Love, Poetry and Revolution - Friday 11th October 2024

We've had a busy week in Liverpool, starting with a gig in Manchester and then in Liverpool. 

Let's start in Manchester.  We went to the new Co-Op Live Arena to see Crowded House.  They are at one extreme of the spectrum of music I usually enjoy, but I was going there with an open mind.  Q is a fan, and the next night we are going to a gig by someone I like, who Q has never heard of. 

Back to Co-Op Live. I've got to say I wasn't impressed with the place. It's billed as having 32 restaurants, using local produce. How many does it have? None. Not a single one.  The place is still not finished. As it has no restaurants, it also has no loos unless you go inside. Which you can't do until they open up for the gig.  Manchester City to the rescue.  There are some portakabin-style loos a five to ten-minute walk from the venue. Not exactly what you imagine a fancy new-built venue to be like.  Food.  Manchester City to the rescue again.  There's a chippy across the road that obviously serves on match day, I think it was called Mary Ds.  That was our evening meal.  OK fish chips and mushy peas, which was a result.

Getting into the venue was also a bit disorganised.  For understandable reasons, they are hot on security, there just weren't enough of them. There are electronic turnstiles. Good idea.  Only thing is they can only count one ticket from your phone.  We had two tickets on one phone, so the phone owner had to pass their phone back to let the other person through. Daft.

Bearing in mind this place only opened earlier this year, in the men's loos one of the cubicles already had the door ripped off.  Impressive.

Inside. I'm not a big fan of these vast warehouse-style venues. I like more intimate venues, but the seats were OK we had a direct view of the stage.  We were there to see Australian/New Zealand band, Crowded House. Support was Liam Finn, solo.  Liam is Neil Finn's son and plays guitar in Crowded House too.  To get around being a one-man band he used some kind of digital loop device to record a drum pattern, then maybe a rhythm guitar riff over which he played lead and sang.  The trouble is it doesn't work well in such a huge venue.  Q was not at all impressed.   I thought it had interesting elements but it wasn't suited to the place.

Crowded House took to the stage amidst great cheers and were straight into 'Weather With You', one of the only two songs of theirs I'm really familiar with.   Excellent playing from the band and some nice audience and band interplay.  It's good listening to music you don't know as you respond to it without filter.  The highlight of the set for me was 'Don't Dream It's Over' which I think is their best song, as a non-fan.  They are a great bunch of musicians and I enjoyed their set.

Wednesday night, Liverpool Philharmonic.  We're here for Steve Hackett's 'Genesis Greats, Lamb Highlights & Solo' tour.  I'm most looking forward to the 'Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' highlights, as it's by far and away my favourite Genesis album (followed by 'Selling England By The Pound' and then 'Trick Of The Tail' (controversial!!))

Q is not familiar with any of the material, so she's in for a treat - I reckon she'll like the 'Lamb...' stuff the most (if she likes any of it!)

Here's the complete set list: 

Set 1:

People of the Smoke

Circo Inferno

These Passing Clouds (Dedicated to John Lennon on his very birthday)

The Devil's Cathedral

Every Day (Rob harmonising both guitars on soprano saxophone)

A Tower Struck Down 

Basic Instincts (Incl. excerpts of Bach's "Suite Nr. I G-Dur, BWV 1007" & Hendrix' "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)")

Camino Royale (With extended alto saxophone bridge & instrumental jam)

Shadow of the Hierophant

Set 2:

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Genesis song)

Fly on a Windshield (Genesis song) 

Broadway Melody of 1974 (Genesis song)

Hairless Heart (Genesis song)

Carpet Crawlers (Genesis song)

The Chamber of 32 Doors (Genesis song)

Lilywhite Lilith (Genesis song)

The Lamia (Genesis song)

It (Genesis song)

Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (Genesis song)

The Cinema Show (Genesis song) 

Aisle of Plenty (Genesis song)

Encore:

Firth of Fifth

(Genesis song)

Los Endos (Genesis song) (1st half; introduced by a drum solo)

Slogans 

Los Endos (Genesis song) (2nd half)

Note: With Amanda Lehmann on 2nd guitar & vocals during the 1st set, and for "Los Endos"

The highlights of the solo set were 'Every Day', 'A Tower Struck Down' and a blistering version of 'Shadow of The Hierophant', vocals by Amanda Lehman, which finished with a climactic dual riffing between Steve and Amanda.  I'm not so familiar with Steve's more recent solo material, and was pleasantly surprised by some of the songs/tunes. Steve dedicated one of his solo songs to John Lennon, as today is his birthday, a dedication that went down well with the crowd.

The start of the second set brought the crowd to its feet, seems like everyone (including me) was here for the 'Lamb...'.  I did record a few sections of it, but almost all of them exceed Blogger's file size limit. 

The highlights from 'The Lamb Lies Down...'  were every bit as good as I'd hoped and the only improvement would have been a complete performance of the whole double album.  Never gonna happen, sadly.

Genesis Greats focused almost entirely on 'Selling England By The Pound', with emotional renditions of two of my favourite tracks, namely 'Dancing With The Moonlit Knight' and 'Firth of Fifth' (the latter as part of the encore).

As is now customary the encore ends with 'Los Endos' from 'Trick Of The Tail'. I'd love to see Steve Hackett perform that album live. Maybe one day soon.

If you've made it this far (in which case you are probably me) you may be wondering why this is post is not under the banner of my new music-only blog, 'Sounds Great When You're Dead'.   Good question. Read on.

Outrageously, Q thinks that 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' is a musical.  Whilst it does tell a story, that's the only overlap with a musical as far as I'm concerned.  

One of the things that fascinates me is that we all experience the world differently, music being no different.  With that in mind, to understand other people and myself better, I have just read this book:

The Pocket Guide to Neurodiversity by Daniel Aherne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A useful introduction which has increased my understanding of the topic.

View all my reviews

Hopefully I can learn from this and be more empathetic and accommodating towards others.

Last night I attended the Idler Zoom call which had Sam Leith as guest talking about children's literature.  I expected to have little interest in the talk.  How wrong was I (this is becoming a habit)! The after talk discussion was fascinating.  In the light of my reading the book on Neurodiversity (see above) it was interesting to hear how many people find Audiobooks easier to follow and pay attention to than physical books.  Audiobooks have never been able to hold my attention for more than a few minutes, whereas I can have laser-sharp focus on the written word.  I can now see this is an example of the different ways our brains work.

I am starting to understand that some of the ways my brain works are different from many other people, which comes as a surprise.  It doesn't bother me, but I've really thought about it before. 

Enough of this introspection before I go nuts. What I need is music.

Genesis /  'Carpet Crawlers'  / 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway'

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