SYVDOH - SYVDOH 1 (Iffy Folk Records)

This is a strange one indeed. As album reviews go, I’ve often a frame of reference that is invariably the music, the band members or the genre.

This is way different.

I’ve always been slightly fascinated (as have, I’m sure, lots of you) by the Scottish gang culture. When I was a wee boy growing up in Coatbridge and latterly Airdrie in the seventies, those round-shouldered guys huddled at café corners smoking and talking in impenetrable growls about “leaders aff” and the like (my old man, who was a beat cop back then, used to describe them as “boot boys”) were an endless source of enthrallment as were those letters daubed on walls that denoted gang names. This was in the days before spray paint, mind,  so they were, literally, daubed.

“Mavis Toi”. “Tongs” “Fleeto”. “Yobboz”. “Derry”. “CYT”. “Goucho”. “Tamla Hill”. “Bar-L”

I still have no idea what most of them mean but there was a certain glamour attached to these memories for me that was quickly eradicated as I got older.

I was once dragged up a close in Coatdyke in the late seventies by three guys who were trying to get my biker jacket and do harm to my then-slender punk rock good looks. I remember one of them whispering “stab the cunt, stab him” before I managed to slither my way out of their grasps. My two erstwhile “mates” had meantime legged it up the road to Airdrie, leaving me to my fate.

This was followed by the then, I suppose, rise of the ned. Maybe they were always there; maybe I just hadn’t noticed them as a youth but the gangs of skip cap, trackie-wearing, buckie drinking hoolie seems like a relatively new phenomenon to me nowadays.

You may wonder what this has to do with the current Scottish music scene, traditionally an island of respite from the squadrons of neds that inhabit the country. Well, here’s the answer.

SYVDOH 1 is the new album from Sea Kings main-man Brian Canning and his co-conspirator Ralph Hector.

The Sea Kings were one of Glasgow’s lost treasures; they rarely gigged and their one and only album was a slice of Nick Cave meets The Triffids meets Neil Young at a convention of mid to late 20^th Century history enthusiasts. Yep, that good.

It was also ram-packed with truly great songs and I really wished they’d stuck around.

Anyway, Canning and Hector have created this first in a duo of albums that use the SYVDOH as a metaphoric vehicle.

The SYVDOH were an eighties gang from the Shettleston area who went by the glorious moniker Sandyhills Young Venny Disciples Of Hate which, whatever way you look at it, is an incredible name for anything.

Taking the local myths and stories and half-remembered truths of Canning (BC as he’s referred to in the lyrics) who grew up around these characters, they’ve crafted an album that defies description at times.

The music is, for the most part, drum-free and often consists of hushed vibrato guitar chords and gentle figures and spare, ghostly piano trills. The lyrics are intoned in spoken word and with the Glasgow vernacular well and truly intact.

There are some clever little lyrical tricks- I particularly like the Elvis-referencing “In the Shetto” refrain of “Empty Pockets” and the eerie “Glasgow 1989” has some alliteration that’s grin-inducing despite the subject matter. I guess if you’re not Glaswegian, you may need some translation- some of the references are very much of the city and its subcultures. Despite this, the album is something you can’t help being enveloped in. There are touches of Tom Waits at times and a pathos and dread that evokes the aforementioned Mr Cave or a gothic, alcohol-ridden Ivor Cutler with the irreverence of “Life In A Scotch Sitting Room” replaced with a very, very black, murderous humour.

You need to hear this, it’s like nothing else doing the rounds just now and its nice to hear a record that has a literary and erudite theme; it’s a bit of a change, I guess.

The second part, SYVDOH 2 is due out this month and promises to weave the pop big guns through the commentary- they mention Bowie and Prince in the press release- and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Come ahead ya bass.

Joe Whyte

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The stars look very different today. Rest easy Garry Alexander Borland.

Waking to the news that Garry Alexander Borland of Heavy Drapes is no longer with us has set a dark tone for the day for those who knew him.

The loss, the hurt, the confusion, and so many other conflicting emotions that his family and band mates will feel cannot be easily put into words.

When any of us lose someone that we are close to then the feelings are individually unique, but equally as traumatic.

The world stops making sense, the earth beneath our feet feels that little bit less stable, and the waves of grief ebb and flow without any real rhyme or reason.

One minute all is fine, and the next it is not.

Kelly and I have extended our condolences to both family and the band, and we were in two minds about saying anything further, but with some consideration we would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about our experience of working with Garry.

