Tag Archives: Wolverhampton

Sweet at The Robin 2, Bilston 19/12/16

Glam rock, Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , ,

While this time of year often provides opportunities to see The Sweet at various provincial theatres around the country it is always nice to see the band at a proper dedicated rock venue. And the Robin in Bilston, near Wolverhampton, is packed out with Sweet fans from across the UK and further afield.

Tonight the band are going to “heavy it up” declares Andy Scott, following a deluge of requests from fans in the run-up to the gig. What this means, therefore, is that as well as those unforgettable Sweet hits, the audience also get a taste of the band’s brilliant 1974 rock album Sweet Fanny Adams, with ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Into The Night’ from that album making a welcome appearance on the setlist, alongside ‘AC-DC’. The band produced some excellent hard rock back in the day and it’s nice to see that side of the band being properly celebrated, in addition to the more obvious but still equally wonderful glam rock side. It certainly hits the spot as far as the audience are concerned.

andy

Of course, before The Sweet even began churning out those glam anthems, they had a run of ridiculously cheesy but inanely catchy bubblegum, hits penned for them by songwriting due Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. For many years, the policy of Messrs Scott and co was to forget these even existed but in recent years they’ve made their way back into the setlist. But now the ephemera of the bubblegum era is completely stripped back and they are re-invented as chilled-out, folky, acoustic sing-alongs. Surprisingly, it works – and the audience lap these up, too.

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Of course, no Sweet gig would be complete without those glam mega-hits: whether it’s the Chinn-Chapman covers like ‘Hellraiser’, ‘The Six Teens’ and ‘Wig-Wam Bam’ or the self-penned hits like ‘Action’ and ‘Fox on the Run’. Add in some majestic versions of ‘Lost Angels’ and ‘Love is Like Oxygen’ and the inevitable ‘Blockbuster!’ and ‘Ballroom Blitz’ for an encore and it’s a perfect Sweet mix.

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There are numerous 70s pop-rock bands ploughing the 70s circuit, many of them continuing to offer a night of nostalgia and guaranteed fun; even if, like Sweet, you will only find one or two original members these days. But few, if any, offer the degree of perfection, professionalism and top class musicianship as Andy Scott and his colleagues, Pete Lincoln, Tony O’Hora and Bruce Bisland do.

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Sadly, I never got to see the classic irreplaceable Sweet line-up of the 70s. But I’ve seen numerous line-ups over the past quarter of a century and this is undoubtedly the strongest since then.

Glam rock and hard perfection. Keep at it boys

Setlist:
Action
New York Groove
Hellraiser
The Six Teens
Set Me Free
Into The Night
AC-DC
Lady Starlight
Lost Angels
Co-Co / Funny Funny / Poppa Joe
Teenage Rampage
Wig-Wam Bam / Little Willy
Love Is Like Oxygen
Fox On The Run
Blockbuster!
The Ballroom Blitz

http://www.thesweet.com/

Photo credits: Eileen Handley

Related posts:
Sweet at Bilston 2014
Sweet at Dartford 2015
Blockbuster – origins and influences

Slade UK and Pouk Hill Prophetz at Wolverhampton 19/3/16

Glam rock, Live reviews, Music culture & history, Rock music, , , , , , , ,

We’re in an era of rock history where bands’ fiftieth anniversaries are increasingly common. The Stones did a world tour,including a celebrated gig in Hyde Park. All the surviving leading members of the Beach Boys reunited and The Who had a well-received anniversary tour which packed out arenas, too. Now it is the turn of Slade, a band who had their breakthrough in the early 70s but who formed in the 60s, when Noddy Holder and Jim Lea joined Dave Hill and Don Powell in an existing band called the N Betweens, a band that would eventually be renamed Slade. It’s exactly fifty years since the four first shared a stage together but there’s no big reunion of the original members, no sell-out gigs at the O2 or the Wembley Arena and no wall to wall press coverage. Instead, the occasion is celebrated with a fans convention in the aptly named, though modestly-sized, Slade Rooms in Wolverhampton where there are performances from a couple of tribute acts, Slade UK and the Pouk Hill Prophetz.

Throughout the afternoon and early evening there’s a Slade quiz; there’s some Slade-related poetry from stand-up poet, Paul Cookson (who perhaps is to the glam rock genre what John Cooper Clark is to punk); and there’s even a speech and formal welcome from the Mayor of Wolverhampton. The Pouk Hill Prophetz play the first of their two sets, an all-acoustic set that delivers acoustic versions of well-known classics like Coz I Luv You and Cum On Feel The Noize, as well as far more obscure material that fans of Slade seldom get to hear in public.

The Pouk Hill Prophetz came together through their shared love of Slade. They’re not a tribute act in the classic sense, in terms of dressing up and adopting the persona of individual band members, and they don’t restrict themselves purely to Slade’s back catalogue either – they throw in a couple of Sweet and T-Rex numbers in the evening set. But in both their earlier acoustic set in the bar and their later evening set on the main stage their love for Slade’s music clearly shines through. Where the band really excel, particularly in the later set, is in the delivery of pre-glam era “before they were famous” Slade songs – stunningly authentic versions of songs like Know Who You Are and Dapple Rose from 1970’s Play It Loud album, for example. Indeed, one of the highlight’s of the whole day is when, drummer, Trevor West’s 13 year old daughter takes the stage to play a beautiful rendition of the violin solo on Dapple Rose, the first decent violin rendition I’ve heard on a Slade song since the classically-trained Jim Lea stopped performing with the original band years ago.

Slade UK are more of a traditional tribute act. They dress like early 70s Slade and vocalist Nidge (Nod) Hillam arrives on stage replete with enormous sideburns, lots of tartan and a mirrored top hat. In the past I’ve tended to be a bit sniffy about tribute acts – of all genres. Slade UK are bloody good though. In fact, the voice of the lead singer is far closer to the raw power and sound of Noddy Holder than Holder’s actual replacement in the modern-day Slade, Mal McNulty. There’s a real energy to the musicianship, too, and they capture the authentic sound of Slade perfectly. As with the previous act, it’s not just about delivering the well-known hits either. We get B sides, we get songs that were never performed live by the original band and we get songs from many different eras of Slade, stretching from the early days right through to the band’s very final hit single, 1991’s Radio Wall Of Sound. Loud and blisteringly authentic they do the band proud. There can be only one song to finish though: the band return to the stage with Santa hats, fake snow pumps out from the stage and the familiar opening chords signal the start of the greatest Christmas song ever made…

The night may have lacked the huge arenas, the enormous crowds or the wall-to-wall press coverage associated with other famous bands’ fiftieth anniversaries. But there is no lack of love for Slade and their music here tonight and both acts do the band and its fans proud.

http://www.sladeuk.com/

slade uk

Related reviews:
Slade at Minehead
Slade at Hastings