Post your recent concert reviews here

[Jarle]

Neal Morse Band


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yzKLHin3aY

I saw this band earlier this summer in a small club in Oslo. It must be some of the best musicians I have ever heard play live. The band played for nearly two and a half hours with lots of energy.

[Farrell Jackson]

Excellent video post Jarle...these guys prog rock with the best of the best!

Farrell

[Rata-tat-tat]

I'm jealous Jarle... you got to see Portnoy play!!!

[Jarle]

Portnoy did an amazing job, but he left it to the guitarist Eric Gillette, to play the drum solo , and what a drummer he was (Eric) and he also played keyboard better than most.

[Blooby]

Portnoy did an amazing job, but he left it to the guitarist Eric Gillette, to play the drum solo , and what a drummer he was (Eric) and he also played keyboard better than most.

FYI, Eric has a solo album out as well. I got so into Spock's Beard and Neal Morse, I had to step away from it for a while for fear of burning myself out. I was even a member of Neal's Inner Circle club for a while where he would provide monthly special releases (demos, live shows, DVDs, etc.). Considered MorseFest this year, but it comes at such a lousy time on my calendar.  I'm sure it was a fabulous night.

Blooby

[bruno]

So went up to the Royal Albert Hall last night to see Dave Gilmour. I was looking forward to it. An old friend of mine contacted on Facebook last week and said he had a spare ticket, it was £100 but thought it was worth while - old Dave is getting on a bit and I've never seen him or Floyd despite being a PF fan from the age of 10. In fact when I started senior school at 11, the English teacher asked the class to bring some music in for discussion. Early 70's, the kids bought in Osmands and David Cassidy etc. I bought in Wish You Were Here much to the surprise of the teacher  . So Floyd is in my DNA, I don't listen to them much these day, coz I don't need to. Its burned into my brain :-)

Well I can truly and honestly say that I'm completely blown away. He played a mixture of his solo stuff, and lots of Floyd. The band was awesome, the sound was amazing, the light show stunning, the playing - well, an abject lesson in tone and taste. I was smiling all the way home. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Wow.

B

[Blooby]

Bruno, did his voice hold up live? I know he never had a huge vocal range, but I am impressed with the clips I have heard. Sounds like he hasn't lost much.

I have posted clips on this site before about Phil Keaggy. He was in a late 60's/early 70's rock band called Glass Harp. He then found God and has played predominantly acoustic (at least live since then). He won Guitar Player polls for best acoustic fingerstyle guitarist (with nine fingers), and it is the best with a looper I think I've seen. It's nutty how he improvises with them.

Saw him last night from the 3rd row and became a mouth breather throughout the whole of the concert. Just stunning and what a sound. I decided to take a gander at how much his Olsen acoustic would run (James Taylor often records with one as well)...$12,000. Now that's a quick cure for g.a.s. if ever I saw one.

Blooby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhf0ypN4OuQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ9YndojCAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqRdTx4ATlo

[bruno]

Hey Blooby.
Yeah Dave's voice was spot on. That Phil Keaggy looks like a great player from he clips - glad that you enjoyed your concert. That's some GAS cure, I dread to think what the value of Dave's guitars last night - I think he played a different guitar on each track  I didn't think about that, that's one kind of GAS that I can do without :-)
B

[AndyR]

Just spent an utterly crazy week (for me) going to three nights of Florence + The Machine's four night stand at Alexandra Palace at the end of their UK Tour.

My review (short version) - HOLY F*CK!!!

I feel 20-30 years younger, my back pain of the last 6 months is gone, they were THAT good

And Florence, oh my goodness... She's surprisingly tiny (and soft and warm and smells utterly wonderful), but she completely fills the huge room and makes every single person feel like she's their best friend, lover, whatever. I haven't experienced ANYONE achieving this, or even coming close to doing it, since Freddie Mercury. And her voice - sheesh, I'm absolutely in awe. I already knew, from the albums, that she has command of a wide range of voices - soft, melodic, through to belting it out like Grace Slick - but I had no idea that she could shift effortlessly between them live (I'd assumed the recordings were overdub jobs, even for the lead vocal). And, as far as I could tell, she didn't lose any power or control, not through the course of a gig, nor from the first note on Monday through to the last one on Friday. Added to that - where does the energy come from? And how does she sing while she's dashing around like that?

The band is fabulous. Probably something that a lot of folks don't consciously notice. I've been really impressed by Rob Ackroyd the guitarist. From the albums, I hadn't managed to figure out what he brought to the party, but live I've seen how he's spot on for what's needed. He doesn't play ANYTHING that I'd think of playing with those songs! But what he does play is perfect... and I might even have to get me an ebow(!) (I'd only ever seen one used by the guy in Hawkwind before - mid 80s, can't remember his name - and I thought "meh, can't see no use for that" ... but now I'm intrigued).

If you're at all interested/intrigued by their records - and I know they're not to everyone's taste - go and see them NOW if you can. These guys are at the top of their game at the moment. I fear it might actually be their peak (that's partly why I went to two more nights after the first one with my missus), but I sincerely hope it's not - they deserve to be huge. They have evolved from a strange arty-farty indie band into an act that can work a stadium and make it feel like your front room, even if you're at the back. And they've kept the weird instrumentation (that harp is to die for) while augmenting it with, basically, a soul-band's horn-section and backing singers.

Class. Far classier than I was expecting. It was a one-off "hey let's go see Florence" thing, and I found myself in an "omigod how do I get more tickets?!!!" panic. If Mrs R hadn't been going to other gigs and stuff already, she'd have been there for Thursday and Friday too.

[bruno]

Blooby - So your Museum of Oddities card is still in my wallet, so it went to the Dave Gilmour gig yesterday at the Royal Albert Hall, its becoming very well travelled :-)