Chris Difford – The Some Fantastic Place Tour – with Boo Hewerdine

Acapela Studio - 15/04/2018

Acclaimed by many as the 'other half' of one of pop's most enduring and loved duos with Glenn Tilbrook, Chris Difford is noted for his kitchen-sink type lyrics that have been a feature of his band Squeeze's career that many have enjoyed since they hit the music scene back in the late 70s.

From fresh-faced lads to middle-aged spread their talent for wonderfully composed, catchy songs helped them become the public's go to band, a pick me up for the times and guaranteed to put smiles on the faces.

But behind the music, Difford dealt with some seriously bad times with addictions and stress, the fall out of being involved in a industry that doesn't look after their casualties too well.

Fortunately for Difford, the dark times documented in his book, Some Fantastic Place: My Life In and Out of Squeeze are in the past and he spares no punches when detailing his life, both the good and the bad times.

Whilst Squeeze the band continue to delight with regular tours, it's the intimate gigs like this one at the Acapela Studios that provides fans with a different insight into the songs and the stories behind them. Songs are broken down, dissected and given new life with the lyrics much more prominent in the acoustic mix.

With the equally talented Boo Hewerdine opening, and providing backing to Difford it was an evening to savour. Hewerdine's songs in his shortish set provided the perfect foil to Difford who followed and with his song American TV, a homage to the TV of his youth, it was one of the evening's stand out moments and would in most cases be hard to follow.

Yet Difford is a consummate professional and with a back catalogue to die for, what to leave out must have been a difficult yet the Squeeze songs he covered fitted effortlessly in with his solo material, another feature of the evening, with Battersea Boys and Sobriety showing Difford at his storytelling best.

As you would expect the Squeeze material produced a sing-a-long effect on the sold out crowd which included Take Me I'm Yours. Goodbye Girl, Tempted and Cool For Cats, to name but a few, interspersed with enthralling tales from his book.

I'd advise anyone with even the faintest of interest in Squeeze to next time. if near you, to get out and witness the genius of the man that is Chris Difford.

Retro Review: Tom Robinson Band

The Globe, Cardiff - 17/10/2017

1978 and a background of economic and political turmoil, a desperate time for teenagers looking for anything to express the anger and frustration, punk had fuelled the youthful angst of a generation. But although punk had started a movement with the exception perhaps of The Clash it lacked Articulate and musical songs to catch the imagination and political influence.

Then along came a band and an album to change that. Power in the Darkness The Tom Robinson Band brought a new intelligence and musicality blended with political comment and vision of a desolate future.

40 years on and the Tom Robinson Band appear at the Globe performing Power In The Darkness in its entirety to a vociferous crowd, not teenagers this time, but teenagers now in their 50’s and just as passionate about this album and it’s message as shown by the tremendous reception of Robinson and every song performed.
From the first chords of ‘Up Against The Wall’ to the brilliant passion of ‘Too Good To Be True’ and the title track every word spat out with passion.
It’s not the same line up but it’s the same message and same anger 40 years on, Robinson amazingly still keeping the venom in his vocals, still meaning every word, with guitarist Adam Phillips’s fierce and melodic sounds on his Les Paul proving fire to Robinson’s thunderous bass lines, and Andy Treacey playing the drums like a man possessed, Jim Simmons completes the driving and powerful sound on keyboards.
In between the frenetic, hard paced set, Robinson explains how the album had two sides as did all albums before the introduction of CDs and only lasted just over 40 minutes but the magic that was in those grooves still stands defiantly in tonight’s performance as it did in its original time.
Power in the Darkness was simply a great album of great songs reflecting a period of change and political movement. Robinson continued after the album performance with familiar favourites to fans ‘Martin’ and ‘Glad to be gay’ and of course the one everybody knows the his breakthrough hit 2-4-6-8 Motorway.

Tom sealed the mood of the night with ‘Don’t Take No For An Answer’ to finish Robinson standing with the band looking drained from a full on performance, a man in his sixties still giving every word and note true feeling.
As he commented 40 years on and what has really changed? Still politically the world in turmoil and socially people struggling, but his answer to his own question is ‘you still got to keep trying’ he is and the crowd are, the spirit of 78 , that lives on tonight.
I suggest digging out ‘Power In The Darkness’ and giving it a listen, it just might get those hairs on the neck standing.

Retro Review: Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons

The Globe, Cardiff - 22/11/2018

A packed venue on a cold autumn night indicates the popularity of Phil Campbell and the bastard sons making a return to home ground before venturing into Europe, with a Brand new critically acclaimed album.
Yes the Motörhead faithful are here but there are more than enough Bastard Sons t shirts on display here to show the band have a real following and on the performance it’s not at all surprising.

