom, Serge and the rest of the band’s egos might appear as big as their sound, they are still humbled by the success and multi-genre acceptance they receive. And it is richly deserved.

Last night with a thousand other midlifers to see three bands from my youth at Wolverhampton Civic Hall. I usually avoid this sort of musical necrophilia, but I thought it would be a nice pre-Christmas treat for Mrs D, who can still play an Ultravox album without irony.

One of the inevitables with this sort of “back from the dead” tour is seeing how well the performers have weathered over the the years.  Pretty good in most instances, although there was the odd middle aged spread being held in by the apparently compulsory grey suits.

Heaven 17 were fun.  Someone’s son on drums, I suspect (certainly not an original member).  Glenn Gregory (vocals, trilby, waistcoat) was obviously utterly delighted to be performing.  Great female vocals too. Temptation predictably brought the house down and I could have done with that being twice as long.

I have a soft spot for ABC, having seen them in a very intimate pre-tour warm up gig in the early 80s.  I was particularly looking forward to seeing the drummer, who had quite an individual style.  Disappointingly the sticksman they have now was much more conventional in his technique.

They did have quite a charistmatic female percussionist/vocalist though, which made up for it a bit.

It was all very professional, but in the old days Martin Fry really committed to those nonsense lyrics he writes.  After so long, and with a new album (they did a couple of tracks, which were fine, but didn’t get the crowd going) there’s a feeling that he’d rather be doing the new stuff.

Human League

And then the main attraction.  And no doubt about the stature of Human League in this package.  Ambitious staging (two level, giant LED screen across the full width of the stage).

Shock to see the once hair-curtained Phil Oakey now with a male pattern baldness No 1. Still looking good, though and with that insistent baritone voice in good shape.

Of the two female  singers, Susan Ann Sulley (the blonde one) is great value.  Looking magnificent, toned and blingy, and with great stagecraft (actually better than Oakey, who is a better singer than he is a frontman).

Joanne Catherall, unfortunately, is the Andrew Ridgely of the outfit.  Looking desperately uncomfortable in an ill-advised flapper dress, she looks every inch the girl that Phil snatched from a Sheffield disco nearly thirty years ago – if that disco was a gay bar frequented by transvestite plumbers.

But the set was one electropop classic after another.  There was much wearing of keyboards. Giant love hearts rolled around the stage to Love Action.  Fascination, Don’t You Want Me… you know the canon, and they (Catherall apart) delivered it with conviction.

Returning quickly for a remarkably fresh-sounding Being Boiled, they spoiled it for me by finishing with Electric Dreams. Hey guys, that’s not a Human League song, it’s pure fromage.

The audience didn’t care, though.  They went back home happy, aching slightly, not caring (until the cold morning) about work and wondering where the last 25 years have gone.

(for catsandbooks, disneytime and jan h: you know who you are)

LSD. The other night at Wolves, Guy Garvey told his delighted audience he was full of the stuff. He immediately clarified his comment: ‘I mean, Lancashire Self Doubt. ‘ Self doubt? How so? This is a frontman who has more self-possession and lyrical balance than almost any other songwriter I could name. He aims true and he hits; when he writes, when he plays, when he sings. From the moment he stepped out to welcome Jessca Hoop onto the stage to the moment he took his last bow we knew we were in safe hands. For a start, there was the way he treated Hoop. Jesca Hoop is a gifted writer herself and her voice has an eccentric but unerring heavenwards trajectory (in fact, it can swoop and dive just about anywhere). But her speaking voice is apologetic and too quiet, and so the audience, even the front few rows, could hardly hear what she was saying about her songs. Garvey, perhaps realising this was a problem, did his best to make sure she was listened to. He didn’t hector us into it, though, he simply gave her a recommendation: ‘one of the best singer songwriters around.’ And that was enough, especially for those of us lucky enough to be at the front. Where’s the LSD in that?

Safer still was the beginning of Elbow’s set. Various members of the band stood like a row of northern angels heralding in the gig as they stuck up the trumpet blasts that begin ‘Starlings.’ With each blast, spotlights lit the trumpeters for a second. Such a trick could look too choreographed with some bands, but not here. It was simply right, a beckoning of the audience, a fanfare for us. I’ve said before that Garvey plays us, his people, even better than he plays anything else, and this move felt like his and the band’s ‘tankpark salute’, a bolt of sheer joy. A jumpstart.

