SpideWriter

Oh Yes, Mama! Mama Oh No / Grandbaby / Robin Evans Norwich Arts Centre, Saturday, 22nd June 2024 Surprising as it was, summer arrived in St Benedict’s Street like a man struggling to explain why he was late for a date because he was so into a spreadsheet at work.  Well, stuff you summer!  All the enthusiastic attention and beautiful flowers aren’t just good enough.  I digress. It was a beautiful evening and the old church that is Norwich Arts Centre , with its delightful back garden, was a joy to be at on Saturday.  In fact, the Fine City was an overall delight.  Music, live or otherwise, filled the old streets, lanes and alleys.  Even the occasional poser in a loud motor, had the bass thumping through the side panels, adding an authentic urban boom to Britain’s Biggest Village.  The warm still air was perfect acoustically.   The backyard at The Plough , one of the very best summer drinking locations in town, was...

Content Warning: Professional Northerner at Work   Richard Hawley The LCR, UEA,  Sunday, 16 th  June 2024 My response to Mr Hawley’s latest album, In This City They Call You ‘Love’ was C omme si, comme ça .  The guitar work, the love Hawley has for his early guitar heroes in his tribute songs to Sheffield and the respective playing styles and indeed singing, is interesting.  It is a nice album, but doesn’t pull up any trees for me, so I was wondering how the tour might be going, ticket sales-wise.    I walked into the SU building at Norwich’s campus university and was over-whelmed by the size and maturity (age-wise) of the crowd.  Not only was the venue rammed with people who looked serious-minded, but the floor space was filled with rows of seats, with each one taken, leaving the rest of us to cram around the edges of the hall, with due regard for height and width of our fellow punters.   Despite taking nearly an hour to set u...

Closing the Circle    Until The Ribbon Breaks  New Album:  V I S I T O R  Album Review by Spencer Ide In a month when fellow Welshman, John Cale releases a new album, POPitcal Illusion , the creative force that is Pete Lawrie Winfield  operating under the recording name of  Until The Ribbon Breaks  re-surfaces with V I S I T O R, his third studio album.   The two artists, Cale and Winfield, have a lot more in common than origins in the land of song.  Both explore how electronic technology can be used to form pleasing new sound waves, both have poetic sensibilities and each of these artists enjoy exploring structure and form in their pop music-friendly compositions. From the first moments of  For The Birds  you sense that V I S I T O R is going to be an exceptional album.  A bit of rustling old school tech recording tape begins the album, as Winfield relaunches himself with, as he describes it, “…renewed emotiona...

Plenty of Spare Change - Then Some! Vieira and The Silvers -  Live at Red Rooster 2024 Main Stage, 1st June 2024 Saturday, 1 st  June, is day three of the tenth Red Rooster Festival .  The relentless cool breeze has blown in some dry weather and there are people, kids mostly, leaping off the springboard into the Black Bourn that runs through the grounds of Euston Hall.   The woodland ringing the big top holding the main stage, is filled with picnic chairs and tables, beer coolers and the well-insulated festival goers, enjoying life outside without being rained on.  There are a lot of Red Rooster regulars there.  They seem relaxed and easy-going.  The music an essential part of their picnic dining, BBQing, summer cruising and boozing existence. It’s all very suburban and comfortable, all very BBC Radio 2.   Yet, weaving through all the folding chairs and circles of camping music-lovers, putting all that behind me, stepping into ...

Yeeeeeehaaaw!   The UFO Rodeo Band Red Rooster Festival 31 st  May 2024 & 1st June 2024   It had been a long night, with rain generating floods in the roads approaching the Red Rooster festival site.  Campers and the MoHo people were getting their collective act together, steeling themselves for an unseasonably cool day ahead and somebody, anybody had to get the show going again.  Who would be first on stage in the big tent on such a dank Friday at noon? Who had been dealt the Joker from the deck?   “Now it’s time to face the music.  Time to find out how the story ends…” Gavin Bowers dramatically introduced his previously rarely-heard singing voice to the half-awake, half-crowd, as the UFO Rodeo Band confidently grasped the nettle and fired the starting pistol for Friday, setting off at a brisk canter, to pour some much-needed, burning Bourbon down Friday's chilly throat .     After their lively opening number, the band ...

Angélica Garcia Provokes A Double Take Angélica Garcia: Gemelo on Partisan Records Album Release Date: 7 th  June 2024 Album Review by Spencer Ide  This album arrives from curious roots and it surprises and delights by turns, with music that fills the room with refreshing combinations that repay replay, after replay. This is an album that may well, in twenty years time, be found in everyone’s collection.     Think how everyone seems to hold a copy of ‘Tapestry’, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, and ‘Buena Vista Social Club', well I would like to think that   Angélica Garcia ’s latest album, ‘Gemelo’ , her first on Partisan records, has the makings of being an equally enduring work. The ten songs packaged up here are headed up by the perfectly complete, two minute, opening track  Reflexiones.   It is a delightful introduction to the theme of this ten song collection. This album captures a pause in life's struggles, a chance to précis the route to today taken by...

An Unforgettable Night With Robert Finley Red Rooster Festival 2024 Thursday 30th May 2024 “Let me take a few seconds to tell you / What is important to me / It is so important to me that / Each and every one of you Is here / Because without you / I cannot do / What I do!”   With that very personal, personable introduction, the seventy-year old, son of sharecroppers made himself very welcome to the packed tent.  He then turned in a tremendous performance that was still the talk of the festival two days later.  Those turning up on the Friday had heard about it too and had a bad case of missing out blues. Mr Finley has a lot of patter, which random as it may feel initially, always turns very neatly into the start of the next number.  He is a natural-born story-teller, which makes his rocky blues so attractive.   Backed by the vocals of his eldest daughter Chrissy Johnson and a powerful band, Robert Finley gave a cracking demonstration of what gett...

Brown Horse Take The Reins Red Rooster 2024 30th May 2024 If you investigate the success of the first Brown Horse album, Reservoir released in January 2024 you will be impressed by the reviews it received: Mojo gave four stars; UNCUT awarded 9/10; The Sunday Times and The Times slapped four stars on it; The Scottish Daily Express five stars; Wall Of Sound wrote, ' This album, put simply, is really, really lovely and well worth a listen.'  These views were heartily endorsed by the people I know who have heard it. Thus encouraged, I made my way to the big top. I had not seen the band before its main stage appearance on 30 th   May at Red Rooster 2024.     There’s six of them and they seem quite shy. It feels like I am back in the pre-punk days of the long-haired musos doing very little except play their instruments, letting the paying audience appreciate them through a process of osmosis.   “Hello. We’re Brown Horse.” was all the assembled were met with at...