Author Archives: Tim Hall

Michael Schenker, Manchester Academy 3, 9th Feb 2008

By all reports, his tour last year was a complete fiasco. There were reports of him shambling about too drunk to play properly, the tour came to a premature end when he injured himself falling off the stage. Many wondered if his career was over.

But this year, the blond axe hero was back, with something to prove.

Billed as ‘Michael Schenker and Friends’, the band were a bunch of unknowns (I’m told they were Swiss). They were more than competant most of the time, although the singer struggled with with the opening number ‘Assault Attack’, lacking some of the power and range that Graham Bonnet had in the early 80s. But he coped well enough with Gary Bardens’ and Phil Mogg’s songs, and anyway, it wasn’t the unknown singer what the 400-odd punters had come to see. It was the blond german playing that iconic Flying V.

And he was both sober and absolutely brilliant. It’s clear when he’s on form he’s lost none of his ability to reel off the incredible solos that blew me away when I first heard his music a quarter of a century ago. The setlist was a bit of a surprise; while I expected to hear ‘Rock Bottom’ and ‘Doctor Doctor’, I hadn’t expected half the set to be UFO numbers like ‘Let it Roll’ and ‘Too Hot to Handle’. The other half was early MSG material, mostly from the first two albums, including, of course, ‘Attack of the Mad Axeman’.

While Michael is still fighting his demons, he seems have them at bay for the time being. Let’s hope he stays that way, and continues to give performances like this one.

As has been widely reported in the media, Planet Rock, the digital classic rock station, is likely to close unless the current owners can find a buyer.

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the station. When I first bought a DAB radio I used to listen to it quite a bit, but I gradually got bored with it as they seemed to play the same limited playlist of songs over and over again, so it got ignored in favour of the good old CD player.

In the last few years, Rock (as opposed to that watered-down genre of music called “indie”) has undergone a revival; there’s a huge number of recent bands producing the sort of music that sits comfortably alongside the likes of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd that dominates Planet Rock’s playlist. Would have been nice to hear any of the bands I’ve blogged about over the past few years on the air.

Yesterday was the official release date (I think) of the retail edition of Fish’s excellent “13th Star”. So why did Nicky Horne play the hoary old “Market Square Heroes” rather than something off the new album on his show last night? Sort of sums the station up, really.

No definite release date for the album “Visionary Position”, but Panic Room are finally hitting the road.

• April 11th – Lydney Town Hall (support: Mermaid Kiss)
• April 12th – Classic Rock Society, Herringthorpe Leisure Centre,
  Rotherham (support: The Dreaming Tree)
• April 13th – The Point, Cardiff (support: Mermaid Kiss)
• April 17th – Bar Riga, Southend-on-Sea
• April 19th – The Peel, Kingston-on-Thames (double headline with Jump)

Time and finances probably mean I’m only going to be able to make one of these, not sure which of them it will be. Rotherham is the closest, but one of the two with Mermaid Kiss is looking tempting.

Sometimes, you just do need to spend the whole of Sunday afternoon listening to Marillion albums. I got through this lot over the course of six and a half hours.

• Marillion.com
• Somewhere Else
• Marbles
• Anoraknophobia
• Afraid of Sunlight
• Seasons End

Some of those I hadn’t listened to for ages, and I’d forgotton how great those albums are. I still love the much-maligned Anoraknophobia (nothing containing ‘Quartz’ or ‘The is the 21st Century’ can possibly be considered a bad album), and even dotcom, which I used to hate, has got better over time. And the oldies AoS and SE (the last of which is 19 years old!) haven’t dated at all.