I must mention Leader of Down as well who were an excellent support band and really got the crowd going, well worth checking out their album Cascade into Chaos.

Phil steps onto the stage with sons Todd,Tyler and Dane and Neil Starr on vocals and it’s straight into Ringleader a Motörhead similar drive and power Style guitar anthem, there is also plenty of diversity in the set, the groovy riff of Freakshow, welcome to Hell Metallica style guitar chords and the catchy Riffed Big Mouth.

Dark days has a Southern Blues feel, and Step into the fire classic power chords and riffs with a modern flavour and killer solo.

There’s plenty of crowd participation encouraged by Starr who’s voice seems to have been inspired by classic rock and bodes well on the different styles performed by the band, Danes drumming is a power house that drives the set and compliments Tyler’s solid Bass and allows Todd and of course Phil to play the trademark Solos displayed in High Rule and Get on your Knees.

The classic Motörhead tunes are also here, Ace of Spades, Bomber, Just’cos you’ve got the power and Going to Brazil, and a fitting tribute of Silver Machine by Hawkwind to all Motörhead members not with us anymore all sounding excellent.
This is Rock music as it should be tightly performed and crowd pleasing but with the bands own originality stamped on it.
Phil Campbell and the Bastard sons are not just reliant on The popularity of Motörhead but have their own style complimented by a quality album and musicians, of course Phil is a legend and after over 30 years of being in Motörhead is the best man to be performing their songs, but the band really have much more to offer and deliver.

If you missed this sold out gig catch them next time you will not be disappointed.

Looking back: Led Zep in Wales

Writer and broadcaster Nigel Crowle remembers back to a legendary concert in Wales – and a bizarre meeting at a petrol station.

THE odds were never in my favour – one million Led Zeppelin fans and only 20,000 tickets for this coming Monday’s much-anticipated reunion gig. I put in some hours in front of the computer, though. I kept clicking away in the hope of buying tickets, but no luck. I was left, Dazed And Confused, with just my fond memories of the World’s Greatest Rock Band.

Anyone who was at Cardiff’s Capitol Theatre on December 12, 1972, will remember that concert. It started in darkness with “Bonzo” Bonham’s relentless, thundering drum intro to Rock and Roll before the stage lit up. The Legend That Was (And Is) Jimmy Page slashed his majestic guitar riffs through the air, while the Quiet One (John Paul Jones) thumped his bass. All the while, frontman Robert Plant shook his shaggy mane like a lion on the pull, as he prowled the stage, cranking his voice effortlessly up to full-volume falsetto screech.

In 1972, the Zep were at the top of the rock game. Why were they so adored? Well, they ignored Top Of The Pops, refusing to release singles like every other group. They were bad boys, too – getting off with groupies and riding motorbikes up and down hotel corridors, probably at the same time. Page may have been a bit too keen on the mysteries of black magic, but that interest probably inspired the mystical Stairway To Heaven. It became a classic – a song the band eventually came to hate, but which wannabe guitarists have loved ever since. So why risk their awesome reputation on Monday by limbering up for their first full-length concert in 19 years?

It seems that the forthcoming concert is a one-off gig in memory of their Atlantic Records boss, Ahmet Ertegun. Jason Bonham is sitting in for his dad behind the drum kit, and let’s hope he’s not a chip off the old block when it comes to living life to excess. Let’s put it this way, Bonzo would’ve been a bit of a liability had he ever attended a vicar’s tea party.

I know it’s trendy for bands to re-form nowadays. You can’t move for Take That, Westlife, The Spice Girls or The Police putting aside their musical and personal differences and getting back together for a UK stadium tour.

I must confess, however, that I have a bit of an obsession with Led Zeppelin. Most days you can spot me striding around Cardiff with my cheese-cloth shirt flapping open to the wind and my jeans looking like they’ve been sprayed on. When Robert Plant dressed like that, he looked like a rock god. I’m simply wearing clothes much too small for me.

I have had my very own spooky brush with Led Zeppelin, though. It was one of those weird coincidences, too. It happened a few years after the Zep played their last full concert in 1980, in Berlin.

At the time, my wife and I were living in London, and on one of our trips back home to see friends and family we ran low on petrol. We’d stopped at a garage near Monmouth and I was halfway out of the car before I realised who was striding towards me, across the forecourt. “Look! It’s Robert Plant!” I gibbered at my wife. “Nothing spooky about that,” you might say, and you’d be right – were it not for the fact that at that exact moment, the all-time classic Zeppelin track Rock and Roll was blaring from my car cassette player.

