SpideWriter

Sound Issues At The Octagon Chapel: Quinn Oulton trio John Ivory's building, opened as the New Meeting House in 1756.  The master carpenter, Freeman of the City, who had previously built the Methodist Hall up on Chapelfield Road, adjacent to The Champion pub, (for reference), clearly took great care to shape a building where a speaker would be able to address a large congregation with minimal vocal effort.  Preparations underway to bring down the old chapel Acoustically, it is an almost perfect building, as proven by the self-indulgent couple who 'whispered' through out their time at the disastrous Quinn Oulton gig on Thursday night. Thankfully, they left after being glared at, then shushed by a distracted audience member, who'd finally had enough of their ignorance. Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the sound problems that beset Oulton's blyth attempts to play on despite obvious technical issues with the sound system.  A very successful show by Sofia Grant,...

Behind The Sun Collective at St Laurence's. Wild Paths: Day 3 Evening I wasn't quite expecting what I got at the church of St Laurence. I had popped in and seen a local art show during the summer. The space is impressive. There's a lot of headroom, (several metres), the nave is wide and much longer than the old church of St Swithin's, home to Norwich Arts Centre. St Laurence's is a biggie. Without any furniture, other than a temporary bar, it offers an exciting opportunity for music promoters.  What I hadn't expected was two sets of gigantic speakers, possible four metres high by three metres wide, either side of the chancel, suggesting some heavy-duty noise was about to be generated. I put my ear plugs in pronto - that amount of power in a stone and flint construction could have hearing diminishing consequences.  It was a good move, because those of us who trooped down St Benedict's were about to be reminded that jazz is a very broad church.  St. Lawrence...

I've been looking forward to this week ever since I first heard about this festival...interesting it's called Wild Paths, not Wild Cobbles, or Wild Streets, but it is here at last, Tuesday, 14th October through to Sunday 19th October. My mission is quite simple: get to every venue when there's a show, or talk in session. How I get on will be written here, as I go. I'll try to keep it tidy, but it may get messy. Edits of articles will be notified when the whirlwind has been and gone. I think this festival could be a gem. Info and tickets are available from the link here:   https://wildpaths.co.uk/ Hope to see you in Norwich at Wild Paths 2025  Spencer Ide Monday, 13th October, 2025

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...

The Big Gig Santiago & The Soulmovers and Mississippi MacDonald Dereham Memorial Hall, Saturday  25 th  May 2024 Santiago & The Soulmovers, Dereham Memorial Hall. (c)CLP   Absolutely chucking it down.  Branches breaking under the combined weight of foliage and very heavy rain.  Perfect for the drive out through flooding, via a phantom road diversion, to Dereham for an evening of blues.   Arriving slightly frazzled by the evening’s journey, I really needed to hear something to relax me, soothe my worried mind and slow me down.  Thankfully, I found it within the comforting confines of Dereham’s picture-book Memorial Hall.   Mississippi MacDonald strolled on stage in a classic black showman’s suit with shiny seams, with mighty fancy lapels, wide as a Concorde delta wing and just as aerodynamic.  He strapped on his Fender CS ’61 as he greeted the audience with a Londoner’s  “Good evening, ladies’n’gennelmen. ...

Welcome to The House of All House of All and Ravenous Hounds Waterfront Studio, Norwich Saturday, 27 th  April 2024 Where do I start with this?   Cuckoo in the Nest ?  Here is a Fall iteration playing brilliant new stuff.  I won’t over-analyse this, but…   But…mortality is a question that haunts us all and loss is part of living.  Steve Diggle speaks of going on without Pete Shelley in Buzzcocks.  Diggle is writing what he can, playing his own Buzzcocks songs of old, (with some of the crowd-pleasing Shelley fans' favourites obviously).  For him, there is no point to trying to recreate yesterday’s Buzzcocks, without Shelley.  At his stage of life Diggle doesn’t want to be singing songs about longing to be sixteen again. So, he is working on taking the melodic punk-pop sound to new areas. More strength to you Steve Diggle for that.   Which is my way of introducing the ghost of Mark E. Smith, who pops in a...