Concert Reviews

  Gary Numan is arguably one of the most charismatic and one of the weirdest performers simply because he has an awesome voice and writes great tunes but where he starts to sing within any given song seems abrupt and out of sync but let’s just settle for unconventional, which is an awesome thing to be. Gary and the musicians he recorded with in his early career had the band name ‘Tubeway Army’ and eventually it became Gary Numan and Tubeway Army and then just Gary Numan, and while most of the musicians from the Tubeway Army days continued to record and work with him, I personally always felt that the music changed after the abandonment of that distinction ‘Tubeway Army’.  It could be argued that Numan always was the principle songwriter within that unit, when I listen to the first ‘Tubeway Army’ album by the same name and ‘Replicas’ released in 1979 as Gary Numan & Tubeway Army it has a distinct magic in it and an identifiable musical flavour. Over decades Gary Numan has released

  Another smashing night at my favourite venue. Billed as ‘a night of glam rock’, the evening offered exactly what it says on the tin and then some. Both acts were visible excited to play and reconnect to their audiences and both acts also appeared nervous at first which soon gave way to just awesome performances. The Pouk Hill Prophetz kicked ass from the word go and were an amazing support act. Their set included high energy stompers such as Queen’s ‘Tie your mother down’, The Sweets ‘Hellraiser’ and Billy Idol’s ‘White Wedding’ and they all went down a storm. In honour of the recent passing of ZZ Top ’s bass player Dusty Hill they played ‘Tush’ and the Prophetz were very well received. A good start to the evening. What followed was magic:   The only all-female Slade tribute act ‘Slady’ all dressed up in 70s retro cloths brought the house down as they performed the awesome ‘Slade Alive’ album (from 1972) and then some. They were awesome musicians, sincere in their performances

The world is just coming back to gigs, long may it last. There are many tribute bands and while some are better than others, there are some tribute bands that are absolutely awesome and Atom Heart Floyd is one of those class acts. With a new drummer and the addition of a female vocalist (new as in: since I saw them live back in 2019) somehow their whole gig felt rejuvenated and since there was now a female voice Atom Heart Floyd could play ‘The great gig in the sky’ and it was amazing. I liked them first time around but somehow the chemistry on stage seemed sort of lifted and raised, was lovely to see that. Set list highlights were ‘wish you were here’, another brick in the wall’, the aforementioned ‘great gig in the sky’, ‘shine on you crazy diamond’ and an awesome rendition of ‘comfortably numb’.   ‘Atom’s David Gilmour’ (to say their guitarist doesn’t sound right, sounds diminished somehow) told the audience that the lady on the keys who also controls all the amazing visuals