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rhythmaningI went to see the Waterboys last. I nearly didn’t. For me, they are very rooted in my past – I’ve got three records by them that I love, and the most recent of those is twenty years old. And their songs make me think of lost loves and old friends.
The gig was also at the Festival Theatre. That is, a theatre. Seats. Sitting down. Rock gigs need standing and moving, not plush red seats. I go to the Festival Theatre to watch ballet – regularly. It isn’t where I’d go for a gig.
Still, go I did. It was good. It took the band – or maybe it was me – a long while to warm up. A Sunday night, no booze, a theatre – see, it was going to take a while to get moving, wasn’t it?
It was a curious set. They played only one song from “A Pagan Place” – and that was Red Army Blues, the one song on the LP (because yes, I have it on vinyl. I only bought the CD a couple of months ago) that isn’t about relationships or yearning (or both).
They only played three tunes from “Fisherman’s Blues”, which surprised me: one of the things about this tour is that it reunites Mike Scott – who, as he told the audience when I last saw him play thirteen years ago IS the Waterboys – and Steve Wickham, the powerful influence on the folk-infused “Fisherman’s Blues”: so I had expected lots of songs from that album.
Instead we got a lot from their latest album, and a lot – an awful lot – from “This Is The Sea”, the harder, guitar-based album that fell between “A Pagan Place” and “Fisherman’s Blues”. They played five of the nine tracks on this album, and rocked out. (Wikipedia tells me that Wickham played on “This Is The Sea” as well, which I hadn’t realised – or remembered. Just one track, though; Wikipedia also reminds me that a guy I knew at university gets a mention on “This Is The Sea” – he is credited with piano, though only appears on the re-release. A small world.)
You may have realised that “This Is The Sea” is not my favourite Waterboys’ album. It is great, but it is a rock album. There were a lot of guitar-rock bands around back then, and it lacked the brass-enthused grandeur of “A Pagan Place” - big music indeed – and the jollity – the fun as well as the emotion – of “Fisherman’s Blues”.
I remember when I was a student, driving in an old car (which kept breaking down) around the northern Highlands of Scotland. I had a portable cassette player in the car – it didn’t even have a radio in it – and I played “A Pagan Place” over and over and over. The music made so much sense in that landscape – the big sound over the barren landscape. The two go together.
By coincidence, it was in Ullapool that I first heard “Fisherman’s Blues”, a few years later. I had loved “A Pagan Place”, and whilst I liked a lot of “This Is The Sea”, I basically thought Scott had lost what I had loved, so I didn’t bother seeking out “Fisherman’s Blues” when it came out. I was visiting the north-west – up from London on a break – and staying with P., the sister of a long-ex-girlfriend. We spent an evening drinking a bottle of Grouse and playing “Fisherman’s Blues” over and over. It is a great record – it quickly became one of my favourites. It is very different from “A Pagan Place” or “This Is The Sea”: a lot of it sounds like folk music in an Irish bar on a Saturday night. Which is not wholly surprising since Scott had decamped to join Wickham in Dublin. And then hung out in bars with folk musicians. (By the way, the drummer on some of the tracks is Patti Smith’s drummer – Jay Dee Daughty. They’re playing in Glasgow this week; I can’t get to see them.)
I clearly have a lot of personal history invested in this music, and listening to the songs brings these things to mind.
Last night, I sat sober in the Festival Theatre waiting to be impressed – waiting for my youth to sneak up behind me and give me a bang on the ear. I felt like I was watching the concert rather than involved in it – I wasn’t standing, I couldn’t move; I wasn’t involved. They got through to me in the end, but it took a while – neither they nor the audience really got going until the encores.
Scott is a good performer, but if anything maybe a little too theatrical: he isn’t just singing songs, he is telling stories, and sometimes the story seems more important than the song. His voice is sometimes mannerly, as if he is an actor on the stage, not a singer.
Focusing on “This Is The Sea”, it was more of a rock gig than I expected. Wickham held his own on the fiddle – and indeed, the sound was great: all the words could be heard, the drums were perhaps a little bit too heavy for me (like I say, this was rock), but the sound wasn’t too loud and it was clear. As well as the fiddle and Scott’s guitar, they were joined by Richard Naiff on organ, Mark Smith on bass (and there for want of an E goes the fall) and a new drummer whose name escaped me.
Scott looked like a rock star. The newer songs seemed rather lightweight, and Scott’s trippy, new age spirituality can wear a bit – but then he played a beautiful song about Iona (despite his strangled vocal intoning Aaayyyyyyyyyyyy-o-na – it did his voice no favours) – and it is a rather beautiful, spiritual place.
The concert closed with two encores: a rocking Be My Enemy and the wonderful, folky Fisherman’s Blues. By then, finally, everyone was standing: and three thousand sang along to the whoo-hoos. It was a brilliant end to a good gig.
