Ian Jones had previously stated that the Manchester show, at the Walkabout club in Manchester as ‘a bit of an experiment for the band’. For those not familiar with the place, The Walkabout is a bar and nightclub in the city centre. To my knowledge they’ve never had a live band before; I tend to associate the place with office parties. The event was part of a ‘classic rock night’ featuring two DJ sets as well as Karnataka’s performance. I susoect that organisers are on a bit of a learning curve on running this sort of event, resulting in one of the stranger gigs I’ve been to in recent years.
Not that I can fault Karnataka’s performance, every bit as strong as it was at Crewe the week before. The new material came over especially well, especially the one with drum loops (Lisa commented on my very bad dancing during that one!) From the front, the sound was OK, but nothing like as good as the perfect sound at Crewe Limelight; don’t know how it sounded further back. They missed out the drum solo this time round.
There appeared to be some confusion over how long the band were supposed to play. The band finished playing the usual set closer ‘The Gathering Light’, when Lisa announced they’d been asked to play a bit longer, so they played three or four more songs. But what happened to ‘Out of Reach’? Was there supposed to have been an encore? The moment the band left the stage, the second DJ set started up without a break!
That DJ set, apparently by the former singer of the Inspiral Carpets, was to be honest, pretty dire. What was billed as a ‘classic rock set’ seemed to contain an inordinate amount of rap. Ugh.
Still an enjoyable evening, even though the feel was more that of a pub gig than a rock club.