Twisting tunes from Leaders of the Free World and Seldom Seen Kid fluidly together, Elbow made every song feel part of the last, and yet every song had its own particular explosive excellence. ‘Grounds for Divorce’ became frighteningly sexy (what a loss of control I felt when they played it; did it show on my face?); ‘Station Approach’ reached further than ever into its longing when it arrived in the encore. But the real joy was hearing songs that I had previously thought slightly weak utterly transfigured. ‘Weather to Fly’ is a perfect example. On CD it seemed a sweet song– but perhaps too sweet. What they did with it live, however, was to begin by getting all the band to go to ‘Craig’s room’ (i.e. the space around the keyboards). Someone came on with a tray of shots. Each member of the band chinned one, after which they sang, flawlessly and a cappella, the first verse and chorus, before emerging from ‘Craig’s room’ to sing to and with the audience. Suddenly we were in a teenager’s house party again, all of us, and the melody was kicking like a horse.

When I listened to Garvey at Wolves, as was the case with other gigs, I attempted my usual dissolve into the voice of the lead singer. So, what did the Doubter deliver? In profile, Garvey looks like a 30s Hollywood hoodlum crossed with a falcon; he seems part Tough, part Windhover. But face on, he has a different kind of beauty: there’s also a childlike delight that ignites at the rightness of a note–his note or someone else’s. Somewhere along his sternum he feels it when a song moves into the right place for himself and the audience; his body seems at times to curve protectively round certain phrases. And, as a friend of mine recently observed, his arms are especially attractive. Some artists sing with their crotches (Elvis, Nick Cave); some with their chest and throat (Liam Gallagher, David Gedge); some with their lips (Richard Hawley), and some, like Thom Yorke, sing as though the melody is rippling around the inside of their skulls, like single malt around a tumbler. Garvey, however, sings with his arms and, by extension, his sense of touch. His arms are part of his voice, and, live, his voice has tentacles–it reaches everywhere.

This ability to touch obviously gives his voice a certain type of sensuality (think of the way he seems to run his fingers over the line ‘Sweet Jesus, I’m on fire’), but it also can simply translate as an affectionate embrace. In fact, there was something very levelling about the way he and the band went about things on Wednesday. His ‘touch’ is also political. Clues to the political groundedness of his approach came in the way he treated Hoop, but also in his insistence on thanking the lighting director for her work and getting us to thank her too; in getting us to wish the lighting director’s mum a happy 60th; in showering us with a canister of glittery silver paper; and most of all in a bit of ‘Kung Fu Fighting.’

That bit of Lancashire Kung Fu crowned the evening. Garvey, announcing the last song on the main part of the set, told us that we would need to sing Elbow back on stage if we wanted an encore. And, in his usual levelling way, he asked us for suggestions. I was just about to shout out ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You’ when someone beat me to it and bellowed ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ (we’d already had about 3 ideas, including ‘Tainted Love’). Garvey consulted the band and informed us that ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ it was, in the true ’spirit of socialism.’ ‘Any socialists in the audience?’ he had asked at one point. Regrettably, only three people said ‘yes.’ Still, this decision felt properly egalitarian: some kind of equality of exchange would take place when we sang the band back into existence. After a bit of rehearsal in which Garvey reminded us of the tune–and realised that part of it was slightly racist– Elbow trooped off to ease their bladders and refill their glasses (how many different drinks could Garvey neck in the one evening?). Meanwhile, we got busy. At first, it was all dreadfully shambolic: one side of the crowd tried to start with ‘Everybody was Kung Fu fighting’ about 6 seconds after the other, making us sound less like a wall and more like a brawl of sound. But then, as the desire to see those northern angels once again suddenly bolted through us, we got it together. As one, we dropped in to that ‘Whooowhuooohh’ bit in the middle, chanting it in a glorious loop. And, after a couple of minutes, when this very silly song had transformed itself into something unexpectedly lovely, the band came out to us, grinning, drinks in hand.

