Live Reviews Blog

Zappa Plays Zappa, 1st July 2006, Apollo Theatre, Manchester

When is a tribute band not a tribute band? When it’s lead by the late bandleader’s son, and includes several members of the original band? Zappa Plays Zappa is such a band.

Frank Zappa’s eldest son Dweezil put together a band including Zappa alumni Stevie Vai and Napoleon Murphy Brock, plus a bunch of young unknowns picked for their chops rather than name recognition, then, in the best tradition of Zappa senior, rehearsed them solidly for three months.

I only discovered Frank Zappa’s music in the 1990s, after he’s stopped touring. I can’t think of anyone else who’s successfully thrown rock, jazz, pop, classical and comedy into a blender in quite the way he did, and I never expected to be able to hear his music performed live. Until now.

The support was a 1973 concert film of Frank himself. As the film ended the eight musicians walked on stage and launched straight into the opening number (which was one of the few in the set I didn’t recognise!)

The setlist covered much of Frank’s lengthy career, but concentrated very heavily on the mid-70s, especially the Apostrophe(‘) and Roxy and Elsewhere albums. Since this is probably my favourite Zappa era, I’m not complaining. They played flawless renditions of favourites like “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black”, “Peaches en Regalia”, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow”, “Zomby Woof” and “Cosmic Debris”, as well as dazzlingly complex instrumentals like “The Black Page” and “Echidna’s Arf”. No “Dangerous Kitchen”, but with FZ’s vast back catalogue there’s now way they could possibly play everything.

Although it was probably Stevie Vai’s name that helped sell tickets, for my money the star was Napoleon Murphy Brock. He handled pretty much all the lead vocals, not just his own, but a lot originally sung by Frank himself, as well as some mean sax. Dweezil himself has matured into pretty impressive guitar player in his own right. To be honest I preferred his playing to Vai’s, which sounded a bit too clinical for my tastes.

The show was unfortunately marred by equipment problems part-way through, when Dweezil first lost his guitar signal, then got an electric shock of the microphone. “That wasn’t a nine volt battery!”, he exclaimed. It’s a tribute to the skill and showmanship of the band that they kept on playing, slotting in the keyboard and sax driven “Pound for a Brown” which didn’t need Dweezil’s guitar while they tried to fix the problems. They finally bypassed whatever box of tricked had failed and plugged the guitar straight into the amp, for a superb rendition of “Inca Roads”. Then there was a short interval while they checked the electrics for safety, before the band came back and played right through to the curfew without going offstage and coming back for an encore. Dweezil told us that “Sofa” was supposed to have been the end of the set.

The ghost of Frank returned for what was supposed to have been the first encore, as we were treated to archive footage of Frank soloing accompanied by the live band on stage; shades of the recent Frank Sinatra show in London.

A superb show, showing how a great band can still rise above equipment problems and still bring down the house. They head for America next.

All too often Marillion get written off as old dinosaurs living off their reputation. But as those who know their recent output can confirm, nothing could be further from the truth. Although they’ve existed since the early 80s, they’re a band that have consistently re-invented themselves every couple of albums, and they’ve exorcised the ghost of their former frontman Fish many years ago. The content of their last few albums bears little resemblance to the music they played when the big Scotsman was still in the band. Many consider their last two albums to contain some of the best music of their career; still containing the essence of what made them great in the first place, but adding elements of trip-hop and dub to the mix.

This is the ninth time I’ve seen Marillion live, and the third time at the Academy One in Manchester. As usual, the place was pretty full, if not quite sold out, and the queue to get in almost encircled the building.

Support was Aziz & Dal. Guitarist Aziz Ibrahim once replaced Jon Squire in The Stone Roses, and also appeared on Ian Brown’s later solo work. Here, accompanied just by Dal on tabla, plus a whole heap of guitar effects, he gave us a mostly instrumental set of what he describes as ‘Asian blues’. Mixing elements of eastern and western styles, his guitar sometimes produced sitar-like sounds, sometimes Floydian blues flourishes, and a lot of music which reminded me of parts of Robert Plant’s last album. His heavy use of echoplex even recalled the early days of Twelfth Night.

Marillion opened with “The Accidental Man”, with frontman Steve “H” Hogarth dressed as a demented old-fashioned schoolmaster, wearing a mortarboard and wielding a cane, with which he took pretend raps over the knuckles of the front row. The band were tight as ever, Pete Trewethas laying down wonderful basslines, and Steve Rothery reeling off many magnificent soaring solos in his trademark style. H added to the instrumentation at times, contributing keyboards and pink Les Paul to several songs.

