"Do some old!"
Just listening to Radio 2's coverage of REM at the Albert Hall. I was very amused at the audience's muted reaction to Michael Stipe's announcement that they will be "Playing a whole bunch of new songs." I'm fairly confident that the good people of the Royal Albert didn't fork out up to £55 a ticket to hear the band run through their new album. They've tossed in a few old favourites for good measure, but the old songs just amplify the fact that the new album only sounds like a return to form inasmuch as the last two were so bad that anything remotely resembling a tune is an improvement. It's not a bad record, by any means, but I doubt that I'll listen to it more than a couple of times.
I remember seeing REM on the "Green" tour in Newport. Stipe got rather tetchy when the crowd began shouting out requests, and informed his audience that he was "Not a jukebox." However, is this what bands like REM have become on tour, as their fans sit patiently through the new material, waiting for them to "do some old" towards the end of the set?
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I used to love REM...
but haven't really bothered with them for a while now. I put it down to the fact that they just seem to HATE being a band now and have done, more or less, since Bill Berry left. To me they just seem to be going through the motions and thats just sad, for a while in the 80's and early 90's they really were the mutts nuts.
I was at the Albert Hall
and thoroughly enjoyed it. I think that most people who were there knew exactly what they'd be getting for their £50 (i.e. most of the new album) as this gig wasn't part of a full scale tour but rather part of a promotional visit to the UK to plug Accelerate.
When we came out at the end, we all agreed that REM seemed to be enjoying themselves and were all very relaxed. This was far from a Police/Eagles style going-through-the-motions/give-us-all-your-money gig.
Robyn Hitchcock was excellent too. The sound wasn't great though.
My problem with REM
isn't that they don't play enough 'old' its just that being in that band seems like such a joyless experience. Hope I'm wrong but that's definately the impression they give in interviews these days.
(edited! iPhones are great but they can be a bugger to use for posting!)
In a just world...
...REM would be playing support to Robyn Hitchcock.
Here they are...
...being Robyn Hitchcock's backing band (Peter Buck is on drums)
I was there along with 100 or so other people. £15 to get in.
Thank you...
...I hadn't seen that before. Whatever happened to Charlie Higson eh?
£50 for a new album showcase gig?
Good grief! How much is are the tickets for the forthcoming tour?
£45 plus fees
for Twickenham. Seems cheap after £83 for Neil Young!
doing OLD is getting old
"I'm fairly confident that the good people of the Royal Albert didn't fork out up to £55 a ticket to hear the band run through their new album".
What else where they there for? A greatest hits gig?
When a band tours following the release of a new album what else would you expect them to do other than play "some new"?
Nothing angers me more than people complaining that a band or performer did too much new material. At some point or other every song was new, so how long before it's able to be classed as "old"? Does it have to have been released as a single and gone top 10 as well?
How long did they play?
If they do a Rory/Bruce/Maceo-esque three-hour jobby, then a set peppered with half a dozen or so new songs is fine. But
too many acts seem to forget that we pay good money to see them entertain us, as if our only role was to pay for the privilege of filling the hall with bodies to improve the acoustics and witness their art. The back catalogue is the reason most people are there. They want to cheer when they recognise an intro, sing along in the fun bits - to feel part of things, rather than just being there as passive observers to a band's self-indulgent road-testing of all-new material.
Nobody complains if they like the new stuff....
....but the bigger an audience and the longer the track record, then the greater the number of conservatives (conservationists?)in the audience, happy only with what they know. I'm all for new stuff or new directions: "new" versions of the old stuff. There are already enough "Greatest Hits" compilations for those who want that. Or, god help us, "Tribute" bands.
Credibility wavering, I went to see the current David Gray "greatest hits" tour and, credibility bollocks, here was a performer at the top of his game, in superlative voice, with a cracking band, willing to take risks with the old material rather than to churn out carbon copies. Masterful. One of the best gigs I have been to, and I have been to very many.
Agree on the Gray!
I too saw his recent tour and also worried about the credibility factor! He was indeed awesome!
But
if David Gray (who I don't mind) had produced a great new album I would be OK with quite a bit of new material being done live, it's just that he's only produced 2 decent albums, that most people are familiar with, some time ago. All depends on the quality and popularity of recent material.
Rising to the defence.....
Uncertain which "2" you refer. Yup, he was out there for yonks until Babylon broke him, along with its parent album. Produced a follow up to that and then another, received by many (me) as his best yet, last year. Recent material includes the by now inevitable 2 new songs on the Best of , produced even more recently and a couple of new ones aired on tour, one, I think as an encore.