Lancashire Self Doubt ? Well, if Garvey feels it, he doesn’t show it. And what I feel, after this gig, is a desire for another kind of LSD: Lancashire Self Determination. What’s so wonderful about Elbow, apart from their skill, is a kind of local energy. Just as Irn Bru was ‘made in Scotland-from girders,’ Elbow are forged in Lancashire, and in such a way as to make London and the self-satisfied south seem redundant. So, never mind all that crap about the North being dead (financially and culturally) (1); those in the know will want to head up Bury way, to the People’s Republic of Elbow. You might not need a passport to cross the border (this isn’t Pimlico) (2) but I suggest that before you travel, you look up the words to ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ and practice a few scales. ‘Saint Peter in satin’ will ask you to sing before he admits you. But once inside, you’ll find you’ve arrived at the centre of the musical universe.

1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/14/britishidentity.conservatives 

2)

See Garvey do his thing with the metal bar. Hot damn!

this review in google-english!

Portishead. Géant.

Bon ok je développe… Contrairement aux idées reçues, ce groupe se prête très bien au live. Accueil incroyable à Wolverhampton, avec un public de gens pas blasés, ça change un peu de Londres !

La voix de Beth Gibbons donne des frissons dignes d’un pic à glace enfoncé dans la colonne vertébrale. Non, ça ne fait pas mal, contrairement aux apparences. Timidité maladive, vraie ou fausse modestie… ce n’est qu’après Glory Box qu’on a droit à un thank you du bout des lèvres. Beth semble presque gênée de l’accueil formidable qui lui est réservé. Elle finira tout de même par aller serrer quelques mains tendues devant la scène !

Beth est accompagnée du guitariste Adrian Utley et de Geoff Barrow aux percussions et platines. La formation est complétée en live par batterie, basse, claviers.

Dès les premières mesures de chaque chanson, on prend en pleine tête la mesure du succès énorme du groupe, et du nombre incroyable de morceaux qui ont marqué nos oreilles et nos esprits ces dernières années. Les souvenirs reviennent du plus profond de nos inconscients, bercés adolescents par la mélancolie maladive des mélodies dark soul trip-hop…

L’éclairage est d’une rare élégance, minimaliste et tout en sobriété, ça colle bien à la musique. Pratique très en vogue, des feeds vidéo live sont projetés en très grand derrière le groupe. On a du Portishead plein les mirettes, sous tous les angles.

En highlight, une version acoustique de Wandering Star, le rappel qui débute sur Roads, beaucoup de tubes de l’album Dummy, et mes préférées du dernier album Third : Silence, The Rip, et Machine Gun. Cet album laisse tomber un peu le côté sombre-mélancolique pour se recentrer sur des sons plus rock et plus électroniques. Enfin je vous laisse écouter et vous faire votre propre avis.

La tracklist (en gras, les tracks du dernier album Third) :

Wicca (Silence?)
Hunter
Mysterons
Mystic (The Rip)
Glory Box
Numb
Magic Doors
Wandering Star (acoustic)
Machine Gun
Over
Sour Times
Nylon Smile
Cowboys

Threads
Roads
Peaches

En bonus, la traduction de l’intro de l’album, un sample de Claudio Campos, instructeur de Capoeira… “Be aware to the rules of three. What you give will return to you. This lesson you have to learn. You only receive what you deserve” . Voilà, c’est dit, tu ne reçois que ce que tu mérites. Encore une histoire de Karma tout ça… Merci à Havah du forum Portishead.

Désolé pour les photos pas géniales, je fais ce que je peux à distance avec mon Ixus 850 IS. Si quelqu’un a un D3 sous la main, je suis preneur bien sûr. Ah oui il faudra que je muscle mes petits bras aussi, ces bêtes là sont plutôt lourdes parait-il…

En attendant, on peut trouver des photos plus jolies sur flickr, et aussi sur le forum Portishead, qui nécessite une inscription mais on n’est plus à ça près !

Wolverhampton Civic Hall – 13/04/2008 – Photos Pia

The show that laughs in the face of science

Strap on your saftey goggles boys and girls: science’s greatest and most volatile show is now on tour across the UK. Join Brainiac Joe on an anarchic and explosive ride as he escapes from Brainiac HQ and with your help, delves fearlessly into the mysteries of science.

Tickets for the Brainiac live tour on March 25^th, Wolverhapton Civic Hall can be purchased from wolvescivic.co.uk

For more information visit brainiaclive.co.uk