Mary Chapin Carpenter has produced some classic music through a long career.
Back in 2015 she toured the UK. She doesn't do that very often and so it was a chance to see her, and the Apex in Bury St. Edmunds is a great venue with good acoustics, and less than an hour's drive from home.
Her recent albums have not quite been of the same standard as earlier ones, but in this show she brought out some of her classics as well as playing some newer songs, and it was musically accomplished and sounded excellent in the Apex.
As with many artists, Mary also released some music recorded during the pandemic, including this performance of 'I am a town'.
A second posting for today as I need to mention an anniversary of one of the best concerts I ever went to.
I was fortunate enough to be present at the Hammersmith Odeon on the 12th of June 2005 (I was in Block 9 Row E Seat 38 in the Circle...) for a performance of "The Way Up" and other music - almost 3 hours of sublime jazz. The late Lyle Mays was awesome as ever, and I loved seeing Pat with Antonio Sanchez on drums once again. It's a pity they stopped working together.
I can't believe that's now over 20 years ago...
Here's the Introduction to the piece, recorded in South Korea in April that year. Then check out the whole piece.
Musicians: Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Steve Rodby, Antonio Sanchez, Cuong Vu, Gregoire Maret, and Nando Lauria.
Francis Dunnery was the guitarist and vocalist with the band It Bites, who have appeared on the blog a few times so far - and were the previous ticket stub. I saw them about 15 times in the 1990s and they were always so tight and crisp in their playing.
I met him and saw him play at a special show down in London at the Hard Rock Cafe's music space when it was in Covent Garden. He'd brought his tapboard with him and shared some stories.
This particular ticket was a solo concert after his departure from It Bites.
As you can see this was ticket #218 and there were probably about 250 people which was all that could fit in the room. It was the same venue where I had earlier seen Aimee Mann play.
A recording of a Glasgow concert from this short tour was later released as the album: "One Night in Sauchiehall Street".
At one point, before the 'Calling all Stations' album was released, he also auditioned for Genesis.
He also sang vocals on a recent reimagining of 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' and also provided a guitar solo for an updated version of the Big Big Train track 'The Underfall Yard'.
It also included a contribution from Jem Godfrey of FROST* who will appear on the blog later in the year.
This ticket was from one of the relatively early Tori Amos gigs that I attended when she still played relatively small venues. She returned to the Sheffield City Hall last month to kick off the tour in support of her new album "In Times of Dragons" as it happens. My sister went and said it was excellent.
We were up in the Grand Circle which is where I preferred to be for gigs at the City Hall. I saw so many different bands from up there - including some stubs I've already posted, such as Big Country. I also saw her down at the Ipswich Regent and elsewhere.
My first Tori Amos gig was actually very much smaller than that.
I traced it back using this tours archive, and it was on February 19, 1992 at Norwich Arts Centre. There were only about 30-40 of us there and we were actually stood around the piano rather than sat down.
Two days previously she had played Manchester University and the set list was:
Little Earthquakes Crucify Silent All These Years Whole Lotta Love/Thank You Precious Things Happy Phantom Leather Girl Upside Down Sentimental Journey Me and a Gun Winter
Encore 1 A Case of You Killing Me Softly China
Encore 2 Tear In Your Hand Angie
As her style developed, I saw her in various other formats, and with other musicians.
Before the days when you have your ticket as a QR code or bar code on your phone - even animated for particular gigs.
I'm going to share some of my old ticket stubs which I took some pictures of.
This concert was one of many that I saw Roy Harper perform - sometimes alone and sometimes with his son Nick. I saw him all over the country from the east coast to the west.
Roy is remembered of course on two classic albums.
And also on David Gilmour's self-titled first solo album from 1978, he recorded a version of Roy's song 'Short and Sweet'. Roy recently did a farewell tour, and still sounds good. There are some classic tracks that he has recorded over the years. One of them is 'Commune', which always reminds me of a friend Caroline.
And of course he has to finish with 'Same old Rock' - which featured Jimmy Page on guitar.
Before the days when you have your ticket as a QR code or bar code on your phone - even animated for particular venues such as the O2 - you got a proper ticket which you could keep.
I'm sharing some of my old ticket stubs which I took some pictures of a few years ago when I came across a box in the loft when we moved house.
This was the only time that I saw Big Country play.
Front row on the balcony at the City Hall, which gives you an awesome view...
Obviously there's a geographical element to their name, and many of their best songs as well.
They were fronted by Stuart Adamson, who was from Manchester, but whose Scottish parents moved back to Fife when he was four years old. He was also in a band called The Skids before forming Big Country.