Slightly surprised to find myself rushing to his defence but feel I have to set the matter straight.
David Gray's early records stand up really well...
I booked him for a session in 1995 when I worked at a local radio station, and he was excellent. At that time nobody bought his records, but he carried on doing his thing because he loved doing it.
That third album
must have passed me by - never hear about it. Apologies to Mr Gray. Anyway thing is it depends on who it is re give us some old or give us your new and old issue. Have we said that already? Time to get back to work I think.
putting it bluntly
that is a steaming load of rubbish.
Are you saying that any band that's being going for 20 years plus, that may have had a couple of big hits "back in the day" shouldn't be allowed to record and then tour any new songs? Would you apply the same rule to a band's debut album?
Of course not
But I wouldn't expect to pay upwards of 50 quid to see a band promote its debut album - with the singer reading the lyrics from a lectern because he can't be arsed to learn them (read the papers).
Stipe has used a lectern for years
It's a prop, and that's all it is. He knows the bloody words to Man On The Moon by now.
Speaking of props and other gimmicks
what colour was the silly old sod's face the other night?
Well, that Gimmick only
Well, that Gimmick only lasted one or maybe two tours (In Time / Around The Sun?) and he's back to normal now as evidenced by http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=126035&in_page_id...
I like a mixture, personally...
...I don't get complaints I see in reviews about bands/artists playing new material- it's a musician's right to do that and I for one always look forward to hearing new material.
However, by the same token, I don't think it's a good idea to play the entirety of a new album live and I like to hear old material as well, without radical re-arrangements. I understand The Police tour had some odd re-arrangements of songs, which is something of a self-indulgence in my opinion when fans are turning up to hear the hits.
On the other side, every review I've seen of The Eagles' recent shows suggests they just went through the motions, and the new material got a big thumbs down in the reviews but having said that, a lot of these reviews seemed to be written by people who hated The Eagles anyway.
I saw a cinema simulcast of Genesis' gig at Dusseldorf and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes, it was a nostalgia tour, but as Phil Collins said it wasn't as if they were in desparate need of the money- there were a lot of fans who just wanted to hear those classic songs played by the band again and from the forums I frequent, it went down really well with the fans. They even got some rave reviews in the press at large.
I heard something from Neil Young's recent tour and he'd put together a great set there; lots of new material, some rarities and yet also showed respect for his back catalogue with various fan favourites in there too. I think he'd got the balance just right.
It depends on the band for me...
being a big fan of Radiohead, I look forward to all the new songs in their set more than the old favourites because they consistently produce fabulous material. But if I went to see the Stones, say, I would be heading for the loo a split second after Mick announces 'Ere's wun orf ahr neuw recawd'.
It depends on the band for me...
Thank goodness when they they play the crap off one of the old records (say, anything from Crime of the Century, Breakfast in America etc etc, if you catch my drift), time for some serious toilet action.
STA?! No, not that!! That's onstage already.
Oi! Outside, now!!
You dissin' the 'Tramp again?! Do they really deserve such scorn?!!
By the way...
what does STA mean?!
Do you really wish to know?
See the preceding sentence......
Oh I see...
more dissin' of the good name of Supertramp!
Sorry, PC, couldn't resist
I love the smell of dissed tramp in the morning. Never sure whether it will be you or Vulpes to respond first. Clearly I can't stand the buggers but for no better reason than blind prejudice, as in Queen and Gilbert.)
Now there's a thought! And one that could restore Paul Rodgers faltering reputation at a stroke. How about Queen fronted by wor Raymond?
Gilbert and AC/DC
If Brian Johnson ever quits the hard rock behemoths, an immediate replacement could be found in the form of wor Gilbert. Cloth cap, you see...
It's a long way to the mill,
if you want to rock 'n' roll.
Whether new material is welcome or not at a gig
depends entirely on how good the new material is. If it's below par shite, which, on average over a career of say, 5 albums or more, it more than likely will be, it deserves to prompt mass trips to the bar or the bogs. If it's any good, it'll immediately begin its transmogrification into part of the band's much loved classic canon.
A gig I saw in Plymouth springs to mind. Supertramp played almost the entire "Crime Of The Century" album, within a month of its first release, material unheard by probably 95% of the audience. Cracking band, cracking gig, cracking album, cracking night out. Didn't I see you at the back, enjoying every minute via a warp in time and space, Patrick?
