Nick Lowe, Union Chapel, Islington - 9 May 2014

Nick Lowe played the first of three nights at what is apparently London's favourite music venue, although from the first floor balcony the sound was a bit muddy for the first three or four numbers so I'd be interested to know what the judging criteria were. With no album to plug this was a run through of Nick's faves on acoustic guitar, aided and abetted for the second half of the set by old mucker Geraint Watkins on keyboards and one time Led Zeppelinite John Paul Jones who switched between bass, electric mandolin and rthythm guitar.

The early part of the set drew heavily on the Brentford Trilogy, with the stand out moment being Rome Wasn't Built In A Day.  Unusually for Nick there was little in the way of inter song banter.

The mid part of the show featured a slew of songs from his last but one album (sadly, no Yuletide treats from his 2013 Christmas album Quality Street), of which the strongest was definitely Stoplight Roses.  There was also a nod to the past with a cover of Cliff Richard's Travelling Light.

Lowe had warned his audience that, whether they had come from Diss or Peterborough, he might not play all their favourites. So there was no Beast in Me. The encore consisted of Watkins and Lowe duetting on the former's Only A Rose and then Jones and support act John Doe joining the duo onstage for an eerie recreation of Everybody's Talkin as made famous by Harry Nilsson. They finished with (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding, despite Nick protesting that they hadn't planned to play it.

As always, Lowe's honeyed voice carried the occasion and left the audience wanting more - and this despite the iffy sound.

Alan Carr, Chorley Little Theatre, 2 March 2014

Chorley Little Theatre continued with its' remarkable ability to pull in big name comics for warm up shows with the booking of Alan Carr for a 'work in progress' show.  Any doubt about Carr's popularity can be dismissed with a look at the number of followers he has on Twitter - 3.4m at the last count - and Carr's own reference to the fact that he had downsized to play Chorley on a Sunday night: 'Two years ago it was the O2.'

But although this was a rehearsal rather than the real thing ('there'll be some shit bits,' Carr assured his audience) the only obvious signs of this were Alan having dressed down by wearing jeans and him briefly referring to his notes as to which gags to try out. Otherwise, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and a show where you had paid a lot more than £13 for a ticket.

Carr does a clever mix of Max Miller cheekiness and Kenneth Williams cum Frankie Howerd style 'oo-er missus' interaction with his audience, and in the intimate surroundings of Chorley he elicits comments and contributions from the front and back rows throughout the show. He deals with unwanted heckles - including trying to find a dogowner who walks their dog and isn't allergic to it in order to set up an anecdote about one of his Red Setters - deftly and in fine music hall tradition.

Carr's gossipy delivery is a clever mix of self deprecating gags and observational humour, such as being disciplined by his mother when a child and exacting his revenge on his father when Dad was driving the family down the M1. There are stories about settling down to domesticity with a new partner, going on holiday in a country where homosexuality is illegal and how comfortable a pair of Crocs are, the last of which items promoted a fiercely hostile reaction from his audience.

He finished an hour long set with a short Q & A, where he was able to knock on the head the suggestion that he was teetotal. Referring to his hit Channel 4 show Chatty Man he said: 'I have a drink with all my guests.'

Unsurprisingly, tickets for this gig sold out within minutes of going on sale and whether or not he ever comes back to the Little Theatre those who were there will be able to boast about it to their friends. The audience were laughing and shrieking from the first moment to the last as a master of his art gave Chorley a taste of a show that will fill venues much bigger than the Little Theatre.

Morrissey, Autobiography, Penguin Classics (book review)

I have read Morrissey's autobiography.  I state this as a proud achievement, because lots of people will pick up this book and put it down and say 'I started something I couldn't finish'.  I myself became becalmed at Page 4 but then soldiered on, like a London Marathon runner who finishes the course several days after the rest of the competitors.

Unless you are a rabid fan (and I have had Morrissey arbitrarily cancel too many concerts for which I have bought tickets to count myself in that category) this is indeed a marathon, clocking in at over 450 pages.

