When was the last concert you went in 2017

Iron Maiden 

tonight at the O2

Maiden is always a good night 

got the ticket on eBay and ended up with a cracking bunch of lads

one of their group had to pull out cos his missus is up the spout and she's due to drop today 

i said if it's a boy call him Eddie 

( Eddie is the Iron Maiden mascot, he appears on every album and T shirt and on stage)

Slug and Lettuce at the O 2

playing maiden before we went in and now afterwards 

a good night had by all 

18,000 of us anyway 

lyndon

I saw them in Liverpool last week, excellent gig even if the sound was a bit shit, Shinedown were pretty good too

Pollini plays Chopin's Greatest Hits

Program:
Two Nocturnes, Op. 27
Ballade No. 3
Ballade No. 4
Berceuse
Scherzo No. 1
Two Nocturnes, Op. 55
Sonata No. 3

It shows he still has a star power, the house was absolutely packed unlike a last few times i have attended his concert in the past.
There were a few misplaying but nothing that takes away from his lovely natural sounding ( yes! ) It's still a cool stand-offish Pollini Chopin but Nocturnes ( Op.27 & 55 ) and Berceuse were rendered with such subtleties, it was extremely convincing and compelling. I certainly was lost in the music. Definitely better than the last set I have heard him play at the Orchestra Hall.

Scherzo probably could have used his old laser sharp attack, and perhaps ballads could have used a bit more contrast between light and dark. ( all too serious ) Finale was pretty impressive showing off but a touch softer than his past readings.

What was so unusual was Pollini gave us 3 encores. Not a short light pieces but he went on to play another Scherzo, and more Ballades! And they were even better played than the program!  I certainly did not see that coming as if you have seen him on stage, he looks like 100 years old ( he's actually 75 ) and barely can walk over to the piano. :/

There aren't many piano player today who travel with his/her own piano. Pollini still insists bringing his own Fabbrini built Hamburg Steinway.

Personally I don't care much for this piano's tone ( which I found it tends to ring and sounds clanggy in high register ). Very little bloom off the low registers compared to the house US Steinway, giving Pollini's svelt well proportioned linear bass line with an exceptional clarity.

Recently he's got a scathing review of his Beethoven piano sonatas elesewhere but I certainly will come back to hear more of his Chopin pieces. ( Mazurkas would be nice. )

The Specials & Toots and the Maytals at Hatfield Uni

Great fun.  Fab back catalogue and a rockier sound than expected. Terry H almost broke into a smile.  Toots (apparently clocking in at 75!) and the Maytals were fabulous support. 

Gorillaz at St Albans Arena - last night

Small venue (c. 1000) warm up gig for forthcoming tour. For one night only it was the Albarn Arena. Blimey they were good. Damon and the band looked like they were having a blast. Tremendous film & animation, collaborators generally featured on the back projections.  Massive sub bass cabinets all along the front produced prodigious bass at the mixing desk. Absolutely loved it. Only downside - listening to Demon Days back at home I think I need active DBLs. 

I attended the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra hosted in Benaroya Hall yesterday afternoon.

From the program....

"Two great Russian composers who chose utterly different creative paths bring the Philharmonic season to a close. Sergei Rachmaninov, who remained true to his romantic ideals until his death in 1943 ("I cannot cast out the old way of writing"), completed his radiant Symphony No. 3 in 1936. Twenty-three years earlier, Igor Stravinsky had shattered all concepts of what orchestral music could be in his ballet masterpiece The Rite of Spring, regarded by many as the single most important and influential piece of music of the 20th century."

They were two wonderful pieces and thought 'The Rite of Spring' was exceptional.

Kraftwerk 3D, Brighton Centre, 7th June.

Glad I have seen them at last but ultimately disappointing, 3D is wasted IMO, uncomfortable paper glasses over normal specs not the way to go.

Sound was good, visuals OK but most seemed to be unchanged vintage stuff. Apparently that was the idea, it being a "retro feeling tour". I must have missed the memo then.

