Went to see Peter Green last night - a great night with 3 of mates from way back. There's snapgallery here. Neil, Dave and Ronnie were good company all evening. Beer flowed, jokes were told and the music was, at times, sublime.
A friend of the kids who works as a reporter on a local rag had acquired a couple of complimentary tickets for me as long as I wrote a review of the concert. We were able to blag some decent seats as a result of this. The only down side was some drunken pillock who 'had a band to promote' boring the pants off me for 10 minutes or so.
Biggest laugh of the night had to be the appearance of 3 of the oldest hippies you're ever likely to see. (Certainly in Manchester anyway - they were all put down or run out of town during The Pistol's legendary gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall back in '76). No sooner had the music started than they were up 'idiot dancing' at the front of the stage. Took us back did that I'll tell yer !
First draft of the review follows:-
Green Plays the Blues !
Men and women of a certain age flocked to The Civic Centre on Friday evening as one of the world’s greatest blues musicians took to the stage. The good old days of the 60s were recaptured and, for a few hours at least, the cares and woes of the present could be forgotten. You almost smell the Patchouli and Incense !
The Peter Green Splinter Group played a masterful set that was an impressive collection of blues standards, self-penned material and some of Green’s early Fleetwood Mac classics. Opening with the Elmore James standard “Believe my Time Ain’t Long”, the band interspersed the evening with tracks from their latest album “Reaching the Cold 100”.
Nigel Watson must take a lot of credit for enticing Peter back to performing live, and it is evident that he provides a great deal of support when on stage. He takes a number of solos and allows Peter to jump from slide guitar to standard guitar and also throw in some divine harmonica playing. The rest of the band: Roger Cotton – keyboards and rhythm guitar, Pete Stroud – bass and Larry Tolfree – drums, provide a solid rhythm section.
The highlights of the evening, though, were undoubtedly the 60s classics. Green admitted to me later that he finds playing these old tunes a little boring but wryly added that the rest of the band think they’re great – so that’s why they play them.
An instrumental version of “Man of the World”, Little Willie John’s immaculate “Need Your Love So Bad”, “Black Magic Woman” and a masterful performance of “The Green Manaleshi” sent the crowd home happy.
The band were available for chatting, autographs and purchasing CDs later and it was evident that Mr Green is relaxed, full of humour and is obviously enjoying life. He’s still full of the blues though.
Well it might get edited a bit. we'll see. I think I'll see if they're interested in any of my photographs as well. Who knows ?
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