It takes a particularly determined soul to plough through Morrissey's repetitive whinge about the High Court action brought against him by Mike Joyce and which Morrissey lost.  I would advise skipping pages 307 to 342 - all you need to know is that the Smiths will never reform if that entails Moz sharing a stage with Mike Joyce.  Oh, and Morrissey doesn't particularly like Judge Weeks either.

Actually, Morrissey doesn't particularly like lots of people, and if this book had been published with an index it would have included entries such as: 'Marr, Johnny, dislike of; Sioux, Souxsie, dislike of; Travis, Geoff, dislike of;' and so on.

There are some unnecessarily vicious barbs handed out - Apple Records' Neil Aspinall refuses Moz permission to use a song and, when he later dies, Moz's response is 'that's what you get for being so nasty.'

Record companies and their failure to promote Smiths and Morrissey product is also a common theme, as is the notion that Moz's singles and albums have the number 1 chart position in the middle of the week but due to the singular or combined conspiracy or incompetence of the record companies, radio stations and chart compilers are languishing mid table by Sunday evening.  Think David Moyes blaming the referee against Sunderland last week for Man United's poor performance.

Morrissey sprinkles Smiths' and his own lyrics and song titles throughout the text, a clever device to keep afficiandos interested when they have ploughed their way through a particularly heavy few pages.  ('I have no idea what he was on about there, but he's just name checked an album I've got so let's carry on.')

For someone who has battled with record companies (Rough Trade, Sire, Sanctuary) over cover art and the lack of care shown towards the finished product, Morrissey doesn't seem to have proof read his own autobiography.  Apart from the annoying use throughout of American spellings rather than English, there appear to be a couple of pages missing.  At the bottom of p391 we are at the end of a paragraph in Paris but by the top of the next we are mid paragraph in Yorkshire.  I feel a law suit coming on.

There are bright spots - the cameo appearances by David Bowie, popping up like Arthur Tolcher attempting to play a few bars of harmonica on the Morecambe and Wise Show to be told 'not now, Arthur'; Morrissey adopting or rescuing cats and pelicans; Morrissey's obvious love of the Smiths as a performing outfit when they started out and of his adoring fans in Scandinavia and Mexico in particular - but there is also a lot of Morrissey reflecting on how many of the people around him seem to die young.

The encounter with a ghost on Saddleworth Moor is an amusing tale (heightened for me by a cat outside giving a deathly late night shriek as I read the passage), and the attempted kidnap of our hero on the way back from a gig in Mexico is well told, but often this lightness of touch is missing.

There is a good book in here, and if Mozzer had not eschewed chapter headings and attempted to be James Joyce but instead had submitted to a decent sub editor and allowed 150 pages to be cut from this tome, we might have got it.  In truth, there is nothing in Autobiography that isn't said more eloquently and elegantly on Vauxhall and I.

(PS.  If a revised version of this book is ever issued, can the commissioning editor get Moz to explain why he walked off the stage two songs into his gig at the Liverpool Echo Arena when a bottle of water bounced off his head and he clearly wasn't injured?  It's time the tale was told....)

2013 with the Wedding Present

I saw quite a few bands in 2013.  And I saw one particular band quite a few times.  The Wedding Present.

It started with Brighton. We'd been twice before to David Gedge's At The Edge Of The Sea festival, but I wasn't convinced we should go again.  'They're playing two nights,' I said, 'but on the first night they're playing George Best all the way through, which isn't my favourite Pressies' album, and then they're doing Hit Parade, and you know I don't like bands playing an album all the way through as a format.  It takes away any element of surprise.'

I had been to see Bruce Springsteen at Wembley Stadium in June on the night he decided to play Darkness On The Edge Of Town - an album I'm not familiar with - in its entirety.  I found the gig correspondingly dull as a result.  (I recognise that of the 60,000 people at that gig, 59,999 probably wouldn't agree with my description of the gig as 'dull', and I hasten to add that I'd seen Bruce play the Etihad the previous year and enjoyed it immensely).