Marillion aren’t one of those bands that plays the same set of standards every show; with such a high quality back catalogue the setlist varies hugely from tour to tour. This time the two hour set took in every post-Fish album with the exception the mostly dismal indie-flavoured “DotCom”. They went right back to the very beginning of the H era with “Seasons End” and a rousing “King of Sunset Town”. In contrast to their last show at this venue, they drew quite heavily from 1995′s Afraid of Sunlight, which they’d ignored completely last time round. Gentler reflective songs like “Beautiful” and the recent top ten single “You’re Gone” contrasted with the darker and more intense material such as “Mad” from Brave, and a surprise, “Cathedral Wall”, from Radiation, the latter sounding a lot less like Radiohead than it sounded on record. Like the band themselves, Marillion’s fanbase don’t live in the past, and recent songs like the dub-driven “Quartz” from 2002′s Anoraknophobia and the anthemic closing epic “Neverland” from last year’s Marbles have already become crowd favourites. The only weak spot was the final encore, a rather silly Christmas song with H dressed as Santa, which we could have done without.

People who dismiss Marillion as 80s relics don’t know what they’re missing. They may be in their 40s, and might not wear the currently fashionably skinny ties or sharp haircuts. But they play great music, and in my book sounding great is far more important than looking cool.

I think it’s a sign of a good concert if the music’s still playing in your head not just first thing the following morning, but well into the day.

Once described as ‘a blend of poetry, jazz and rock’, Van der Graaf Generator stood at the avant-garde end of progressive rock before splitting in 1978. I only discovered their music in the 1980s, so I’d never had the chance to see them live. But with the reforming at the beginning of this year, this was about to change. Having continually met up at the funerals of members of the road crew, they decided that if they were going to reform, it had better be while the four of them were all still alive.

The venue was Bridgewater Hall, Manchester’s premier classical concert hall. It’s a place more used to playing host to symphony orchestras than rock bands, which explains the unusual timing. VDGG were on stage just after 7:30, and finished their two hour set just after half-past nine, a time when a typical headliner is just about hitting the stage. Naturally for a symphony hall the acoustics were excellent, a far cry from the dreadful sound of far too many club gigs.

The set started deceptively quietly, with the gentle intro to “The Undercover Man” from 1975′s “Godbluff” album, before exploding into full-blown sound and fury. This was not your typical rock band. Lacking a bass player, their instrumental sound revolves around Hugh Banton’s sinister swirling organ and David Jackson’s furious saxes and flutes. Peter Hammill’s distinctive ‘Hendrix of the voice’ vocals were on fine form. Unlike too many 70s veterans, the voice that influenced artists as diverse as Fish and Johnny Rotten has lost none of it’s power. During some instrumental sections he prowled the stage like David Byrne’s sinister uncle, pacing back to the microphone at exactly the point where the vocals come back in. At other times he contributed towards the instrumental sound mostly on electric piano, but also occasionally on guitar.

I can’t remember the full setlist; my CD collection doesn’t include their whole back catalogue, and I didn’t recognise about a third of the setlist. I know they played most of “Godbluff”, included the two strongest numbers, “Every Bloody Emperor” and “Nutter Alert” from the new album, and closed with “Man-Erg” from “Pawn Hearts”.

This sort of dark and intense stuff can hardly be described as easy listening, with songs often exceeding ten minutes in length, frequent tempo changes, dramatic contrasts between quiet church organ and flute interludes followed by cacophonous walls of sound, plenty of minor keys, and some howling solos from David Jackson, sometimes playing two saxes as once. Peter Hammill’s theatrical vocals are definitely an acquired taste. I can easily forgive anyone for not liking their music; this stuff is not for the faint-hearted. But it’s rewarding for those prepared to make the effort to listen. And even reforming after 25 years, they’re very much a live force to be reckoned with.

Last Wednesday I went to Manchester Academy 3 to see Paradise Lost, one of the major influnces for my ficticious Ümläüt. Perhaps buying several albums and going to see the band live is a bit OTT for research for an RPG character, but I do quite their music…

There were two support bands. First up, Leaves Eyes, another of the currently fashionable subgenre of female-fronted metal bands following in the wake of the likes of Finland’s Nightwish and Italy’s Lacuna Coil. They play what I would describe as Viking-flavoured Euro-metal. Liv Kristine Espenæs Krull’s soprano vocals give them a distinctive sound, and she’s very much the visual focus of the band on stage. The twin guitars of Thorsten Bauer and Dr Who lookalike Mathias Röderer gave them a heavy sound in places, although some of their songs relied on programmed orchestral keyboards from Alexander Krull, who spent most of the set in the wings, and only appears to sing vocals on a couple of guitar-driven songs. They played an enthusiastic and entertaining short set. I think we’ll hear more of this band.