So I scrambled out of the car and rushed over to him and, falling to my knees, gushingly said to him, “Robert, I’m a huge, huge fan of your work. Led Zeppelin were the finest rock band in the world. In 1972, I saw you at Cardiff’s Capitol Theatre. Tickets were £1 and it was the best concert I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much for all the happy musical memories you’ve given me.”

Only I didn’t say any of that. In fact, I didn’t say a thing. I just grinned inanely. I was so star-struck by my proximity to Robert “Lord Percy” Plant that all I could do was smile like a mentally deficient spaniel. Being temporarily deprived of the power of speech, I kept jerking my head towards the open car door, hoping that the great man would hear the tinny sounds of his musical masterpiece and recognise the coincidence. Needless to say, he didn’t.

To his credit, though, he also didn’t run away on being confronted by what must have seemed like a drooling, twitching simpleton on the other side of the pumps.

He smiled at me and cheerily said, “Tcchhh! Price of petrol nowadays, eh?” I nodded enthusiastically, but by the time I’d plucked up the courage to go into my fan’s spiel, Planty had driven off in a blur of denim.

All that lingered was a faint whiff of patchouli oil, mixing in the air with the petrol fumes. To quote the title of a track on Led Zep’s first LP, you might say I’d suffered a Communication Breakdown.

Rock legend pays trip to Cardiff Castle

William Burges

Led Zep guitarist a fan of 19th century architect William Burges.

He's a rock legend and used to the glare and publicity that surrounds such iconic figure in Britain's rock history, yet it was rather more low-key visit that saw Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page slip almost unknown into town's Castle to support the launch of a new book on the Castle and its former owner the Marquesses of Bute.

Written by Matthew Williams, who Page shares a love of the Castle's architect William Burges, the former curator of the Castle, his book ' Cardiff Castle and the Marquesses of Bute' details the transformation of the Castle and the impact Burges's work had under the patronage of the Marquesses of Bute.

Jimmy Page’s town house

Cardiff Castle

Page, who lives in a Burges-designed town house in London wrote the foreword for the book and his love of Burges stems from the time he moved into his Holland Park home 47 years ago, which is described as one of the finest examples of the French Gothic revival.

During the visit Page was presented with print of the Castle.

Hello, goodbye - The Beatles last hurrah

Sunday nights in the 60s were bloody awful. Sing Something Simple was the radio equivalent of Mogadon; Doctor Finlay’s Casebook on the telly made you yearn for school or work next morning.

But for one Sunday night just before Christmas in Cardiff in 1965 the gloom was lifted for 5,000 lucky people. Because The Beatles were in town. What those 5,000 didn’t realise was that the band would never be back – to Cardiff, nor anywhere else in Britain. It was the last date of their last ever tour here. “No more tours, no more She Loves Yous”, John Lennon said. Those who screamed so hard that no-one heard the music were driving the final nail in the coffin of The Beatles on the road – but paving the way for the glorious experimentation of Revolver and the genius of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. For The Beatles were ready to turn their back on the road and concentrate on the studio instead.

So it was Sunday December 12, 1965. The Beatles’ sixth album – Rubber Soul – had been released the week before and the Capitol Cinema in Queen Street was the venue for the last two shows of a 10-day, nine-venue, 18-show tour. The other acts were listened to with some respect. The Moody Blues, the Paramounts – soon to become Procul Harum – plus the Marionettes and Liverpool performers The Koobas, Steve Aldo and Beryl Marsden. For Steve Aldo is was like coming home. He’d worked in Butetown and says it was the first time he hadn’t experienced any racism in a community. The Beatles manager Brian Epstein asked the promoter to include him on the tour. “He asked why? Brian said, ‘Because the boys want him,’” Aldo recalled.

“I knew the guys from the Cavern, and then did some shows with them and Little Richard,” said Marsden. “The Paramounts backed us. I did one song on me own and then me and Steve did Mocking Bird and Baby Baby Baby – a quite obscure, soully thing. We were never sure what the fans were going to do because they came to see the Beatles, but they were receptive and came to listen. It was a good audience until the curtains opened for The Beatles - then they went mad”

They went mad over two shows – at 5.30 and 8pm. Tickets ranged from 10 shillings and sixpence to 15 shillings – that’s 75 p. The Beatles were opening their 30-minute sets with I Feel Fine, and then included She’s A Woman, If I Needed Someone, Act Naturally, Nowhere Man, Baby’s in Black, Help!, We Can Work It Out, Yesterday, Day Tripper and I’m Down. It’s possible to put together a fair representation of what that set might have sounded like by listening to live tracks on the Anthology series of CDs issued a few years ago. And by doing that you’d get a better idea than people who were in the audience of what they were playing.