He was simply a diamond of a man. He lived life large fronting Heavy Drapes, but when you spoke to him away from the moments when he was promoting the band he shook off the ‘in your face rentagob’ persona that occasionally riled people who didn’t get the joke, and discovered a gentleman who had time for everyone.

Quick to smile, and quick to offer support, he gave the impression of a man who was standing exactly where he wanted to be in life. He was comfortable. He had his eye on the prize, but gave off the air of someone who knew that it was coming, and while we will never know if that was to be the case we would like to think that it was.

That he was a star is in no doubt. The rest of the world just had to catch up and agree with him.

In general conversation face to face, and online, we spoke of many things. Music was of course the main subject, but surrounding that there were times when he mentioned his family, fleeting comments, but always positive ones. That he loved and cared for then deeply was obvious. He never needed to shout it from the rooftops. It’s was just part of how he carried himself. He also spoke about his band mates in glowing terms.

He was what some people call the real deal, although we often can’t quantify what that is.

We worked with him on two occasions, with both being Heavy Drapes playing alongside Duncan Reid and the Big Heads.

The first time in Audio he pulled me to the side midway through Duncan Reid’s set and thanked me for the opportunity of playing. He didn’t have to. It was our privilege.

He commented that up until that point he hadn’t felt that they had played with bands that fitted with what they were doing, and then quickly added that this was not to be taken as a criticism of previous shows, but just an acknowledgement that it felt right.

I knew what he meant. Everything was clicking into place.

When I pushed some cash into his hand he asked what it was for.

At that moment in time they were considering gigs as paying their dues as they climbed a ladder and hadn’t expected to get paid, but I told him not to be silly and take it.

Here was a guy who had opened for Bowie, played with the New York Dolls, and he was thanking me for allowing him to play and refusing to take money for their performance.

I pressed it on him and he grudgingly accepted it.

The next morning I had a message from him saying the rest of the guys had given him it tight for taking it and he offered to return it.

Again I told him not to be silly. They had worked hard for it, but that’s the guy he was. He wasn’t out to take liberties and wanted to seek out good working relationships with like minded people.

The gig itself was indeed a match made in heaven and we are very proud that we were able to do it all again in NiceNSleazys when Duncan returned to Scotland.

At that one he was quick to thank us for providing a preferred mic stand for him. He was a little surprised as he had admitted that he had stopped asking promoters if they could provide one as it rarely transpired, and on this occasion here it was and he hadn’t even asked.

He didn’t miss these little things. He clocked them, logged it away, and made sure that you knew that he knew with a genuine thank you.

Both gigs have since been described as “you had to have been there” shows, and we would agree. You really did have to be there to fully understand just how good they both were. How everything flowed, how the energy built up to the point that people felt that shiver that sends a signal to the brain that tells you that you should pay attention as you are seeing something very special.

These are the shows that refuel the tank when we think about throwing in the towel. We remember the excitement and the enjoyment, and then we think about how we can aim to grab another piece of it.

We should thank Garry for that. Not just Garry, but everyone who delivers as he did.

What else can we say?

We admired him, we admired his dedication, his confidence, his faux arrogance. We wish we knew him better, that we could have built on the foundations of the relationship we had, but sadly that is not to be now.

We will leave you with a link to an interview that I did with Garry. His own words are always going to resonate more that ours could.

NHC interview with Garry Alexander Borland

And in closing all that is left to say is goodnight Garry. You made it, you will forever be a star mate. At least in our eyes.

Mainy and Kelly

 

Brian James- Brian James (Re-release, Easy Action) Joe Whyte

Apologies if this reads like a love-letter to Brian James, people.

Brian James is a guy who’s probably enlivened my life more than most. I absolutely adored “Damned Damned Damned” from the minute I first heard it and still do. In particular, James’s searing guitar playing which sounded to me, as a youth, like the end of the world, the beginning of a new world and was to my teenage ears, a real statement of intent.

I spent weeks in the late 70’s trying to learn how to play some of those songs (some of the parts still evade me!) and although there are rumours that the album was vari-speeded up during post production, I somehow doubt that.

The guitar playing on “See Her Tonight” is one of the most breakneck, seat-of-the-pants things ever committed to vinyl and the blood-dripping main riff on “Fan Club” is utterly spellbinding. The album is chock-full of these moments.

Of course, James had been around before The Damned; some of the songs on “DDD” have their roots in his earlier “biker rock” band Bastard whom he’d toured Europe with and he was slightly older than his erstwhile band-mates although punks Year Zero saw quite a few people dropping a year or two as well as their “aitches” and their Genesis albums.

