OFF: touring bands

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2002 at 10:11:22PM +0100, Jill Strobridge typed out:

        It's really no use replying to this this late, but I;m hoping to
get over that with quantity over relevance...

> Two flyers received in the post - one says that "The Pretty Things" are
> touring with special guest ARTHUR BROWN.    Is it *the* Arthur Brown
> does anyone know?   They are playing Edinburgh on 6th October which
> might be worth a visit if he is going to be there.

        Yes, it's him, but what that means you'd have got I don't
know. I've passed on every chance I've had to see The Pretty Things sibce
I found out what they sounded like, not because I dislike it, but because
I have here _Resurrection_, which is essentially _S. F. Sorrow_ live with
Arthur Brown narrating and Dave Gilmour on lead guitar, and so far that's
(with or without Gilmour) more or less what they seem to have been doing
live, and I know what that sounds like... so I haven't been interested
enough to go.

> The other flyer says that the "21st Century Schizoid Band" is touring.
> This appears to be quite a large chunk of X-King Crimson (pardon me) and
> in theory should be a good show.      They are in Cambridge tomorrow,
> Newcastle on Saturday and Edinburgh on Sunday.    If anyone has a chance
> to hear them could they post a quick review?

        That on the other hand was quite literally right up my street, so
I did go, and I wrote this review of it:

        "The 21st Century Schizoid Band. This, should you not know, is
four ex-members of King Crimson and a new vocalist-guitarist doing old KC
material and new solo etc. stuff. So we sort of had to go, what with them
being in our town and everything.

        "Support was one man with a six-string fretless bass, a load of
pedals and a box which I shall term a loop generator. He came on stage,
said, `“Clap then, '’m the support ac't”, and transpired to be called
Steve Lawson. He had a lot of pedals, at least one of which was a
pitchshifter, and thus managed to cover a lot of ground with his
bass. What he did was to set up riffs and odd-noise patterns, loop them
and build on them, but this is a rather limited art-form, and nothing he
could do was interesting for longer than about two minutes because it
became impossible to change anything much. He wasn'’t in full control of
it either; he messed up the timing on a couple of the loops, his natural
rhythm wasn’t perfect and hewas trying to work too many controls. He had
to keep telling the audience when stuff was finished. I thought that there
would be people interested to see how it was done who would then do
similar things but not all by themselves. It wasn'’t an act in itself.

        The actual band though, whom we went to see and everything, were
rather better. One may learn something from the instruments on stage as
they took it; Mel Collins, ex-Lindisfarne among other things, had a
treble, tenor and a baritone saxophone, a flute, and a synthesizer; the
drummer, Michael Giles, had a huge drum-kit with ten cymbals on it, half
of which kit turned out to be pressure pads set *loud* so that he sounded
as if he were really belting it when in fact he was being normal; Jacko
Jakszyk, the guitarist and vocalist, ex-Level 42 of all things but also
Michael Giles's son-in-law, was also playing a flute in one number and
helped Mel with the synth; the other Giles brother, Peter, nearly only
played the bass but also took a hand (literally--he pressed one key) with
the second synth at one point; and Ian MacDonald played synthesizer,
tambourines, flute and grand piano. They didn't have a mellotron, which
was rather a pity but beyond that it was difficult to see what they might
be missing. We got several twin-lead-flute passages therefore and everyone
shifted round quite a lot outside the rhythm section. All were very good,
*especially* the rhythm section; the bass player made everything look
utterly effortless, doing everything the simplest way, and the drummer as
I say was making full use of electronics to boost his kit, though the
pressure pads didn't always help as they only seemed to have quiet and
*loud* options and they were often louder than the rest of the kit, and at
moments indeed the whole band. That was the only mix problem though. To
get all criticisms done with quickly, Ian MacDonald shouldn't sing; and
Jacko, though he was very good at imitating early Robert Fripp, wasn't
half as good as Fripp is now, and seemed to actually want to be Satriani
or someone more widdly than Fripp when he was actually let solo.
Furthermore, though his pitch was perfect, unusually so, he couldn't reach
the high notes as clearly as the (admittedly much-treated-in-the-studio)
voice of Greg Lake does on the first album, and it was odd hearing the
crystal-clear lines of `Epitaph' so husky, and losing the top note that
makes it so poignant. He did very well but wasn't quite the thing. If you
had to pick a weak link... but that would be very unfair because the band
was ridiculously well-drilled and made no mistakes that I could spot,
apart from nearly fluffing one of the all-change moments which you have to
be damn good to try anyway mid-song, so no weakest link title need be
awarded.

        "The set-list, with comments, was like this:

Pictures of a City (big sax!)
Cat Food (this is a test song really, isn't it? A bad band can't do
        it, only a good band can do it well; this proved we had a
        good band here)
Let There Be Light (a new number by MacDonald and Pete Seinfeld, not
        bad but rather less ambitious in terms of rhythm and so on
        than I might have hoped, 4/4 all through)
Progress (a solo number of I think Mel's, social commentary of a
        fairly usual sort--at this point I realised the problem of
        having such a good band playing, it made it difficult to tell
        when the material was poor because it was all given virtuoso
        treatment anyway)
The Court of the Crimson King (before which Jacko explained his
        presence in the band as the result of winning 2001 Prog Idol
        with this number... It was very good, but the lack of
        mellotron meant it didn't swamp one as much it should do.
        9/10)
Formentera Lady (lovely building long jam here)
Tomorrow's People (a Giles-MacDonald number, bouncy, again its
        essential floppy-hippiness and lack of interest hidden by the
        excellent playing--nonetheless I did not feel I needed the
        album)
If I Was (a solo number by Ian, again, not inspiring compared to what
        else they were playing)
Ladies of the Road (this was top stuff; Jacko's voice was fine for
        this, and I'm probably going to like any song that starts in
        9/4 and then `settles' into 7/4... )
I Talk to the Wind (not so right for this, though he did it perfectly
        well; he's just not Greg Lake)
Epitaph (this would have been excellent had he made that top note,
        but he, perhaps wisely, didn't try, and again only 9/10)
*
? (I don't know what the first tune of the encore was--other setlists
        suggest it would be `Birdman--The Reflection'? But it sounded
        like a Rick Wright number and was easily the weakest thing
        they played all night)
21st Century Schizoid Man (no complaints about this at all!)

        "In sum, they weren't quite King Crimson but they were doing stuff
KC don't do now, and they came damn close. I didn't feel the need to get
their album because, basically, the studio recordings aren't different
enough, which is a commendation of a sort I suppose? Worth seeing live
though, definitely!"

        Yours,
                Jon (on some kind of mail case)


--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)