Tickets! Anyone Want Tickets...?

Some posts ago, I protested that I couldn’t really give an answer to the vexed question of my favourite gig of all time. This was based on the premise that I couldn’t remember them all and even if I could, it was impossible to go back in time and inhabit your younger self to ‘feel the moment’ as it were. Well, since then I have made a concerted effort to create a list of gigs attended and have surprised myself by recalling, with the help of ticket stubs and old diaries, just under 100 occasions where I tried to make myself permanently deaf! There are bound to be more but for the time being this list will suffice. Now, trying to remember them all in any detail is a much more difficult task owing either to too much alcohol at the time or lack of memory now (or both really).

Nevertheless here is a list of 11 gigs that I feel were definitely a fun night out. They may not be the best gigs I have attended but they are events for which I have real memories rather than hindsight imaginings. Nor do they always feature the biggest bands or the best venues but each has a place in my hall of fame.

Curved Air (Hatfield Polytechnic 1972) – My first ever gig. Truly awe-inspiring despite having to leave during the set due to parental curfew. (Huh! How rock ‘n’ roll!) Set me on the path to music as an unpaid career.
Argent (St Albans Civic 1974) – One of my favourite bands of the early 70s. This was one of their last appearances before Russ Ballard left. In the days when musicianship counted for something.
Split Enz (St Albans Civic 1976) – Tim Finn’s weird and wonderful band before little brother Neil took them away from the avant-garde and onto the path of commercial pop.
Talking Heads (Hemel Hempstead Pavilion 1978) – A night throbbing with massive rhythmic integrity and psychosis from a band at their prime.
Martha and the Muffins (Nashville 1979) – Before they were famous, playing the back room at the Nashville pub and filling it with sweaty energy.
The Bangles (Town and Country Club 1985) – 4th July gig gave it a certain poignancy. Who said women can’t play? One of my favourite live bands...ever.
The Smiths (Royal Albert Hall 1986) – Better than I thought it would be. Great tunes and Morrissey on top form complementing the grandeur of the venue.
Siouxsie and the Banshees (Royal Albert Hall 1986) – my favourite of all the gigs of theirs I attended (and there were many). ‘Nightshift’ rules!
Ghost Dance (Riverside Studios Hammersmith 1987) – A solo outing on a whim to see an unknown I’d picked out of the NME and turning out to be one of the best nights of my life. You live for these moments.
All About Eve (Astoria 1988) – Another great live band melding some old fashioned guitar histrionics with Julianne Regan’s fabulous voice.
Go-Go’s (Shepherds Bush Empire 1994) – With The Bangles’ Vicki Peterson filling in for a pregnant Charlotte Caffey, and Belinda Carlisle back in the fold, how could they fail?

So, there you have it and not a mention of Pink Floyd at Knebworth 1975, nor Queen in Hyde Park 1976 but then I never really enjoyed outdoor events. Perhaps I’ll dig out a few more intimate venue favourite gigs for a future post. Or maybe the worst gigs...

The Ones That Got Away

The trouble with being a bit of an obsessive and following a broad spectrum of bands and artists is that it is not financially, or indeed physically possible to own everything they release unless you have several storage rooms lying vacant in the East wing. I don’t even own every Beatles album. Luckily, some of my favourite bands have not produced a huge amount of material so it is relatively easy to collect the whole set but my general rule is that I tend to start buying from the early days and then tail off unless they are very special indeed.

Over the years, I have accordingly ignored many later albums from those artists I once followed and it often comes as a bit of a shock to stumble on one of these ‘passed over’ albums much later and find that they are blindingly good.

Such an album is ‘Ultraviolet’ by All About Eve.

I always felt AAE were a cut above the rest when I first heard ‘Our Summer’ on an Indie compilation back in the 1980s and this view was ratified after having purchased their first two albums in the late eighties when they presented a face which matched Julianne Regan’s cut-glass vocals with the then prevalent goth metal/mystic folk sound. However, I became a lapsed fan after guitarist Tim Bricheno left and never looked back, so it was with no little degree of trepidation that I approached their ‘Keepsakes’ 2CD compilation which boasts large chunks of later albums that I failed to buy.

But I needn’t have worried. Whilst all the best moments from the first two albums ‘All About Eve’ and ‘Scarlet and Other Stories’ are present and correct, it is the later material from the albums ‘Touched by Jesus’ and the much maligned 1992 effort, ‘Ultraviolet’, the ones I didn’t buy and now wish that I had, that have really surprised me. The dense, dreamy, shoegazing-meets-psychedelia style tracks from the latter are magnificent slices of post Pink Floyd aural architecture, particularly the trance-like ‘Phased’ and ‘Infrared’ which could be the offspring of a coupling between Syd Barrett’s ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Echoes’. And to think I nearly missed out on this stuff.

Unfortunately, ‘Ultraviolet’ was an unmitigated disaster in the shops and MCA dropped AAE and promptly deleted the album from their catalogue soon after its release (thus keeping eBay in funds for years after). More fool them for it is an enjoyable listen and even Julianne jokes that AAE were a great band ‘70% of the time’. The 70% must cover this album. It is still unavailable, but 6 of the 11 tracks are available on ‘Keepsakes’ which certainly is available, so give ‘em a listen.