Second support, the Norwegian (almost) all-girl band Octavia weren’t quite as good. Technical problems delayed the start of their set. Darker and more gothy than Leaves Eyes, they didn’t seem quite as tight, and their songs weren’t as memorable. On the other hand, they appeared to be extremely young (one or two of them looked about seventeen), so maybe there will better music from them in the future.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Paradise Lost. They’d established a reputations as leaders of the “Northern Doom” scene of goth-metal, culminating in the excellent “Draconian Times” album. Then they kept changing their sound, delving into electronica, and found their fan base began evaporating. More recently they’ve returned to their metal roots, although I had yet to hear their latest album.

Paradise Lost opened with “Like a Fever” from Draconian Times, a statement of intent. We were treated to a little over an hour of dark and atmospheric metal. They played a token song, So Much Is Lost from the Depeche Mode like “Host”, some excellent goth rock numbers from the “One Second” album, and some oldies like “As I Die”, which vocalist Nick Holmes sang ‘clean’ rather than in the cookie-monster style of the original recording. One of the high spots was “Hallowed Ground”, one of their heaviest songs, with Gregor Mackintosh’s simple but devastatingly effective solo (yes I know it’s just a series of rising arpeggios and a wah-wah pedal, but it works!). Interesting moment on the final encore, “Just Say Words”, where the opening piano figure got a bigger reaction from the audience than the Nick Holmes’ announcement of the songs. He reckoned the audience was slow on the uptake; but it proved that I wasn’t the only person who recognised the intro but couldn’t remember what the song was called.

Overall, a good show, well worth braving a wet Wednesday evening, even if they didn’t attempt to summon Great Cthulhu.

I had mixed feelings when I heard Fish was going to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Marillion’s 1985 concept album “Misplaced Childhood” by playing album live in it’s entirety. Although many fans consider it to be their masterpiece, it’s never been one of my favourite Marillion albums; I have always preferred the underrated “Clutching at Straws” and “Fugazi”. And in the 17 years since Fish and Marillion went their separate ways, Fish has built up a solid back catalogue of his own solo work. Would Manchester Academy 2 see a triumphal revisit of past glories for old time’s sake? Or would Fish’s diminished voice fail to do the old material justice, and result in a pale shadow of what had once been?

Support was a female-fronted local band, The Haights, who played 70s-style hard rock with a funky edge. If they’d been Scottish, they might have been an early version of the band Frozen Gold from Iain Banks’ novel “Espediair Street”. They played a short but entertaining set, making up in enthusiasm what they lacked in experience.

The hall was packed by the time Fish took to the stage, launching straight into the highly-critical-of-America anthem ‘Big Wedge’. This managed to pack a punch even without the horn section from the original recording. His version on the second line, with “I’d just cleared immigration JFK-K-K” isn’t going to win him any friends in the Red States! This tour the band consisted of a returned Frank Usher on guitar, Steve Vantsis on bass, Tony Turrell on keys, John Tonks on drums, and a second guitarist and backing singer whose names I didn’t catch. Not quite as tight as the last time I saw Fish, back in 1999, but good enough.

The first half of the set was a greatest hits of his solo material, with most of the favourites, including ‘Credo’, ‘Brother 52′, ‘Goldfish and Clowns’ and ‘Family Business’. Fish’s voice held up most of the time, but did go ragged on one or two occasions, which made me wonder whether it would hold out for the whole show.

There was supposed to have been a ten-minute interval, but since things were running a few minutes late, the band remained on stage while Fish engaged in some banter with members of the audience. He told us how much he both loves and hates the film “Still Crazy” (about a 70s band on a comeback tour), because so much seems true to his own career. He keeps seeing “signs”, he told us. Behind the venue is a small park, and he saw a magpie that afternoon. This was A Sign, he told us! Of what?

The second half of the show was what many of the punters had really come for, the complete “Misplaced Childhood”. This was the point when the crowd really erupted. Large sections of the audience were singing along to Fish’s impenetrable and deeply personal lyrics. (My brother likened them to obsessive Morrisey fans; Ouch!) If Fish’s voice had been slightly shaky earlier on, he recovered his strength now, from the eerie ‘Pseudo Silk Kimono’, through the hit singles ‘Kayleigh’ and ‘Lavender’, the dark and twisted ‘Bitter Suite’ and the anthemic ‘Heart of Lothian’. The band made a good job of reproducing Marillion’s complex music, with Frank Usher making a credible stab at Steve Rothery’s guitar parts.

Call be a heretic, but I’ve always felt the first side of the original LP contained all the best moments, and the second side dragged a little. So it was tonight; although it still has it’s moments I think I’d rather have heard Fish’s later epic, ‘Plague of Ghosts’.

Having already overrun the official curfew, there was time for just one encore. I was expecting Fish’s traditional encore, ‘The Company’, but the big man decided to go right back to the dawn of time and treat the audience to a rousing version of Marillion’s very first single, ‘Market Square Heroes’. Are you following me?

Overall, a good show, if not quite a great one. Fish’s voice will never be what it was twenty years ago, but it was far from the disaster I feared it might be. The band continue on tour in England (but surprisingly not London, or Scotland), then to south America before returning for some more European dates in the summer.