They had played Glasgow the night before. Barrowland. A truly great venue. Now that would have been a great gig. And I can’t help feeling that I missed out. I saw a good gig. I wish I had gone through to Glasgow instead – and seen a great one.
The gig was also at the Festival Theatre. That is, a theatre. Seats. Sitting down. Rock gigs need standing and moving, not plush red seats. I go to the Festival Theatre to watch ballet – regularly. It isn’t where I’d go for a gig.
Still, go I did. It was good. It took the band – or maybe it was me – a long while to warm up. A Sunday night, no booze, a theatre – see, it was going to take a while to get moving, wasn’t it?
It was a curious set. They played only one song from “A Pagan Place” – and that was Red Army Blues, the one song on the LP (because yes, I have it on vinyl. I only bought the CD a couple of months ago) that isn’t about relationships or yearning (or both).
They only played three tunes from “Fisherman’s Blues”, which surprised me: one of the things about this tour is that it reunites Mike Scott – who, as he told the audience when I last saw him play thirteen years ago IS the Waterboys – and Steve Wickham, the powerful influence on the folk-infused “Fisherman’s Blues”: so I had expected lots of songs from that album.
Instead we got a lot from their latest album, and a lot – an awful lot – from “This Is The Sea”, the harder, guitar-based album that fell between “A Pagan Place” and “Fisherman’s Blues”. They played five of the nine tracks on this album, and rocked out. (Wikipedia tells me that Wickham played on “This Is The Sea” as well, which I hadn’t realised – or remembered. Just one track, though; Wikipedia also reminds me that a guy I knew at university gets a mention on “This Is The Sea” – he is credited with piano, though only appears on the re-release. A small world.)
You may have realised that “This Is The Sea” is not my favourite Waterboys’ album. It is great, but it is a rock album. There were a lot of guitar-rock bands around back then, and it lacked the brass-enthused grandeur of “A Pagan Place” - big music indeed – and the jollity – the fun as well as the emotion – of “Fisherman’s Blues”.
I remember when I was a student, driving in an old car (which kept breaking down) around the northern Highlands of Scotland. I had a portable cassette player in the car – it didn’t even have a radio in it – and I played “A Pagan Place” over and over and over. The music made so much sense in that landscape – the big sound over the barren landscape. The two go together.
By coincidence, it was in Ullapool that I first heard “Fisherman’s Blues”, a few years later. I had loved “A Pagan Place”, and whilst I liked a lot of “This Is The Sea”, I basically thought Scott had lost what I had loved, so I didn’t bother seeking out “Fisherman’s Blues” when it came out. I was visiting the north-west – up from London on a break – and staying with P., the sister of a long-ex-girlfriend. We spent an evening drinking a bottle of Grouse and playing “Fisherman’s Blues” over and over. It is a great record – it quickly became one of my favourites. It is very different from “A Pagan Place” or “This Is The Sea”: a lot of it sounds like folk music in an Irish bar on a Saturday night. Which is not wholly surprising since Scott had decamped to join Wickham in Dublin. And then hung out in bars with folk musicians. (By the way, the drummer on some of the tracks is Patti Smith’s drummer – Jay Dee Daughty. They’re playing in Glasgow this week; I can’t get to see them.)
I clearly have a lot of personal history invested in this music, and listening to the songs brings these things to mind.
Last night, I sat sober in the Festival Theatre waiting to be impressed – waiting for my youth to sneak up behind me and give me a bang on the ear. I felt like I was watching the concert rather than involved in it – I wasn’t standing, I couldn’t move; I wasn’t involved. They got through to me in the end, but it took a while – neither they nor the audience really got going until the encores.
Scott is a good performer, but if anything maybe a little too theatrical: he isn’t just singing songs, he is telling stories, and sometimes the story seems more important than the song. His voice is sometimes mannerly, as if he is an actor on the stage, not a singer.
Focusing on “This Is The Sea”, it was more of a rock gig than I expected. Wickham held his own on the fiddle – and indeed, the sound was great: all the words could be heard, the drums were perhaps a little bit too heavy for me (like I say, this was rock), but the sound wasn’t too loud and it was clear. As well as the fiddle and Scott’s guitar, they were joined by Richard Naiff on organ, Mark Smith on bass (and there for want of an E goes the fall) and a new drummer whose name escaped me.
Scott looked like a rock star. The newer songs seemed rather lightweight, and Scott’s trippy, new age spirituality can wear a bit – but then he played a beautiful song about Iona (despite his strangled vocal intoning Aaayyyyyyyyyyyy-o-na – it did his voice no favours) – and it is a rather beautiful, spiritual place.
The concert closed with two encores: a rocking Be My Enemy and the wonderful, folky Fisherman’s Blues. By then, finally, everyone was standing: and three thousand sang along to the whoo-hoos. It was a brilliant end to a good gig.
They had played Glasgow the night before. Barrowland. A truly great venue. Now that would have been a great gig. And I can’t help feeling that I missed out. I saw a good gig. I wish I had gone through to Glasgow instead – and seen a great one.