Wish I'd been there...
but I was too young! I saw them on the 'Famous Last Words' tour in 1983 at Earls Court. And most excellent it was too... musically, at least. Visually they had the charisma of a potato.
Nice metaphor.
Very succinct, very accurate and very fair. They have never been a particularly well presented bunch of scruffs, have they?
Believe me, in 1974 (for it was then or thereabouts) they had a similar, if slightly less wrinkled, visual appeal. Like nicely washed New Potatoes perhaps, before those little sprouty things appear.
And in any case
if REM, who have spent their last few albums lowering the bar for future releases to reach, can only recreate the original arrangements when they play familiar material, they deserve no respect.
Some artists can recreate old songs with new arrangements of sufficient imagination that they remain familiar, have the same lyrics and maybe even verse structures, but sound excitingly new. There's no "old" versus "new" antagonism to reconcile if this is done well. Dylan's set as represented on the Budokan album (or the very similar Blackbushe gig setlist), versus the original versions of most of the songs therein, springs to mind.
But surely those people were 'the faithful'?
Cards on table, I flew out to Dublin and saw one of the "live rehearsal" shows last year, so it's fair to say that I don't mind REM, but I find it very hard to imagine that people who went last night didn't know what they were in for, considering that the majority of tickets went in various pre-sales to fan club etc...
I honestly don't know what anyone would have had to complain about, considering the set list - the new stuff easily stands up to the old and indeed the dullest part of last night for me was "Drive" which plodded along like the dinosaur it is compared to the zippy new stuff.
Why on earth do REM deserve "No respect" for playing the original arrangement of songs? Would you have preferred a funked up Losing My Religion? A ragga Electrolite? If it ain't broke...
Last night's show was a showcase for the new album and was pretty much billed as such, rather than being a show 'proper' - if you want that, go to the stadium shows later in the year.
If you want to hear (and you can hear the show in full, dodgy mix aside) what their current set proper looks like, go to
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88155007
"Living Well Is the Best Revenge"
"Man-Sized Wreath"
"Second Guessing"
"Drive"
"Hollow Man"
"Animal"
"Auctioneer (Another Engine)"
"Mr. Richards"
"Fall on Me"
"The Great Beyond"
"Houston"
"Electrolyte"
"Accelerate"
"Until the Day Is Done"
"Final Straw"
"Bad Day"
"Horse to Water"
"Walk Unafraid"
"Supernatural Superserious"
"Imitation of Life"
"I'm Gonna DJ"
"Man on the Moon"
Now tell me that's not a well balanced, interesting set list, mixing old and new? 9 or 10 singles, some old IRS era stuff and some 'new'.
Anyway, the Long Blondes are currently touring the nations clubs doing a 45 minute set with only 2 songs that the audience have heard. Now that's hard work.
Please tell me where I can download
a funked up Losing My Religion and a ragga Electrolite?
I'm bored with the originals.
Sorry, but I've seen REM too (not for a couple of years I must admit) and the last time I saw them I thought their performance was perfunctory and unimaginative.
I certainly wouldn't risk £50 or more to see if things had improved.
OK, you asked for it...
... that's NOT a well balanced setlist. 5/6 tunes (from a set of 22) from their pre-2000 releases? Nice to see Second Guessing getting an outing, likewise Auctioneer, but aside from that it seems very heavily weighted to their more recent stuff. I've seen REM a couple of times (1989 and 1995) and the sets I saw then seemed a lot more representative of their career...
We'll agree to disagree
I think that's a really decent set, and throwing in some really old/obscure stuff for the faithful seems a fair thing to do. That was at SXSW, so even that was effectively a showcase. Let's wait for the tour proper and see how it turns out.
Bands should just do two gigs at each venue
the first night last few albums, second night greatest hits type stuff. That would sort it out.
It's not like playing and remembering that many songs is really that difficult a task.
Supertramp...
...are a fine band; don't get the scorn they get (same with 10cc, actually). Not one of my all time favourites by any means but the albums from 'Crime Of The Century' through 'Breakfast In America' I play now and again enjoy them, especially 'Dreamer' which is a great single.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Give this man a medal etc etc...
Exactly. They wrote some great, great songs. I can see that Roger Hodgson's voice is an acquired taste, but what about Neil Young? Similarly high-pitched and whiny. Some bands just seem to embody naffness for people, but don't really deserve the criticism they get. And funnily enough, 10cc was the first band I ever saw, back in 1983. Supertramp were the second! So that should make me about the uncoolest person on earth! And you know what? I couldn't give a f**k...
