Tag Archives: Francis Rossi

2023 in Darren’s music blog – the ten most popular posts of the year

Folk music, Interviews, Live reviews, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Happy New Year to one and all. My thanks to everyone who has visited Darren’s music blog during 2023. As usual an eclectic mix of musical genres feature in this year’s top ten most viewed posts of the year – from blues to classic rock, to prog, to goth, to punk, to new wave, to folk – and much more in between! Here’s to 2024 which will mark ten years since I first started this blog back in March 2014.

1. So farewell to Butlin’s Rock & Blues weekends, Skegness 13-15 January 2023

For more than a decade an out-of-season trip to Butlins has been a fixture in my diary at least once each year: numerous trips to Minehead for the Giants Of Rock weekends, several trips to Skegness for the Great British Folk Festival and a handful of additional trips to the same resort for the Rock & Blues weekends. But now it was finally all coming to an end. My review of the final ever Rock & Blues weekend.

Read full review here

2. Live review: Francis Rossi – ‘Tunes & Chat’ at White Rock Theatre, Hastings 3/6/23

Always quite a Quo fan since being a young teenager, I’d originally booked to see Francis Rossi on his ‘I Talk Too Much Tour’ back in 2020. Covid came along and that got rescheduled and then cancelled altogether but Rossi finally made it to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre on his follow-up tour, ‘Tunes and Chat’.

Read full review here

3. Goth without the gloomy bits: five cheerful, upbeat and joy-inducing songs by goth bands

My affectionate but somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at some of my favourite tunes from goth bands. Features Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cult, Sisters of Mercy and The Cure.

Read full post here

4. Live review: Steeleye Span at the Old Market, Brighton & Hove 23/11/23

This tour saw Steeleye Span promoting a new album The Green Man Collection. The band revisit some of their past material with a mixture of songs written by members of the band at the time and some traditional numbers. The new album also includes a newly-composed song from Maddy Prior, a couple of well-chosen covers and something that was written for the band by (the sadly now recently deceased) Bob Johnson back in the ‘80s, committed to tape and then completely forgotten about for the next four decades.

Read full post here

5. Notes from the Lust For Life Tour – Feb/Mar 2023

The Lust For Life tour brought together Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop), Clem Burke (Blondie, Iggy Pop), Katie Puckrik (Pet Shop Boys, Sparks), Kevin Armstrong (Iggy Pop, David Bowie), Luis Correia (Earl Slick) and Florence Sabeva (Heaven 17). Having had the immense privilege of spending the past few months working on the PR campaign for the tour it was a joy to finally witness the band live, not just in a professional capacity but most importantly as a fan, of both that glorious Iggy Pop album and of the individual players in the band, too. The band are back for a new tour in Feb/March 2024.

Read full post here

6. Live review: Graham Nash at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 30/8/23

Billed as ‘Sixty Years of Songs & Stories’ the ten-date UK tour celebrated Graham Nash’s six decades of writing, recording and performing. I’m aware of his hits with The Hollies in the early days, of course, and (courtesy of a couple of compilations) I’m also pretty familiar with some of the best-known songs by both Crosby, Still & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I can’t claim to have followed his solo career in any great depth but, nevertheless, I felt confident that this tour was going to be something rather special and something I didn’t want to miss.

Read full review here

7. Live review: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention August 2023

Following an enforced two-year break due to Covid, going to last year’s Cropredy festival almost felt like a novelty. This year, though, it very much felt like being part of an annual fixture once more, the two-year gap now but a distant memory. With various combinations of friends and family over the years, I’ve been going to Fairport Convention’s annual bash in rural Oxfordshire since 2010 so it’s been part of my summer for a good chunk of my life now.

Read full review here

8. Live review: Iggy Pop, Blondie, Generation Sex, Stiff Little Fingers & Buzzcocks at Crystal Palace Park 1/7/23

One thing I like about the music scene these days is how much less tribal it all is compared to when I was a teenager. The intense rivalry between punks and metalheads has certainly dissipated since I was at school in the late 70s and early 80s. The passage of time, for many of us, has led to a much broader appreciation of rock and roll in all its many guises. As a teen, I was firmly in the hard rock/metal camp rather than the punk/new wave camp but looking around at those attending what has been billed Dog Day Afternoon today, there doesn’t look to be much difference in appearance between all the crop-haired, ageing punk fans clad in regulation khaki shorts and black T-shirts and all the crop-haired, ageing metal fans clad in regulation khaki shorts and black T-shirts.

Read full review here

9. Absolute Beginner: Interview with Bowie/Iggy guitarist Kevin Armstrong

Kevin Armstrong has played alongside icons like David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Thomas Dolby, Sinéad O’Connor and many others. We catch up to talk about his forthcoming autobiography Absolute Beginner which came out in October; as well as the Lust For Life project which has brought together the likes of Clem Burke, Glen Matlock and Katie Puckrik to celebrate the classic Iggy album; plus our mutual love of the live music scene down here in Hastings.

Read full interview here

10. Live review: John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest at Salle Pleyel, Paris 19/11/23

I was fairly late coming to Barclay James Harvest. I was aware of the likes of ‘Mocking Bird’, of course, but picked up a second-hand compilation from a charity shop in about 2019 and my fasciation grew from there. By the time lockdown came, I found myself tracking down the band’s entire back catalogue on ebay. When I saw that John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest were doing their final tour I decided I just had to be there. With only one remaining UK date I wasn’t particularly keen on a trek all the way up to Huddersfield from my home in Hastings and so I hit on the idea of a trip to Paris. I could meet up with friends and make a long weekend of it.