James was also, and I have no qualms about saying this, the coolest motherfucker alive at that point; his jet black mop-top, his lanky stick insect demeanour and his angular guitar hero poses, all jutting limbs and curled lip insouciance, were simply jaw-dropping.

I doubt that anyone in the nascent punk scene wore a leather jacket quite as well as Brian James, either. He had that whole Parisian proto-punk look going on and he looked more like Patti Smith than she did at times. And lets not forget that guitar playing; cherry red Gibson SG straight into a cranked up Hi Watt stack- no pedals, no gimmicks, just sheer volume and his hands peeling off those licks and fiery chords.

That first Damned record gets spoken about now as “the first punk album blah blah blah” and any article on the group invariably mentions how they were first to do this or do that.

What is always missing, however, is the recognition that “DDD” is a classic rock record played REALLY REALLY fast. The songs aren’t “punk” as it became; they’re indebted to 60’s girl groups and The Stooges and The Dolls and show the depth of James’s song-writing in full effect. Bar “Stab Yor Back” which is a Scabies write, the full album is James’s and it shows.

The follow-up, the critically mauled (but actually not that bad) “Music For Pleasure” saw James pulling away from the amphetamine buzzbomb of the debut and crafting a more textured, almost psychedelic-type album in places. “Problem Child”, “Stretcher Case” and others retained the blitzkrieg of old, however.

Produced by Nick Mason of Pink Floyd (they’d originally wanted the reclusive Syd Barrett), the album basically signed the death warrant on the original line up of the Damned.

James’s next venture was the short-lived Tanz Der Youth, who released a couple of cracking psych-pop singles then disappeared. There were another few collaborations and bands but the game seemed to be up as the rejuvenated Damned headed off to mainstream chart acclaim with “Machine Gun Etiquette”.

The next move was quite a surprise, however. Teaming up with Dead Boy Stiv Bators, Sham’s Dave Treganna and The Barracudas drumming powerhouse Nicky Turner as punk super-group Lords of the New Church was, on paper, destined to be a disaster. As it turned out, it was anything but.

The Lords shook off the novelty tag almost immediately. Supergroups are usually anything but; massive egos and fans desperate for their favourite members back catalogue usually mean their life span is pretty brief. The Lords quashed that notion and then some.

To be fair, they were a way better band live than they ever were on record; the albums are good but they don’t come close to capturing the raw tsunami of the band live. 

James and Bators were an astonishing double act and it just seemed so right to witness them together.

Obviously both were heavily indebted to Iggy and The Dolls in their previous bands but the two sparked off of each other and created sheer bottled lightning on stage. That rhythm section weren’t  too bad, either, with Turner’s energy (he literally would bounce up and down on the drum stool) and Treganna anchoring it in the low register.

Several albums and a few near-chart-hits later, it was all over acrimoniously but I’ll always treasure those times I saw The Lords live. They were, at times, truly unbeatable.

Following this, James released this self-titled album with help from some musicians he’d played with in the past. It’s a mature record- the frenetic soloing of DDD and The Lords is replaced by a more mannered, blues-y style but the songs retain the spark of old. Originally released in 1990, this is a re-mastered and limited edition vinyl version of the album.

He’s a better guitarist than he is vocalist but don’t let that put you off; his languid voice on “The Twist” or “Cut Throat” sits well with the slithering, serpentine licks and the late-night feel of the rhythm section. “Ain’t That A Shame” makes a reappearance- it was originally a single with Stewart Copeland on drums- and a cover of R&R standard “Cut Across Shorty” slots in well with the rest of the album.

There’s a depth to the songs that repeated listening unearths; on the face of it, they are fairly standard garage rock fare but several times around, there is clearly more to them than meets the ear.

Our esteemed Droog Brother Main put on a Scabies/James gig some years back- that’s where I met Mainy for the first time as I recall- and time had not blunted the attack.

James wielding, as always, his trusty Telecaster (he’d switched to a Tele when The Lords started) straight into a stack of amplifiers and it was loud.

VERY, VERY LOUD.

He doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered about the mainstream these days; he appears to be happy doing the odd collaboration or showcase gig and that’s a shame for us. He’s unlikely to ever rejoin The Damned and a Lords reunion is a non-starter since the death of Stiv Bators.

I guess we should be happy with what he have. He’s a national treasure (well, he is to me!) and that body of work is simply magnificent.

All hail Brain James, or as he used to have painted on his Lords amp;

“Brian Saves”.

