Norwich is an awful long way to go to watch a gig. Norwich is an awful long way from anywhere. Which would be fine if it was a stinking hole, but it’s a lovely city, and someone should pick it up, drag it 50 miles west and join it up with Cambridge – Camwich would be a really really lovely city.
But I digress. It’s a long way, but I went anyway. on the main bill were Tim Bowness with his band, and Steven Wilson. Tim was the singer I gigged with last Friday. This time he had a whole band with him, featuring the truly marvellous Andrew Booker on drums (the last time I saw Andrew play drums with Tim, Brian Eno was at the gig, and wanted his phone number… did he ever get it? I don’t think so… a miss opportunity methinks).
The show was opened by Andy Butler – a looping guitarist, using multiple echoplexes. Sadly, because the gig started earlier than advertised, we (by ‘we’ I mean me, Dweez and Mrs Dweez, who all went for food, planning to be back in time for advertised start) missed all but the last few minutes of Andy’s set.
Steven Wilson set was really enjoyable – I didn’t know any of the songs (for some reason, despite liking all the stuff I’ve heard of theirs, I don’t own a single Porcupine Tree album… must rectify that), no, I lie, he covered ‘Thankyou’ by Alanis Morrisette, and that I knew. Anyway, most of it was just electric guitar and voice – something that I’m always amazed more people don’t do. Billy Bragg is the absolute master of that format, but i’ve heard others do it well (Iain Archer is another that plays brilliantly with just a elec. guitar and no band). I had a brief chat with Steven afterwards (we’ve got a fair few mutual friends, not least of all Theo who has played on Porcupine Tree things and opened for them at Shepherd’s Bush).
So all in a great night, and what’s more I got to meet up with Myspace chums Jeffrey and Samantha, here from New York. Much fun.
For PT albums, I’d recommend – well, all of them really! In Absentia (2002?)is brilliant – Amazon have the version with bonus disc for only £5.97 which has to be the bargain of the year. Fantastic production. Great songs. Stupid Dream (1999?) is excellent, and features a fair bit of Theo – get that from Burning Shed once they’ve sorted out the problems with the reissue bonus disc. Deadwing (2005) is also very good indeed – it was the first PT album I bought, last November, just after I’d seen the poster for the gig with Fripp supporting them and wondered who the hell they were, and just before going to see them for the first time in December! It has some fab crunchy guitar sounds on it & excellent songs. Of the earlier stuff, Coma Divine is the most wonderful live album -they are such a tight band live. Also, do try Signify and Lightbulb sun… Over the last 6 months I’ve been listening to a lot of their stuff, as you can probably tell!