Read full review here

2022 in Darren’s music blog

2021 in Darren’s music blog

2020 in Darren’s music blog

2019 in Darren’s music blog

Live review: Francis Rossi – ‘Tunes & Chat’ at White Rock Theatre, Hastings 3/6/23

Hastings music scene, Live reviews, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , ,

Always quite a Quo fan since being a young teenager, I’d originally booked to see Francis Rossi on his ‘I Talk Too Much Tour’ back in 2020. Covid came along and that got rescheduled and then cancelled altogether but Rossi finally makes it to Hastings’ White Rock Theatre on his follow-up tour, ‘Tunes and Chat’.

The previous tour adopted that well-established format for this type of evening: seasoned music journo chats to acclaimed rock star about their life and career, interspersed with some live songs. Sadly, (for the reasons given above) I didn’t get the chance to see Rossi do this with veteran rock writer, Mick Wall, when they went out on the road but Rossi clearly enjoyed himself because he’s back for more. However, this time he’s eschewed the standard format of on-stage bantering with an established music journo and it’s just Rossi and his guitar tech and accomplished co-musician, Andy Brook.

Brook famously doesn’t say a word during the show until right towards the end when he reads out some audience questions for Rossi to answer. So the “chat” part is very much Rossi in solo mode. It soon begins to remind me of one of those monologues that Ronnie Corbett used to do sitting on that massive big chair meandering away when he did his solo segment on The Two Ronnies. It’s very stream-of-consciousness with lots of ad-hoc, one-liners interspersed with recollections about growing up in an Italian family in south London, getting hooked on music and embarking on a potentially-lethal home experiment in trying to create his first ever electric guitar.

Along with the more generic chit-chat, there’s also some fascinating insights into how certain Quo songs came about. And, my, do we get the songs. Starting off with some of the early material like ‘In My Chair’ and ‘Down The Dustpipe’ before moving on to some of the songs recorded at the height of the band’s success in the 1970s and early 1980s, there is absolutely no shortage of Quo classics, including ‘What You’re Proposing’, ‘Paper Plane’ and ‘Rocking All Over The World’.

I’ve seen Status Quo perform acoustically in the past, of course, when they did their ‘Aquostic’ project some years back but this is a much more intimate affair and Rossi is in fine voice and clearly in his element. On stage, Rossi and Andy Brook spar extremely well together musically – even if not conversationally – and the evening ends with a wonderful, communal sing-along to ‘Caroline’.

Structured? Not really.

Insightful? Partly.

Entertaining? Absolutely!

https://www.francisrossi.com/

Related posts:

Status Quo – Aquostic at Hammersmith Apollo 26/4/15

Status Quo at Hammersmith Apollo 28/3/14

Live review: Status Quo – Aquostic at Hammersmith Apollo 26/4/15

Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , ,

Status Quo are a band that stopped worrying about critical acclaim and musical credibility long, long ago. After the band’s 70s/early 80s peak we’ve seen cringe-worthy covers albums, sing-along football songs, bizarre collaborations with the Beach Boys; in fact you name it, they’ve tried it. Even the well-received reunion of their classic 70s line-up in 2013  was immediately followed by a cheesy mafia comedy film set on a tropical island.

So the idea of a Status Quo acoustic album and tour could be dismissed as yet the latest undignified attempt in a long line of pointless gimmicks. Except that… the album was actually rather good. And following a strong reception to a one-off acoustic show at the Roundhouse last year, touring it was an inspired idea. More than simply strumming along to some old hits, however, the band took the trouble to create completely reworked arrangements for the album and they are replicated here tonight. The acoustic guitars and harmonica are complimented by a range of other instruments, including mandolin, accordion, viola, cello and violins. Joining the modern era line-up of Status Quo (Francis Rossi, Rick Parfitt, Andrew Brown, John Edwards and new-boy Leon Cave) are an additional nine musicians as well as two female backing singers, all of whom, Rossi tells the crowd, played on the album.

Rather than the usual Quo gig, the elegant lighting, back drapes and stage full of seated musicians looks more like the setting for a 1950s dance band. The sound is still unmistakably Status Quo but the light and breezy arrangements and sensitive vocals show off the quality of the songwriting and bring out new depths to often familiar songs. A beautifully laid-back version of early 80s hit “Rock ‘n’ Roll” is a particular highlight and there are some lovely reworkings of earlier material like “Reason for Living”, now re-imagined as a folk-rock rock classic. Rain is given a makeover as a countrified acoustic blues and a classically-infused Mystery Song, with exquisitely catchy string accompaniment, is another highlight. Of course many of the best known classics are included, too, like Caroline, What Your Proposin’ and Down Down.

The set proper is finished with Whatever You Want and Rockin All Over the World, the acoustic treatments creating the perfect setting for a mighty communal sing-along. Thankfully the post 1983 material has been kept to a minimum in favour of earlier classics, but they encore with a nicely sensitive version of Rock ‘til You Drop. That is then followed by the gimmicky jig, Burning Bridges. It wouldn’t be my choice for a Quo encore but the crowd lap it up and you can forgive the band one lapse of good taste after such a stunning evening.

Set-list:
Break the Rules
Again and Again
Paper Plane
Mystery Song / Little Lady
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Caroline
What You’re Proposing
Softer Ride
Down Down
Pictures of Matchstick Men
Down the Dustpipe
All the Reasons
Reason for Living
Rollin’ Home
Don’t Drive My Car
Claudie
Rain
Marguerita Time
Nanana
Whatever You Want
Rockin’ All Over the World
Rock ’til You Drop
Burning Bridges (On and Off and on Again)

http://www.statusquo.co.uk/

Previous Review:

Status Quo Frantic Four reunion