Gary Brooker of The Paramounts remembers standing at the side of the stage watching them perform Day Tripper because he could hear the vocals from there. He had no chance in front of the stage. Because when the curtains opened on The Beatles, the audience – mainly girls – screamed, shouted and cried to such an extent that the band couldn’t even hear themselves. “There was disappointment because you couldn’t really hear anything. You could sort of hear the music but we were familiar with the music; we had the records so we wanted to see them,” one of the lucky ticket holders remembered. “A brilliant night though.” Jon Holliday wrote about the event in the South Wales Echo: “The girls were part of the performance, and for me writing about it that was what was interesting.

The Beatles could have been cut out figures – you just couldn’t hear anything, it was cannon fire, brutal stuff, enough to make your eardrums bleed if you were too close to it.” That had been the story of most of the Beatles performances once they’d hit the charts, so much so that the decision to quite touring had more or less been made before the Cardiff spectacular. In 1966 they fulfilled commitments in the States, and Europe and – disastrously – the Philippines.

And they played for 15-minutes at a UK poll winner’s concert. The curtain came down on the 8pm show in Cardiff on December 12 1965 and that was it – The Beatles were rushed into an Austin Princess and driven to London for a slap-up celebration at the 60s pop star hang out, Scott’s of St James. And unless you were lucky enough to be in Saville Row for the 1969 Rooftop concert, you’d never see them in the UK again.

Retro Review: Jack Bruce

23/03/2012 - St David’s Hall, Cardiff

MOST people will remember Jack Bruce as one third of the inspirational band Cream. Along with drummer Ginger Baker, and Eric Clapton, they set about changing rock ‘n’ roll in a two-year span that saw them sell 35 million records, receive the first ever platinum album, and create a blues rock sound to inspire the likes of Led Zeppelin and many others. The simple fact is that Jack Bruce, using an overused phrase in music, truly qualifies as a legend.

Over a 50-year span in music, he has worked with a veritable who’s who of musicians too numerous to mention, fought and survived alcohol and drug problems, been inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, created and performed on over 20 studio and live albums and played on many more projects with other artists, while developing a unique vocal and bass style to influence many. When Mr Bruce strolls on to a stage it’s a set for music, no gimmicks, just musicians and equipment. He takes a seat at the piano and starts the opening phrases to Morning Story from the Harmony Row album, his voice strong and dynamic as ever.

Delving into his solo material Jack moves to the bass he describes as “his other piano”, the sound created, was a virtual band on its own. We are treated to very different and improvised versions of some classic Bruce, the likes of You Burned The Tables On Me, Neighbour, Neighbour, from his Graham Bond days, Weird of Hermiston, Born Under A Bad Sign, and a very moving version of Child Song Bruce dedicated to his son.

Then came the moment many had waited for with some classic Cream songs, White Room and Sunshine Of Your Love, that encapsulated the spirit of improvisation from the band, all excellent musicians, and bolstered by the brass section that moved in a soulful, funky direction, adding to and complementing Jack’s singing and bass playing. While the sound mix was patchy at times, all was forgiven as the band appeared for Politician as the encore where a true innovator and free spirit humbly said thank you to the crowd.

Music says thank YOU Mr Bruce.

Jack Bruce in 1972. originally posted to Flickr as Jack Bruce 1001720034. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Retro Review: Sal

Sal signed up

PONTYPRIDD bass guitarist Marc Real is enjoying growing success with his band, Sal.

The band has just signed with top record company, Track Records, who launched the careers of Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and their debut single, Runaway, is due for release this summer.

Sal is a refreshing four-piece band, full of energy and turning out melodic and emotional songs.

Apart from Marc, the other band members are singer Catrin Southall, guitarist Noog and drummer Denley Slade.

The band has been together since November, 1998, with various line-up changes along the way.

Their summer 2000 EP with producer Greg Haver, and video Before Tomorrow featured on BBC TV's first series of the Pop Factory’s The Fizz.

The EP also achieved “Record of the Week” status on both Bath University radio and Glamorgan University's Fusion 107FM.

During the summer of 2001, the band played as main support to such bands as Terris and The Crocketts, and were main tour support to Dodgy on their Welsh leg of their British tour.

They also supported American band Fydolla Ho when they came to Cardiff in December.

In 2002, Sal recorded Perfect at Twin Peaks Studio, and great reviews followed.