Their first album was an immediate success and came out while I was an undergraduate in Huddersfield and got played a lot at the time in the student house where I spent a lot of time. The 'bagpipe' guitars were achieved using a
Mike Oldfield also added 'bagpipe guitars' to the list of instruments on his albums.
The drumming of Mark Brzezicki was a major part of their sound - very 'busy' and precise.
Here's one of their songs that I particularly liked at the time: a 12" version of 'Wonderland', which came out in 1984.
When I saw them, the drummer wasn't Mark who had left by then. Simon Phillips later played with them for a while.
A favourite of mine is the soundtrack to the film 'Restless Natives'. This was a film made by Bill Forsyth, who also made several of my favourite films, including
I also like the bounce and the bass of 'Rememberance Day' (with its weird spelling). Here it is being performed in 1986. I loved the bass playing of Tony Butler.
Very sadly, Stuart took his own life in 2001.
The band still continues playing, but it's not really Big Country of course without Stuart.
Before the days when you have your ticket as a QR code or bar code on your phone, or printed it at home using your own ink and paper - even animated for particular events at the O2 these days so even a screenshot isn't enough to deter the fakers...
I'm going to share some of my old ticket stubs which I took some pictures of back in the day. There were plenty more which disappeared into the mists of time... some others are tucked into CDs and LP sleeves I think.
This ticket was from a gig by the Scottish band Blue Nile. They have a very geographical name of course. They apparently picked their name while looking at a map.
I first heard them in the summer of 1988 on tape cassette in a bothy on the isle of Rhum.
It took place at Cambridge Corn Exchange in 1996. I've seen many a gig there over the years.
Because of the reluctance of the singer the band has hardly ever toured, and albums have been very infrequent.
We had excellent seats: on the 8th row and on the end of the middle section of seats. And you can't argue at the price. I went to this gig with my girlfriend of the time (now my wife for over 25 years) who also loved the band - she's an 80s girl. I also still have my polo shirt which I bought from the merchandise stand that night, and I can still fit into it.
That's a reminder that we will also start sharing pictures of old tour shirts in a future post. So start hunting those out too....
This gig was absolutely amazing...
Here they are on Jools Holland's programme in that year, performing one of their classic tracks:
And here's Paul Buchanan performing with Peter Gabriel in a song from his 'Ovo' album.
The excellent piece by Kieran Curren in The Tribune linked to above explains more of the links with the city:
Seeing themselves at odds with some of the more trendy denizens of the Glasgow scene at the time, the group holed up in their flat in the city’s West End, often rehearsing all night through headphones, perfecting their sound. This would take hold on the 1984 LP A Walk Across the Rooftops, released on South Glasgow’s own Linn Records (an ad hoc label offshoot of their hi-fi company Linn Audio), adorned with a photo of the trio gazing through a shop window in the Southside’s Cathcart Road.
On Tinseltown in the Rain:
Much of their work is focused on the city of Glasgow itself, the city as a character, and the changes wrought by the early shock of the Thatcherite revolution. A Walk Across The Rooftops’ key track is ‘Tinseltown in the Rain’, today their most popular song in terms of streaming numbers on Spotify. Sounding like a possible hit in an alternate universe, ‘Tinseltown’ provides wry, contemplative lyrics where ‘tall buildings reach up in vain’, full of nostalgic dread (‘Love was so exciting’). It is also a hymn to the ‘one big rhythm’ of the city, the interrelationship between standardised consumption and the feeling of strange magic. It still resonates powerfully with Glaswegians to this day, the Glasgow that is in flux, taking it hard, but always emotionally open and expressive. Yet Buchanan has also spoken of its universality, its replicability—this could be anywhere (but in a good way).
And on Heatwave:
Buchanan’s resigned lyric is a riposte to the hyper-capitalist boosterism for greed, under the guise of economic growth: ‘Are we rich or are we poor, does it matter anymore?’ Much as the essential detail of the city—its almost-connected red sandstone tenements—is zoned in on in the title track, ‘Heatwave’ points out another target of Thatcher’s shock doctrine: ‘falling down, on the young and foolish’. Its vacant centre, its illusory quality, ‘straw houses, in the promised land’.
More on 'Hats' and the music and the struggles to make the album on this RTE Documentary, which starts with Matt Healy from The 1975 talking about how it influenced their music.
In the documentary they head for Kelvingrove in a taxi to visit the house where they recorded the music for their first album... and where Paul Buchanan could look out of the kitchen window across the rooftops...
I remember picking up the LP of 'Hats' when it came out from a record shop in a small town on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
There used to be an app with a Walking Tour of the city but it was removed some years ago...