However, come the end of August Kate and I were in Brighton for the annual (and now two day) celebration of all things Wedding Present.

The band played on Saturday and Sunday, running through George Best on the first night and the twelve consecutive chart placed singles from 1992 that made up the Hit Parade album on the following night, and were on fine form as always.

The venue, Concorde 2, has very few places to sit down which makes the festival nature of the event - running for seven hours each day - something of an endurance test for someone of my advancing years.  So between the opening act (Cinerama on both days, playing sides one and two of their album Va Va Voom) and the Pressies we availed ourselves of Brighton beach, where we went and laid on the pebbles to watch the sun start to go down before the main event of the evening.

When we got home, the idea of going to see the Pressies on their November UK tour seemed like a good idea. Dusting off The Hit Parade for the first time in ages to listen to it anew had persuaded me that seeing the band again a couple of times more would be a good thing.

'And,' I said, 'they're playing Paris and then two gigs in Lille. Do you fancy going to see them three times in 36 hours?'

Kate, despite firmly rebutting any labelling of her as a Wedding Present obsessive, did.

So the flight to Paris and the trains and hotels were booked.  'But it's your job to sort the tickets for the gigs,' she said.  Which was easier said than done. My schoolboy French was not sufficient to enable me to navitage the two venues' websites, and with no English language website available, I emailed the band's record label Scopitones for help.  Acknowledging the difficulty in getting tickets for European gigs Jessica, David's girlfriend, kindly arranged to put us on the guest list for Paris and Lille. 'And you do know the band are playing a matinee in Lille?'

The Paris gig was at La Maroquinerie, a small club which online reviews of other bands suggested had great views and a great sound.  We watched from the first floor balcony as the band, coming to the end of the continental leg of their tour, played a not dissimilar set to what we'd witnessed in Brighton.  The gig, aided by a great venue, was a good one.

Afterwards, we spoke to Jessica who said that the band would be playing a toned down set for the matinee in Lille the next day and that they'd be on stage at 4pm.

From Paris next morning we went by train, arriving in a very wet Lille around lunchtime.  After a quick bite to eat, and having scouted out the location of the venue on arrival, we headed down to L'Aeronef for the first of two planned gigs that day.

On arrival at the venue the signs were not promising.  Two separate adults were leading their young children up the metal staircase to what we thought was the venue, which looked shut.  Arriving at the rear entrance we could see several more adults with assorted children ranging from toddlers to kids up to perhaps eight years of age.  We seemed to be in the wrong place.

The woman at the door was not encouraging.

'We've come for the Wedding Present gig,' I said.

'Come back this evening,' she replied. 'At 8 o'clock.'

'We've come for the matinee,' I said.

'The Wedding Present are this evening,' she said firmly. 'There is a matinee, but you cannot come in.'

'But we're on the guest list,' I protested.  At this, she relented and led us to the box office where she issued us with two tickets.

Waiting in the lobby, where I managed to spend a couple of Euros on a handily placed Rollng Stones pinball machine, we weree still not sure we were in the right place.  We'd come to see a rock band but everyone else had small children with them and looked as though they were going to a kids' birthday party.

But the venue duly opened the doors to the main arena and we trooped in along with the parents and their many offspring to be greeted by the sight of Tilly on the Pressies' merchandise stall, the first familiar face and the first clear indication that we were definitely in the right place.

What followed was one of the most bizarre gigs I've been to - the Wedding Present coming onstage, plugging in their instruments and launching into a 25 minute set in front of an audience of adults and small children sat cross legged as though they were all back at school.  Which in the case of some of the audience members would have been less than 48 hours before.

The evening performance - for grown ups - was also low key, with no mosh pit and the restrained audience standing well back from the band.  This was no fault of the band, but the French crowd were quite stand offish.  Needless to say, we took advantage of the crowd's diffidence to stand on the front row, and being able to watch the Pressies from close quarters without being sent flying by an overweight fiftysomething (and I write this as an overweight fiftysomething myself) was a rare delight.

