BOC: Mean Fiddler/OFF: Ficton & Nektar

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 CWarburton at OAG.COM wrote:

> Moved downstairs - musta bin a big fall off in ticket sales this time!
> Maybe Jon & I weren't the only ones put off by last years poor show.
>
> Paging Rich Lockwood... Did you go?

        Yeah, it strikes me that I've seen no review of that gig beyond a
setlist, or indeed any reviews from that tourlet at all. I've been having
trouble tinkering with list settings lately which means I have missed some
mail, but there didn't seem to be anything at the time. Were they any
better this time out people?

        The Fiction and Nektar gig didn't seem like a worse
option. Fiction were playing with a stand-in drummer because their usual
one had broken some limb or other. This left them in the awkward position
of playing with someone much better than their usual drummer who was
presumably then going to do something else rather than hang around
Alan-Powell-like. It was a good and tight performance, though, no insult
meant to the rhythm section because there's nothing wrong there especially
with a better-than-usual drummer, it was all about the guitar, and that's
what anyone going to see Tony Hill's solo outfit presumably expects, I
know it's what I do. Most of the set was done on his usual axe, I'm afraid
I can't tell you what it is but he gets a crushingly heavy yet sweet sound
out of it, like treacle fired through a high-pressure hose. No, okay, not
very much like that I imagine, but I can't describe it better. What,
apart from my vocabulary failure, strikes me about Fiction is that lately
more and more and more of the material has been upbeat. Now, don't get me
wrong, bouncy songs full of loud guitar as done by a seventies psych
wizard rather than a bunch of East Londoners who're sorry they're too
young to be in Madness, this is a good thing, but Tony Hill's particular
brand of hopeless gloom is uniquely powerful and cathartic and sort of one
of the things I go to see him for. If it's a toss-up between him being
happier and his band being less of an experience I suppose I'd have to
choose the former but I have to admit I won't enjoy it as much.

        Last song was done on a spare guitar, anyway, tuned differently,
or rather not tuned, as Tony spent a minute or two trying to get it in
tune and then gave up, saying, "If it's still out of tune, sod it", but
unfortunately it was and it did make the last song drag rather, because
you could hear it wasn't where it was supposed to be. But incendiary
playing and cosmic Geordie doom we got, and I was pretty happy with it.

        I had no idea what to expect from Nektar, as I'd only discovered
minutes before I got in that they weren't German and that I couldn't
remember which of their albums Calvert guested on, so had to choose which
to buy on the basis of which cover I liked best. I got _A Tab in the
Ocean_, even before they played, and that seems to have been a good
bargain, because they opened with what I now know is its title
track and did almost all of the album in the course of the (long) set.
Keyboards, played apparently by a Welsh hobbit, were as with modern
Man slightly too new and digital to be entirely authentic but they were
also very low in the mix, so that when things got going the general effect
was of a fearsomely loud prog rock three-piece. But prog in a way that
escapes at least one usual definition, because there were almost no
solos. They just played and played, as a three-piece (and occasionally
some keyboards made it through) going through ceaselessly changing complex
rock, no one pattern or riff really played out because they moved on too
fast. I was dazzled before the end of the first track, and I remember also
being very impressed by `Remember the Future' and what I know now as
`Desolation Valley'. As I said to Chris Warburton at the time, "I haven't
had to mosh in 9:8 since Porcupine Tree were interesting!", which is a
little unfair perhaps as I haven't seen the current PT lineup and they
might for all I know be positively fascinating, and in any case the
section I meant transpires to actually be in 4:4 with a very clever guitar
line, but I quote myself anyway just to give you the impression I was
getting second-hand. They didn't mess about, they just came out and
delivered a long and blistering set of meaty prog workouts and I was
sorry I didn't have enough money for more albums (or, in the end, even
though they started playing at nine-forty, enough time to stay for the
encore). So I say, go see them if you get the chance as they will pin
back your ears and wash your forebrain over with the Real Stuff.

        Now, someone tell me what I missed, OK? Yours,
                                                        Jonathan

ObCD: V/A - _Doomed_ CD3
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)