30 January 2013 – I have seen the big music

As I walked Lady this morning, the thought occurred to me that The Waterboys are playing in Melbourne for the very first time in a 30 year career.  Ordinarily, I would have been excited by this thought and would have been there tonight for sure.  The reason I haven’t is due to one of those occurrences that happens when you backpack or travel, as I’ve done through most of my adult life; that is to arrive in a City to find a favourite act playing either on that day or during your stay.

As it turns out, I’ve been very lucky.  During a 1998 European trek, this occurred on a few occasions. I spent a night In The Hague, The Netherlands purely as an overnight travel stop which turned out to be the opening night of the North Sea Jazz Festival with a number of free outdoor gigs throughout town.  I contented myself by watching the great Texan guitarist Duke Robillard and his band and would have continued on to reggae's legendary Skatalites if it wasn't for the rain that started falling. A few weeks later in Munich I was able to see Jeff Beck with support from the Big Town Playboys.  In the last weekend of August, I went to a ticket office in Brussels to buy a ticket to that year's Belgian Formula1 Grand Prix.  As I was enquiring, I saw a poster for the Belgian equivalent of Glastonbury, the Pinkpop Festival.  When the Grand Prix tickets turned out to be massively expensive, I switched tack and took in the Saturday of the Festival.  As a result I got to see Portishead, P.J Harvey, The Afghan Whigs, Monster Magnet, The Deftones, Fu Manchu, Spiritualised, The Fun Lovin’ Criminals, The Dandy Warhols, Gomez, Boys Against Girls, Bad Religion and many others.  As it turned out, I avoided a massive rain storm that lasted for the length of the Grand Prix.

But it was during an earlier backpacking odyssey in Europe in 1990 that I hit pay dirt when I arrived in Rome and discovered The Rolling Stones and Prince were appearing in separate shows only 5 days apart.  Getting tickets was easy despite not speaking Italian.  I walked into a ticket office, saw piles of unsold tickets to both gigs and simply pointed at each, raising one finger.  I then stayed in Rome long enough to take in the Stones gig, journeyed to Pisa, Florence and Sienna and then returned to Rome for just for the Stones gig.

For each show, I got early to the venue and plonked myself at the front.  The Stones show was part of their Urban Jungle tour and was pretty good despite the wild Italian audience.  At the time, I thought this was a coup because at that stage they hadn’t played in Australia since 1973.  They’ve been to Melbourne on 3 separate tours since and I’ve gone each time. (I’ll probably write about these gigs at some later time.)  Prince was even more of a coup as he hadn’t toured Australia at all at this point.  (He has also played Australia three times since and I’ve also been to each of those tours).  The Rome gig was part of his Nude tour, essentially a greatest hits show, because his then current album was the Batman soundtrack into which he dipped sparingly.  For the rest of the show there were choice selections from the Purple Rain, 1999, Parade and Sign O The Times albums, some real obscurities such as Bambi, and his own version of Nothin’ Compares 2 U as well as Thieves In The Temple and Question Of U, the best two tracks from the soon to be released and unloved Graffiti Bridge.  The band was also marvellous, containing Matt "Dr." Fink of The Revolution and some of the personnel from the Sign O The Times concert movie and Rosie Gaines.

But then I got even luckier.  A few weeks later I day-tripped into Lausanne, Switzerland from Geneva to find Prince was playing there that night.  I made my way to the venue and listened to the soundcheck.  For my reward, I got to hear the band practice Sign O The Times a few times, quite a treat.  I then continued on my way, but two mornings later as my train was pulling into Nice, I discovered he was playing there too.  This time I got to the gig, bought a ticket and was rewarded with a show even better than Rome. And if that wasn't enough, the local paper published a photo of the crowd from the stage the following day and I could pick myself out in it.  Much later I discovered that heavy rain fell during the actual Lausanne gig too.

A month after that, I arrived in London and discovered that The Waterboys were going to play in a tent erected on Finsbury Park.  As it turns out, fate delivered a better show than I’d dared consider.  The show was ostensibly part of the tour to support the Room To Roam album, the follow up to the wonderful Fisherman’s Blues.  However, Steve Wickham the fiddle player who was central to the folk sound of both albums left the band and Mike Scott reconfigured it so that it returned to the “Big Music” rock that characterised all of its pre Blues albums.  The resultant show was a triumphant summation of the bands career to date, taking in absolutely everything I’d loved about the band up to that point.  Appropriate tracks from Fisherman’s Blues and Room To Roam were also played and I left the temporary venue with the “hoo hoo hoos” of the largely drunken crowd happily replaying in my mind. 

In a way that show (and the fact that it came with the added romance of being overseas) has coloured my relationship to Scott’s subsequent solo output and Waterboys albums in a negative way that no other show has been able to achieve.  Although there are albums that I like, my mind keeps casting back to that September night in 1990.  Like I said, I got lucky and saw a band I loved at exactly the right time. Try as I might, I can’t get that memory out of my head.  It is a major reason why I am trotting out this post on my kitchen table tonight instead of sitting in Hamer Hall hoping, probably in vain, for a set list from 23 years ago.  Fortunately, unless there is an unfortunate accident, I don’t think tonight’s audience is going to get soaked.

But at least today’s listening was great.

(87) Fisherman’s Blues – The Waterboys

(88) Too Close To Heaven. The Unreleased Fisherman’s Blues Sessions – The Waterboys

Fisherman’s Blues is one of my favourite albums.  It is an inspired marriage of rock, soul and folk in a way that very few acts have even been able to achieve.  It kicks off with the title track, a joyful piece of music in which Mike Scott expresses his wish to be a fisherman against a Irish sounding melody driven by Steve Wickham’s fiddle.  The template is then followed for the remainder of the album on a diverse selection of songs including We Will Not Be Lovers, World Party, And A Bang On The Ear and an inspired cover of Van Morrison’s Sweet Thing which incorporates part of The Beatles Blackbird.  Scott’s fascination with W.B Yeats also features in The Stolen Child and the album concludes with an unlisted potion of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land.

Fisherman’s Blues has a seamless unity to it but it represents only a small part of the music recorded at the sessions.  Too Close To Heaven is the first disc of music released to highlight this material.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the tracks, but listening to it one can understand why these tracks were not included in the original album.  The sound is definitely less joyous and the inclusion of any of these pieces, especially the epic 12 and a half minute title track, would have interrupted the flow of the album.  It is a testament to Scott’s vision that he knew what to release as well as what not to release.  As such, this album has much in common with other similar compliations, notably Bruce Sprongsteen’s The Promise, the album of tracks recorded for and not included on Darkness On The Edge Of Town.