We arrived back in the UK and immediately began planning our trips around the UK.  By the time Wolverhampton rolled around, the enormity of what we'd signed up to began to hit me.  Wolverhampton on a Tuesday night would be followed by Leeds, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Liverpool. Five gigs in eight days.  Okay, the band were following the same schedule but we were fitting the gigs in around our day jobs, with a half day's leave taken on Friday to allow us time to get up to Glasgow the only concession to the itinerary we had set ourselves.

Wolverhampton was wet, with the rain sheeting down.  The venue, it has to be said, wasn't great, and we were at the back of the crowd where the chattering classes gather and where the sound wasn't as crisp as you might expect.  Never a great spot to be.

Leeds two days later was much better.  The venue was bigger and a larger crowd made for a cracking atmosphere.  The Pressies almost always sell out what is their home town gig and the O2 Academy, with its large dance floor and clear sight lines, is a great place to witness a rock band in full flight.

The following evening we were in Glasgow.  Another O2 Academy and another great venue.  The band were extremely loud and the crowd raucous.  Talking to guitarist Patrick Alexander, drummer Charles Layton and bassist Katharine Wallinger afterwards we were probably less than coherent as we babbled enthusiastically to them about how much we'd enjoyed the performance.

We would have gone to see the band in Aberdeen (indeed, we had tickets and I had booked a hotel in Aberdeen) but a chance conversation with Tilly on the merchandise stall brought home to me the fact that the Aberdeen gig was on Sunday. (I had booked the hotel for Saturday) and that I had screwed up.  Since I had to be at work on Monday afternoon, we were going to have to give The Lemon Tree a miss. Fortunately, I found someone on Twitter who could make use of the tickets so they didn't go to waste.

The following Tuesday saw us, and the band, in Liverpool.  Another O2 Academy gig, with the Pressies playing upstairs while The Cult took up occupation of the larger downstairs space.

Epic Studios in Norwich was the venue for our penultimate gig of the year.  The former home of Anglia TV and where Sale of the Century, hosted by Nicholas Parsons, was filmed, the cameras were also on for this gig and streamed on t'Internet for anyone who cared to part with £5 for the privilege.  The set was more of a greatest hits, with nothing from the Hit Parade, and the band were once again excellent, although David fluffed the intro to closing number End Credits by forgetting the lyrics, forcing the band to restart the song.

And, finally for us and the band, Leeds again at the Brudenell Social Club with a raucous crowd, a couple of enthusiastic bouncers and Gedgey getting banged in the mouth by a stray microphone. 'I'll bring a gum shield next time,' he said.

So that's it for 2013.  Kate and I saw 11 performances by The Wedding Present, and two by Cinerama.  Quite a haul given that we had no firm plans to go and see the band come the end of July.

Seeing the band play their matinee gig in Lille and witnessing the obvious delight of the band at the enthusiasm of some of the younger members of the audience was a highlight.  As was the whole adventure of seeing the band several times over.

And will we be going to see The Wedding Present in 2014?  Well Athens is already pencilled in the diary....

Black Sabbath, Phones 4 Us Arena, Manchester, 18 December 2013

By rights two members of Black Sabbath shouldn't be on stage in Manchester on the grounds that they shouldn't still be alive. Guitarist Tony Iommi is being treated for lymphoma, which would lead lesser mortals to take an extended sickie at the very least while lead singer Ozzy Osbourne's drug and drink travails, well documented in the red tops and in wife Sharon's regular autobiographies, would have done for anyone without the constitution of a team of oxen.

But here they are, clad in black and grinning broadly, and along with bassist Geezer Butler and drafted in drummer Tommy Clufetos are firing up their amplifiers to 11 and turning the clock back to 1972.