Usual tossers talking all the time and it must have been one of the thirstiest audiences I have been part of.

Anyway Kraftwerk off the list and won't bother with them again. 

One of the wife's favourite bands, Boney M, were in Christchurch last night. Managed to get good seats the night before, which was a surprise. Sat through the first act, a DJ who 'played' for an hour. Then the main act came on, only one of which was an original member. Accompanied by lacklustre backing tapes they sang their greatest hits for 58 minutes, including repeating the song Ma Baker, and left. First show I've ever been to where the main attraction played for less time than the opening act..


Had some 70's nostalgia last night...

Went to the Caribana Festival...saw Roger Hodgson (Supertramp fame) - excellent musician and a very, very good set !

Also present were Foreigner doing their 40th anniversary tour - again a good set....and whilst not the original folks (except Mick Jones), a pretty good rendition of all their old classics..

Also playing was a  young London group called  Vant, full of energy, a bit punky, had potential....

Overall a great night !!

Tonight's musical delight, a set of master guitarists, I'm guessing the Daves will play lead with Dave Bainbridge also on keyboards, Dan on bass and John on drums, hopefully we'll get Dan showing off his skills on the tin whistle and guitar,  and some acoustic guitar from John as well. Excellent songwriters all, great musicians, small intimate venue with music lovers in the audience, can't wait.

Last night I went to see The Potsdam Chamber Orchestra + Pinnock + Pahud.

The program included Haydn Symph No. 52, Mozart Flute Concerto No. 2, Devienne Flute Concerto No. 7, Mozart Symph No. 29.

Excellent music, great musicians, small hall with good acoustics. My wife and I really enjoyed it as well as the late dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Today I have been listening more Pinnock, Pahud, Potsdam, Devianne.

Terrific! I don't have many of his albums but  I do like Pahud's Bach playing.

Longborough Festival last night for a revival of Tristan from 2 years ago. Peter Wedd and Lee Bisset in the tital roles with Anthony Negus in the pit. The dancers from last time were gone replaced by  dramatic performances by most of the singers (Marke was rather static though his tone of sadness rather than anger in act two worked well enough with it). The orchestra were superb and the simple stage furnature augmented by lighting effects supported the action without distracting.

Pictures here: https://lfo.org.uk/news/trista...NZ,824I,620U8,SRKE,1

The Wedding Present @ London Roundhouse on Saturday night (10th June). I've seen The Wedding Present more times than I can remember, and way more than any other band. They were the soundtrack to my teens, 20s and even 30s. This was a 30th (yes, 30th) anniversary performance of George Best. At the risk of sounding less than hagiographic, the problem with converting a genuine indie classic album (guitars that scratched and cut like stanley knives and produced far more than the sum of their parts) by beefing up the overdrive on guitar 2 is that it sounds just like any other past and current indie guitar band. George Best was and is one of the greatest debut albums of all time precisely because it sounded so different. Hey-ho - they were good but not great.

BUT, all minor troubles allayed by the main support band, Brix & the Extricated. Even David Gedge had to admit to some embarassment at headlining over past members of The Fall (not just Brix Smith, btw, but the magnificent Hanley brothers, Steve and Paul - legends all of them).

Saw Ulver the other night at the Dark Mofo festival in Hobart, Tasmania. I suspect that more recent Ulver would be on the radar of some folk here.

The festival is an extraordinary affair in all sorts of ways. Probably the most curious festival I've been to. And the show was good, heavily geared towards their most recent 80s electronic influenced material, with a nice laser show to boot. I definitely preferred it to the last time I saw them, which was in the Czech Republic with a load of Riefenstahl footage on a big projector a few years ago.

I had intended to go back to the same venue last night to see Einsturzende Neubauten, but unfortunately an ungodly early flight to Japan this morning made it seem unwise. Also, the jetlag wasn't playing ball at all!

Joe Jackson in Greensboro, NC on June 6, as mentioned in another thread, so I won't bore with re-posting the venue photo, but here was the set list from that evening. Great show.

