Last night Peter Hammill visited Vienna to play a solo set at the jazz club ‘Porgy and Bess’. I last saw him in Glasgow, at the Oran Mor, which was a fantastic gig and a hard act to follow, since he played a stunning ‘Time Heals’ and ended the show with ‘A Better Time’ and a standing ovation.
Porgy’s is unlike any venue I’ve ever been to, I think. Red velvet chairs sat in fours around small round tables with waitress service and a very relaxed atmosphere, all very civilised. Even better than the layout was the attentive audience; every song played out to the very end, with not a single clap of premature applause. That made listening to the rich dying chords from the grand piano a real pleasure, though PH was a bit heavy coming off the sustain pedal, which sometimes resulted in a bit of a noisy clunk. Indeed, the only noise at the venue came from bar staff dropping the occasional glass and the waitresses jangling loose change as punters paid for their drinks.
Perhaps because of this attention to quiet, I had the feeling that PH played some songs more delicately than normal. ‘Stranger Still’ live usually ends with him yelling “A stranger, a worldly man” over and over in a crescendo of seeming madness. Last night it played out almost the polar opposite, getting quieter until almost a whisper. Real pin-drop stuff. Simply stunning.
After a dark ‘Friday Afternoon’, we were then treated to a song that PH claimed he had been carrying around for years, but had never put any chords to. Inspired by the quality of the piano at Porgy’s he sat down at rehearsal and worked them out: ‘Not For Keith’, one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite albums, the classic ‘pH7′. I’m not sure he did manage to get all the chords right, but it was very powerful and a delight to finally hear this song live.
Another highlight was ‘His Best Girl’, a song that was perhaps a little over-played during the early 90′s, but hasn’t seen the light for a while. Last night he combined it with the version from ‘Offensichtlich Goldfisch’, singing the last few lines in German and making the song in general seem every bit as threatening as the lyrics imply.
‘Shingle Song’ started off a cappella, with some very understated guitar coming in for accompaniment. This would have been a perfect performance, but for PH starting before the applause from the previous song had died down, which took away from the impact a little.
The gig finished with an encore of ‘Your Tall Ship’ and it was all over. Another fantastically emotional night in the presence of a musician who is never afraid to bend and twist the phrasing of his songs until they show all their hidden secrets.
Thanks to Katharina for her concert photographs.
” tour (in Glasgow). I recall being a little underwhelmed at the time, having the feeling that the fun had gone out of the band, or maybe my musical tastes were parting ways with the past.
‘, along with its sequel, I was in two minds about buying tickets. Some part of me wanted to see if the magic was still there to some degree, whilst the rest thought it would be best to remember them as they were, especially since this would be Ian Anderson alone, with no Martin Barre and not bearing the ‘Jethro Tull’ mark. When it turned out that one of the closest two gigs would be in Budapest, my mind was made up. Not only was it a city I had yet to visit, but since Tull have a song called ‘Budapest’, I thought it might make for an interesting venue, so I decided to give them another chance.
‘ album and was reasonably pleased with it. Over ten years have passed since the last new Tull album, unless you count the ‘Christmas Album’ which is mostly re-recordings of old songs sprinkled with a couple of traditional songs and a couple of new songs, or the various live or anniversary albums. My first impression was that this might be what a music professor who specialised in Jethro Tull might come up with by distilling the essence of the band over the 40-odd years of its existence. It contained references galore to earlier albums, to certain forms of instrumentation, to particular songs as well as to the original ‘Thick As A Brick’ (TAAB). I always preferred ‘
‘ to TAAB, but the latter is an excellent album and hard to beat. The new album doesn’t come close to beating it, but it is better than I had expected.
instead? (there were a few audience grumbles that they didn’t play it). The classic show-closer was very effective with two sets of voices, particularly in the last choruses, and make me keen to see a regular Tull show in this format.
I don’t normally pay much heed to the ‘latest big thing’ in musical circles – there is just so much hype about usually very little substance, but there is a new album by a quite unique artist that has been sitting at the top of my playlist for the past few weeks.