Joe Whyte

Buy it here

We know what you want. Even if you don't

A day late, and the proverbial dollar short, but the planned recommendations update is here.

All the recommendations come from members of the Reservoir Droogs Facebook group.

Anything can get a shout out. The only rule is there are no rules.

Yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense. If you want shit to make sense then what are you doing here?  

Jimmy Devlin (Ex every punk band in Scotland, ex Wig Wam Bam, ex The Carpettes, currently on the run from debtors, and some angry fathers who will soon be grandfathers. Allegedly. His lawyer told us to say that bit.)

Green Room. Late to seeing this one, but for those who don’t know it is Patrick Stewart as the owner and top man of a dive bar. A skinhead/punk/metal club in the backwoods of the bad ol’ US of A.

Some right nasty stuff going on throughout, and far better than most of the supernatural horror movies released over the last couple of years. It’s everything that can go wrong does go wrong mixed with American History X.

Perfect date night movie if you want your partner jumping into your lap.

Klaatu has been getting some heavy plays around these here parts recently. Once considered to be the Beatles under a different name they also penned Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft that the Carpenters made famous.
Sort of lost in the mists of time, but worthy of a google in my humble opinion.

David (Munro) Orr (Vocalist Southern Approach/Outstandifold and the Wrttygrippers. Sex Badger and vodka and diet coke connoisseur)
Sex Pistols tour of London on YouTube. It proves that you can take the punk out of London, but not the London out of punk. Mainy (Res Droog will weigh in here about his beloved US bands)
And as if by magic here it is here for your consideration.

Glen Robertson (The Stumblers)

Outside suggestion, but The Hope County Choir with Let Your Water Wash away Your Sins is doing it for me, and the album that it comes from. It's part of the new Farcry game soundtrack, and to me it perfectly captures the gospel vibe with true country song writing.

And for all it sounds overly religious it’s written to be cult propaganda but someone else can draw the lines between religion and brainwashing.

Daniel Graham. The debut from Thunderpussy. Best name for a band since Split Beaver. Oooft.

And not so rock and roll, but Anthony Hopkins in King Lear is the daddy. 

Jeff King. Millie Manders & the Shut Up are currently on magnificent form, and been the talk of their recent festivals.

The Kut album is a belter too.



Pete Montador. Ghost in The Tanglewood from Ginger Wildheart has been getting bashed in the car, and the gig in Edinburgh was triumphant. (Link in Kels recommendations). Eureka Machines with Victories has been making an appearance too, but as of the Ginger gig it's Billy Liar that is getting a shout out from me. First time seeing him, but not the last.

Kel Droog (Right hand woman, the power behind the throne.)

Ginger Wildheart and his Ghost in the Tanglewood album has had me cheering and crying too. A very personal album, but made all the more powerful by the honesty that is on display.  

It was my birthday and Mainy (Res Droog) bought me some Alice Cooper Funko POP merch.

(Editor edit) What a nice guy he is.

A girl can’t have too much Coop merch. If you are into that side of thing then these are nice collectables.

Reservoir Droog A hand me down recommendation from me. Joe Whyte of Reaction and writer for Vive le Rock assured me that I would like New York Junk, and he was right. One EP purchased from Love Music in Glasgow and I’m deep in the groove. Bit of MC5, a whole lot of NY Dolls and a smidgeon of everything that made the seventies New York gutter scene so bloody attractive is thrown at the wall and what sticks is New York Junk.  
So from Joe to me to you. Here's New york Junk.

A review will follow. 

And just a reminder in closing to go with the recommendations. If you like what has been posted here then go and buy the album, see the band, watch the movie. Support the artists because if we don't then they can't entertain us. 

J D Wilkes and Th' Legendary Shack Shakers - Broadcast (Glasgow) 07/05/18

If you want larger than life then look no further than JD Wilkes.

Off stage he’s allegedly a mild mannered gentleman, but on stage he is anything but. Plucking pubic hair (his own) and casting it into the audience, relentlessly displaying tourette styled ticks, gurning and contorting his body into pretzel shapes are all par for the course when attending a Legendary Shack Shakers gig. The man is a combination of sweat, spit, and angels and demons fighting for control.

And more power to him.

It may well all be an act, but he plays it to the hilt. The stage persona is as real as you can get to lunacy unleashed, and unlike the Victorians who would simply gape at the madman, we get to sing and dance along with him and his band.

That this show was billed as an acoustic affair was something that wouldn’t neatly lodge in my head though.

It kept slipping out and I’d have to pick it up, look at this strange little thing, and then I’d shrug and try and pop it back in.