REM Last Night
I've read quite a few down in the mouth web views of last night's performance, all of which I feel rather missed the point.
It was a showcase for a new release as was known at the outset. In addition there were 3 support acts, and so REM were never likely to play more than their alloted 90 minutes. From my vantage point (circle) REM's sound wasn't too bad. Robyn Hitchcock and John Paul Jones were a welcome peaceful interlude before the punchy new REM material, which came across very well. Theywere at ease with the audience and it was just a pleasure to see them in somewhere intimate and with a roof, for a change.I first saw REM 23 years ago, and have seen them on most tours ever since, and mostly in enormo-sheds or fields.
I enjoyed the brief set a great deal, especially as I took my 11 year old along, and it was a pleasure to see her so thrilled to be there. I realise it's only a metter of time until she finds her own path, but for now I'll keep up the indoctrination!
I suppose
which songs you want to hear depends on whether you've seen the act before or not. I couldn't care less if REM never played Losing My Religion or Man on the Moon ever again, but if last night had been my first REM gig I'd have been disappointed if they hadn't played them.
As it was, I was very happy to hear most of the new album.
I remember
the most disappointing gig I ever saw, and the strongest case for "doing some old" that ever there was.
I am, of course, talking about David Bowie's Glass Spider tour when it rolled into Cardiff Arms Park in 1987. The bemulleted Thin White Duke(TM) descended from a fibreglass glass spider, and proceeded to bang out about four or five numbers in a row from his latest "elpee" which was, unfortunately, Never Let Me Down. With the protracted intro of dancers and performers taking to the stage, before we even got a glimpse of the Dame himself, it was a good thirty minutes before we got any old at all. And even then, it was either "Absolute Beginners" or "Loving The Alien" (I can't quite remember). It was truly awful.
It was a good few years before I saw him again, on the "Outside" tour at Wembley Arena. Oh dear. He pulled the same thing again, deciding to perform most of the 70 minute "Outside" album, with a drum & bass version of Andy Warhol thrown in, and no encore.
However, his last tour was fantastic - a decent couple of recent albums behind him, and a terrific balance of old and new in the setlist, with some great obscure ones thrown in.
Bowie: once was enough
The most disappointing gig - in the sense of expecting a lot and getting next to nothing - I ever saw was the Heroes tour in 1977.
Glass Spider....
Enough to put you off Wembley as a venue for life.......
It always amazed me...
that Bowie came up with that concept when he'd cleaned up. If that isn't an idea forged in the midst of a blizzard of cocaine, I don't know what is...
Glass Spider...
...I have that on DVD! It's a monumental folly and at times, unintentionally hilarious. Those rap/dance routines are excruciatingly bad, as are the moments of dialogue and the bit where Bowie pulls someone out of the crowd who happens to be part of the dance troupe and the same girl who became his girlfriend around this time! (Melissa Hurley, I believe her name was)
However, I do really like the versions of 'Absolute Beginners', 'Loving The Alien', 'Sons Of The Silent Age' and 'Time' that were done on that tour.
Grumpy Old Van
It's been quite a week:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/...
Van the Teen
This is from one of the comments to the article Philip linked to:
The great thing about VM is that you can never be sure what you are going to get. if you cannot open up your mind to this fact, you will nearly always end up disappointed, and maybe you should consider staying at home and listening to "San Fransisco Nights" or his greatest hits. At least you wont feel "cheated" out of your ticket money. If, on the other hand, you can accept that this is the way VM works, you will have a great time - which we did ! It was great to hear so much of the new material live, and clearly this was what VM was really interested in playing.
A pop concert is not a religious service. A stage is not a pulpit. An artist is not a priest. And most importantly, the paying public are not the non-paying "faithful". What a concert is is a contract. I pay you; you entertain me. And if more than an anecdotic few feel that the contract has been breached, then that artist is quite rightly liable to be dissed without mercy.
Yes, even some artists who are "crowd pleasers" (what a horrible expression; what are acts supposed to do to crowds, then - piss them off?) like Bruce Springsteen ask the audience to shut up for the quieter numbers. But they also make damned sure the contract is honoured by giving them "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road" as well.
Van Morrison is 62. Is it too late to stop hoping that one day he might, just might, grow up and stop behaving like a teenager who doesn't understand why he's expected to mow the lawn if he wants his pocket money?