Official Fish Website www.the-company.com

There are so many 70s bands on the road with just one or two original members nowadays that the dividing line between an original band and a tribute act is getting just a little blurred. To take a random example, is a Thin Lizzy fronted by Jon Sykes really worthy of the name?

Both Barclay James Harvest and Asia are down to just one original member, bassist and vocalist Les Holroyd in the case of BJH, and ex-Buggles keyboardist Geoff Downes in the case of Asia. (To confuse things further, there are now two competing BJHs on the gig circuit!) Are they really ‘genuine’ bands? And how much does it really matter anyway? Manchester Academy 2 on Friday night was the place to find out.

Dare were the first of the three bands on the bill, playing a brief 30 minute set to warm up the audience for the double headliners. The set started with an awful muddy sound mix, although thankfully it got better after the first couple of numbers. To be honest, Dare never really rose about the level of a pub-rock band, which probably explains why they’ve never had much success even though they’ve been around for years. Nothing spectacularly bad about them; the playing was competent, but with one or two exceptions, most of the AOR-ish songs were rather ordinary.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from BJH. I’m only familiar with one of their albums, the live one recorded in Berlin twenty years ago. Sadly they played all of one song from it. The numbers they did play, which I gather was a mix of some songs from their 70s heyday and some much never material was more guitar-driven than I expected. In an interview Les Holroyd had stated that the setlist concentrates on songs he had written, which confirmed the impression I was getting; this was not so much Barclay James Harvest, as Les Holroyd plus a bunch of anonymous session musos. They were musically competent, I have to say, especially the guitarist. They just didn’t seem that tight as a band, and too much of the material sounded the same, and came over flat and uninspired. The biggest single flaw was Les’ vocals, desperately weak in places.

Disaster struck towards the second half of the set. Just as the show began to show a few signs of life, the power went out on stage; no amps, no mikes, no keyboards, nothing. After a few embarrassed minutes, they got the sound back, only for the power to fail a second time after about a minute of song intro. A much longer pause followed before the problems were finally fixed, and BJH were finally able to complete a now somewhat truncated set. But by now it was too late; they’d completely lost momentum, and any atmosphere had fizzled out. They’re going to have nightmares about this show for months.

And so to the headliners. Asia have a strange history; a supergroup accused by some of having been put together by the record company, who nevertheless produced one classic album. Then the original supergroup dissipated following a disappointing second album. In most cases, that would simply have been the end of the story. In Asia’s case, the least well-known band member recruited a bunch of relative unknowns, and carried on.

Asia’s current lineup is Geoff Downes on keys (Formerly of The Buggles, and then Yes), John Payne on bass and vocals, Chris Slade (who’s played with Tom Jones, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Uriah Heep and AC/DC) on drums, and Guthrie Govan on guitar.

Asia opened with barnstorming versions of “Wildest Dreams” and “Here Comes the Feeling” from that classic 23 year old debut. Asia had the tightness and unity of purpose that BJH had lacked; this was clearly a band, not a bunch of random musos on stage. But all four of them nevertheless have amazing chops. Frontman John Payne is very much the visual focus now, and someone not knowing their history would assume that he, not Geoff Downes, was the founder member of the band. His voice is a little more gravelly than that of John Wetton, but he’s nevertheless made the older songs his own. Guthrie Govan cuts a frail-looking figure on stage, but there’s nothing frail about his guitar playing, some of which is just amazing. And Chris Slade drumming is just monstrous.

The set naturally drew heavily from that first album, with I think six of the eight on it songs being played. Quite a bit came from their most recent effort, “Silent Nation”, which I have yet to hear. John said that they’ve given up on album titles beginning and ending with the letter ‘A’ (Asia, Alpha, Astra, Aqua etc.) because they’ve run out of usable words; “Angina” or “Asthma” would not have worked! In the middle of the show they played an acoustic set, with some incredible duelling flamenco licks from John and Guthrie. And Chris Slade even managed to play a drum solo which wasn’t boring! The only weak spot was the semi-instrumental version of The Buggles’ big hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star” in Geoff’s keyboard solo. That didn’t really work; if they are to include it in the set at all, perhaps they should rework it as a rock number and get John Payne to sing it.

The finished as they began, with “Only Time Will Tell”, and the encore “Heat of the Moment”.

Overall, Asia put on a great show, clearly well-rehearsed and professional, although still very much enjoying themselves. The fact that they only have one original member left is only an incidental detail; the current lineup has very much gelled as a band, and were firing on all cylinders. But when it comes to Barclay James Harvest, I’m afraid I can’t really say the same thing. To describe them as one has-been backed by anonymous sidesmen sounds cruel, but it’s pretty close to the truth. A genuine tribute band would probably have put on a better show.

Official Asia web site www.asiaworld.org