It was messing with me and I didn’t like it.

And up until the day of the gig I was actually in two minds about going.

That is until a random message from a friend asking if I fancied it tipped the balance of the scales from a maybe to a why the hell not, and I’m glad it did because ultimately it wasn’t really an acoustic show at all.

My perception of what it would be, and what it was, had nothing in common at all.

Rather than an acoustic guitar strumming snorefest facsimile of what I had experienced at Shack Shakers gigs before,  it was a stripped back set up that featured a basic drum set up, a double bass, and an electric guitar that more than delivered.

Throw in JD and his harmonica, and a guest appearance of a fiddle, and the juke joint on moonshine angle on entertaining was well covered.

In hindsight I’m comfortable in saying that energy wise you can’t differentiate between a full blown Shack Shakers set and this version of it.

In the aftermath of a show I’ve often pondered where the band would sit most comfortably. Sonically speaking that is. And it has come to me that they exist in that moment when the party peaks. When the drink has worked its inhibition magic and the madness is in full flow, but also in that moment just before the darkness slips in and fucks everything up.

You can smell the danger in the air and it’s intoxicating, but the violence and blood hasn’t arrived yet. It’s a good time; a moment that rests on the cusp, but the real deal never lasts long while these guys can stretch the feeling of that moment out over a much longer period by tightly controlling it.

They work on the premise that it has to sound like the train is about to jump the tracks, and if it doesn’t then what is the point.

It’s an illusion, but a damn fine one to get lost in as most of us will admit that the feeling of living on the edge is thrilling, but the reality carries a cost that is often too much to pay. This is why we gravitate towards the rollercoaster at the fair and throw ourselves into night long marathons of horrors movies. We want the thrill without the cost, and JD Wilkes and the Shack Shakers deliver that very same thing. The pretence of danger without the burden of having to live with the consequences, and that’s what makes it so fuckin good. 

It’s a best of both worlds scenario and they know it.

Next time let’s all see how near the edge we can get.

Beechwood. Your new favourite band. (Joe Whyte)

Imagine if you will, three waifs from Queens who look as if they’d crawled out of the background of a scene in Coppola’s “Mean Streets” and who wouldn’t be fussed about either mugging you at knife point in a dark alley or alternatively taking you to the hippest, druggiest, supermodel-infested late night dive and keeping you out till you’d experienced a full-scale psychotic meltdown.

Add to that, two albums bursting with seedy, opiated, dirty rock a la Lou Reed or Patti Smith mixed with a pop sensibility that seems so ridiculously right and you have Beechwood, a band from NYC who genuinely would be in jail or dead if rock and roll hadn’t saved them from themselves.

Managed by Cynthia Ross, former B Girl, member of New York Junk, friend and confidante of Sid and Nancy, former partner of the late Stiv Bators and erstwhile heart and soul of the beating heart of NY rock, it’s fair to say they’re being guided by a hand that’s seen and experienced the pitfalls….

The debut album, “Songs From The Land Of Nod” came out last year and showcased the young trio’s tense, brittle and beautiful songs that are indebted to Television, Lou, Bowie and The Velvets and are as close a match to the heartbeat of the city that birthed them as the subway that dissects it.

This is a band that is the polar opposite of the mannered, manicured scuzz-lite of The Strokes; they genuinely need this as a route out of the hustling and criminality that they were involved in before. The songs very much reflect this; desperation, melancholy, loss and a laconic, deathly attitude that infuses them with a dark and powerful grace. Entwined among these are songs with a classic pop sensibility that have a bittersweet delicacy about them that totally enriches.

The new album (less than six months on from the debut) is “Inside The Flesh Hotel”- they’re both on Alive Natural Sounds- and is a step up from the debut in song quality. There is a real depth to the material that unravels and entrances on repeated listens. There’s a grubby glamour, a pallid and bloodless ache amid songs of loss and betrayal and joy and solace. It’s barely been off my turntable since it arrived.

They’re on tour in Europe as we speak; unfortunately there’s only the one UK date in London. Hopefully that’ll be corrected next time around.

Beechwood are;

Gordon Lawrence (guitar/vox),
Isa Tineo (drums/vox)
Sid Simons (bass/vox)

Joe Whyte

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Back to the seventies

I love a bit of Dr Feelgood, and I’m equally enamoured with a  great deal of the pub rockers that predated punk, but when the plaudits are thrown at them as being some sort of sole chain in the link that took us from the bloated stadium rockers to the year zero snarl of punk I get a bit uppity.