Dr. Mark,

I saw those great photos! It looks to be like the best kind of venue. Not too large and intimate but not too small.

See No Evil cover is great!
The trio seems to be tight. Very cool.

Elton John, Portman Road football stadium, Ipswich.

Good old Elt, he sure knows how to put on a show! A straight two and a half hours of his best tunes from a great band. He seems to genuinely enjoy himself and is a master at getting the audience going.

Bloody uncomfortable seats, silly queuing to get into the place (I get the need for extra security, but not the bit where you shuffle in a long queue, only to be told you're in the wrong line; but the other side of the turnstiles it all goes into one anyway...). Then there's the usual tosser in the crowd who keeps shouting incomprehensible garbage. To cap it all, they decided our train for the return journey wouldn't be stopping at our station (in case the train gets overloaded). Rip-off prices for water, food etc.

Love the live performances but I don't think I can be bothered with all the aggravation any more.

Tony,

Yep. We are too old for that sort of thing.

You ought to get an atta boy for attempting to attend a concert like that. ( I don't bother any more )

I even get annoyed with *amplified* events. :/

kuma posted:

Tony,

Yep. We are too old for that sort of thing.

You ought to get an atta boy for attempting to attend a concert like that. ( I don't bother any more )

I even get annoyed with *amplified* events. :/

...but I'm only 23! 

OK, let's catch up. At the wonderful Moth Club in Hackney (it's still used as a Royal British Legion club), Krautwerk. This was early KW guitarist Eberhard Kranemann plus Harald Grosskopf (once, briefly, of Neu!).

The venue was great, and there was some reassuringly beleepy music being played over the PA, but ultimately this was a bit of a disappointment - tow aged geezers playing early 90s tech and ambient chillout rave on laptops.

Occasionally elements of both musicians' avant-garde backgrounds crept in, and that's when the show started to really catch fire.

Transglobal Underground - Tunbridge Wells Forum

One of those groups I tend to think of as "modern", and yet they've been going about 25 years. Given that they mostly do festivals, this was a rare treat for a small venue but they had no difficulty turning a largely middle-aged audience into a bunch of bouncing loons. I even tapped my toes, as they did stuff from across their albums (including Temple Head, the track Peel played in '93 that turned me on to them) with astounding rhythms from the drummers laced throughout by Sheema Mukherjee's fiery sitar licks.

Wonderful stuff - a big grin from start to finish.

Thursday 4th May - Ese and her Vooduu People at the Old Dispensary in Camberwell, London SE5. The band always go down well at this venue, and this particular Thursday night was no exception, with the band giving the lively crowd a mix of 70% originals and 30% covers - including this version of "Dock of the Bay":

Thursday 27 April: To Under The Bridge (an odd but likeable venue underneath Ch*ls**'s Stamford Bridge ground).

The act was veteran Turkish politico-psychedelicists Baba Zula, supported by Gypsydelica. The latter started off OK but played for too long and were just a bit samey. The headline act's swirling, hypnotic music ticked all the boxes for me, however.

Friday 12th May, and a short stroll to my local, the Balham Bowls Club, for a Friday night freebie from Ese and the boys. This particular crowd (pretty rowdy) were more suited to covers but the band's originals, such as "Silver Spoon", "I Don't Mind", "Up In Smoke", "Alien", "Fairy Tales", "Dynamite" and "Grey" went down a storm.

Here's a vid of the very last number of the night, a 'send 'em home with something mellow' cover of the Commodores' "Easy":

Saturday 13th May and up to Dalston for a gig by Howe Gelb and his trio, supported by French guitarist Naim Amor at Café Oto. I saw Howe last December at the same venue, and he was an absolute revelation. This time round the gig wasn't quite as good, perhaps because it wasn't so much of a surprise, things were more one-paced and there was just one set. Howe's trio was helped out by the excellent Amor and by vocalist Lonna Kelley.

The event was being recorded and filmed by Fire Records so I presume we'll see the results released sometime soon.