I dunno, Archie...
I read the review and it sounded, to me, well worth seeing, almost because he cast aside the expectations. The reviewer seemed to like it, in the main. Van, like Dylan, will never give what is necessarily expected: the audiences should know that by now. And, yes, if you have to dig thru' some shit, yes, every now and agin up will come a truffle. I've only seen Van twice, once fantastic, second shocking. But I'd go again, even more so after reading that review. Too many folk perhaps know the greatest hit or hits, as the reviewer states, maybe even owning, for Van, Vol 1 thereof, and don't realise he has been just a tad more prolific than they know.
Fair enough
I just get irritated with the pervading view that certain artists, including Van Morrison and Dylan, are somehow "above" their peers and their audience, as if it were our privilege merely to be in the same basketball stadium as them (and it's a privilege we pay wodges of money for) rather then them being privileged to have thousands of people prepared to show up night after night so they can keep their castles heated.
I'm not asking for greatest-hits-only sets, but is it really too much to ask for Van to make sure that every show has at least the odd Gloria or Brown Eyed Girl or Caravan scattered in the set list? Macca does. Neil Young does. Hell, even Dylan does - and, as a result, I really will be able to tell my grandchildren that I've seen Dylan sing "Visions of Johanna" live, something I'll be forever grateful to the wizened old weirdo for. I'd like to be equally beholden to Van Morrison but I don't see it happening somehow. (I've only seen him once and let's just say I shan't be going back.)
Archie, please don't write him off as a live act.
As I've posted elsewhere in here, I've seen the old curmudgeon countless times, and I've seen a few fairly damp squib gigs, a lot of average sets with good or excellent bits in them, and a couple of incandescently brilliant performances.
Maybe it's because I've got a whole shelf of his albums, and I play them a lot, but I don't recall ever seeing him play and not hearing at least a handfull of my old faves.
It could be, as I'd pay very good money just to hear him, with the best of his band line-ups, do "Common One" from start to finish and back again, that perhaps I'm not a representative punter at a VM gig, but I'd urge you to give him another shot if you get a chance; he really can deliver.
And an equally fair response from you.
Van, to be fair to him, tends to play the smaller size of venue, say Symphony Hall rather than NEC or NIA (B'ham). Also pops up in very odd destinations_ he seems to have had a near residency at the Hay on Wye festival, in marquees. I like to think it is deliberate choice where he is best suited.
Van venues
Yes, I saw him on a makeshift stage in the middle of rubble-strewn bit of wasteland at a Womad festival in Spain. The bleakness of the surroundings was quite apt, as it turned out. He seemed to be annoyed (what - Van Morrison annoyed?) about his monitors and just mumbled his way through a cursory set that lasted barely an hour. Matters weren't helped when someone called out "You can take the trilby off now, Van - we know what's under there" and everybody laughed. The band were good though (it was during the Georgie Fame/Pee Wee period, which was probably the cleft-enriched gobiron period too, come to think of it).
Same era...
...as his shocking performance at the Phoenix(!) festival, made all the worse by the awful echolalia of Brian Kennedy (who, shock horror, has just produced a half decent set of covers, Interpretations, with a cracking version of Brown Eyed Girl)Deffo worth a 79p on i-tunes.
Justin Currie
I saw the ex-front man of Del Amitri last night at Bush Hall - he started with 4 very slow and somber numbers from his solo album - never getting above 60 BPM - and as he started another with some veeeeery slow minor piano chords he muttered into the mic "I know what you're thinking - I can't stand it any longer - play some foookin' hits". And to everyone's relief, next number, he did!
Eagles
I gather, after reading Tim de Lisle's review (in the Mail) that Eagles didn't do much "old" much to the reviwer's chagrin. Personally if I'd paid lots to see the band I would have been delighted to hear all the new songs. Hepworth may not agree.
'Common One'...
...count me in for that! I think alongside 'Veedon Fleece' it's his finest work...but it got a critical drubbing and is neglected to this day. Shame that- I can think of few pieces of music in any genre that are as beautiful as 'When Heart Is Open'.
BTW, do check out that DVD of his live at Montreux in 1980 where he plays most of 'Common One' live, alongside some (shock horror!) old favourites. Superb performance, that one.
It's his mid-90s stuff I find to be his poorest, to be honest- have enjoyed most of it since 'Back On Top'. This year's 'Keep It Simple' is quite decent.