What about glam rock?

Bowie, Roxy Music, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Marc Bolan, and so many more, were right there at the birthing of punk rock, and their DNA is stamped throughout the wailing of the nascent scene.

With their chart topping hits they most definitely influenced punk far more than a band playing on a Friday night in the local boozer purely by dint of having that greater reach.

Mick Jones was a Mott fanatic, everyone loved Bowie, would we have the Stooges success in the UK without him?

How about Bolan and the Damned?

And on the subject of Bolan this musical is looking rather good.

 20^th Century Boy is currently mid run with these dates still to come.

1-5 May  BRADFORD ALHAMBRA 

9-12 May  KINGSTON ROSE THEATRE
14-16 May  CRAWLEY THE HAWTH THEATRE
17-20 May  ST ALBANS ARENA
22-26 May  NOTTINGHAM THEATRE ROYAL
28-30 May  PRESTON CHARTER THEATRE
31-2 June  LINCOLN THEATRE ROYAL
4-6 June  GLASGOW KINGS THEATRE
7-9 June  CARLISLE SANDS
12-13 June  DARTFORD ORCHARD THEATRE
14-16 June  LLANDUDNO
21-23 June  WYCOMBE SWAN
26-27 June  YORK BARBICAN
28-30 June  CHELMSFORD CIVIC 

As a primary school kid I would religiously watch Marc Bolan on tv. I'd pour over newspapers to see what shows he would be on and commandeer the tv for the duration of his appearance.

I was a fanatic, and my bedroom was a shrine to him.
Too young to have been caught up in Bolanmania I didn't really care as it was still going on in my head.
Other kids didn't get it, but even at this young age I was already used to being out of step with my peers.

The lads were all into football, but I was wondering if I could get away with wearing eye make up. Everyone wanted to stay up and see the Sweeny, but I was more likely to be sneaking a peak at Monty Python.

When it was announced that he was playing Glasgow my head exploded.

March 12, 1977 – Apollo Theatre, Glasgow (supported by The Damned)

I was ten years old, and with some determination I set out to have my parents let me go, or take me.
Tears before bedtime followed tantrums as my pleading fell on deaf ears.
To be fair no parents were allowing ten year olds to go to gigs alone, and if any took their kids then I don't remember it happening.

My childish mind couldn't understand why they wouldn't accommodate my need to see my idol though.

It especially struggled with resentment when the news of his death knocked me for six as the awareness that I would never see him settled in.

In hindsight all is forgiven. Or nearly all because if I'm honest there's a tiny little kernel of resentment still lodged in a corner of my mind.

Still, this looks like it could provide some closure.

The critical reviews are positive, and the more important public reaction is even better.

I guess I might need to look the glitter out.

Ticket links and further information.

Wait! That isn’t enough love for the seventies being shown?

Well how about this.

Holy Holy will be back next year.

FEBRUARY

08 YORK, ENGLAND

09 LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

10 GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

12 NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND

13 BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND

15 SALISBURY, ENGLAND

16 CARDIFF, WALES

17 BEXHILL-ON-SEA, ENGLAND

19 GUILDFORD, ENGLAND

20 LONDON, ENGLAND

21 MANCHESTER, ENGLAND

23 LEAMINGTON SPA, ENGLAND

24 CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

The first time Kelly and I seen Holy Holy it ranked up there as one of those "you should have been there" gigs.
The ensemble cast of musicians delivered a spectacular, and emotionally charged, performance that left those attending appreciating that they had seen something very special indeed.

Unfortunately our second experience failed to hit similar heights. It was a perfect storm scenario that sucked a great deal of fun from attending.
Hiked ticket prices impacted on the turn out, the seating put in place at the last minute to make it look busier just served to provide a dead space front of the stage, and while Glenn valiantly soldiered on with a cold affecting his vocals the Academy's notoriously poor sound was sabotaging his efforts throughout.

"Ziggy" comes a close second to "Hunky Dory" as my favourite Bowie album and the opportunity to see Holy Holy do it in its entirety was something that had me giddy with excitement for months leading up to it, but the reality ultimately left me feeling deflated.

Tickets for this one are however being sold far in advance of the event which may well address the poor uptake from last time, and the show has returned to the ABC which most definitely suits it better.
That's two positives to consider, and on balance I think we will go back for a third bite of Holy Holy.
Fingers crossed that health issues are avoided and this time we get the Ziggy material delivered in a manner that sends jolts of electricity up and down our spines.

Event details and all Holy Holy news