From the opening siren of War Pigs through to the encore Paranoid (Ozzy rushing back on stage having hidden behind the speaker stack encouraging the audience to clap louder - 'come on you f*****s') the band that can be argued to have invented heavy metal grind out the riffs of classic song after classic song. Sabbath have rarely troubled the singles chart, but their repertoire draws heavily on their first four albums with three songs from this year's album chart topping '13' (Age of Reason, End of the Beginning and God is Dead) thrown in for good measure. The Sabbath sound has come full circle as the newer songs could easily have been written in the band's early days, so smoothly do they drop into the set. Anyone expecting Black Sabbath to start doing dub step or Miley Cyrus covers is going to be severely disappointed.

Several audience members appear to be paying their own personal tributes to an off the wagon Ozzy, and are significantly the worse for wear before the band come on. Ozzy, of course, has gone from being a shoeless petty thief from Aston, Birmingham to a national treasure singing at Buckingham Palace. You are unlikely to rush out and buy an Ozzy Osbourne keep fit DVD based on the physical shape he is in these days but there is no doubting the power of the voice or his enthusiasm at being on stage.

Geezer Butler, the band's main lyricist, performs a sterling job on bass and Clufetos plays an energetic stop start drum solo that, accompanied by a spectacular light show, builds the suspense before the band launch into the final stretch of the set.

The heart of the Black Sabbath engine though is Tony Iommi, in blue tinted specs and black leather, strolling up and down the side of the stage with a benign smile on his face and guitar in hand, effortlessly emitting arena shaking riffs without breaking sweat.

Heavy metal has its detractors but Black Sabbbath must be doing something right. The band are getting on but the audience, ranging from teenagers to late middle aged bikers, reflects a youthful demographic, demonstrating heavy metal's multi generational appeal and suggesting that as long as the band that invented it can keep going they'll continue to sell out big venues. Long live Sabbath!

The Beatles, Hammersmith Odeon, December 1964

It was Christmas 1964. I was four years old. My Dad wasn't into music but my mum - a big Guy Mitchell fan - was still only 24 when the Beatles emerged and so she listened to them and wanted someone to go with when she got tickets. So it was that I dutifully boarded a train to London to see a department store Santa and, after visiting Santa's grotto and collecting my neatly wrapped present, Mum took me on to the Hammersmith Odeon to see The Beatles' Christmas Show 1964, compered by Jimmy Savile.

I heard The Beatles that evening, but my memory is not of the music. I don't remember what John and Paul said, or whether you could hear them over the screams of the audience. Or indeed if the audience was screaming.What I remember is opening my present from Santa and removing the wrapping paper to find that I'd got a set of wooden skittles and balls. And then dropping one of the balls on the floor where it promptly rolled away on the sloping auditorium floor to the stage, never to be seen again.  I didn't understand then why the ball couldn't be retrieved.  I do now.

The Wedding Present, O2 Academy, Liverpool, 29 October 2013

The Wedding Present's Hit Parade Tour ends on Friday in London, so you've got just three more opportunities to catch the band replaying their Elvis Presley-matching cascade of a hit single every month during 1992. From the opening chords of Blue Eyes through to the haunting chorus of No Christmas, the audience in Liverpool were reminded of why the charts back then were so much more interesting than they are now. Well perhaps that's nostalgia, but if you're going to get all nostalgic why not do so in the company of a great band playing loud in a small venue? The Hit Parade songs were bookended by 9 or 10 others from the band's 'extensive repertoire', as main man David Gedge introduced them. Whether it's the industrial thunder of Interstate 5 with which the band start the show, the spirit lifting 524 Fidelio with bassist Katharine Wallinger on backing vocals or the squalling guitar of Patrick Alexander on new single Two Bridges there are a range of newer songs for fans to nod along to. But it is Brassneck and set closer My Favourite Dress that get the mosh pit of 50 somethings bouncing around. The band are held together by the energetic Charles Layton on drums, and David Gedge has a line in patter that other front men would do well to study. The only sombre note (aside from the fact that most Wedding Present songs are bitter sweet lyrically) is when Gedge says a few words in tribute to Lou Reed and then plays Reed's She's My Best Friend. By the end of the pulsating 90 minute show the crowd have had their fill, which is just as well since the Wedding Present don't do encores.